9-16-03 Not a horrible day considering a fed meeeting day. Was long all day, so was on the right side of the market, but left a little money on the table in the afternoon. Took long @54.45, sold half at 54.75, and sold the other half at .87. Took CDWC long @57.29, took profits at 57.45. Took JCO long at 21.75, got stopped out at .73. Took XLNX long at 30.85, stopped out at .74 I took Ebay long at 54.15 right before the fed announcment (half lot to limit risk, but a complete gamble) great setup, but high risk cause of Fed. But ended up going my way. Took profit at .50. Left alot of money on the table. grossed +$110.10 on 2000 shares today.
9-17-03 Horrible day today! i did everything wrong. Im not even going to waste the time of writing my trades here. grossed -$300 on 3200 shares
Today sucked for me too! -$50 excluding commiss. With commiss., it's probably around $-80 -FastTrader
Joey, the bad days are the most important ones to record. When you mess up and break your rules, that's when you need to examine and record what you did. Human nature is to accentuate the positive and ignore the negative. As traders, we have to fight our natural tendencies all the time. Recording the bad with the good is being true to yourself and making sure you realize and take responsibility for mistakes. Not raggin' on ya, but that kind of thinking has helped me a lot. Good luck, CB
Corey, Good advice as usual....im not really ignoring the bad trades, or why i lost today, i just have lots of work to do today...if i have time later tonight i will post my trades. I did spend around a hour after the close going through everything and finding my mistakes and making sure i go by my plan the rest of the week. Thanks again!
9-18-03 Not a great day for me today again. I did alot of thinking and looking over my stats, and ive noticed i only make money in the AM. Im going to just trade the morning next week and see how it goes. I am not going to trade tomorrow also. I need a breather, plus it wont be a exciting day anyways because of experation. I had a great morning today of course, ended up having one bad trade that ruined it and then ended up churning and over trading in the afternoon. I think next week i am going to start doing some swing trades to get my cents pershare up. it ook STZ long 10 min into the open at 30.37, got out half at 30.59, stopped out on the rest at .55. I need to not have such a tight stop on my partials. STZ would of been a great play today. Most of my morning trades are off longer term charts, i need to trat them more like swing trades. long qcom at 44.79 out at 45.00. left lots of money on table, i need to learn to keep small partials and let them run on most of my plays... Long PETM at 24.54, out at .63 Long SINA at 39.74out at .95 Long BMET at 34.50, stopped out at 34.31 Long merq at 50.98, out half at 51.20, out rest at 50.96 stop. Long NTE at 30.74 stopped out at 30.36. This is what screwed my day up, my first bad experience with a specialists...my stop was at .60..He filled me a little lower than my stop Ok so i was stupid, the market was strong and i jumoed back in....revenge trading..y ai suppse, ill admit it. in at .70 stopped at .42 . Bought QCOM in the afternoon at 45.88, ended up scrathing it. grossed +18.11 today on 3800 shares...as you can see i overtraded today imo compared to what i usally trade. Ill start fresh next week, and see how the new plan works!! I would love any advice any of you have for me about my trading this week. weeks gross -155.19 on 10,600 shares.
If you're trading small size, I would stay away from NYSE. All of my bad fills have been on NYSE. Nasdaq is an instant fill. -FastTrader
I just spent 3 hours going through trades, ect. I found out all my profit is made in the first 2 hours of the trading day. The rest of the day is just churning and churning. I have attched a chart for you guys to look at. I am just going to trade the morning for awhile now and do some swing trading to capitialize on any of the larger market swings through the afternoon. My adice to any new trader is you HAVE to go through your trades, and stuff on a wekely basis. Even if you have a good week, go through and se WHY you had a good week....was it just that you followed your plan well?, or was it because the market was roaring and a monkey could of made a profit that week? You also have to find out why on the weeks that you traded like shit, WHY? Keep very good records of all your trades. You need to treat this like a buiness....all business keep records of everything so they can go back and find out what works and what doesnt. You will not suceed in this game without doing this. If you are to lazy to do this....get out now...you wont make it....I dont have room to be saying this maybe because im a new trader, but iv been in teh trading business way longer than i have traded myslef, and i also listen to vetren traders, and they will all say the same thing. As you can see on the chart i posted, i made all my money in the morning and broke even through the lunch time and afternoon.....but that is gross....i trade just as much volume in the afternoon and lunch as i do in the morning, actually more. So my commision is eating my NET profit just from churrning afte the moning. These stats show that i need to stop it...so i will. Simple as that. This is going to HOPEFULLY solve a couple of my problems....1. make my cents pershare more now, with less trading and swing trades it should make it grow alot. 2. stop giving so much o my profit and getting charged commision on all of these scrathed trades and tiny winner in the afternoon. Well anyways, i would like some feedback on this. THANKS