March 10, 2015 blackout Today´s market was extremely unpredictible for me. I felt that someone big kept pushing the market in desired direction. There have been lot of limit but also market orders entering the market and moving it in desired direction. This are conditions which are not really ideal for me and my system. I managed to keep my results at break-even until 10:30 but then I enterd 3 bad trades in a row and then I kept adding losses.
And this is fine--but you should recognize that results may be less than what the results would be if trading at least 3 to 1. If you're ok with that, then it's all good.
March 11, 2015 picking tops and bottoms Today I managed to pick several tops and bottoms with great precision, but I added also some sloppy trades to the mix. I ended up in profit again, but I could have done better without those trades. I tried couple of trades in Dow Jones and both ended up in a loss. I think I will concentrate more on Nasdaq in the future. T1 I picked up the bottom 4 ticks from low. +4 T2 I picked up the top 4 ticks from high. +6 T3 I tried long in DowJones but had bad price. I opted for quick loss instead of giving the market more space. Even when I can see retrospectively that it would have ended up in profit, I still think that it was good decision. -5 T4 I picked local low just 2 ticks from low. +6 T5 Bad trade, bad management. I took it too prematurely. -8 T6 This was more of a reentry in different market. Still bad idea. -6 T7 Finally a trade which made a little money as well. +18
March 13, 2015 I rolled over and traded the new contract month today. I missed the first opportunity for long at 8:34 from my preplanned zone in NQ (point A). After that I kept waiting for some nice setup. (T1) That came after the market pulled back and looked like it is going to bounce off the MID. I forgot the report comming out and jumped in as I saw weak bears trying to push quickly down. My $85 profit target was filled in 15 seconds. T2 Another good opportunity arose at 9:08 when the market reacted to my preplanned support level again. I waited until the orderflow showed me that bears are not interrested to push lower anymore and I went long for a very nice price. I didn't want to risk anymore so I opted for quick $45 after the market lost the primary momentum. Suma summarum I reached my perfect daily profit (range $80 - $120) in first half an hour of trading. Keeping in mind that it is friday and rollover period I simply stopped trading and dedicated my time to other activities.
When do most traders switch contracts for rollover? Isn't rollover next Thursday? March 20th? Just wondering. -js
Very good question. The reason why there is so much chaos with rollover is that nobody knows for sure. There is no clear rule saying when you should roll over. That is why traders use different rules for rolling over: 1. Some traders use date rule - 10.3., 10.6., 10.9., 10.12. (for NQ, YM, ES etc.) 2. Some use specific day of the week for rollover - second Thursday of the rollover month for example 3. And others (including me) watch the volume and roll over when they see more volume in the new contract month. Very important is also to work with back-adjusted data which will connect data from both contract months into one continuos chart without gap.
Yeah I noticed volume disappearing in I think December. It took me a couple minutes to learn where it all went. Lol. Thanks. -js
When you struggle with your trading, nothing goes as it should, you do a lot of mistakes and the whole trading doesn´t make sense anymore it is time for a few days off. Not thinking about trading for a few days helps to clear your head and gain new strength. It always helped in my case. After few days off, I am looking forward to analyze the markets and trade again. Those of you who read my journal from time to time know that I am currently struggling with my trading. It seems that the success is just around the corner, but at the same time it keeps evading me mostly because of my own mental state during the trading (anxiety and greed). So after a month of struggling, with results oscilating around break even, I decided to take a quick break. I didn´t make it on the slopes this year yet, so after I heard there is 50cm of fresh snow in High Tatras I decided to go for a spring ski trip. This is a short report. I was very lucky - the weather was wonderful Great view on the rocky mountains of High Tatras French mulda - beautiful and dangerous (that is how I like them ). Highest and one of the steepest slopes in Slovakia. Our hotel had small ZOO and among other animals they also breed horses. This was Irish Tinker Johny. Beautiful but extremely stubborn. The only way I could make him gallop was on the way home When riding in the opposite direction (away from home), he kept turning around all the time.
My tradings gone to pot recently aswell, like you, so close, but keep screwing it up, Beach Holiday booked Sunday for 7 days somewhere hot, so already on that. Mountaineer, Rock Climber, Ice Climber aswell, so do need a holiday in the mountains 1 day soon to, they look fun and high, nothing like that in the UK sadly but they do
March 24, 2015 I was done for today after initial 50min. I reached my PDP (perfect daily target), so I was reluctant to trade more. I took first long near the low of the market and as you can see, it was also a good lesson why to take your first profit target quickly. The market fell littlebit lower to rebounce and move higher. I took short position after I saw the agony of premature longs (simple traders). First, the market makers created a situation where they ''advertised'' long situation for the simple trader. And they catched a lot of them this time. Simple traders kept buying and buying and market makers ate their market orders with their sell limits (to prevent the market to move higher) resulting in a situation which I call ''the trap''. Now we see lot of simple traders already in the position wondering why the market doesn't move. They cannot get out and they keep hoping that the market will eventually rise. Market makers wait until they see they have trapped enough of them. They enable market to move just littlebit higher so the last latecomers will join in. After few minutes of agony they let the market fall with one objective in mind: to feed on the poor simple trader's stop limits, which are in fact sell orders so they help the market to fall even lower. Of course I joined the market makers in their filthy game and took quick profit. I will take a shower after I am done here