Hi, I have been trading for around 6-7 years and have made numerous attempts to keep up with a trade journal, only to fail miserably. Hopefully I will be able to this time. My methodology for trading is essentially taught by Chick Goslin and a quick search on this forum led me to the journal of a fellow trader named Ashan. Unlike Ashan, I would probably not go so much in depth into my analysis but rather use this journal as a reflection on my journey. A quick background, I started trading FX in 2004/2005 and progressed on to spread trading and arbitraging futures 3 to 4 years later, made some money but didn't like it much. I found Chick Goslin's book and never looked back as it gel-ed with my personal beliefs. I only trade with the trend and one basic rule I stick with is never go short when prices are above the 50 SMA and vice versa. Rule number 2 would be an old cliche, take care of my losses and my winners would take care of themselves. I only trade 1 window a day, when I wake up and after I'm done, I do not trade until the day has passed and I'm at my next window. I only look at the daily charts. Current Positions: Long Heating Oil Crude Cotton Soybeans Soybean Meal Corn Russell Copper Silver Gold Lean Hogs Lumber Euro TRV CTB PM AN Short: Sugar 11 *A lot of my trades are correlated but I trade very small. Sometimes too small.
Got out of a few positions, will post my positions tomorrow. Overall this past week have been very boring as the trends haven't been very powerful. Although silver provided a lot of profits, about half of that went into a sour coffee trade. Oh well that's trading. I'm still waiting for the trends to kick in.
Decent past week, I covered my losses and am up a bit currently. NFP was quite a roller coaster but luckily I managed to dig my heels in and hold on. These are most of my current positions.
Did not change much of my positions today. I exited my CL positions with a nice profit. Although my charts say it's ok to hold on, I'm a bit worried about OPEC stepping in. Charts of RBOB and HO also seems very nice, leading me to be quite confused. Corn is having a nice run now and hopefully it carries on. Metals are doing great, well not all metals, silver is doing great. As for currencies, I got out of my CAD longs and am still holding on to a long EUR position, if EUR doesn't rise tonight, I'm letting it go tomorrow. Reminder to self; 1. I trade based on what I observe on charts, do not analyze too much. 2. Trade small, to the extent that I need not care about my positions.
Theme of the day: Taking Profits. I've always had a major problem with taking profits. Entering positions, taking losses, I consider myself quite adept at those. But taking profits, that's a whole new thing.
Took profits on my major positions and holding nonsense ones today. I'll begin proper trading again next week.
I'm down 15% from my equity high. After months of thinking about increasing my size, I chose to do so, just at the wrong time. Also, I lost most of the money on energy and grain futures, however, I do not think that I'm wrong. The loss was just too much for me to hold through and most importantly, it was my golden rule, liquidate entire portfolio once I have a 15% draw-down. I'm looking forward to going long on those trains in the near future. Of course, this is from my charts which unfortunately do not show the future. If the trend changes, I'll change. For now, I'm going to take a break for a couple of days to get my head straight and re-organize my thoughts.
What a crappy 2 weeks it has been for me. From a trading perspective, I'm down 25%. A draw-down of that magnitude is normally fine for me, I've been through worst, however, in monetary terms, it's quite big for me. As a pretty young guy, a loss of 100k USD in 2 weeks is huge. I know I should separate emotions from my trading, but somehow, it's a real problem for me. I keep telling myself that it's fine, but deep down, it's killing me. This is something that I HAVE TO overcome. I've been going through my trades in my mind and I've drilled my problems down to these few points: 1. I increased my size without caring about the psychological effects. 2. Hubris. I made money 8 months straight and began to place stupid and sub-standard trades. 3. Going out of my comfort zone. I realized that my method works on stocks and have been trading way too much stocks. I should focus on my main area more, namely futures. I used to be able to place my trades and sleep peacefully. Now I check my equity every 1-2 hours. I have to get a grip on myself. Oh well, No point crying over spilled milk. I've done my reflections, pin-pointed some mistakes, all that's left now is to rectify my mistakes and move on. I've decided to cut back on my size, and go back to trading products I'm confident at. Hopefully I'll be able to recoup my losses soon.
"Here was an individual who would have made a really great long-term trader. He had the funds to absorb short-term moves against him and the psychological patience [stubbornness?) and toughness to hold on to trades for a long time" - Chick Goslin, Trading day by day Just a reminder to myself.
That's the wrong way to approach the situation. For a moment, forget about making your "money back". Concentrate just on the discipline to execute your system in order to limit a further loss of capital. The more you forget about the former and instead focus on the latter the sooner you'll be back at your equity high.