NoDoji's Day Trading Log

Understood. Stick with what works.

Winning is about figuring out how to get your "PIECE" of the days action, regardless of what the toy is.

Retail so called scalpers just sit there spinning their wheels getting crumbs paying commissions and invariably give back the crumbs with each and every slip of discipline.

Catching the "WHOLE" run is no easy task either. I can get in on the start of many runs (we always lose maybe a couple handles catching reversals), breakout trades are easier to catch just by their very nature, the bugaboo on them are the false bo's, we just deal with them as best we can. I do not catch whole runs a lot, not even close.

There is a very well known secret in trading that does not appear in the thousands of books, letters, etc, etc. That saying is as we discussed before................. narrow the setups down to VERY few, even if down to one or two, feel comfy like a bug in a rug and go in full HOG with enough cars to make getting a PIECE worth your while.

By a "PIECE" i mean maybe just a couple handles to start. By going for your piece you will trade far less, you will go for quality instead of quantity. Thats where the higher number of cars will pay off. The higher number of cars will FORCE the trader to play a better gameplan. Imagine trading the ES with 1 car a trade, you can get sloppy because a cpuple slips in discipline a day will not cut to deep and the wins will not matter anyway. The trader will think they are getting experience..........but experience in what?

The amount of cars say 20 or below really is (maybe start at 4, then 10, then 20 ) after the initial getting used to the chart lessons are really going to vastly improve the trading because now the amount of wins to losses make a difference. The trader is FORCED to perform.

Think of it like this: 4 wins at a handle per trade on a single car is 200, thats after 2 losers earlier. Subtract commissions and maybe ahead $175 a day. That type of trading is difficult because the discipline is loose. :eek:

Now run the same numbers as you graduate up to 20 cars with the newly discovered rock solid discipline that the HIGHER NUMBER OF CARS self imposed on the trader.

This is how you transition to the big leagues. "YOU CAN DO IT"
Some old timer stock traders can do it, but not by trading small amounts of stocks. "Just a piece, just a piece " Thats all it takes. After that, it is gravy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU97Yrymwtg&feature=fvw


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oONWgcvPutE&feature=related

 

I'm learning this, no doubt. Just look at my solid days: Usually one or two trades, decent moves. Look at yesterday where I churned around with various trades. What were my two easy winners? The two with the fully CONFIRMED setups.

When a good part of the morning is over and I haven't traded yet or I've scratched trades due to mismanagement and left money on the table, I start trading dumb because I feel that I need to generate a profit every day and "get back" what I left behind. I have to keep reminding myself that a couple $700 days a week pays the bills. I don't have to trade every day; I don't have to jump on less-than-ideal setups.

I'm re-reading Trading in the Zone now, hoping to reinforce old lessons in the mental game.

 

+$288

I’m generally nervous trading near the open because of the volatility, but that’s what makes those early moves so profitable. So I traded my strategy in the sim account to help build confidence in it, the way I did yesterday with AAPL. It worked very well again today with AMZN. Why that surprised me I don’t know. The key is to wait patiently for a fully confirmed setup and, voila, profit appears!

I then took a break during the mid morning chop to prevent myself from trading live trying to “get” what I got in sim.

Came back and watched AMZN later on and shorted @ 122.13, pullback from a lower high beneath a falling moving average. Covered @ 121.40 pivot off oversold for +$288. The high/low of this move was 122.28/121.21 and I was pleased to take 68% of the move. One of the books I read a while back talks about grading your trades in your selected time frame based on that parameter and I believe that % gets an A. (I think it’s Alexander Elder’s book.)

I thought about shorting the next lower high, but AMZN already had 4 pushes down from the high (I traded the 4th push down) and with FOMC coming I decided to wait. Turns out that, in very short order, there was a 5th push down that was not too shabby, and even more after that.

After FOMC, I jumped into the AMZN momentum selloff at god knows what price. Within seconds I was $255 in the green. I moved my stop near b/e and within seconds I was stopped out b/e. Just like that. Just not quick enough for that FOMC action…

One of the big lessons to learn in trading (still working cementing it into my brain) is that when you consider getting into a trade early before the fully confirmed setup occurs, because you’re afraid you’ll “miss out”, it rarely turns out well unless you’re willing to take more than usual heat on your trade. That’s simply an added and unnecessary stressor.

Patience. It pays. In more ways than monetarily.

 

TEST:

http://images.pcworld.com/news/graphics/187962-ipants_original.jpg

needs "MAXI" pockets for the guys :eek:

 

lol like the picture new to posting on the message boards, enjoy your and NoDoji's insights

 

Thanks. I like your AAPL profits!

 

Ha! iPad, Maxi pocket, MaxiPad, wait a minute, this is getting kinda girlie...

 

I liked this essay except for this part:

Care to ellaborate a little more about that?. Interesting discussion.

 

Like playing poker. You never really know for sure if the other person is bluffing or has a royal flush.

In daytrading, the fundamentals are useless, fundamentals are for investors or so called position players.

In daytrading i can only watch the setups forming...............then i place odds on the setup...............but i can never time the trade to work because i do not know when someone else will throw in a big order to destroy the setup.

As a breakout trader we never know with certainty if followthrough will show up.

 

So following that analogy.....while in a trade and moving in positve direction and headed towards your target, it stops 2 pts short of the target, pullsback(retraces).
Is the speed of the retracement or the volume, what clues could we use to determine to fold? Yesterday, the Nq had 1787 in mind got to 1790 and promptly retraced on 2 15 min bars. only to go higher. Knock out stops, I thought but headed even higher than turned around and went to 1787.75. I was out for a loss and totally discombobulated. The rest of the day is too annoying to further discuss!