NoDoji's Day Trading Log

D,

You see what I am attempting to do with my little T/A journal.. We have the EXACT same problems as I am sure are major in that they are the undoing of many traders.... "doing what you plan to do in spite of yourself" a.k.a. discipline.. Seems price movement alone makes it difficult to even remember what the game plan was.. Meditation is HARD to "begin"... As you noticed the ES action, why were you massaging shorts? Why does a dog bark?

 

Hi NoD,

Here is a quote from PTJ, and I think this would help us in maintaining our discipline and keep us from over-trading. I hope you will find this useful.

"The most important rule of trading is to play great defense, not great offense. Every day I assume every position I have is wrong. I know where my stop risk points are going to be. I do that so I can define my maximum possible drawdown. Hopefully, I spend the rest of the day enjoying positions that are going in my direction. If they are going against me, then I have a game plan for getting out." - Paul Tudor Jones


PA

 

another suggestion that i believe will vastly improve your trading.

DROP that chat room. Think about it. You are being influenced by some that try to follow the trend, some try to fade moves, some try to scalp, some probably are swing traders. Some have no idea what real discipline means and some think they use discipline.

Mass confusion!!!! Try dropping the chat room for 6 months and ask yourself if only YOU, and YOURSELF making the decisions helps.

Your brain is the only one that counts on the bottom line. Trading is a tough gig, chat rooms are fine for later but before that you do not need a mutual admiration society. Far to many egos in most chat rooms to deal with.

You need to condense a lot of inputs to widdle down what you need to win. LESS IS MORE

PS: as an example: sometimes during trading day i will pop into the ES JOURNAL thread and read who is doing what. I might fluff some feathers by saying this but ....like i really care, HA. The ES journal is a joke and pure entertainment, sure some are decent but most are just throwing darts. Thats what i mean...........trading is NOT group think..........it is about ME, MYSELF and ISH. Just trying to help. Ok, done for weekend..........maybe some good playoff games this weekend.

Have a good weekend.

 

Interestingly I've been quite sporadic in the chat room for the exact reason that I have so much trouble focusing as it is and if I'm testing strategies in my sim account I really can't even have the chat open, no screen space for it on that PC.

I agree that I need to get serious and become a consistently profitable trader generating an excellent income and I am easily distracted by anything.

I evaluated my best profits over the past year and most of them were a result of playing one stock for an extended time (ANF and APOL come to mind). There's nothing like knowing S/R levels in multiple time frames like the back of your hand in aiding strong trades. That's why I thought an emini would be my best option. However, I realize now that it doesn't matter WHAT I choose, the important thing is to focus on one thing daily, at least for the opening hour or so, to generate a good day's pay.

So your advice has already been taken, no chat for me. I know how to trade; now I need to focus with laser-sight precision on executing without hesitation and letting winners play out.

 

Very good advice bighog!

 

I am not going to say any emini, ES, NQ, or any particular commodity is better for you. Bonds, Gold, Prunejuice, Mexican jumping beans or whatever. But i would like you to consider if stocks REALLY are your balli-wick.

–noun 1. the district within which a bailie or bailiff has jurisdiction.
2. a person's area of skill, knowledge, authority, or work: to confine suggestions to one's own bailiwick.

Synonyms:
2. domain, department, sphere, territory, turf.

...........................................................
It has become apparent you do bounce around in even stocks, and yes you still lean to the short side. Stocks can be like a kid in a candy store or a hooker at a plumbers convention.

Have you ever considered that maybe STOCKS are not for you? What i am saying is stocks do not all trade alike, to many variables. I found when i switched to futures in general my trading improved because i was not playing the field nearly as much. Then i went down to just the ES.

I believe yes, it is possible to focus on a certain stock and do good. Emini futs are in fact a daytraders playground, the ES, NQ take in the ENTIRE sphere of stocks. That was a gift for pikers to play in the same playpen with the pros while following JUST A SINGLE instrument. What better way to learn how the big dogs trade for free? If i went to trade some stocks it would be like i did in the beginning..........i played positions, not trades. Trading stocks never moved me as much as futures. Futures fit my personality better.

Understand, i am not again trying to sway you to futures, just saying you need to ask yourself what best fits YOUR personality?
You are close, done darn good, but a burning need to finalize the plan is needed. I would grade your card as............she needs to decide what she should be trading, trade both long and short, and trade either breakouts and follow the trend or fade support and resist levels. And what is just focusing on one thing for only the first hour about? Why not all the time? Focus is holding you back.

Correct those apparent flaws and solid improvement should be easier, far easier.

Ok, back to Barrett-Jackson collector car auction.

 

+$31

Toss up between AMZN and GMCR for the morning focus. I ended up placing GMCR on long watch because there was an inexplicable 88.00 transaction early in premarket when the bid/ask was something like 81.50/88.00. I figured maybe some chatter circulating. Long @ 81.82 near the open, moving stop near b/e once .50 cent gain was on. I don’t mind moving stops too soon on this one because of the spread and the quick reversals it can suddenly make. Which it did, taking me out near b/e. Considering what a short bias I have I've no idea why I didn't reverse to a short when the opening low was breached.

By then AMZN had made the move of the morning (silly me for choosing GMCR), so then I decided to wait for the housing news to trade further. After the initial news reaction the market was pretty choppy and range bound. I realized that there was an article about AAPL stealing away AMZN’s fire with their tablet, and perhaps should’ve figured there’d be a panic reaction off the open. AMZN has been hanging by a thread lately as it is, with strong selloffs becoming the norm.

RIMM exhibited particular strength after the housing news, and I was very close to a long position at the bottom of the consolidation range after the move up, but the market was so weak at that point, that I waited for more action to unfold. There was a small break out of that range.

Since the breakout was rather weak compared to the first leg up, and RIMM then left a lower high after the second consolidation, I placed it on short watch, shorting the next rally to a lower high, or possibly fading a 3rd leg up if it broke out again.

Short small AMZN @ 119.31, pullback from overbought lower high, very small because it had sold off so much already over the past few days that price was struggling mightily to establish support and stage a bounce at this level (it had already found quick buyers at the test of lows). So I figured it would either retest the low once more and crash through, or it would indeed attempt to establish and uptrend. I waited until it was short term oversold and moved my stop to 119.15 and the little bitch took it out to the tick for +$14 before falling further. It did establish a higher low after that. Oh well, it wasn’t the highest probability trade at this level.

Short small AMZN @ 119.46 pullback from overbought internal double top. When price moved .50 cents in my favor I moved stop to 119.30 (55% retracement of the move where price found support), hit for +$15.

Went to short X and the moment I clicked Sell it dropped .20 cents without me and I didn’t want to chase, because it wasn’t one of my “A” setups; at this point it was an intraday short term counter-trend scalp and ,20 cents was about what I expected to scalp. I decided to wait and see if the new intraday trend would hold up at the 20 EMA; if not I’d short the next lower high. Well, the price action of everything on my watch became a range-bound chop, so I took a break before I became tempted to churn away my hard-earned $30.

I missed a couple more entries late in the day, but absolutely didn’t chase (been there done that), so calling it a day and kicking back to watch AAPL after the close.

 

+$181

Short AMZN @ 120.86. Covered for +$2.00 when the price action was finding too much support and no breakdown ensued.

Deeply chased an AMZN short @ 121.90, very small because of the chasing aspect because sellers came in quickly after the breakout; stop above the high, stopped out for -$82.

Short AMZN once more @ 122.82, lower high and this was a confirmed setup. So what did I do? I allowed the previous trade to influence me. The previous trade was profitable at first and I’d failed to lock it at b/e and ended up with a significant loss. It made sense to lock that one at b/e because of the distance I chased it. Well never mind that that loser was a very different trade and should’ve had no bearing on this new and wonderful setup. No, I moved my stop to b/e too soon, for a little whipsaw exit of -$6.00, only to then watch the trade actually work as expected and then I didn't chase a re-entry!

Moved on to X which was setting up a short. Normally I wait for the fast stochastic to became extremely overbought and pivot, but I jumped the gun this time, chasing a small pullback @ 51.70 before the trajectory was done with a stop above the previous resistance, stopped out for -$60, then quickly moved on to POT which was winking hard at me from across the dance floor. Watching X and re-shorting quickly would’ve been well worth it too, because it was a false breakout and made an excellent down move.

However, to my credit I did jump on the POT setup which was juicy, fulfilling my "1 cm above the 20 EMA" criteria. I shorted @ 111.87, pullback from a strong 2nd leg up off the open, overbought pivot, stop above the HOD. It immediately continued my way in POT-like fashion and I covered on the oversold pivot @ 111.23 for +$126.

Instead of sticking with POT or X or AMZN or anything else I’d been trading I took a break, afraid to churn in the chop. I sim traded ES quite a bit in the chop and as expected came out pretty much b/e.

Late in the day I had fallen in love with AAPL’s price action between short term time frames and I experimented in sim for quite a while. I had a eureka! moment and decided to take it live, shorting AAPL @ 208.90 and covering @ 207.89 for a very quick $200 gain. Of course instead of continuing to use the strategy I took a brief break to give myself high fives, returned and then thought it was too sold off to continue to short, but it kept working (without me), and damn did I leave money on the table!

As you can see I struggled today with allowing previous trades to influence new trades, and also with lack of focus by scattering my attention.

Tomorrow I will do my best to focus on one or two stocks.

RN, I think I "got it". I really do. Thank you.

 

A suggestion about reentering a trade, even if the previous one was a loss.

No matter what a trader uses to identify a breakout type trade (i consider all types of trades as breakouts, be they a continuation, a range-channel parameter breakthrough, a pivot reversal, a supp/resist test bust through or failure,etc, etc).

Lets set the stage: We spot a signal that is in our top 5 GOLD signals, 5 is enough. Ok, we visualize the profit target and where we will admit defeat, recognizing a loser is a snap because either the trade follows through on the breakout or not, a child can see that. I take the first breakout because i like to think everyone else is looking at what i am looking at. Now looking at something and actually pulling the trigger is something we never know what THEY will do.

Ok, say i take the trade and the followthrough does not have enough powder to produce a winner and actually goes against me enough to STOP me out. That kills that particular trade, FUGEDDABOUTIT, it is history. Ok, price starts to sneak back to the breakout point...........i am going to play it again, i assume my technical signal is going to try again. This is not revenge trading, it is smart trading, i can at any moment be correct on the technicals, thats easy. But, i can never be confident on the timing because aside from my technical reading of the mkt, i am clueless. No indicator is faster than price itself, i have no faith in indicators to foretell what price will do, if anything many probably use signals to setup the weak hands to smack their trades. That debate always opens up a seperate can of worms. I just look at a loser trade as the right technicals but timing is flawed. Timing can never be mastered, NEVER.

Today was just such a day, round number of 14 handles up and 14 down. For a change the down move later in the day was a good read. 1100.00 was tested and retested, on the 3rd try at 1400est it showed a small key reverseal, unlike the other 2 attempts to punch through R1 at 1100.00. Think.....3rd time through or 3rd time (attempt) through fails......... PP was 1095 and S1 was at 1087.00. They took it down to S1, we are in a BEAR down swing. But i hate to have a bias.

A trading plan is a PLAN, there are things that work and some that do not. Forget, keeping losers small and work the winners, those are givins, the real trick is to play your spots. Timing is the buggaboo, try again if price says to do so.

Sometimes it is worth your while to ask the same gal for a dance after she played hard to get.

PS: on that key reversal at 1400 est, price never got back above the KEYS opening tick at 1099.50 Clues, clues, work the clues.

PSS: Nod,What is this you simed ES and results as expected? Comeon, you are better than that. Work on a plan.

 

I'm only sim trading ES for now, and today I only sim traded during some choppy range action. If I were trading it for real I would NOT have traded during that time. I was just bored and thought I'd see how clever I could be with a very tight range in ES.

I decided to stick with stocks and SPY for now. I've found some stocks that have decent moves up and down every day and I'm focusing on generating a consistent income from them. I imagine it doesn't matter what I trade, but other than a few exceptions where I caught some nice moves, whenever I trade ES live I totally short circuit my potential gains (even worse than I do with stocks).