NoDoji's Day Trading Log

Good Lord, nod, you have a lot of teachers! I need to get me one of these journals. LOL.

Okay, since everyone is putting their analogies out there, I will too:

"Intraday trading is like nuclear war, the only way to win is not to play."

 

+ $49

I’m still having a terrible time overcoming price bias. Here’s the recap of the day:

THE GOOD: I did trade 2 ES short signals today and managed the trades perfectly with a -$17.30 (1 tick) loss on each when the expected moves failed to materialize. Both signals were solid as a rock, but were definitely aggressive trades and required quick exits when price action showed rapid renewed strength. My exits were as perfect as I possibly could’ve gotten without second guessing my trades, so I was VERY pleased with that.

THE BAD: That was 2 out of about 16 solid ES signals today and I was supposed to trade ALL my signals.

THE UGLY: My first signal was an aggressive opening long @ 982.00 (my own signal), which I didn’t trade because price seemed too close to major resistance (an exact repeat of last Thursday’s wrong thoughts). Next long signal was the confirmed long @ 986.00 off the opening range bar (BigHog’s signal), which I didn’t trade because then SURELY price was too high to go long. (For the record, price hit 994.00.) The third short signal after my two scratch trades occurred very soon after those trades, but my ADD self had moved on to watching stocks at that point, and I missed the move I’d been shooting for on the previous 2 trades.

THE UGLIER: AMSC had awesome earnings and guidance and I figured the big guys would be snapping up shares and shorts would a-covering off the gap. They were my top pick for the open to the long side. I expected some pullback off the pre-open gap up, but price quickly moved up from opening 29.75 price, and I kept waiting for a pullback to enter, but by the time a pullback occurred price was already up 2.00 from the gapped open and I thought surely price was too high to go long. Well, at 36.47 price was finally too high to go long.

Also CL was on my list for the open to the short side, because earnings gave it no legs to climb in pre-market. It dropped rather quickly and I didn’t chase it, though it was a great short all day.

I watched ORLY hitting highs after strong earnings and then it formed a bull flag near the HOD. The consolidation was tight as a spring and I moved in to place my buy stop @ 42.01 just above the HOD. It immediately took off without me, but after only a .09 cent move it then came back to the consolidation range area near the previous HOD. I figured it was a failed breakout and did not put on a trade. It was no such thing, and quickly regained traction and moved to 42.71 before pulling back and regrouping.

Later I saw LAZ, which had been hitting the high ticker earlier, break out of consolidation and hit a whole new set of highs. If anything, I should’ve had LAZ on watch for the expected b/o. Either entering long at the consolidation low area or placing a buy stop above the HOD would’ve produced a nearly 2.00 move up. Then I watched it moving up and was ready to short. I took time to make a comment or two about it in chat and I missed the short entry!

At this point I realized that the minute or two I would spend looking from chart to chart, and taking time to converse in chat was all it took for a setup to come and go without me, and with much regret I exited chat, and decided I need to focus purely on trading my signals surely and quickly.

Just to prove the point about how easily a trade slips away, I was watching ES for a short entry @ 991.75 shortly before 11:00 a.m. and my husband came in to ask a few questions and when I looked back price had dropped to 989.25, which was about the size of the midday range scalp I expected.

Now for the real kicker: Last half hour ES has been forming a bull flag near highs and I watched for a breakout. It failed to test the HOD, and technically at that point my signal said short @ 991.50, but I wanted to wait for confirmation via a break through the 20-EMA to short @ 990.25, so I decided to leave ES alone for a brief period of time because…

...I saw TIF had formed an internal double top below the HOD and consolidated nicely, looking very ripe for an end of day short scalp. Short @ 30.02 on the move down through the 20-period MA, covered on the pivot @ 29.84 for an $84 gain. I watched for a re-shortable bounce, but it wasn’t strong enough for me to feel comfortable for another trade and was happy to have taken something off the table.

I then looked at my ES chart and gasped in horror (I know you guys read this journal for the drama) as I saw price had dropped over 4 pts from my original short signal, and at that point I thought it was too low to short (“Hahahahahahaha!” exclaimed the additional 4+ pts I missed out on by having that thought).

LESSON: When you have a price level at which a trade signal would be confirmed, place a couple stop orders before doing anything else. I started reading Al Brooks book last night and wow his strategies are nearly identical to mine and he advocates placing stops in advance to get into trades without missing out. I've been talking about that a lot but not doing it.

So I traded 2 out nearly 20 useful ES signals today, many of which would’ve been small scalps, but at least 3 of which would’ve been very fine trades. That’s the advantage of taking all trades presented and staying focused throughout the day, not picking and choosing, and getting distracted. For a while I will not be participating in any chat rooms, because I really need the focus.

I hope everyone got some entertainment and education off today’s post. I tell you I feel like a dog chasing its tail sometimes, but I’m in a better mood today because I realize that I CAN trade, thanks to hours and hours of study and screen time, and I also have strong risk management, so I’m going to make this work, come hell or high water!

Cheers!

 

NOD

Of that there is absolutely no doubt Ma'am

Keep pushin forward

RN

 

Nod said a six yrs old can too. but toward a professional one, ?

 

I kind of feel you are concentrating on too many things at once.

How about for a try for the next few days, pick one day you focus only on stocks, and another day you focus only on es and nothing else.

If you end up making over $ 500 on day listening to this advice, you owe me.

My problem today was averaging into losers instead of cutting my loss and looking for a new trade. On Friday, my goal is to take only 1 trade, with set fixed profit and stop price, this way I will improve my money management and know in advance how much I can make or lose for that day.

In the future if I improve, may start taking 2 trades per day and so on since I feel I am over trading and sometimes averaging against the trend. One other issue today, I had a good setup and missed getting filled by .50 which sucks.

 

Exactly! I plan to start trading this way more often, so I don't miss out. I see the setups forming then I look away, or get some tea, or God forbid, go to bathroom without my laptop, and the train leaves the station without me.

So when I see the setup and want to get in upon a confirmation signal, I will do exactly that, put in the trigger stop and the stop loss, and hopefully look back at my screen to see green

The reason I had to manage TIF hands-on was because the trade was entered as a scalp, since I knew of no reason for it to fall off a cliff, and I wanted to grab the max profit out of the move. Knowing taht, I really should've placed a sell stop at my trigger price on ES. But I "thought" it would range a bit longer.

 

relax a little bit, you will be better. you focus on 3points ES loss or gain too closely. Es works just like mutual funds, the only difference is ES has high leverage and has no dividend and time expiration date, that is it.

if I were you, I would buy ES and hold it, and neglect those 10points wobbling movement. the market is looking forward to 10000+ for the DOW this year, I do not hold ES, I hold IWM in conservative investment account.

just as another gentleman pointed out, you pay attention to too many things, just focus on one will be better.

just focus on ES or one very liqidiable individual stock or ETF, neglect those home-run opportunities, just focus on the things you can pay attention to or are very corfortable to, your trading will definitely get boosted.


do not do paper trading, close the paper account. it will create additction. it also distracts your production trading. when you feel not good in real money trading, you will fall back to paper trading. paper trading will make you feel comfortable.

I would suggest, do the uncomfortable thing, that is your job.

 

That is some terrific advice...so very, very true. 100% applicable to me, no doubt about it.

Donna - I am for one happy to see you jump on it. I am beginning to see your Q1 resolve again. Markets, beware!

 

Nod,

Thats a ROGER on dropping the chat room until a later date. ( Roger in military radio communications means........."i understand your message"..

I was going to suggest that to you a while back but was giving you some slack............not rope, just some slack. :eek:

20 trades (signals) in a day with an intraday range of 12 3/4 handles is a bit much for my blood, but understand you do like to do range trades thats ok IF. The BIG IF. thats ok if you do not take your eye off the bigger "runs". But allow me to say this: I have said this before mind you: "it is easier said than done to trade for smaller 2 handle swings in hopes of catching the big ham bone" I will ALLOW YOU THIS, if you can do range trading with a bigger goal of of keeping an eye on the NEXT level if price does a BO, then and only then you could be onto something.

BUT, thats asking a lot at this point in time because you are having trigger finger impediments. Work on less for now to get more.

If you decide to do range trades, then thats fine as long as you know the mission before your plane leaves the ground (fire up the trading pc, ha ). A hunter that goes out rabbit hunting does not take an elephant gun in the corn field to hunt rabbits just in case a elephant shows up. Choose your weapons for the battle and fight only a single battle at once. Less is more.

You can do this, but you need to to slow down the objectives.

Agree, stay away from chat. focus, focus focus.

PS: Pappy Boyington said he once found a girlie magazine in one of his fighter pilots cockpit. Pappy said he jumped the pilot to never do that again unless he was prepared to die from lack of focus. :eek: