Trades for the day. I only wound up taking two trades. The first was with the micro trend, probably a bit too much in the micro trend looking back on it. The long thought, that lined right up with the big picture. Upon entry, I didn't take too much heat, and the trade moved nicely. Target? Upper Trend Channel line. Followed it almost to the top. Good trade. These trades are good trades, the ability to take ONLY these trades would probably reflect well in my P/L.
Trades for the day. Feel like I left a lot on the table today. I'm taking a lot less trades than usual. Patience is developing, luckily I have some guys in the chatroom to talk to ease the impatience. I seem to have picked up two habbits. 1) Trading less. This is good and bad. Good because it's trying to trade the best setups and reduce commissions. Bad as it's a bit more difficult psychologically when trades go against you early on, now I'm hoping I get more opporunities soon which could lead to over trading. 2) Drawing less trendlines through out the day. In an attempt to have less clutter on the screen, I seem to be missing a lot og good setups. Many of these today that looking back I wish I'd have taken are listed. I think this is due in part to me not taking them. Forrest
Trades for the day. Finished Green. A little off though. Wished I hadn't stopped towards the end of day, i would have killed that huge selloff! Have not been posting as I've been having data issues. Also Getting new PC set up, etc. Forrest
Hi Forrestang I am learning as well- so please note I am no great trader- but I often do OK I looked at your past chart image that you had made notes on and added some notes of things that I have recently been learning from this forum, which have helped me quite a bit.. mostly price action logic I am attaching it so you can take a look at it, and also so that any more experienced traders can see these notes as well and add their analysis/thoughts to my logic for both our benefit My added lines are in orange, and my notes are both on the chart and below in white text
I appreciate the comments!! I particularly like you pointing out that resistance can become support. I've heard that a million times, but I often overlook taht important fact in my trading. Good T/L drawn on my chart, I'm sure I hadn't noticed that at the time, if I had I probably would have easily picked up some more points on the day. Since we're both learning, post up some of your charts with your trades you have so we can both get some good observations from them. Forrest
I will post up some trade charts in the coming weeks. I traded my daytrade account down below the $25k min (lost 5k over 6 months or so) and took that opportunity to take a breather and study up some more before funding it again and going back to daytrading. I've just been making some 1-4 day long trades from my IRA account- some loser, some winners.. overall I'm in the green the past month or so, mostly thanks to a good FAS trade However the FAS trade was origianlly a Class-A F-up on my part.. I didn't take a look back at a 30-day chart to see the overall massive trend channel before entering, and as a result, I mistook a pause in the middle of the channel (on its way to a bounce of the bottom of the channel) as a real bounce off the bottom- since FAS was doing a similar thing at the time as you see in your chart (went from a big trend-range to ranging in the upper half between the top and middle line) so when it came down to the trendline that I thought was the bottom of the channel (it was actually the middle of the larger scale trend) and I saw it hitting some support, I bought it and rode it up a ways.. I was thinking for sure it would go to the top of the channel... and I DID NOT PUT IN A STOP a bit below my entry at the next good support. So it made it about halfway up and then it reversed REALLY FAST and just blew through my entry I was just caught off guard by how fast it ran out of steam with no stop in place, I was left to my own discipline, which I have to say is LACKING So I kept thinking "this doesnt make sense, it HAS to bounce" and on that logic, watched it fall and fall and fall. Then things got stupider and stupider.. I was pretty down at that point, and decided "hell, I'm closer to bouncing off the bottom now, than i am to a reasonable stop loss" so i decided (awesome idea) to just let it fall until it made some support, and then I'd let it ride back up and get out at the first sign of weakness, to lessen my losses. well, it was getting close to end of day and I thought "There will be some end of day quick rally- its way too down" well.. DO NOT count on ANY rally just becasue its the "end of the day" or whatever and its been going down for an hour. NOTHING happened. it went straight down, and closed. So there I was WAY down. THEN I figured, ah, it will have to recoup tommorow somewhat. Next day, it gapped down and stayed down all day. So I was REALLY eating it. Remember this is FAS a 3x leveraged etf on a specific sector, and really I should not have been trading it without keeping tight and disciplined stops. What I was doing was INSANE, but I was terrified of realizing this loss, as it was enormous (5 figures) and I just felt like a frikkin IDIOT. So I notice FAS "didnt seem to want to trade much below 5" or whatever stupid crap I was telling myself to get through the weekend holding this giant LOSER. Then a miracle happened, the Geithner thing was setup for premarket on Monday.. I noticed the futures setting up real high, and I thought I'd at least get a chance to lessen the losses. So I decided I would play this thing right.. Geithner made his speech, and it looked like the market liked it, and FAS was set for a HUGE gap up. Awesome.. looks like my losses got halved right there. But I still need to get to break even, or close. So I played it very carefully, I allowed it to trade down a little bit from the big gap-up open.. as this is usually the case. Then as it established an early bottom, I set a stop-market under it and watched that damn thing all day with sweaty palms, raising my stop with every higher bottom on the current trendline. Towards the end of the day, around 2:30 I had to go pick up my kids from school, and take my 1 year old to the doctor because she was sick (good timing) So I'm watching the market from my Tmobile G1 (thank god for google finance realtime quotes) and raising my stops from the phone via Ameritrade's website.. all while running these errands. By 3pm or so, I was finally at BREAK EVEN so I was breathing a huge sigh of relief, but I figured it was trending up pretty good, and it had been up at least a half point from my entry back when I first entered, so I gave it a tiny bit of wiggle room (put a stop a little bit under my exact breakeven) and figured if I got stopped out for a small loss I deserved it for being such a moron with this whole trade. So I'm sitting in the doctor's office while my 1 year gets a checkup, my wife met me there, and my 5 year old is in there too boucing off the walls hahaha and I'm sitting in the corner raising stops! Then it REALLY takes off, and I can't believe these quotes coming in. I keep raising stops like a madman and here's the POINT- it feels SO good to know you have that STOP in there. I really never traded with actual *entered* stops before and I think that was a HUGE part of my problem. Obviously, I would not have been in the mess in the first palce if I had, and now here I was in the green like +$4k and I knew I'd be taking NO LOSS So then comes the conundrum... SELL TODAY? What to do.. what to do... I took and gamble there and let it go into the next day. I figured there didnt seem to be any profit taking, just a 50 degree upwards angle in the trend. Another Lesson learned.. After a huge day.. take your profits. Don't expect a big gap up or whatever. Just take your money. So next day (today) I figure it will pullback some and then hopefully trend up a bit more.. not really good logic in hindsight, considering what a big move it was on Monday It opens at my break even (arrrrggghh) and I set a tight stop under early lows and allow it to trend up It gets back to the previous highs and I should have sold there, but held out for the all-day uptrend. I raised a few stops, and ended up hitting one of them about halfway back down. So I lucked out BIGTIME- like once in a lifetime luckout- that is not real trading in any way, shape or form. I got incredibly lucky, and yet still made stupid moves (holding overnight) I learned alot from that trade- perhaps it takes a huge scare like that to etch some things into your head. I hope I don't forget these lessons down the road. It forced me to use stops and actually enter them and raise them along the way to protect profits, which I never did in the past.. I just used mental stops and my finger near the sell button.. which is CRAP for a rookie trader like me. And I also learned to just take the dang profits and not be too greedy- especially end of day- if it looks too good to last it probably is. I should make up a chart of that heart-attack experience for you So, you see, I am NOT a good trader. I may be in the green- but that trade was pure SUCKAGE
What a crappy trading day. Not too bad overall, took away some good lessons. Patience and discipline. I think most of the trades taken today were reasonable, timing was just off, felt kinda choppy....but a choppy/trendy day I didn't fare well with.
Hey Forrestang I'm still watching your charts but this last one, I cant really see where your exact entries and exact exits are plus the image is ginormous* I posted some charts of a recent trade or two in my journal as well http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=155877 *yes that is a real word