Liver Moore was a trader... There is no difference between swing or day... It's all trading and involves the same emotions of fear and greed. Same as most prop firms, the cost is a % of profits and software stuff.
Well today was dissaponting to say the least. Besides an earnings play I didn't take a single long all day. The problem was quite simple... I played the first 30-60mins after the open. This is something I identified earlier in the month and had been avoiding it the past week or so. Today I decided to play it due to the large gap down. Bad mistake as we short squeezed until the market turned about 1hr in. I was down $900+ if I had to bang the offer @4.82. most of the losses came from XLF as I got caught in the squeeze up to $17. I kept my short on C at $4.81 and covered to make $800 on the trade. flat for the day. Made a little on AA short $200 and C long $100 and ALU short $200. Was up about $450 on the close and took the HPQ earnings long. They missed bad and banged out of my $48 long @$45.50 after trying to give it a little room to rebound. I was comfortable with the risk. Had 300 shares so lost $750ish. Looks like my exit turned out to be good as it's down another $3 in post market. Only 2 real mistakes today. Playing the opening 30-60mins and not reshorting XLF when I saw financials start to roll over. I'm pretty sure this is the start of the correction everyone expected. Everything felt weak! We finished the lows. Financials really lead the way down. There should be a few months of good trading. Time to capitalize! I predicted late Jan to mid Feb... Little off but I'm pretty confident this correction is different. The action was weak... Really weak in some stocks. The only reason we weren't down more on the market was the oil stocks being positive. Not a good start but time to start making some $$. I will be looking to increase size where possible Date: 22/02/2011 Net P&L: ($300) Month Balance: +$1,740
More weakness again today which I completely expected. Not sure about tomorrow. We may get a little consolidation but Friday will prob be down as who wants to hold over the weekend when stuff could blow up in mid east. Also end of month. Happy with my strategy today. Didn't trade any market stocks from the first hour. I sooooo wanted to short what turned out to be the high of the day on XLF but resisted. On reflection I think I should trade but small size only. This might be my rule going forward. Instead of a market stock I traded AIB. it did a reverse split (x5). Based on $.80 it should have been at $4. Instead it opened at $3.50. I was so confident it was going much lower. Started shorting at $3.40 and added on the way down. I played this well and made about $400 from it on small size. I wanted to take more size but unable to due to candles that would come out of no where and push the stock 9c in 1second. Missed the capitulation down below $3.10 but happy with my conviction on the trade. Caught MGM and LVS short, little on Citi (I'm essentially ignoring it of late) and some small shorts of XLF. This combined added $300 or so. Found out I only lost $200 not $300 yesterday so that was a good surprise. Not up much for the month however I'm quit content as last year I was down about $13k combined for this period. +$3k is thus acceptable in my book. Want to try and finish this month strong but I'm probably just going to watch myself the last few days here. I will kick in the size begginning of March. As a side note I have sized down so much the past 2 months that I want to see how I manage mentally when I size back up. Date: 23/02/2011 Net P&L: +$700 Month Balance: +$2,540
Interesting day today. Avoiding the first hour worked well today. However once I started trading I found myself down pretty quickly. Tried a short on SNV (it had a little news)... It broke a key level but popped in my face. Was holding decent size on it and was down about $350-400 on it at one stage... I had a good average otherwise it would have been $200+ more then that. I gave it time and ended up getting out for a loss of $200. ALU got me bad as well as I was trading for a gap it had below .60 however it was HFT heaven on that thing. Added when the .60 level broke and the exact same thing happened as SNV... pop in my face. Coincided with a market pop and the levels thinned out. I had 9k on it and ended up losing $300. Of course it went later... I even tried it again and had to flat... luckily At this point I was down about $600. I was really convinced the market was weak and wanted to be short. I tried one and got out right away for a flat on XLF. I waited until it popped up 5c more and then took 5k short... my out was going to be 5c ($250)... It happened to be the high (I seem to be good at that on XLF hahaha). I shorted 2.5k more 3c lower and had 7.5k in total at $16.54. I gave it time... something that I'm really happy with. +$750 on the trade. It went down and I was about 6c in the $$$... ($16.48) the market short squeezed a bit and I went to only being up 3c again. I gave it time as I was very convinced that this market was weak. It was and we then got a nice move down. I managed to get out 4.5k @ $16.44 and 3k @ $16.45. Very happy with the trade... I took more size then I had been and I was patient with my exit. I missed the move down later but at that stage I really didn't want to touch the market as it was very choppy. After being down $600 and then making it back to +$150 I was pretty happy. Made a few little trades and ended up $190. I decided to take AIG into earnings which although it wasted 1hr of my time waiting for the release I was able to make almost $2 on the trade. Only took 100 shares as I wasn't comfortable with the downside risk. +$180 on the trade and +$370 on the day. Probably just going to take it easy tomorrow and Monday due to end of month. Satisfied is not the word but I would say I'm glad to be positive this month. Next month is looking like it could be good trading. Date: 24/02/2011 Net P&L: +$370 Month Balance: +$2,910 Just looked at AIG - I had a really good out @ $42.27.... nice!
Nothing much to mention today. Had a rough nights sleep and wasn't really up for trading combined with it being a Friday and in addition to it being 2nd last day of month... Well you get the picture! Took tiny size, nothing worth mentioning. The only thing of note is that in case anybody didn't realize we are following oil a lot for the market moves. I had gotten rid of my USD/EUR chart a while ago as the correlation fell off. Yesterday I put up a USO chart to follow oil. Will keep this up until we start following something else. I'm thinking of giving Monday a miss and just finish the month today. Unless I see something significant regarding mid-east Date: 25/02/2011 Net P&L: +$220 Month Balance: +$3,130
Finished the month in the green. Always hate finishing down on the last day and I avoided that today. Traded 3 stocks in the morning... only 1 prior to 10:30 as per my rules at the moment. The stock I traded prior to 10:30 was DPTR. It had done about 1m in volume and the chart looked awesome. I traded it long side only... got chopped around even though all of my trades were decent just bad timing... I had about 4k long @ $1.12 and it went up to $1.17 and then pulled all the way back. I wasn't about to step in front of a bus on the way back down and got out flat. After testing the $1.10 level where there was large buyer it then moved to towards the high of the day again. Got in on the high... pulled back. Buying the highs on this thing wasn't working. In the meantime I took a trade in AMD and lost $80-100 as after the level broke it just short squeezed all the way back up... NEXT So at this point I was down about $360 but didn't feel like I had really done anything wrong. The trades just were not panning out. After trying to buy the highs on DPTR I decided for a pulled back... let it stuff around for a while as the HTF played pass the parcel. I then took 5k long $1.17 after the $1.14-.15 level was holding. My out was going to be $1.13 and $1.10 in worst case as I knew there was a large buyer there from earlier. It slowly started going up, I knew by the tape this was going higher and I just held. I watch as people bought the new highs @ $1.21-.22 and had to give them back as it chopped around. I felt it could make a decent move but then a large seller showed up @ 1.25. Covered my whole position @ 1.24. +$350 on the trade. Combined with a 9k spread on Citi I was then back slightly positive, like $60. Didn't take a single trade until I saw FlyonTheWall announce something about YRCW (an old favorite of mine). It was halted and opened back up @ 3:05pm. The restructuring was bad news for existing equity holders. I managed to get 1k short @ $3.10 and after a couple of mins I was able to cover in the $2.80s for +$300 on the trade. I had tried hitting more @ $3.00 but my system rejected the order for some reason. I signed up for stocktwits the other day. I have been using it for trades ideas. Not listening to the advice or anything but just using it as a different sort of scan for whats moving. I announced I was shorting YRCW on the trading resumption... hopefully I made someone some $$ hahahaa Green for the day and green for the month. I may do a separate month summary... I want to start looking at a few stats to monitor my progress. Not sure if I will bother for this month but we will see. Lets hope trading next month is better!! Date: 28/02/2011 Net P&L: +$350 Month Balance: +$3,480
Not sure if any of you have checked out SteveGomez's channel on youtube. He is part of a website called today trader. I have no association at all and I don't pay for any of their stuff but he has a free youtube channel and posts videos every week or 2. Although his style of trading is different to mine I still find it interesting to watch someone else trade and hear some of the things he is thinking about. I just watched the latest video from Feb 22nd and right at the end ( 18:30/19:42 )he mentions something that I had realised myself and talked about in my journal. He says that he avoids the first half an hour of trade at the moment and waits for the move to happen... sometimes fading a move up or down. This is something I have been doing for the past couple of weeks. I just found it interesting that he was talking about the exact same thing. Here is the link to the video in case anyone is interested http://www.youtube.com/user/sgomez858#p/u
Very good today. Just didn't capitalize as much as I wanted to. I really have to increase my size but I'm still not comfortable to do it in the market at the moment. This is a time to capitalize as we all know volume and movement will die off in summer months. I'm sorry but I don't really remember my trades. Basically 2 trades made up my day. Shorted YRCW on the open... really didn't take enough size or hold it for long enough... very disappointed in my trading for this one. This should have been $600-$900 if I had grown some balls and was patient. Instead I only took small size and for 1/3 of the move. +$200 but like I said this was poor trading at its best. I also shorted AIG... I think it was $37.20 level... took 500 shares... it immediately went in my favor. Large bid were just getting whacked on this thing. I knew I was the right way on this. Covered some in the low $36.80s and then re-shorted those 200 shares in the 36.96-.97 area. Staggered my outs all the way down to my best cover of $36.52. +$260 on the trade which equated to 50cents on those 500 shares. Pretty darn happy with this trade. On a side note my earning play on this one (long $40.40 exit $42.27) sure looks like a great exit hahahaha... and this is why sometimes I love not holding overnight positions As I write this my trades are coming back to me... LVS... got a good short. Noticed MGM popped and made up all of the down move... LVS didn't do the same so I figured... short the weak one. Short @ $44.70... 500 shares... staggered my out and made $150. This trade was too easy and I really should have milked it further as it just couldn't bounce. Later in the day I tried a long around the $43 level... gave back half of what I made on the move down. Lesson in this market.... DON'T TAKE ANY LONGS. Everything else kinda canceled each other out... up a little on C down a little on XLF. Disappointed I didn't take the short on the pop in the morning. Almost shorted $16.75s but just didn't pull the trigger. All in all a good start to the month. Got to focus on increasing size and really maximizing these trades that easily go with me. Avoiding the first 30mins-1hr on market type stocks is still working well for me. I look around and see people getting stopped out a lot in the first hour... not me!! Date: 01/03/2011 Net P&L: +$430 Month Balance: +$430