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Really like how you log all your trades and post your charts. I reviewed a lot of your entries today. I think you have a good sense of how price moves but probably need better control over your risk. I'd strongly discourage using wide stops and doubling down on a losing trade. Based on your results, it's clear that you manage to extract profits from the market time and again. However, your losses overwhelm those profits. I'd suggest trading sim for now on one contract with no more than 5 ticks of risk. If it must be 8 ticks, your reward should be proportionately higher. Focus on improving your entry points perhaps by using a minute time frame (377 tick, 233 tick, 144 tick).
Thanks for the tip and words of encouragement. I am trading quite a bit on the simulator but dabbling in the live market a little too. You're absolutely right though, I simply cannot take those big losses or double up. Working on that today. It's way too hard to come back from one of those big losses with my little 4-tick scalps.
I'll post some charts from today's trading a little later.
Today it was like I was malfunctioning all day! Right from the start on my very first trade, I clicked the wrong button on my platform. I took myself out of what would have been a winning scalp, instead taking a 1 tick loss.
Undeterred I kept at it and did manage to eek out a small profit today. However, 3 of my 5 wins were longs. On a day like today, with the market down over 25 points, why the hell was I getting long at all, ever?!?! On the one really nice short setup that I took, I ended up second guessing the trade and closed it with only 1 tick of profit. I could have ridden that short for 36 ticks!!!! Then I kept passing on different short setups for various reasons. When I finally took another short it was 1 tick above the low of the day at that point! What?!?! Anyway, it did drop further right away but my target order wasn't filled and I had to sweat a 6-tick pullback. Lucky for me no one other than me was buying today and it worked back down to where I could close it for 3 ticks profit.
I'm thinking I was victim of more psychological trouble today. I feel good about my ability to read the PA but it's like I'm still self-sabotaging. At least I didn't use any stops bigger than 8 ticks today and I didn't double up. Those are my two goals right now.
Nice journal bbdsan. I am just wonder what stop strategy are you using? Seems your target is 4 ticks. You set a stop larger than that? (because I see in one your chart the price went against you by more than 4 ticks but didn't stop you out.)
One stupid counter trend trade not withstanding, I'm pretty happy with my trading today. My dad is in the hospital after surgery yesterday, so I rearranged my schedule a little such that I could go visit him. I was up early and trading at 5:30. I took a break from about 9 to 10 for my run. It worked out great because the market was going nowhere for that hour but setup a nice long entry right when I got back. Then I called it a day at noon, an hour before the close.
Here are my charts for the day with some comments:
Correct, I have a 4-tick target and a max 8-tick stop. I learned this from Mack at priceactiontradingsystem.com and his many YouTube videos (PATs Trading). I understand it seems backwards. At least, it seemed that way to me at first. But what I've learned is it allows me to have a very high win / loss ratio, which makes up for the backwards risk / reward ratio. I really like the strategy and it seems to work well, even for a complete amateur like me.
Also, keep in mind that I'm only trading 1 contract. Eventually, as I get better at this I'll start trading 4 or 5 contracts. I'll scalp my 4 ticks on most of the contracts then hang on to 1 contract for a potential runner.
Well, I had another blow-up yesterday. I've reviewed my chart and Mack's videos a few times now. I definitely made some mistakes with respect to reading the price action. I didn't have enough experience (no experience, really) trading a 2-tiered range, which is what yesterday turned out to be. To make matters even worse, I broke my own position management rules on one trade, letting it go from +7 to -8. I didn't take the 4-tick scalp. I didn't move my stop to entry+1 after it went 5 ticks my way. It was pretty demoralizing.
By the time I was in my last trade of the day I was already down over $300. I just kind of gave up. I basically just let the trade play out without any stop. It went 3 ticks my way on 3 separate occasions but never could reach my 4-tick target order. I was really frustrated and I had already lost too much money to be able to trade another day without adding some more funds to my account. So I just let it go. Eventually my broker forced the issue and closed out the trade (which, adding insult to injury, cost me an extra $25).
Here are some charts of the disaster:
So, there I was, down to $68.71. I originally deposited $600, then reloaded for another $800. I'd lost almost the entire $1400 and I didn't know what to do. I knew that I wouldn't quit trading. I knew that I've had many profitable days both on the simulator and in the live market. I started thinking of the money I'd lost already as being 1) kind of like a tuition payment and 2) a very small amount compared to what I could be making in a few months when I have more practice and skills.
I thought about switching to simulator only. And I like that idea because I can get a lot of practice without paying any more "tuition". However, it seems like my biggest problem is the psychological part. As helpful as simulator practice is, it doesn't do much for my psychological issues. I need real world experience and practice to improve my mental game. Long story short, I decided to reload one final time. This time for $1600.
Why $1600? Well, for one it rounds out my "tuition" to an even $3000. Second, it allows me to trade up to 4 contracts per trade. That was the plan, at least. When the rubber met the road this morning, however, I just didn't feel comfortable trading more than a single contract. I'm glad about that, too. I mean, my activity thus far really borders on compulsive gambling. I'm sure there are many who would think of it that way. I'm still thinking of it as "tuition" and I can get a lot more education for my money if I'm only trading singles.
I could be completely full of shit, and just donating my money. I don't want to lose $3000, of course. But it won't hurt me, financially. There's a decent chance that I'll never have to reload again for the rest of my life. And $3000 ain't much considering that if I can just do as well as I did today, on average, trading 10 contracts, I can make $3000+ in 2 days.
Speaking of today, here are my charts:
So, we'll see what happens. I'll take a look at the trading psychology section of this forum and see if I can find anything helpful. I do believe that it's necessary to put myself in the live market (as cheaply as possible, i.e. single contract trades) to really be able to make any headway on my psychological issues. I don't think the simulator will help me improve in that respect.
I've been on vacation so I haven't posted in a while. I took my laptop with me last week and traded every day. I almost completely destroyed my account last week and finished the job on Monday this week. Of the $3000 I put in my account I'm down to $224. So I am back on the simulator.
My main issue continues to be making bets instead of trades. I don't have the necessary patience to wait on the right setups. I also get stubborn after a losing trade and start counter trend trading, trying to will the market to do what I think it should do. These psychological issues are compounded by my tendency to misread the price action due to my very limited experience.
So for now, I'll be trading live data and replay data on the simulator only. I will not put any more money into my account until I've made $3000 in my sim account.
Here are a bunch of charts from last week and this week:
6/2/2015 -$860.70, 16 wins, 12 losses
6/3/2015 -$45.76, 9 wins, 4 losses
6/4/2015 +$123.42, 3 wins, 1 loss
6/5/2015 -$643.46, 12 wins, 6 losses
6/8/2015 -$328.16, 3 wins, 5 losses
6/9/2015 (Simulator) +$141.38, 5 wins, 1 loss
That's it for now. I made $141.38 on the simulator today. Only $2858.62 to go
Day 2 back on the simulator and unfortunately I gave some of yesterday's profits back. I'm very disappointed because I should have made a killing on a nice trend day like today. I watched most of the good long entries pass me by this morning and then proceeded to get chopped up in the afternoon. In desperation I broke the rules near the end of the session. I doubled down on a short position. It worked out for me and I made a good profit on that trade but that kind of shit usually doesn't work. So overall I'm pretty unhappy with my trading today. I'll give it another try tomorrow and I'm not trading on Friday. At this rate it'll take a few months to hit my $3000 goal. <sigh>
