Hi Everyone, Been away from ET for awhile but I check things out from time to time. It looks like there are still some nuggets on wisdom being passed along so I thought I would start another journal. Here is my first try at day trading:Working on Consistent Profitability At the end of my journal I called it quits because I really wasn't enjoying trading and had way too many emotional issues that came along with trading. Ok...so why am I starting another journal? Well, I have been options swing trading for the past couple of years and doing quite well. I must admit, IMO,its not too difficult to do well in the market the ways its been for the past few years. But, I contribute a lot of the success to what I learned day trading and reading charts. Not only picking big winners, but one thing that I immediately noticed was exiting out of my losers or taking profits before a big reversal. When I first started trading options that was my biggest flaw and source of major drawdowns. Those have been minimized for sure. I'm still options swing trading, but with the choppy market as of late, there are fewer good set-ups thus Im in fewer trades. So I thought it would be a good time to revisit day trading to see if I can improve on my trading in general. I have no grand aspirations of doing trading full time right now. I just want to keep trading better and better. I am not too sure if I will continue with my options trading or not while I do this. We will see how my time management works out and if I lose focus on one end or the other. I'm not posting any options stuff here. Maybe that will be for another time. I am going to be trading the ES as that is what I have been comfortable with and although I have not been day trading for the past couple of years, I watch it on almost a daily basis. I should mention that I already starting with this little project a couple of weeks ago and have been operating on somewhat on a B/E basis, but the past week I had a few bad days and bad trades. Perfect time to take a break over the long weekend. On Monday, I will start with my first chart for the second try which is open for all the feedback you guys want to give me.
I have to say this is a bad deal for you. I have seen so much bad in my years where someone was doing well in one instrument then they start not doing well to jump to a totally different kind of trading altogether. And back in the 80's, I was opposite where I was doing well in stocks and wanted to expand without doing much backtesting, huge mistake. I would advise to correct what you are not doing well in before adding and backtest to sample size min of 3,000 before considering real time.
+1 Trading ES is hard. Read this: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=241226&perpage=20&pagenumber=1
Scalping the ES if you're not in Chicago, at the exchange, right next to the exchange is silly when competing against lower latency traders and HFT programs. Also retail commissions a lone are a slice in any edge. That being said swing trading or intra-day position trading can be done and i've seen many do it on the ES. The beauty of it is you don't have to worry about liquidity. I know some scalpers of the ES but they are based in prop firms in Chicago have next to no commissions and ultra low latency to the exchange. Good luck though!
Not the way I wanted to start off the journal but here it is. Some things that have changed with me since doing my last journal is one, the amount of time I spent in front of the computer watching the day, and two, I don't even bother trading the first hour or so. In both cases, it allows me to take my time to start the day and not feel rushed in to trading as well as not getting caught up in the opening noise. Also, the gap fills and reversal that tend to happen...I am really not good at seeing those and haven't done enough sim work or backtesting to really take advantage of that movement. I also take regular breaks through the day because it helps me stay a bit more focused and I also have regular work to attend to at times. With that, here are the trades( all times in PST): Trade 1: 8:00- Long 1636.00 Target 1638 but will hang on a break with conviction 8:08- Sell 1637.75 +1.75 pts Pretty good trade. I like how I managed the false breakdown of consolitdation and how I exited. When price hit 1638.00 and just hung there I got out on the bid since there was no push. The mistake I made, was I should have flipped to a short trade pretty much right away.We had established a LH and there was potential for a run downward since the upward push failed Trade 2: 10:22- Long 1632.50 Target 1635.50 10:31- Sell 1632.50 +0.00 pts really botched this one. Good idea poor execution. My entry was way too early and I got so blinded by this, i exited on a doji bar so worried that the trade was just wrong, when if I had seen this with clearer eyes, it was a good trade had I waited a bit. I drew a really poor trendline and that was part of the problem (in red), instead of looking at all the support at 31.25-31.75 level. Trade 3: 11:48- Short 1634.75 Target 1631.25 will hold a runner 11:54- stopped out to cover at 1636.75 -2.00 pts I am not too sure what happened with this trade. Got stopped out to the tick on the reversal upward, so that was a bit annoying but I obviously did something wrong, I think I basically ran into a bear trap. still working on identifying those in real time. Trade 4: 12:30- Short 1633.50 Target looking for a runner past 1631.25 12:35- Stopped out to cover at 1635.50 I waited for a retest of the 34.50 level to try another short, but price reversed on me pretty quick once it headed for the 1632 level. That should have been my queue to get out but I hung around and again got stopped out to the tick. Seemed a bit choppy with the last two trades and I got caught out a bit. I probably should have avoided the last two trades all together given there was so much support at the 32-31 level. Total Trades: 4 Winners: 1 Losers:2 B/E:1 Total Points: -2.25 Avg. Win: $43.75 Avg. Loss: -$100.00 Total Win: 25% Total Profits: -$112.50