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So I was almost done my weekly post and I usually do Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C in case my computer shuts off or something. I usually do it a couple of times while writing a post and this time I didn't do it as I was also writing back to a PM that was quite long. I accidentally clicked Ctrl+W instead and my post was gone!!!
In essence- I'll make this short and sweet.
Numbers wise- Finally broke my 3-week losing streak, I took few trades but they were good. I was happy with all but 1. High Win % and High expectancy look and feel nice, but with such few data points they are not statistically significant.
Psychology wise- Definitely my best week in my short trading career. I felt a lot more in control, I forced myself to make deliberate decisions, I controlled myself when I just wanted to click the trade button without thinking. I'm not expecting a 180 psychology turn and bam everything is good now, far from it. I have lots of work to do in this area and I need to continuously improve on it, I will still be taking limited trades and so on. Overall I know I am far from my destination but on the right track, which is good if your goal is long-term growth!
Goals for the week 0 Emotional trades - Passed
0 FOMO trades - Passed
Write in journal every day - Passed
Do not take a vacation, just because you aren't trading doesn't mean you aren't working - Passed
Keep progressing on your book - Passed
Maximum of 2 trades a day with the exception of Wednesday - Passed
Passed everything, what? Now I didn't post them in my journal so some of you might think I created them now and cheated, but I promise I didn't
I would only be cheating myself anyway.
I'm finding that this metric might not be as useful to measure as it once was. All of the trades I took this week were somewhat rational. I engaged my deliberate thinking on all of them but for some reason I was hesitant to mark them as rational when I executed them. The only trade I marked down as rational was the short I took at 4842 which ended in a loss, so yeah this isn't quite working. I've got bigger fish to fry right now though so I'll worry about changing this later. Just a thought.
Out of those trades:
Excellent trades- 1
Good trades- 0
Ok trades- 3
Bad trades- 1
Really bad trades- 0
Win%- 60%
Weekly expectancy- 93.00
Yesterday's excellence is today's standard and tomorrow's mediocrity
Thanks for sharing your experience. I can relate to that ,after a string of wins executed with discipline, patience and careful planning I can reverse my accrual by simply trading when I shouldn't trade. For me I guess I have such an over confidence after a big win. That I almost feel that the market can't hurt me, that I know what is going to happen, and then, just like that the market will put me in my place, and smack me around like you illustrated above. Particularly when I trade multiple contracts, or put on a huge position. Then, when my account accrual has reversed and I'm trying to get back to where I was, I completely over-trade, and enter in where I have no business trying to make it back quick, just like I lost it, and end up loosing more.
That is particularly the reason that has led me to this site and convinced me to sign up to this forum (2nd Post). My other major problem is not knowing when I'm right, and exiting a trade way to early. Recently I've taken larger losses than profits and some of the times I've sold have haunted me more than my worst losses. So I've come here to learn better trade management through sharing my trades and journal. Plan on starting next week. My main themes going forward are as follows.
Be Open For Success: Quit Cutting off winners
Quit Cutting Off Winners This week I sold 2000 Shares of GoPro for 8% less than I would have got the next day, I sold out of short puts at breakeven after holding them for 1 day. Selling these assets cost me thousands in profits and I sold them too soon due to emotions and being down on the trade on my initial entry, not taking a profit quickly when I should have and being down thousands on the position to start off. I sold for a profit, but it was managed poorly, I still hold 500 Shares.
Take Small Losses: Set Stops or simply get out if you are wrong initially.
I traded CL this past Friday when it sold off 4%. I was more Bullish on CL than most so I thought it might rally and went long twice on Futures contracts and once on Options with 4 Calls. I managed to come out with a win overall on the day of $790 due to the fact that I set my stops tight and bought in at defined technical levels. Otherwise I would have been killed down 4% should have been short.
I believe that if I follow these two rules, that I will gain consistency and increased profitability.
Thanks again for sharing, as it inspired me to share this.
Market was hesitant to push too high on Thursday's RTH, and retracted on Friday. Is this a sign that we'll see a creeper bull market now? Or a sign that we might see a big overall correction? Who knows and your job is to read the market and act. Don't sell yourself on any idea
The Wednesday meeting results were clearly priced in the week before, we either saw some higher time players add to their position or focus on other markets last week . At what price point do they start to enter / exit the NQ again?
The range last week was almost 90pts less than the week prior
Overall the market looks stable
Lots of fed speakers this week, is that normal the week after the FOMC announcement? probably? lol. Will they have any impact on the market? we already know what they are going to say (the case for an interest rate is increasing, but the signs we are looking for aren't there, blah blah blah). I'll be listening closer to start to get an idea of the politics within the FED, 3 voted for a rate hike last meeting so I'm more interested in listening to what they have to say.
Some more data this week.
Monday- New home sales and the debate .
Tuesday- HPI
Wednesday Durable goods
Thursday GDP, Internal trade in goods, corporate profits, jobless claims, and Yellen speaks (post market). Japan releases CPI and industrial production. I'm interested in seeing how both, specially industrial production impact the NQ (if at all)
Friday- Personal Income and Consumer sentiment, also China has the logistics and purchasing manager's index. Haven't seen this before so I'm curious
No US holidays
Side note
I love politics and have been watching this election closely so I'm very excited for the first debate. We've already seen HRC try to get into Trump's skin by sitting Mark Cuban at the front and Trump counter acted by asking Gennifer Flowers to sit in the front row, just wow. Pence says she won't be attending but will Trump pull anything else like that? What will Clinton's strategy in the debate be? Will she be the tough Clinton that everyone behind the stages talks about but we've yet to see at the debate stage? Will she crumble under Trump's unconventional debating style as all the GOP nominees did? Will Trump's 'no prep and just wing it' approach be effective? How will he adapt with only 1 other person in the debate stage? How much policy talk will we see from him?
So many questions, and just 90 minutes. Going to be exciting.
Edit- I forgot to add my goals for the week! haha Goals for the week
Do not look at P&L until end of week unless you think you are getting close to breaking a golden rule
Maximum of 3 trades a day, but on most days aim for maximum of 2 trades
You were able to accomplish all of your goals last week, 0 fomo 0 emotional trades. This was excellent. However, last week's excellence is this week's standard.
Remember that!
Yesterday's excellence is today's standard and tomorrow's mediocrity
Awesome to hear this, good luck in your trading and journaling journey. It sounds like you are already aware of some of your biggest pitfalls, so that's awesome!
Starting a journal was one of the best decisions I have made in my short trading career, you won't regret it.
Some suggestions on things that have helped me improve my journaling:
Be consistent, there will be times when you won't want to journal but you must
Do not be ashamed. There were so many times when I didn't want to post my results or my true emotions on my journal for the world to see, I didn't want to be vulnerable. Get over that phase as soon as possible because it's not important, the earlier that you can get past that, the earlier you can start improving.
Journal for you and not anybody else. Don't worry about what other people are doing, or what other traders want to see. Do what you need to see, write down what you want to refer back to in the future, do it all for you.
Incorporate journaling into your routine
Be open minded. There will be people who will criticize your trades or your methodology. Either publicly or privately. Don't take their advice without thinking about it of course, but be open to what they say. There are some very smart people in here who will see things that you don't see.
Honestly the FIO community is amazing. Embrace it. If you ever need inspiration you are only a few clicks away from some amazing traders.
PS- Don't want to sound like a sales person here as I have no relation to FIO, but spend the $100 on the Elite membership. The content that is available once you purchase it is honestly worth tens of thousands. So many good webinars with extremely successful traders on various topics, as well as access to the elite forums where the best traders post their journals. You won't regret it.
Cheers!
Yesterday's excellence is today's standard and tomorrow's mediocrity
Monday is here, and I've been waiting for Monday since Friday close. Unfortunately I got a really bad sleep last night, and combined I probably got about 2 hours of sleep, probably 0 REM time. I feel impaired to be honest and I'm in limbo as to whether or not to trade. My heart wants to trade, my head tells me I shouldn't. When I get to a decision point I need to also ask myself whether or not I'm in the right state of mind to make an adequate decision, if the answer is no then I need to not take the trade.
Whether I take a trade or not, I still need to do my homework, so here goes.
Market went up 10 pts after Sunday open and then came back down 40+ pts pretty aggressively. This definitely surprised me as I placed an Overnight trade at the 4840 area which got stopped out pretty fast
30 point gap from Friday's close and today's open to the down side
As I start to understand myself more, I'm going to standardize certain parts of my trading. Starting with my daily goals. For the time being, they will almost always be the following:
Market trends bear, trends back to around the 4780 before the day closes
Market starts trending bear,
Market continues bear, has a big pullback and then trends to the 4800-4790 area
Market finds a bottom at the start of the session, and then balance between that bottom and 4830-4840
Market finds a bottom, then aggressively trends bull as we see some bulls enter the market at more favorable price points
Here are the only set-ups I'll take today
~4830 area
LF Short
You want to see some slowing down before getting here
You want to see higher volume count getting close to the top
Entry can be tricky because we might not break the 4830 mark and ideally you want a stop of at least 4835.50
4816 should be a safe bet, but aim for around 4811-4806 target. Pay close attention to how the market reacts to the 4815 and below areas, be prepared to exit should you see signs of aggressive buying
This will either be the first or maybe second pullback, if we hit this later in the afternoon you probably don't want to take it
Please don't take a break-out trade if we break this fast, 4840 might've been a weak support zone, but in the past it has been a surprisingly strong resistance area
~4805-4800 area
LF long opportunities
You want to see signs that the move is over, and buyers are stepping in
The entry on this will be very tricky because ideally you want your stop behind 4796 but for that you would need to enter closer to 4800, which we might not get to. You need to watch the market and react to what you see here, but logically and not emotionally.
Be prepared to pass up on this trade if you aren't comfortable enough with entry points
4815 would be a safe target, but 4823-4826 could be reachable. Don't pass up on a quick win too easily, but don't get too greedy either
Do not take a break-down trade pls
If this is near the end of the day consider the overall weekly market sentiment, you probably don't want to take this trade late though
~4790-4780
Look for long opportunities
You want to see signs that the selling has stopped, or slowed down significantly
You might see signs that other time-frame players have stepped in, if so then enter with them and you can do so preemptively
If you don't see strong signs of players stepping in, you want to be careful with entry because 4891-4882 would all be possible good entry points. Ideally you want a stop behind 4879 but that will be tough to get unless the market slices down the 4890 area fast.
4809 is a safe target, but you might want to hold this one longer for the ~4819-4824 area.
You can take this trade late in the session, but only if we see signs that buyers stepped in
You can leave this trade Overnight but only if you are up at least 6-8 pts.
Here are my alarms
Yesterday's excellence is today's standard and tomorrow's mediocrity
I really wanted to take a trade today and I didn't end up taking any. I got such a bad sleep and my decision making felt impaired. The morning session my head wasn't there, and in the afternoon session none of my alarms were triggered. There were 3 times when I got close to taking a trade though. They are below:
~4814
I got into my desk late today, and the market was down here and the volume was strong, the gap in the morning was strong and I thought oh wow maybe this will be a bear trend day. I was just about finished my trading plan when I looked at the market and thought I should take the short in here. I told myself you haven't completed your prep, you are late to your desk, you are tired, and this would be a FOMO and an emotional trade. Do you really want to start your week off by taking a FOMO/emotional trade?
That was a good decision because the trade would've been stopped within minutes
~4819
Started to see some signs on the volume profile that this would turn, VPOC was changing around it as well at the time but it wasn't part of my trading plan so I passed it up. The next 6-8 minutes the market dropped about 7 points and I thought I missed a good trade, I fought FOMO not to get back in but it would've been a bad trade either way.
~4830
First contact - Alarm rang on this one and it was the first trade that could be in my trading plan. I analyzed and I saw enough signs to get in but I felt so tired that I wondered whether or not my decision making was too impaired to make a rational decision. I decided I wasn't in the right state of mind to make a proper decision so I walked away. I set my alarm for the 4831 zone in case we hit it again today and stepped back.
Second contact- My second alarm went off pretty fast and I was in the washroom, by the time I came back the opportunity was gone.
I set my alarm for the 4830 area but it was never hit again.
Engage your deliberate thinking for all trades - Passed
0 FOMO trades - Passed
0 Emotional Trades - Passed
Maximum of 2 trades today - Passed
3 things I did well
Stopped myself on taking a FOMO / emotional trade
Stopped myself on taking a trade outside of my plan
Made the unpopular decision to not take a trade because my head wasn't in the right place. I didn't want to do this, I wanted to trade so bad so it was tough to do, but this will probably save me money in the future
3 things I can improve on
Ensuring a good night's rest so I don't have to question my general decision making abilities
Not being 'unavailable' when price is within 5-6 points of my alarm. If price is that close I don't have to be watching it but I should be able to drop everything and get to my desk within seconds if my alarm does go off
No 3rd
Yesterday's excellence is today's standard and tomorrow's mediocrity
Well I'm keeping a written journal and journal-ed today. I wrote down ideas and strategies I was going to follow over the weekend. Then when market opened yesterday evening, I followed some of them and sold out of CL long positions that I knew I wanted to hold on to. "biggest problem" I sell the positions I need to hold on to and don't sell the ones that work against me. I followed some of my strategy on NY Open purchasing a small position in ACIU and selling them before close for a tidy $501 profit. Not bad for a 200 share daytrade, so that was a high point. Also I added to another successful position that had a pull back at a decent level, closed above the level I entered at.
I trade 2 accounts, 1 I take more risk with than the other. My Risky account was down big today, but my hedge, or safety account was up enough to nearly offset all losses sustained on my risk account. Through out most of the day I was withing $200 even $100 of break even. Of course at the close it became a little further scewed as sellers and day traders sold, but overall no more than $750 difference. So I feel like I can effectively hedge, and it feels like a win if the market is down 20 points and either one of my accounts is positive.
I'm still on the fence about which way to go with Ninja Trader. I use TDA for my broker but I was planning on setting up another account with IB or MB Trading. I go to download NT and select MultiBroker and now they want to charge more. So is that really what I want to do? I am planning on running scripts on NT and further automating my trading. I was looking to go with a broker that has lower trading costs than TDA even though I have negotiated rates with them on stocks, options, and futures, I think I will come out better with IB since I daytrade alot and don't want trading cost to be a factor. I know that this is basically a futures site, so I don't know if you all trade stocks or not at all but I'd like to know if you use the multi broker feature to trade multiple accounts or what not before I pay and download.
I want to start a journal on here, but honestly I don't know if I should start it in this thread or not. September is almost over and I don't have NT downloaded yet. So let me know what you think is appropriate.
Maximum of 3 trades today. Aim for 2 trades though, only take a 3rd if the market is trending hard and you catch a good pullback or you catch the falling knife
This is above the ON high and we also start to get into territory that the market didn't appreciate for an extended period of time
You can preemptively take this, but be careful
You will be tempted to take a break-out trade if we break this hard, do not take it!
Aim for a stop of 4855 if possible, but things might turn before the 50 zone so make a judgment call
Safe target would be 4839, but if the move down is hard and fast you could see it comes down to the 4820s
Don't get too greedy with your entry and exit points on this one
You might need to wait a while for this to be hit (if at all), and you might have to wait a while for this to pay off. Be prepared for that
~4840 area
LF Short opportunities
If we get here very fast from open be wary of taking this setup
If we see some balance at ~ the 4830 area, and a lot of signs are there you can enter this preemptively. But you want to see signs of force and / or higher time frame players stepping in to sell
There could be a struggle here between strong buying and strong selling, you don't want to get caught in the middle. If you do see a struggle, try and see the high points and look to enter your long there
Ideally you want a stop past the 4846.50 (ON High) area, but that might be tough to do
~4830 area
LF Short opportunities
IF we get here very fast from open be wary of taking this setup
Do not enter preemptively
Look for signs that the market trend is changing
YOu want to see some slowdown before getting here and definitely a lot of signs related to volume and price to take this trade
Be prepared to pass up on this trade
You are looking for a stop of at least 4835
Safe target on this is 4813, but you could take this just above the PDC of 4807.50. Watch the 4817-4814 area though as you might need to get out earlier.
~4800 area
Look for bull entry
If this gets hit early don't panic, you should still look to take the trade
You want to see volume, you want to see force, you want to see people taking advantage of this low price point
Be prepared to pass up on this one, we could shatter this zone fast in the open
A safe target would be 4817-4819, you might want to consider 4824 though
Stop below 4796 would be ideal
~4785 area
Look for bull entry
If you see signs of things slowing down before we get here, you can enter preemptively
Safe target is 4804, but you could aim as high of 4824 if this is hit early in the morning
Ideal stop is below 4780, but you might not get close to 4785 so take that into consideration
~4770 area
Unlikely to hit this, but watch for higher time frame players stepping in
Here are my alarms:
Yesterday's excellence is today's standard and tomorrow's mediocrity
Today I didn't do so well. You are going to have bad days adn that's fine, today was one of those days. My read on the market today was completely off, and none of my scenarios included a bull trend day, which is what we got today
However, I do have one thing bothering me and that is the fact that it didn't have to be a negative day $-wise. My last 2 trades were bad reads on the market / situation, so those are going to happen. But my last trade I was doing well, very logical, held properly, contained my emotions until the end where hope overcame logic. So unfortunately a trade that I was up quite a bit, almost 20 points turned into a loss because hope clouded my judgment.
Short @ 4833.00
I was looking for signs that the trend would reverse, and I saw some small signs, but I failed to take into account the big and fast bull rally that we had right at the open. 25 minutes in we are up 25 points, you want to see STRONG force stopping this next time. We saw a small pullback after that but not much. Bad read.
Short @ 4842.50
Same as above. Looking for signs that trend wouldr everse, we saw some strong selling but jeez it got eaten up very fast by even stronger buying. Again, I failed to recognize the strength in the bull rally at the open. This was a bad read on the market.
Short @ 4849.50
My last trade of the day, I wasn't going to take this one unless I saw some stronger signs. I saw them so I decided to enter. After about 15 minutes I felt very comfortable that we were reversing the trend. I felt good.
We started to see some signs that this might be a pullback. However, they weren't strong enough so I fought my emotions here and thought logically that the trend should continue bearishly. My target here was good, 4831 was a perfect target.
Then the market kept trending bear. I moved my target down even further, and I did not adjust my stop. This was the decision that killed me. The signs were looking good for the most part but the total volume count definitely showed that I needed to watch this very carefully and exit if we see signs of a strong reversal.
Then the signs came. They were very clear, the bull move was over. I didn't have any signs that this was going to continue. However, I felt bearish, and hope kind of took over here. I was thinking well maybe this is just a small pullback, maybe we will see the market just trend down after this, I was hoping for something to change. The signs were there though and they were pretty clear. My judgment was clouded by emotion and I put myself in a situation of analysis paralysis.
The right information was there telling me to get out, but I didn't want to listen to it. So I said screw it, I'm going to leave the trade and walk away until I either hit my stop or my target. This is what I do when I get stressed out as the market moves against me after debating that I should get out. Obviously in retrospect that wasn't good but I made a wrong call.
Maximum of 3 trades today. Aim for 2 trades though, only take a 3rd if the market is trending hard and you catch a good pullback or you catch the falling knife - Passed
3 things I did well
Did not take a 4th trade, although I wanted to
Deliberate thinking in all my trades
No 3rd
3 things I could improve on
Not letting hope cloud my judgment
Taking the overall sentiment into account when looking for a trend reversal. If we have a STRONG bull trend, I want to see STRONG signs of a trend reversal, viceversa if things are weak
Read market wrong
Yesterday's excellence is today's standard and tomorrow's mediocrity
Sounds like you have quite a bit of stuff to figure out. Don't hesitate to look around the site and see if others have asked the same questions you are asking yourself re: broker, automation, platform, etc. There's a lot of information on FIO and it could save you some time!
As for the stocks piece, there is a sub forum in FIO dedicated purely to stock trading https://nexusfi.com/stocks-etfs-trading/
It might not be as popular but there could be a bunch of people who feel the same as you and take their conversation elsewhere. All the popular threads start with one person, so that could be you!
As far as starting a journal, I think it's best for you to start your own. I feel that's the best way to maximize the journaling experience. Don't worry if you don't have NT downloaded. There are many people who don't trade using NinjaTrader and some barely (if at all) post any screenshots. Just look at it as a place for you to write down your thoughts, talk about your positions, methodology, whatever you want to have.
Check out some of the other journals to get an idea as well as to how you want yours to be, but honestly you can always modify your journal along the way. One of the hardest things is to get it off the ground, kind of like going to the gym. Half the issue is just getting there, once you are there you just focus on consistency to get the results you want!
Cheers.
Yesterday's excellence is today's standard and tomorrow's mediocrity
