Dislcaimer: Englisch is not my mother tounge Hello everyone, i'm starting this Journal today bc 1st: i think a publicly available Journal will improve my Trading (e.g. not doing stupid Things bc somebody else will see it ..) 2nd: maybe i Can find someone who wants to back me 3rd: to make some friends who share the same Passion as me (every advice from your side to improve my Trading is welcome) Disclaimer 2: i dont have Money to trade live, so all Charts shared here are traded with a SIM account My Setup: i won't tell you what my whole Setup is, but i Can tell you what i try to do. Pre-Market Prep: Multiple Time Frame Analysis for Key Reference Area identification on market-open: Volume-Volatility Analysis combined with Basic technical Analysis that's all for now. Later on i Can Show you with Charts what i mean by all that. The main market i will trade is the Emini S&P Futures contract. i will Show you at the end of the day where i entered and Exit the trade on the Chart. i will use Ninjatrader, so i will not be able to manipulate my trades. Enough said for now. I wish you all happy Trading !!
1st- Most get worse cause added stress of doing a journal. 2nd- Anyone would have to be dumber than a rock to back up unproven trader already with discipline problems and zero trading their own funds. 3rd- This is a business, and those who can't trade are seeking friendships, and those who can trade guard much of anything that would matter to others. Why not trade something easier like the Nasdaq as it is more forgiving than ES and less per tick.
Hi Handle123, thanks for your comment. 1. i have a Journal already for myself, and i like to comment on the Chart. it is fun. maybe some other trader Can also comment on my Charts and Show me what i did miss or could do better next time. 2. i did trade my own live account a while ago. i did save some Money and then scalped the ES and the Treasuries, i want to be honest with you: focusing on the DOM the whole time is really difficult for a human beeing, and with scalping you compete against HFT's, i made some Money with scalping but i was looking for the Minimum risk entry and i had only a few trades a day. then i did Need the Money for University and quit Trading on the CME. i traded CL with Oanda for a while with good results. i dont have any Problems with discipline. im a very disciplined Person indeed. i watched the DOM every day for 9 months on different markets and i came to the conclusion that more often than not the interaction between buyers and sellers does not make any sense. i think on the very short term the market makers Can Control the markets, pulling orders and then working on their inventory which will move markets, and one valuable lesson i learned is that at some Levels the market makers employ different strategies than in ranges. so the trade volatility and Speed tells a lot BUT on the short term only. no one is bigger than the market, but large funds Can move markets on the very short term. thats why i made the Transition to a larger time Frame. taking just a few trades with longer Holding periods and good risk-reward ratios. 3. i already made some good friends on Trading Forums with Trading experience which are nice guys. on my bad days when i decided not to trade anymore (i think everyone has this type of day one day) These guys did motivate me and did give me some valuable advice. i dont think that there is some Magic in Trading. i dont really think that by sharing some ideas you give your edge to someone else. to trade successfully you Need to be ok with the stress and the Trading style. i wont move markets with my 5-10 lots and i dont care if a few guys join me with some 5-10 lots. the markets are bigger than that. why do you think that one Instrument is easier to trade than another?
Besides 40 years of experience? If I was to do a trade manually and I can see something is not right, Nasdaq is sloppy cause many young traders trade it, so I be able to get out with plus one tick and let someone else pay my fees. But this market adheres to basic charting whereas ES is the toughest market on the planet, well maybe China Indexes might be tougher. As far as reading the Dome, best you learn programming and let that read the Dome, and you are right, there are about a dozen "patterns" during the week that re-occur that I have been able to locate, some couple dozen times a day after filtering it and other every 2-3 days, but to sit their waiting for something that shows itself in 1-2 seconds, you will hurt your eyes forever. Just so incredible these days, you come up with an idea, start programming and debugging, then start back testing and when you wake up from your desk-don't even notice 3 days flew by, LOL well...my problems of life, but you see what the big boys been doing for decades, the field they say are getting more level, but it is bullcrap, just when you think we catching up, they make ten more ways to keep non-professionals from catching up. yeah, I have 40 years of journals and usually have 2-3 going at same time, since I no longer manually trade, I use to keep a dumb journal of these times I just knew market was going to go certain direction, so I would write these trades down but not take them, 95-96% of them be losses, LOL my mind loves to locate the losing trades, but at some point this became a part of my Trading Plan of when not to take certain good signals, so little things like this are in Dumb journal. I don't believe in "risk-reward ratios", they are more of after the fact for swing trading. My risk for scalping is great deal more than other scalpers as I use wave distances for normalcy, so seldom getting in perfect was my intention so I could average down. It not been till last year I start Swing trading, the risk is the same for me whether Swing or long term, so it is more of an experiment right now, but does allow me to get more experience dealing with options as only been using these to make profits for only past four years, that has been fun, so I been swing both stocks and credit spreads using same signals of direction or counter-trend and either hedge my longs or reverse. Good luck to you.
Hi All, so today is the first day in this journal. I should mention that i cant focus 100 % on trading right now, bc i need to study for university. I have two screens, i follow the ES on one screen and study on the other screen. Often i need to concentrate on my study and therefore cant focus solely on trading. However, so asian markets gained around 1,5-2 % but europe was not following the trend. i was long biased on the open bc on friday we had suprising good NFP numbers. I thought that we could have a trend day today so i was looking for confirmation in the market internals, which i had after the opening bell. NYSE TICK was constantly above zero with NYSE Advancing Issues climbing higher. On the open NYSE Declining Issues was also climbing higher, but after few minute it begun to decline and the Advancing Line still gaining. Open Type: We had an open rejection drive, the market did respected the short term pre-market support area and took higher. I entered somewhere when i saw the NYSE Declining Issues change direction and jumped on board for a trend day, my goal was to hold until the close (thats what i do on a trend day). So market turned somewhere, it was a v-shape reversal with market internals confirming the reversal. -> no trend day. so i did exit my position. Afterwards the market broke down and retested a key area where i took a short with initial take profit at the next blue line. i had to take my profit a little before that. I dont want to write the whole story and my thought process but today was a good example of a double distribution day. buy low sell at high volume node, sell high buy at high volume node. i couldnt anticipate that bc i had to study. a good entry for this would be the range expansion downwards and the initial balance low upwards. also note that the initial balance was extendet nearly 100 percent. .....
today i took 3 trades in total. 2 losers and one winner, on the first trade after i got stopped out the market turned in my original anticipated direction. after the breakout i took the pullback and did ride the wave for 9 Points. i missed one very good reversal opportunity bc i was studying, the missed trade is with a red arrow. when i saw that i did miss this good opportunity i felt like i had to trade, so i took the 3rd trade which of Course had to be a loser. i got angry that i took this bad trade and so i wrote down my complete Setup. in total i have 7 Setups. here is the pic of the trades.
3rd day today, took 3 trades, one was a large winner, the second a scratch in a high volatility Environment and the 3rd also a 3 tick winner, the volatility peaked and the market went crazy for couple of minutes, so i wasnt sure about the Outcome in total and got out of the trade with a small winner. missed another trade at the first red arrow bc i wasnt watching the markets. didnt take the second arrow bc i had already a big winner and in case that the trade wouldnt be a winner i would have a small gain in total which wouldnt be healthy for my psychology. but the next time i will definitely take a Setup no matter of previous results.
When i enter a trade i normally have a pre set target. It is a market generated price level where i think the market might go in my favour. My only definitin of overtrading is when you take a trade without a setup or a reason. It is not about quantity or time. What is your definition of overtrading?