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Trade 1 was intended to be a pullback on the way down. Perhaps not the best trade after a gap up and a higher high, but ended up losing the full stop.
Trade 2 was taken after the lower low and lower high. But after a higher low was put in, I moved the stop to only lose half of the loss.
Trade 3 was a long after two wrong shorts. This was very short lived and full stop resulted.
Basically I tried to trade a fairly narrow range. All 3 trades are within $1.50 high to low. I did not like how little time was spent between trades either. Only 3 minutes between trade 1 and trade 2. Trade 1 -> 2 was particularly bad because the stop was hit after taking out a local swing high. It is one thing if you are using a fixed stop and get taken out and still want to jump back in, but when you have the luxury of seeing the swing highs and lows taken out, then use that information to bias the next trade, which should probably be waiting
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
1 winner, 3 losers. Net gain $220. 76th percentile day.
Trade 1 was a failed breakout above $139.30, which was S/R from a prior day. A little slow on the trigger getting in. I met my own resistance around $138 and price pushed all the way back to my entry point. By that time I had impatiently moved my stop loss to BE and was taken out. Either way, the next push down wouldn't go much further.
Trade 2 looked like a breakout pullback trade at $139.30. I was looking for another failed breakout and a continuation of the trading range, but when I saw the tail bullish bar at 8:18, I jumped on a offer right towards the end of the bar. Price ran $0.60, and I moved to BE - no point in losing a full $1 when the market moves so favorably. But back to BE.
Trade 3 was a simple pullback trade. After the lower high registered at 8:24, I thought we might see more of a sell off. After price retraced to my entry point. I moved my stop to BE. Hit again. So three trades. Pretty good set ups. Pretty patient and defensive with stops.
All in all, fairly pleased with the three trades, even with no $ to show for them.
Trade 4 was taken after seeing the strong support at $138.50 and a tight trading channel developing at around 11:00am. Took 200 shares with a $0.20 stop. Took a little heat on the first bar, and then it took off from there. Very patient with stops. Ratcheted tighter in the last 20 minutes of the session.
So I have 14 days of watching VFC in real time. I have compared the results of each day to my paper trading results, to see where the day's results stand versus the paper results. Here are the percentile ranks of each day so far:
29 58 61 1 1 24 33 48 9 54 64 1 1 76
The median is 33. Not quite 50, as you would expect if I were replicating the paper trade system. But I also took the time to enter the daily P&Ls for paper and real time into an unpaired t-test to compare the the means of the two methods. The null hypothesis being that they are trades from the same "population". If the means are very far apart, I would have evidence to reject that hypothesis.
Paper trades have a daily mean of $124.44, a standard deviation of $121.07, and N of 34. The real time trades have a daily mean of $53.93, a standard deviation of $118.54, and N of 14.
So the difference between the two means is $70.54, which is not statistically significant at 95%. So I can't conclude yet that they are different. But I suspect that could change with more samples of the the real time trading.
The other question is "Are my real time trading results, while positive, significantly different from $0?" For the paper trades they were, with a p-value of less than .0001. However, the real time trades have a p-value of 0.3214, so not really that different, but that could also change with a larger sample size.
3 trades. 2 Winners. 1 Loser. Net gain $110. 45th percentile day.
Trade 1 was a bit of a conflicted trade. Part pullback after 2-3 HH/HLs and part breakout above $140.35. Ended up being a trap.
Trade 2 was a failed break out of $140.35. Price traded back to test the low of the day and stopped just short. I might have inched my stop a little tighter, but that was about all I was going to get out of it.
Trade 3 was a sad trade. Traded on a test of the high of the day. Nice short went immediately and forcefully in my favor. As price approached $139, I got worried about giving back profits if VFC stayed in a trading range. So I jammed my stop up to the offer, when price got close. Sat around for half an hour, during which I only would have taken $0.10 of heat, and then watched price trade off. The CWSMFE (coulda woulda shoulda maximum favorable excursion) was $2. Ugh.
4 trades. 3 winners. 1 loser. Net gain $175. 62nd percentile day.
Trade 1 was supposed to be a with trend pull back off the EMA21. turned out to be a trap. Was stopped in about 5 min.
Trade 2 was a test of the intraday low and recent swing low at around $139. I probably could have been more aggressive on a tighter stop with twice the shares. But for how price behaved, I got out of it what my plan allows.
Trade 3 was a failed break out, after price just barely pushed past the recent swing high at around $140.40. I became anxious as price approached the low for the day a third time. I played off this anxiety to tighten my stop, which was hit. Had I left to stop an the recent swing high in the down trend, I probably would have picked up another $0.70.
Trade 4 was a breakout. The G20 banks said they would coordinate a reaction if needed to the Greek elections. Markets went nuts. After price had gone up $1.00 in 2 bars, I jumped in with a $0.20 stop and 200 shares. I ended up bailing on the trade 3 bars later as price failed to follow through, and I was stepping away from the desk for a meeting.
Trade 1 was supposed to be a with trend pull back after the gap-down open. Price bounced off the 21 EMA, went in my favor but did not follow through. Stopped out at full.
Trade 2 was a little late after the pull back, but jumped on the trend that took me out of Trade 1. After going $0.50 in my favor, I moved to BE, and was taken out there.
Trade 3 was somewhat of a breakout trade. I felt a little antsy on moving my stop, but got out at a fair place given the price action.
Usually I don't post two charts, but today it was necessary because the VFC chart is the one I used to place my trades, but the SPX chart was that one I used to identify trend and set my bias for the day. This did not go well. When I was paper trading, I was ignorant of what the S&P did, all I watched was price. But online I have the markets to bias me real time.
Today the S&P was up, up, up from 6:30 to 10:30, but VFC was up only for the first hour of trading. I kept going long, and long, and long, waiting for VFC to reintegrate with the market trend. After my fourth trade I realized I had my EMA 21 turned off. Hindsight is hindsight, but the trades at 8:00, 8:57, and 10:57 stood out pretty starkly once it was on.
Trade 1 was a pullback off a strong open (100,000 shares on the gap open). Went $0.95 in my favor. Based on what I saw in SPX, this could be a strong trend up day, so I wanted to give it room to run, only moved my stop to BE. Ended up getting stopped out there. Probably should have made at least $20-30 on this trade.
Trade 2 was really off the SPX again. I got stopped out in less than 1 bar.
Trade 3 was rediculous. Again, angling for the reintegration with the market up trend. I should have at least waited for the pullback. After that long of a pullback (especially against such strength in the general market), there will not likely be a v-shaped recovery; most likely a complex reversal.
Trade 4 was at least on a breakout and large volume but only lasted 2 bars.
Trade 1 was a pullback after a breakout. Early in the session, price pushed through $142. Took heat on one pullback, and the price traded through the lower low, so I thought I was good. Ended up breaking even.
Trade 2 was a trade off a double top. Price went briefly in my direction. When I didn't see any follow through, I got out at BE, since I didn't want to have a position when the Fed announcement came out at 9:30.
Trade 3 was 2 bars too early. Got stopped out by a trap that did not go past the previous swing high of $143.63. Can't do anything about that; perhaps should have used a wider stop to encompass the swing high. Should have jumped back in. Would have been a $0.80 trade.
One question that has come up for me is just how much further can a rally run. Or if I am in a tight trading range, is that a "small" range for a day or average.
So I grabbed the day high less the day low to get a sense for how much price can move in a day. Histogram attached.
Turns out the median is about $3. 25th and 75th percentiles are $2.10 and $4.09 respectively. 10th percentile is $1.71 and 90th percentile is $5.14. So if I see a day with a $1.50 trading range, chances are it will break up or down to a wider range for the day. And if I am in a rally that has run $5 from the days low, I should be more aggressive with my stops.
