I am creating this to write down what I am looking at when I trade. I have traded in the past, and have been out for few years and tried again few months ago, and it's different and not going good. I am going to give this one last try and if this does not work-out, I'll be doing something else. I have been paper-trading for the past few months and believe that I may have a viable strategy....so I'll be trying with real money. Will post the trades at the end of the day. My system is basically buying/selling pullbacks after resistance/support is broken. I use S/R levels, but enter the trade based on Nasdaq-TICK.
Not a good day P&L wise, but can't compalin after a long time. The first trade was a short at 7cst, it was a pullback after making a new low and I got stopped out for a loss. The first half hour is uaually a difficult time to trade for me since I've seen more quick moves in the opposite direction. There was another long trade after the 7.30 bar (that I cancelled because of the first loss). It would have been good for 4 pts. I entered a short at 9.13 at 32.5 and the trailing stop took me out at 31.75. It was apullback after breaking the support at 30.75. The next trade that I did was pullback from breaking the support, lost 1.25 pts...but it was a right trade. I reshorted again that was good for 3.5 pts, and there was a point when I had made everything that I had lost in the morning but was down about $30. Not sure why I took the last trade since the pullback from the low was strong. Anyway -$70 for the day. I will try to post charts once I figure out how annotate it.
-17 today on 3 trades, so basically I lost $5 and $12 was commissions. I have the tendancy to be impatient. I do good on Sim but not as good real time, because I am more patient on Sim and feel that I might miss the big move when I am trading real money, so I initiate the trade early. All 3 of my trades were short trades and on a day like today, I still lost money overall. I lost on the first 2 and made mmost of it back on the last one. Let me tell you my strategy and if I don't follow it going forward, please let me know. I think this is the only way the journal is going to be helpful for me, and it may help others too. I like to call my strategy 2 by 2. I trade NQ and use 5 min chart. I have KC (10,1) and RSI (9,19). I use Ninjatrader with data from IB. Basically I want the price to close above KC 2 times (cannot be back to back high/low) and I buy/sell on the 2nd pullback on price and RSI. The stop will be 2 ticks above/below the price that I enter and will trail it once price goes above the low/high. In the following chart 1A is when the price made a new low and 1B is where the price made the second low. 2A is when the price closed above 1B. Here RSI is crosses over too. 2 A-B is when the price and RSI make a new 5 min low. 2B is when the price/RSI makes a new high than the previous bar. My entry will be 1 tick below the 5 min low and my stop will be 2 ticks above the high. Once price makes a new low, I will use a trailing stop, that is 2 ticks above the high. This is 1 of my 3 strategies that I use, but it is very powerful.