I've decided to start this journal for purely selfish reasons as I hope it will help with my progression as a trader, although I also hope others can learn from my mistakes. I've been trading intraday for a year and during this time have learned A LOT, mostly from the many mistakes I have made. Prior to starting this day trading adventure, I traded over longer horizons for more than a decade, but have discovered that intraday trading is an entirely different beast. I currently trade 3 different setups - 2 that are with momentum/trend and 1 that is mean reversion. The setups tend to produce less than 5 trades per day. My setups work well for my and my results with them have been strong. However, I suffer from a severe case of deviating from my setups and over trading, primarily in the form of chasing big moves that haven't retraced, presumably in search of easy money or possibly boredom-driven. I also tend to trade between 11:15am and 1:45pm and after 3:45pm (Eastern) and I know from my analysis that these are losing time periods for me. Inevitably at the end of the week when I review my trades, I am up nicely on the trades with the proper setups and have given back much of my gains on the deviations. I hope that I can progress past these psychological issues and move on with the next lesson. In a future post when I have more time, I will go over my specific experience, goals for 2011, more reasons behind starting this journal and an outline of my trading setups. Beginning tomorrow, I will be posting my trades as soon as I enter them. My understanding is there may be some delays on the initial posts since I am a new user and then the posts will become real time after a few days. I will also try to post charts with my entry and exit points at the end of each day as time permits and a brief explanation and analysis of my thought process so I can refer back at a later date.
10:55 Short OVTI @ 28.37 All trades still alive except the stopped out COV position. CNX was a few cents away from my target and then shot back up and is now negative. Will be trying to avoid the 11:15-1:45 period today. Passed on two AZO shorts this morning to take other shorts instead and the AZO's would have both hit my profit targets. Darn!
11:02 Short MCP at 59.25 I've never made money shorting this, but it is a strong setup so I'm taking it.
Stopped out of LVS -.17. Was very close to my target, possibly should have moved stop to break even at that point, although I'm trying to get away from adjusting my stops post-trade as it seems to hurt me more than help me.
11:13 Long AES @ 12.53 Done for the morning, will only be closing positions at this point, no new trades. Frustrating morning so far, seems the setups I didn't take (short NFLX + AZO) and the setups I couldn't take (tries to short COV 3 times and couldn't get shares) worked great, while the trades I have taken have been mixed. Will review all morning trades in detail at the end of the day.
11:26 Stopped out of MCP -.56 Again could have possibly moved my stop to B/E after it failed to get through 59, but wanted to give it time and as I mentioned earlier I am trying to get away from adjusting stops. I really just need to stop shorting MCP.