A place for me to post my trades, thoughts, ideas, and daily review for public review and feedback. My method is fairly simple and if someone wants I can post screen shots. I day trade only the YM, but note that I have only been trading my live account for 4 days after testing my strategy for several months on a demo account and giving the strategy lot's of thought so I understand it fully. So far I'm down about $350 or so. I have made a few mistakes but quickly ironed those out. The main one being over-trading. My plan is to stay under 5 trades/day, unless most of my trades are breakeven, than I will keep trading as opportunities present themselves. My setups are based on divergence and continuation patterns. Pretty simple stuff really. Most importantly below is my process: Daily self monitoring: -Is my mind clear and free from conflict, do I feel well enough to perform at my peak. Pre Trading: Outlining important levels, support/resistance, trend, etc. Taking note of news/data releases that could have an impact and the time of release, checking related markets for insight into overall trading environment, making a game plan which includes risk levels for my account. Market Monitoring: Watching for my low risk setups to present themselves, passively, in the background while I do other things. This allows for my intuition to trade, and keeps me from getting caught up in the noise. Taking notice: As something is developing my alerts go into high gear Stalking: Using smaller time frames and execution skills to get the best entry possible that conforms with my trade idea. EXECUTION: Quick, lightning fast, and effecient - no hesitation. Monitoring/Managing: Including risk/reward - keeping it 1-1 throughout trade while giving market room to move. For example, if I am 5 points from my target, I will be trailing by 5 points, if I am 2 points, trailing by 2 points. Placing stop @ BE when up by .5 to .75x my risk. Exiting: Either on a trailing stop, or when my target is reached, or on a market order when necessary. Let profits run, minimize impact when wrong. Daily review and journaling: I screen shoot my trade setups and outcomes and make note of my thougths throughout the day. This forum will be useful for my overall journalling. Attached is setups, basically. I also have my excel tracker, but can't post excel files, so I will just post results. I will try to post my trading ideas at the beginning of the day if time/focus allows. Also my thoughts, etc.
Support/resistance on market profile... I take note of these levels, which help me in my entry/exits.
I missed this one though, I was out to lunch with clients. Today I was trying to trade the head and shoulders top before the market broke the 9200 level. I took several trades, all breakeven except the last one, which I lost 6 pts, a small loss before it went for a huge ride. It's interesting I didn't see the breakout coming? Note that I use the 500 tick and 100 tick charts, but zoom out to the 15,5 minute TF's throughout the day to get a guage on the overall action. Oh yah, My holy grail... is me.
-$68 for the day, 2 small losses. of 6, and 1 points, the rest of the trades breakeven Not bad and I consider such days a triumph, when I am wrong I don't mind at all if I am minimizing the impact. The last trade of the day turned out to be good but I placed my stop @ BE too quickly, actually voilating my 1-1Risk/Reward throughout trade rule. It was a long at the last dip before the days high from the 75 level, looking for 95 exit target... Had I kept it 1-1, it would have been a profitable trade, lesson learned. I also took the Van Tharp Investment Psychology Inventory Profile again today, I haven't taken it for 6 months. It's interesting to note that I feel more comfortable with myself and my plan then I did last time so I'm making progress for sure. I will post the results of that. It's extremely insightful and available at www.iitm.com I'm studying the peak performance course and "Trading in the Zone" book, also Market's in Profile is on it's way so I can become fluent in the language of market profile and the auction process... Anything to help increase my edge is great but the key lies with me.
In Hindsight using a 10 point stop, and going for 1x risk MIN would have worked a bit better today. Friday will be interesting since I have the day off I can devote the morning to trading, getting up while the market is making the good moves. Market's in Profile is an excellent book! Also it's important to note with the kind of risk i'm taking there is bound to be several losing days in a row, it's just important to minimize the impact of them. I'm basically taking 1-2% risk, with a 40-60% accuracy I could easily have 5 full losers in a row, or 10, or even 20 over the long run. So I still consider today to be a triumph. I just need to be more flexible, and not so rigid when it comes to my entries/exits, stops and profit targets. The Market is a dynamic creature which can only be conquered with dynamic weapons. Todays performance I will try to attach. But if that doesn't work I will post it next.
Ninja Trader w/ZenFire is excellent. I will post a chart of the setups I missed. I realize I missed a couple very nice setups today. I do work full time, so there's many distractions. I keep the chart up throughout the day. Sometimes my focus is taken away that I miss setups that are extremely obvious in hindsight. For better details, refer to my excel sheet.
Studying the day's action in hindsight helps me in two ways, to have more confidence seeing how my method worked and to remind me to focus.
A few good opp's It's important to note that while this are good low risk entries, that means nothing, because it's the trade management, and exits that make it profitable or not. Getting to a risk free trade right away is important but not as much of a priority as staying in a good trade... While minimizing risk should it go against me. By now if you haven't noticed, i trade divergence setups, and continuation patterns. I have a hard time taking a breakout for some reason, even though I know there's money to be made with breakouts. With all of these Divergence signals, waiting for a confirmation candle is useful.