Very busy day today. Traded from before the open right up to the close today. My overnight with DECK worked out well. One trader in the chat room held on a lot longer than I did with it and made a killing but I exited around my target area and while I did not make as much I am very happy with the trade. I had a total of 10 trades today which is the most in a while and I have a couple of overnights too. DV was a B9 signal that I nailed near the top and was able to really grab some gains with it. while the size was small I made better than target with it. FNSR was another B9 signal and only traded 100 shares with it.LEN was a another along with MTL. The most interesting trade which started out boring was with SWC. This traded in a range for about three hours and then within about five seconds fell out of bed taking all my bids with it and closing me out for a nice gain. It was a good reminder why I donât leave my bids at target but rather spread them out below in case the price crashes. This happens about once every six weeks or so and really does a nice job of adding to the PnL but does require a bit more management of the trade. I shorted EAT into the close for an overnight and STI was never closed out due to not reaching target so that was is coming along for the ride as well. I donât feel all that special about STI and looking at the chart I will be happy to break even with it tomorrow but will plan on taking a hit. All in all a very good day without much drama after DECK finally opened. In pre market it traded up over 80 and I had already committed most of my size to it but I did add above 80 and scalped some before it fell to give me an average of above 80. I would love to be able to wait until the next day to short these but most of the time they open up in pre market well below the close so I guess the best I can do is short some the night before and keep some powder dry for the once in a while it actually trades higher before the open. For those that were selling in pre market what a great time to sell out this stock. DECK + 455 DECK dec 80C + 203 DV + 148 FNSR + 54 LEN + 110 MTL + 414 NAV + 47 (missed a second short with this one due to watching another stock and reading the news on itâ¦) STI + 7 (still short) SWC + 460 SXCI + 46 + 1949
I wanted to ask you about that psycho-cybernetics cd's you recommended in another thread. What is so special about it?
The week started out better than it ended. Between the software shortcoming and mistakes what could have been and what started out as a pretty good day went south. The start of the problems for the day began when I took a non signal short with DECK. I had no reason to take it beyond my belief that the stock was overbought and I was proven very wrong by the market. This is the type of mistake that is most upsetting because its the exact type of trade that I should not take. So to say that I am frustrated with myself is an understatement. On top of the frustration is the loss that I took from the trade but in the whole scheme of things its the actual taking of the trade that is worse than the loss. My next problem came when I received signals for both GNTX and PAY near the same time leaving me in three trades at one time. Normally this would not be an issue but GNTX ripped higher and Pay while not ripping as much as GNTX found its way higher as well leaving me with feeling like I needed to hold back as I was short also with DECK. This resulted in me starting out normal to a little bit heavy with the trades and when I really should have been pounding them holding back. As a result my average price short was not where it needed to be considering they did not come back as far as I would have liked. This was not my biggest problem. My biggest problem is that my signal uses as part of the multi-time frame a 10min chart that confirms the stock is overbought. There was put in a safety valve in case of news/rumors etc⦠like with GNTX today. unfortunetly with several trades going on at once I missed a manual check on the massive increase in volume. As a result I not only entered in at a price below what I would have entered if the volume check could keep up but also used greater size to early. As it would turn out I was able to exit and cover the short with a small gain of a little over $100 and I went down to 100 shares that I wanted to leave for the target. Then the next and biggest mistake of the day happened. In order for me to reenter a short based on this signal I need to have it not only reach a new high for the day but it has to become overbought as if it was the first time. This rule applies if the stock reaches my target and since I didnât reach my target I thought it would be fine to add to the short as it moved higher again while I wait for it to hit the target. I can also just close it out if it goes back to even but GNTX was so far above where I though it would retrace I felt comforatable adding to the 100 shares. The problem was that GNTX did reach target because the entry level was actually higher than what I entered and averaged into. The software code that I wrote did not show this correctly because of the surge in volume was not being correctly factored in. So when I should have been staying out I started adding and while I took some small amounts of stops I ended up the day still short and the gain I had with GNTX all but dissapeared. GNTX traded higher in after hours and while I would normally like to short that for an overnight I had to stand fast and just hold as I did not want to increase my share size. PAY was my other problem child today. The short signal was fine and while I may have went a bit heavy in the start that was not a big problem. I should have added more when it became so far extended but again between DECK and GNTX I held back and my average was not as high as it could have been but that was not a mistake and in fact I shorted on the B7 signal and I kept the powder dry looking for a B9 signal which it came close to making but didnât quite get there. It came back and I closed out some shares for a gain and then it moved higher and when it came back down again it came within about five cents of my break even. I did cover some shares just above my break even when it appeared that it may not continue down (a correct call) and re-shorted it higher but it never came back down to my break even again much less my target. I realized a loss with it into the close when I covered over half the short. So Pay went from the win to the loser catagory with that cover. In after hours I shorted PAY again when it was bid up around 40.00 again. So I am now holding a larger than expected (at the close) short with PAY. On a somewhat better note my overnight with EAT was a winner along with the overnight STI but both very small. I had a B7 signal with FNSR and that was also a winner. I was very frustrated with IB as some of my book traders (the advisor account) was not reporting the correct position size (was reporting zero). This is a very serious problem and really added to my frustration with IB today. I could have very easily made a mistake as a result. I am also not sure where I stand with GNTX now as the account window shows a gain of $4 but the online reporting shows a loss of 499. I have no idea what to believe and will have to run the numbers and do the math to figure it out. I ended the day thinking I closed out a small gain and held an overnight unrealized loss but by the time I had a chance to write up todays activity the account window has now been reset to zeros and the reason for looking at the online reporting is to see what is now missing from the account window. So to add to the frustration I thought I ended the day with a total realized loss of around 630 but the online reporting says a loss of 1435 but the shares traded and average prices give another number that shows a larger gain with GNTX. I will be glad when I move to another broker if for no other reason than I will not have to deal with all the mistakes by IB. so the GNTX and PAY numbers are not what was reported in the real time reporting but what is being reported in the online statement and not as good as I thought but I will go with the worse of the numbers to be on the safe side of the post. I will look to close out GNTX and PAY near the open on Monday. DECK â 628 EAT + 60 FNSR + 136 GNTX â 499 PAY â 550 STI + 46 - 1435
Bob, how many jumping jacks did you do for the DECK trade? That is the requisite punishment still, isn't it? JS
Don't feel too bad about DECK-i almost had it short too on instinct but was doing good in other trades so I just let it be and didn't take it-call it good fortune but when you go back and look at it you go what the hell was I thinking short _almost a perfect long. I had a similar hunch on PD_phelps dodge about 3-4 years back -stock had returned below 100 after going to 106 or so. Decided just to wait another day_next day it opened at 127 on takeover. A buddy of mine took it and was steamrolled over cause we had discussed it in chat and I felt so guilty about that even though I didn't have the trade.
Hello JScott, Well thats what I said but you know they kinda fell be the wayside as I forgot to do them or chose not to the last few times. Time to reinstate that and as of this post I have 200 of them done so far and will have the rest done today. Its 100 just for doing the trade plus one for every dollar lost. Thanks for reminding me or I may not have received the reinforcement to stop making stupid non signal trades. Your post is helping me be more profitable. Have a good weekend Robert
I am not sure how to give it enough credit for as great as it is. Off the top of my head I would say its like an instructional manual for your brain. If you feel your brain is important to your success than knowing how it works or knowing better how it works I believe is important. The worst thing I can say about it is that the title sucks IMHO and makes it appear"strange". I believe its given me understanding in how to be a better trader, better father, and all around better in life. If someone can name something else that is as good as the audio book by Kennedy (i have not read the book just listened to the CDs) I would sure welcome the information but it seems like everything else is a rehash or borrows the ideas. I hope this shows how important it has been to me : o ) Best Robert
Not a bad idea. But since losses are part of the game, it wouldn't necessarily be a punishment, but a great way to get in shape. But I'm thinking burpees tabata style instead.
Hey Badger, I hope your doing well. Your right about the losses being part of the game. The "punishment" is for taking a trade without a signal. Impulsive trades need to be removed. I have no edge with them and have lost way more than I have made with them. The real bitch of it is that I can not tell you why I took that trade when not taking this type of trade is something I "talk to myself" about a lot...... Best Robert ... back to jumping jacks. over half way done
After spending the whole weekend coding I now have a new entry generator for B9 confirmation. My wrists hurt from all the typing but this post is important so I will give it what I can. Two of my trades on Friday where results of errors and not poor trading or at least not totally due to poor trading. Pay entry was a result of misreading the entry price on the monitor. This was fixed this weekend. Before today there was three prices and the lowest one being reached triggered the alert but I was not to enter into the trade until the highest one met. PAY had one that was 39.xx and two prices 38.xx and all thhree were close in price except for the little nine in one of them. This let to my entry into PAY almost a dollar early and to the loss I took. I was able to get out of it without much of a ding and the problem has been taken care of with lots of code written. Now I will just simply see one price and will not have to figure out anything. This probably should have been done a while ago but I thought the B7 signal would be totally replaced with the B9 signal and it hasnât. At least now it works as well as the B9 in terms of being able to see it. I didnât even know I misread the price until Saturday when I was going over the trade trying to figure out how it went so poorly. My next problem Friday was GNTX (27.39 ↑1.86%). This was so many problems wrapped up into one its hard to figure out where to begin. Having already gone through many volume price spikes I wrote code to protect against it. Or at least I thought the code could adjust and protect. Usually it works fine and it was a major milestone in my progress I thought. A problem I knew I had but was slow to correct was that the bars I was using had such a long time frame that I could receive a signal to short while the bar was in progress which is normal but if a spike is going on like with volume and/or price in relation to time the actual entry price could go higher and higher while the bar was in progress and I could end up in a trade and not know I should not be in the trade until after the fact. This is what happened Friday with GNTX. I was already working on a solution to this but I guess I needed more âmotivationâ to finish the job. Today I received a full blast of the motivation along with a double shot on Friday with GNTX. What should have been a really nice winner of a trade turned into one of the worst trades I have had in terms of execution in months. Today was the day the loss occurred but this mess was all about Friday. And to make matters worse mentally GNTX was a profitable trade (although small) at one point on Friday when I went down to only having 100 shares left. The good news is that by the end of the day Sunday I had been able to adjust my entry signal generator to provide within a penny or two consistently where I should normally enter but with a shorter volume/ price spike time frame that also uses previous bars so that what ever entry price I get is the one for that bar. Moving forward I donât expect another GNTX for a few months as I usually only get a few per year but when I do it will be a really good trade. I did get another B9 signal trade today and as luck would have it I am slightly underwater on this one too. I took a small couple of stop losses with it as it went so far beyond my entry. I am still in the short as its a valid overnight and I am looking forward to making forward progress again. For as bad of a day as it was I am in pretty good spirits as I know the two issues I had have been dealt with and there is no reason why I shouldnât close out this month very well. GNTX â 4919 MCP + 43 PAY + 34 PPO â 212 RVBD (35.57 ↑2.15%) + 24 - 5029