Where should I begin? About once every month, comes a game which I blew the open, get very upset and force myself to keep putting up shots into the final hour, and eventually destroy myself by taking on a lot of unnecessary damage. Today, going into the final hour I had that feeling in me, and I almost knew for sure that had I traded on I would blow myself out, but for whatever the reason I kept on taking shots when absolutely nothing was going on and churned myself to death. I could not keep my composure when it was most needed, and I paid a heavy heavy price for it. What hurts even more was the vast number of opportunities in the morning and the fact that I was doing very well until a very very dumb trade coupled with mis-entered order which bought more when I was meant to sell it. That trade send me into the red after I had some serious pain with bullet software today which cost me two huge trades. I was frustrated, yet I managed to keep my cool and kept on cutting into that deficit. At one point during the afternoon, I was down a mere $110, then a couple of bad trades that simply didn't go my way warmed my head up. By then, it was over. It is a shame that this has to happen last week of the month, as a matter of fact I realized that something like this always happen toward the end of the month, as deep in my heart I want to make that check bigger . . . That's a pitfall I must overcome. Still, my daily chart research is paying off, I can tell I am more confident off the open and all I have to do is knocking down a few shots to win. I am removing 50/200 SMA indicators from my daily charts, no more bounce off the moving average crap, if it is strong then it is strong, if it is weak then it is weak. 2 of 14 (!!!!!!) on 25300 shares, -274 before commissions, -1100 after, 4 bullets. Holding onto a $300 margin for the month, in a month that I should be up size, that said, I realized that this just wasn't my month, and I am going to do my best next two games to wrap this up. There are cold months, there are hot months, I do hope I can get warmed up again soon and finish the year on a roll, right now I can not set any expectations. The good news is that my trading size is up, and I realize some of my struggles are with the bigger sizes, but next month will be my one year anniversary in day trading and it is about time I start positions with 1000 shares on a regular basis off the open. If I get smoked then I get smoked, can not stay in this size forever. It takes some time to fully digest this, but things will eventually go my way, I STILL BELIEVE, which is the only thing I have to hold on to after a blow out. Pre-Market: Triple downgrade on AES and one downgrade on DUK spells doom for the electric utility sector. I had 10 of the names on my screen when it opened and took two with offers and didn't gap down. OPEC meeting today regarding energy price. I liked NKE on the daily chart last night and I was pleased to see an upgrade in RBK (unfortunately both gapped up and market sold off). I liked LH and CI on the daily's and I didn't take them today (too busy watching utilities, I need to sort my long/short list by sector so I can get to them FAST off the open). 9:30: Bulleted XEL and REI off the open, sometime you just have to go ahead and market, I got filled 500 shares on REI and 1300 on XEL but I was too nervous and stopped out of half of XEL for no reason other than barely a squeeze. Took half a point out of each but not on enough shares. OIX selling off I wanted a bullet on TX and with OSX sell-off I wanted SGY, software got stuck! I couldn't post the damn bullet and watched TX go down 1 point and they put up the SGY bullet for me even after I cancelled it! 10:00: Ahh, the trade of death, I thought ADI was strong, and it was, it held through most of the early morning sell-off, I thought I saw a temporary rebound in futures, I bought some at 35 on what I thought will be a reversal. Very badly rushed trade, probably because of bullet frustrations. It started to sell-off and I wanted out, I was like what hell so I sold, and when I looked at my P&L again I was down on the day, and I saw I was long 1100 shares with the thing tanking in my face! It ruined everything I did in the morning plus more, in frustration I started to bottomfish DOX, first try I missed and lost a quarter, second try I lost another quarter, but third try I took half and fourth try another half. Unfortunately, along with utilities that were my ONLY winners of the day as I would not have another winning trade rest of the way. 10:30: Thought WM would bounce off 200 day SMA (ahhh, the magical support and resistance points), and bulleted it at 37.11, it really looked like it will come in but it stopped me out for a 15 cents loss. The idea didn't work, I don't normally trade this stock, it was a solid shot, next! Instead, I kept on churing it and just could not get anything out of it as it refused to break below that dreaded 37 support. 10:45, took SGY for a 40 cents move on the long side on energy rebound, and I thought it would come in as energy bounced off the unchanged, there I started to churn it over and over until I lost all of my profit. 11:00: Took some CAM and lost 10 cents on a failed OSX rebound. Took QQQ near yesterday's low and out flat. Started churning REI over and over until I lost all of my morning profit plus extra. 2:00: Started churning GE, ahhhh. 3:00: Took TYC and KSS on what should have been a pair of successful breakout's, but they both pulled back big wiggle to blow out all stops before they rallied into the close. A very similar story with AOL. I lost nickle's and dime's on each of those a couple of times but they did exactly what they are supposed to do (in KSS's case 1 point!) . . . in the end . . . I hate trading breakout's, I always buy them from consolidation stage, and for some reason I tend to sell them before the breakout occur's, this has to change. Took way too many shots in XEL, REI, WM etc . . . and really killed myself today. Actually, after reviewing my journal I can see that I didn't do as bad as I thought I did, I still had the common sense to cut losses fast and it was just that I couldn't stop shooting when I wasn't hitting anything. I am going home early today to sleep, it speeds up the healing process, I know I am capable of going hot, words are cheap, time to do it with action.
Kind of funny reading about all the commissions you pay during the day Hitman. For example today I got 5 swing trade orders filled to the short side (no bullets!) totaling 1500 shares, and ended the day with a gross profit of $521 and a net of $509 after commissions (IB is broker). I closed half of one trade that met profit objective. This was only $25,000 at risk roughly. Seems like you could mix in more swing trades to your portfolio and help the bottom line.
I agree with ddefina. Try intraday position trading & some swing trading. I've mentioned this in the past on this thread and repeat it again here because it sounds like the solution. I've tried many trading styles in the past and now I tend to look for bigger gains on fewer trades instead of churning all day for pennies (of course you can only take what the market gives). If you carefully select your stocks and look for bigger moves and adjust position size accordingly, you can have wider stops and not get stopped out so easily. Getting stopped out for a nickel, a dime, or quarter on listed stock is as easy as the specialist jossling the bid/ask just a bit. I'm conviced you can't win with a hair trigger like that. This doesn't mean that you won't end up taking quarter or half dollar profits when appropriate for that stock and that particular day's trading, but rather that your aiming for a definitive move, not just looking for a pop in the right direction.
I think you are comparing apples and oranges here, your result mean nothing until your trades are actually closed, and as a swing trader I don't think your daily P&L mean anything because of overnight positions. If you trade size you pay a lot of commissions, and if you churn, you pay a lot more, it is a given. And without bullets you will never get the fills when you most need it, like when everything is really coming in. And having only $25000 at risk, I don't consider that an advantage do you? I would love to see you post on my thread every day how you did each day and how long you can keep up. Before you give advice I would like to see YTD numbers / MTD numbers or account size for that matter, as in $$$. It is very easy to sit back and say o I have to go for bigger points when you don't trade for a living, I mean, duh . . .
Only if you short into squeezes, or 300 shares. Try shorting any electric utility stock this morning and see what happens, or energies . . . I hate to say this but anyone who doesn't consider bullet a huge advantage has never used them.
I notice that a lot of people who trade for a living (with no other income streams) tend to gravitate towards daytrading/scalping. Why? Perhaps if you sit in front of a quote screen 8 hours a day it feels like you are doing an honest days work. But I don't think there is a real correlation between how much time you spend trading and how much you make. In my case, I do about 20 trades per month and most of my income comes from just 3 or 4 big trades. I would rather spend 4-5 hours a day on my business and the rest windsurfing and relaxing than sweating over every tick. In fact, I don't even watch the market during most of the session! Just a different perspective.
Okay Hitman, you know the sizes I trade (if you remember from past posts) and you know that I trade for a living. So this post is not coming from someone who says you have to go for bigger points while not trading for a living at the same time. I am going to post a link to two of the setups I like to trade. (I posted my trades for the day on another thread http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2319&pagenumber=3 ) Here are the setups: http://www.stockjunkie.com/tonyoz/sc8.htm http://www.stockjunkie.com/tonyoz/sc9.htm My FRIENDLY advice to you is to not just read these pages, but to study them. Next, don't be defensive and keep an open mind! Otherwise, you will miss the hidden treasure Good trading to you, and I hope you finish the month strong and have a kick-ass performance in the last quarter of the year. Sincerely, Bill
Hitman, I think you would make a great pairs trader. You seem to be good at identifying strength and weakness across sectors.
There is a very real correlation to how much effort you put into something and how much you make. Goldman Sachs start preparing for its trading day at 6AM. It is like someone playing basketball in the park questioning why professional players go on strict diets and do a tons of weight lifting . . . If you ever want to make say, half a million a year doing ANYTHING, do you honestly think 4 hours a day is enough?