I have been trading at a prop firm for almost 3 months. Lets just say I have to work a few night and weekend jobs to pay the bills. I am starting to turn the corner; so I know it is worth everyones time to read my journal. I trade momentum and base breakouts. My biggest problem had been taking too many trades that were not my proper set ups. My second biggest problem is breaking my rules during a trade and not letting the trade work in or against my favor enough for clear sell signals. Against all of my instincts I have begun to slow down the number of trades-taking only ideal setups(if not ideal I only take small share lots with tighter stops) AND letting trades work themselves out. ie waiting for my confirmation sells as apposed to selling into a possible tail and taking a loss right before the stock goes nuts. Hope you take away as much as I do- I may call out trades before I enter them-
I want to post each trade I do before or after or both so that I take the time to reflect after each trade. A slowing mechanism. Spys opened very low on the day. I was watching azo but was a punk and didnt take my low risk high reward trade in the 186 area. That was unfortunately one of the only charts that had my set up in it that i could have gone long with size. The overall market scared me away- so i reverted to my spys trade. Which took my eyes of azo where i could have made money on the new high it made at 9:50- there was a formation trade & and momentum trade there that I missed- I usually am desperate to try to find a new trade at this point to make up for it however I am wiser now and instead of forcing myself to stop for the rest of the day I will go clear my mind- when I am ready i will return I am tired today due to lack of sleep so even tho I knew there was a number at 10am i took a long trade anyways. I do not trade before numbers thats one of my rules so i was forced to sell at a small loss right before the number. when the number came out and the action was bullish i stepped into the spys and turned my day positive-although very small. The only way my share count should get up to normal levels today is if it is short- UNTIL MY INDICATOR TELLS ME THAT THE MARKET HAS CONSOLIDATED I WILL NOT TAKE FULL LONG POSITIONS ONLY 1/3 or 1/2 SIZE. SHORTS WILL BE 1/2 TO FULL SIZE. i took a small short of mdt and covered on new lows. small profit i took a small long of gld and sold at the break of the base. small loss. got long the spys on the pendant breakout and played it up till the 50% of gap fill reshorted mdt- basically retarted trade- I was right but I did break my rules of not selling or covering at my out prices. It is 1:50pm I am up gross 47 net 35....not the day I had hoped for- I will likely stop trading for the remaining part of the day I took one more trade long spys on the pendant break out again +67 or +53 apprx net
MA falls under my technical breakout possibility today. I will be mindful of it possibly taking out yesterdays lows giving a weak flat day or a high upper tail because the spys are still not under my technical all in buy.
My trade was here. I unfortunately sold again into a tail. When I went back to re-enter...I was unable to enter the order because someone changed my max loss for the day to 100 as apposed to 200 and i lossed 104. the spx is now right into resistance where i thought it would get to. I am unlikely to enter long although it is possible that i do try to get back into this trade
traded spys back to -37 and a total of -50 net for day. i was long until we failed to have a high volume breakout thru the 50 sma on the hourly chart; than I shorted. I made some nice trades to get back to -60 than lost it all on 1 trade to wind up making most of it back long than going short to get to my day. I was too early on MA period. it was a 200 dollar trade that I had planned and was ready to make and was right but still lost money; the emotions of day trading. my sell was a 5 minute close under the previous bottom of day. i was in too high and was not prepared to take the loss that was there. Bad execution of plan. spys i went long after the 50% of gap was hit @.19 with support- I am upset that I traded in and out instead of holding at such good prices for the day-although I was fairly confident I should not be looking for big up moves today. I am trying to get myself away from trading so much and making fewer decisions.
If you're struggling and have to put up with a daily loss limit that low why are you trying trade things like AZO and MA? IMHO, a $200 neighborhood stock with a 5+ ATR and relatively low volume is really not compatible with that low a limit.
I understand what you are saying and I generally agree. I do not typically trade stocks with more than 1.5 dollar ATR. However those two stocks were in my buy signal areas and I was confident I could have a very big day if I executed properly. Had I executed properly I would have had a big day, very big. Today, so far and I may be done for the day, I have traded only the spys. I did get sucked into selling into the tail again but only at a very small loss. I did however reenter on the close into the lower portion of the range and held onto 100 of 200 shares until 109.89 on the spys. I am +85 on 1000 shares or net of 78. I am up chump change for the week of about 20 or 30 dollars
UPDATE: I took a small loss in ego 13 dollars net lost a little money shorting the spys and made it back+1 getting back into the trade. I than lossed 26 on GS again selling into tails but I was not 100% in the setup so not incredibly upset. When it rebabsed at 1:20pm I got back into the set up that I was 98% in and took it to 143.75 making a total of 20 bucks (haha) on goldman. my net is 81...basically wasted my time except for the lessons learned
i didnt do anything friday...i tried but there wasnt anything i was excited enough about. i saw a few good set ups and tried to get in them but the market got away and i refuse to trade out of position. yesterday i took one small trade after the news at 10 am. +15 net. today i took a few trades long lost some money than tried to short tsl but only small...i was down like 38 after all that than i realized how algorithmic the trading is today. light volume taking shares than making a short trap and sending prices thru highs. understanding the day is the single greatest profit predictor i have seen some days my formations work. some days my bases work. some days my momentum works. some days none of it works. today nothing was working for me except having confidence that this was an algo day where we are smartly making a bottome here for the market and we would just hit resistance bring it back than only blow thru all resistance levels. i scaled in and out to go up gross 81 net 74. i sold new highs and bought pull backs that occured on light volume starting from 108.4 on spys taking it to 109.1 good luck today guys
As I mentioned to another trader on this forum. If I understand you correctly, you are posting these trades to keep yourself "honest" with yourself, and to see if you are congruent with your subsequent market actions? But just for the record, for those of us with a slight interest in what we think you are doing, would it be possible for you to post your Trading Plan, so that we may have some basis by which to compare your pre-planned "intentions" with your actual market "actions". I believe this type of record keeping may help you as well. Thanks