Having you considered expanding your repertoire of intraday setups outside of your opening plays? Adding additional setups with proven success & consistency to your arsenal is like instead of just hunting deer, you are now also hunting elk. Hunt both with the same philosophy of patience and precision.
Boring trading (at least for me) correlates with my most professional spells of trading... keep this journal going! It is enjoyable and instructive... hopefully readers will pick up many valuable lessons from it, for example the importance of waiting for your trades rather than trading for the sake of trading...
I have a few things that I like to look at. First thrusts, divergences etc. For the most part though the only place I feel absolutly confident is at the open. I honestly feel that in the first 20/30 minutes of the day I am one of the best traders in the world. I can not say that about the rest of the day. So, I am very confident at the open, follow my plan very well and stay very comfortable with the trades. As I get further away from the morning though I am not as confident, thus do not do as well. Brandon
Brandon, good luck with your health. I hope your Hawkeyes win at Minnesota and go to the Rose Bowl, my daughter goes to school at Iowa. Keep up the journal, I think anyone who posts a journal is pretty gutsy (or someone with ego problems not concerned about tempting their ghosts):eek:
hallo brandon, i found your research on gaps quite interesting and looked at it on my own. actually there is one thing i do not like too much about your original post where you said that the average gap was 1.17%. you posted that three months ago and and that time you were perfectly right. but in the meantime this number has increased to 1.34% - always calculated since 1989. and before 2001 the average gap was quite below 1%, constantly rising since then. are you taking that into account when placing new trades? i found your probability statistics quite correct, even when testing it by looking at the avg gap seen so far at any one point of time. i tried to look at it in the way buy-the-gap-sell-the close for several paramters = standard deviations and this looks good especially for up gaps. it looked like results could be improved by taken short term trendiness into account. single stocks look good as well. did you ever try to define "gap" differently there by introducing "virtual" gaps, meaning the market gaps but the stock does not? peace
Two trades today. I'm probably going to call it a day because I have an early flight to catch tomorrow morning and have not gotten everything in order to leave yet. I will be back Sunday night, so the Journal wont have anything from me tomorrow or this weekend, but I will resume on Monday. ------ Nov 14th Trades Short NQ 1034 (8:42) and closed at 1030.5 for a gain of 3.5. Today's gap on NQ was average so I took my short. However, as we came down to the 1030ish area the market had a small double bottom in place that it held onto very well. The TICKs also held very well etc, so I got out before my target (initial target was 1018) and took the small gain. Long ES 900.5 (11:55). Profits taken at 901.75 (12:02) for gain of 1.25 --------- Discussion of ES Trade: [12:25] <brandon> simple is always better [12:26] <brandon> so lets start here with the basics [12:26] <brandon> the one minute chart here is in an uptrend [12:26] <brandon> making higher highs and lows [12:26] <brandon> the market has been showing a lot of health in that it just traded sideways [12:27] <brandon> based out which is about the most productive thing after a gap [12:27] <brandon> now at the breakout point you can go ahead and buy [12:27] <brandon> but you have to keep in mind with breakouts that they are the lowest % trade [12:27] <brandon> as far as how often you will be profitable [12:27] <brandon> overall I find that Im going to be profitable on about 1/3 of my breakouts [12:27] <brandon> now [12:27] <brandon> if I managed them correctly I would make a ton of money [12:27] <brandon> because the ones that go, really go [12:27] <brandon> but [12:28] <brandon> after having lost several times in a row [12:28] <brandon> I tend to not manage the winner correctly [12:28] <brandon> so nix breakouts [12:28] <brandon> that does not mean however [12:28] <brandon> that I dont get to trade [12:28] <brandon> i just have to wait [12:28] <brandon> nothing ever moves in a line [12:28] <brandon> there are always pullbacks [12:28] <brandon> so [12:28] <brandon> once we had our breakout [12:28] <brandon> the ES confirmed its strength [12:29] <brandon> and we had a thrusting move above the Kband [12:29] <brandon> this tells us that a pullback to the 20ema is going to be a buying opty for us [12:29] <brandon> now you can see there are two thrusts here [12:29] <brandon> the first one just went sideways [12:29] <brandon> and did not manage to hit the MA [12:29] <brandon> so we passed on this [12:29] <brandon> why? [12:29] <brandon> because we dont have to take things that are not perfect [12:30] <brandon> picky traders are profitable ones [12:30] <brandon> by waiting for our setups [12:30] <brandon> we insure that we will be here to play again [12:30] <brandon> so it gets another thrust [12:30] <brandon> and again we now know that this is a confirmation of strength [12:30] <brandon> and a move down to the MA is our point [12:31] <brandon> the MA was sitting at 900.5 [12:31] <brandon> so we place a resting order in [12:31] <brandon> that once we get down trading there to get filled [12:31] <brandon> patience pays [12:31] <brandon> put our stop just a point or so away [12:31] <brandon> and look for a test of the prior pivot [12:31] <brandon> now [12:31] <brandon> this isnt a big target [12:31] <brandon> we made 1.25 points on this [12:31] <brandon> however [12:31] <brandon> our risk was only 1 to 1.5 [12:32] <brandon> and this is a setup that we find will produce profits for us about 80% of the time [12:32] <brandon> the simple fact that it pierced the Kband tells you that you have a 2/3 chance of it testing that point again [12:32] <brandon> but when you combine this with the strength we have had today [12:32] <brandon> the first thrusting [12:32] <brandon> the breakout etc [12:33] <brandon> you had a trade in which it was very unlikely we would take a stop --------- Days Return: (less commissions of $6 r/t) $120.5 Monthly Retun: (again less commissions) $867 (8.67%) Margin Used: $10,000 per contract. ---- Thats likely all for today. Have a great weekend, hope you are still all enjoying my journal. Brandon
Atlanta sources report that Brandon was last seen exiting a Subway sandwich shop with its unidentified owner/franchisee as county "bunko" inspectors moved in to close the restaurant for ignoring repeated warnings to stop issuing coupons for "free sandwiches" in exchange for futures trading strategies... the unidentified man of approximately 40 years of age had rolls of intraday stock charts stained with mayo and italian dressing.... the recently divorced owner/franchisee was overheard extolling the virtues of increasing share/position size after each losing trade... sources in the "Peach" state have heard rumors that famed ex-jockey Stevie Cauthen, whose 100+ race losing streak sent many a pyramiding horseplayer into retirement, may be a financial backer in the subway partnership. more to follow...