+29 gross I was having a good morning and then have slowly been giving my profits back. I took a couple of non-planned trades that ended up being losers. Done for the week.
i barely traded this week (other than long vol buildup) saving all my bullets for a possible vol up move next week. of course my hopes for market life can easily be dashed; but if there are some fireworks i will be ready. otherwise i will just wait for the inevitable vol as i earned already this year enough for my needs. week marks 9/23 to 9/27
-86 gross I got shredded up today. What a terrible way to end the month. I started the first day of the month the same way. A lot of what happened today was psychological. I came into today down a bit for the month and knew that if I had a decent day that I could get positive for the month. That made me push and push. I went back to my overtrading tendencies and took many unecessary losses. I do need to think about how I approach the day when there are large gaps. I tend to perform poorly on days like this. Maybe I will look to sit out the first 30 minutes to an hour on days with large market gaps.
Since I am not posting my daily blotters while I continue to work to improve my trading (less pressure to perform, and I can focus more on the process) I will post the summary detail of my trades. Detail for 09/13 Total Profit/(Loss): ($335.00) No of Trades: 11 Wins: 7 Loss: 4 Avg Win: $84.36 Avg Loss: ($166.20)
-72 gross That was a very frustrating day for me. And I sadly let my frustrations affect my trading. Just like yesterday, I let paying attention to my P/L drive my trading decisions. It was the first day of the month and I wanted to start off great. I took a loss on my first trade by getting ticked out at the low of the day only to see the stock shoot to new highs. My overtrading demon emerged and I took too many trades and forced ideas. September Review: September was a month of bad times, good times, and a poor finish. It started off horribly with 7 of the first nine trading days being losers. The culprit was my overtrading weakness. I was taking too many unplanned trades on the spur of the moment. In the middle of the month, I instigated a rule that I could only take trades that were pre-planned the night before. This immediately had a positive result as I won 8 of the next 9 trading days. Things were going well until the last day of the month. This is where emotions crept in and threw a wrench in my trading. I badly wanted to be positive for the month. During my good streak, I wasn't quite able to recover all of my losses from beginning of the month. On the last day, I knew that if I had a decent day that I would be positive for the month and would have recovered from the horrible streak I had. This idea drove my trading forcing me to search for any reason to get into a trade. Add in that it was a large gap down day, days of which are usually not good days for me, and it was a recipe for disaster. I was stopped out at my max loss for the day. The positives for the month are that I did have that good streak right after a terrible streak. During all down days and bad streaks, I was always able to stick to my risk limits. Never did I go over my max loss per day. If things went too sour, I shut it down and came back the next day. As long as I control my losses, I'll be in the game long enough for good things to happen. The one thing saving me so far is my ability to control my losses. Obviously, I'm not a great trader, but I can limit the bleeding when I get cut. This month, my main focus will be to trading less and waiting for my prime trade setups. Sep: P/L: -$178.25 Win%: 34.25 Avg Win/Avg Loss: 1.53 My win percentage was around 25% the first half of the month and close to 50% the second half excluding the last day of the month. This month was when I decided to risk a little more on each trade in an attempt to get some larger winners. Unfortunately, I never got those big winners I was looking for. The larger losses dropped my avg win/loss ratio. Last month it was 2.62. Looking forward to October, I need to trade less by only taking high quality setups with good risk reward ratios. I need to stick to my plan without having emotions linked to P/L and just let the chips fall how they may.
-77 gross I got my butt kicked. For the third day in a row I let myself get a little too pissed off. Due to the large market gap down, I decided to follow my new rule of not trading the first 30 minutes. I didn't place a trade during that time. What I did do was watch two of my pre-planned trades trigger and end up making fantastic moves. This aggitated me. I then proceeded to mess up an order that caused me to take a loss three times the size of what I meant to. I then went on to place numerous non-planned trades for small losses. To help me follow the rule tomorrow, I will state it here. Tomorrow, I will make a maximum of two trades.
-44 gross I had a couple of trades trigger near the open. Neither of them worked. I used up my two trades already. I'm done for the day.
still expecting big vol. i'm not killing it this year; but its more than enough to have to ever work for a living. week marks 9/30 to 10/4