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Sagor's trading journal


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Sagor's trading journal

  #21 (permalink)
 sagor 
Los Angeles, CA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NinjaTrader
Broker: NinjaTrader Brokerage
Trading: YM
Posts: 83 since Dec 2011
Thanks Given: 193
Thanks Received: 126

Spent weekend thinking about my trading.
Looked at my charts. And started to remove everything that was not adding real benefit.
For my main chart, ended up with having 2min chart, tick, vwap lines, pivots, opening range. That is it.
For my strategic chart, switched it to ETH, so that I can see overnight action right away, instead of having it on a different tab, removed volume profile, some other crap. It is much cleaner now.
Thought for a long time about volume profiles. And decided to remove them. They don't add value to my trading after all. And, just by looking at where price was and how long, you can kind of know the shape of volume profile.

Then spent the rest of Saturday and Sunday looking at price action for last year. Getting a feel for it. How price rotates. And so on.

We will see how my trading will go this week.

Two trades today. One long, and one short:


1. We moved lower, but tick remained positive, and move down "felt" weak. That confirmed by bullish thesis for the morning.
2. Some selling, but again, it felt weak. I had a feeling that absorption is happening.
3. Added one more via limit buy at OR_Lx1, that was almost an edge of my thesis. If it would keep pushing lower, I would have been wrong.
<Not quite sure why I skipped on chart point 4 and 5>
6. By this time I felt pretty sure that we are not gonna move higher anymore. If anything, probably rotate around vwap. Bearish div on tick vs price. Buying overall was dropping and felt like sellers have a chance to try to push lower maybe, or just chop.
My original exits were around OR_Hx1 and x2. Really small range today, 67 points, was expecting it to extend at least to 90.
So exited from long and entered 1 short as a test.
I missed one good opportunity to add to it on a retest of my entry.
Also after entry selling pressure increased, which told me that I probably was right on a short.
7. Both buying and selling were done by this time, and it was getting close to market close. So closed my test short.

Good day.
But I want to see if I can sustain it for a week or not. A lot of it could be due to luck.

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  #22 (permalink)
 
rocksolid68's Avatar
 rocksolid68 
Duluth MN
Market Wizard
 
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sagor View Post


Good day.
But I want to see if I can sustain it for a week or not. A lot of it could be due to luck.

Very happy to see your good performance today!

Your chart is very clean, which I like.

Your 3rd contract on your long: holy, can you get a better entry?

All-in-all, well done, my friend!

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  #23 (permalink)
 sagor 
Los Angeles, CA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NinjaTrader
Broker: NinjaTrader Brokerage
Trading: YM
Posts: 83 since Dec 2011
Thanks Given: 193
Thanks Received: 126



rocksolid68 View Post
Very happy to see your good performance today!

Your chart is very clean, which I like.

Your 3rd contract on your long: holy, can you get a better entry?

All-in-all, well done, my friend!

Haha. Luck.

Thank you.
I hope the rest of the week will go well.

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  #24 (permalink)
 sagor 
Los Angeles, CA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NinjaTrader
Broker: NinjaTrader Brokerage
Trading: YM
Posts: 83 since Dec 2011
Thanks Given: 193
Thanks Received: 126

What an interesting day.
Few concerns, as I am evaluating my new way of trading.
1. Need to make sure to leave the runner on. I am usually trying to be done trading around 8.30am-9am (local time), but I feel like it might be worth leaving runner on with a stop order. Worse case, I will get stopped out, and on good days like today, that runner can make a lot of profit.
2. Need to make sure that my winning days are growing in size and staying solidly profitable. I am very aware of asymmetrical losses now. So to make sure that in long term I am profitable, my winning days need to be at least twice the size of my potential max loss days.

Today's trades:


1. Initially went long. Off the open, we moved lower, but tick remained positive. Since we had news at 7am, I was waiting after the news to add to my position.
2. When news came out, price moved higher initially, but at that high, tick barely made it above 0. That was a bad sign for longs. I reversed my position, right before it dropped lower (good timing).
3. Took partial profits. And then closed my short. This was maybe a mistake. At that point range was at around 90 points, and average is about 120 points. I definitely did not anticipate such a down day. But. Tick remained below zero that all time. On my last exit, I even said to myself, that it feels like we are too oversold right now and we need to flush some weak shorts, and maybe tag VWAP. And we did exactly that.
4. I continued with my thinking that we might be done selling so took small long position (which I think at that point was OK). But I shouldn't have. I was almost running out of time as I had to leave and was not monitoring it very closely at that point (and for this reason mainly I should not have takes a new position at all). I missed serious tick divergence, after which we started dropping again. I closed that long for a small loss though.
5. This is divergence that I am talking about in 4.

Overall my read on the market was right. We have some serious selling, as indicated by tick. That first move of tick to around +600 was flush of weak shorts.

Need to work on keeping my runners.
I should have closed my short only if tick would have remained in positive territory and price moved above VWAP. That would have indicated a change of character to long side.

So far, day two is good. But need to keep an eye on my psychology and staying vigilant.
Tomorrow is FOMC, so potentially there might be no movement before FOMC.

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  #25 (permalink)
 sagor 
Los Angeles, CA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NinjaTrader
Broker: NinjaTrader Brokerage
Trading: YM
Posts: 83 since Dec 2011
Thanks Given: 193
Thanks Received: 126

Kind of mixed trading today.
I was expecting side ways chop due to FOMC, but pressed too hard early morning, and then talked myself out of good position.

Two trades today, short and long:


1. Initiated short here, as price started to move higher fast, but tick was not really confirming enthusiasm.
2. Added to my short in this area. Tick divergence. We were making higher, but tick was just weak.
3. Managed to talk myself out of my short position. Concern was that we might just keep on drifting like that higher, VWAP was moving higher quite sharp, and I thought that we might be trending higher like that.
Also, I did enter one long there, just if I am right about my new thesis.
4. This is 7.30am oil news. We spiked lower, tick got to -600, but we started to erase that spike really fast. So added to long, thinking that we might have flushed out longs and are ready to move higher.
5. We did not move right away higher. At this point I was really thinking about bailing out on my long and calling it a day. Stepped away from the screen for 5 minutes, just to be able to get a fresh look.
Tick was negative this all time, but price wise we are not moving that much lower. So I decided to keep it for a bit longer and let market prove me decisively wrong.
6. We spiked higher, and I took my exits. Did not want to hold any more before FOMC.

Overall, my short would have been good, as I wanted to scale out at OR-H. But alas.

Worrisome to me is that my profit keeps dropping. That is not good. I might be becoming too fearful. And not able to hold my positions. Need to work on that.

I will post one more chart later today when whole day will unfold, as that way I can see how my trades stacked against whole day when I will be doing my weekly review.


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  #26 (permalink)
 sagor 
Los Angeles, CA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NinjaTrader
Broker: NinjaTrader Brokerage
Trading: YM
Posts: 83 since Dec 2011
Thanks Given: 193
Thanks Received: 126

One trade today, and had to scratch it.
It still feels like it will break down, but at this point it just hopium I think.
Seems like everyone is hungover after Cubs won and no one is in the market today.
Volume is lower than average and so far it just chops around VWAP. Sad.
Hopefully tomorrow NFP will bring out some action.

Today's trade, one short:


1. Initial short position off the open, as market attempted to poke higher but tick was not confirming it.
Added to that short on another poke higher and tick showing divergence.
2. That was a wrong add. I even thought that I might be wrong (retail bus to short side) on adding here. But still clicked on sell button. Next time, I should at least wait for a pullback, but I thought that we might be breaking down and moving lower here.
3. Added on pullback, just action felt weak. First add was very good, dropped almost right away after it. Second add was kind of dubious at this point, as we completely erased that sharp drop lower, but tick still felt weak.
4. This is where I did not like the action to support my short thesis. We repeatedly hit -500, almost -600, but price just didn't bulge lower. Seems like someone is just buying at 17900 level and keeps support there.
5. Even though I still think we might break down, as overall tick shows a bearish reading, but we can also rip higher. My concern is that it might be a bear trap. A lot of traders are positioned to short side, tick repeatedly hitting low numbers and price doesn't move lower, lower volume. It just feels like it might rip to the upside. Or to the downside. But I don't want to gamble if I don't feel like I can read where the market is going.

I will post chart at end of day, to see the final action.

===========
Just wanted to add, that as of right now, 8.40am (about 20 min after my exit) it is starting to look like we are going to move higher after all. But I am flat.

===========
Ugh. It did move lower after all. Will need to think about it.

===========


I think reason I bailed out early is two fold:
1. Due to my day job, I have to finish somewhere before 9am. That puts serious time constraint, but nothing I can do about it right now. Which forces me to act, even though it might not be prudent.
2. I scaled in too fast. It is obvious only in hindsight though. If we would move lower right away, then my scale in would have been ok. Something that I need to think about and formalize better, as to where I should scale in and how.
3. Because I scaled in too fast, I had big position with somewhat unfavorable average. Technically I should have waited for market to prove my wrong by taking out day's high for example, which it never did.
Will think about it some more. Feels like scaling in when price moves in my direction (averaging down) might not be good, and I might need to scale in only when price moves against me, to improve my average, and in case if I am wrong, then due to higher average, my loss will be less.

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  #27 (permalink)
 sagor 
Los Angeles, CA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NinjaTrader
Broker: NinjaTrader Brokerage
Trading: YM
Posts: 83 since Dec 2011
Thanks Given: 193
Thanks Received: 126

@Inletcap
Any chance you can provide some feedback to my trading? Maybe you can give some valuable insight?
If you have time though.
Thank you!!!

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  #28 (permalink)
 sagor 
Los Angeles, CA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NinjaTrader
Broker: NinjaTrader Brokerage
Trading: YM
Posts: 83 since Dec 2011
Thanks Given: 193
Thanks Received: 126

I have been thinking about my recent trades and where I add to my position.
I am going to formalize the rules as to when I am adding.
Say I am bearish. I open short. I have a thesis for short side and I have an area or price action that would invalidate my thesis. I should be adding to my position as price moves against me. Basically adding to the loser, as long as price still supports my original thesis. Why adding to the loser? That way I am averaging up my position. Say I am wrong and my thesis was wrong. By averaging up, my loss will be smaller when I will have to close my position, since I was averaging up. If I will add to the winner, I am averaging down, and then when price moves against me on pullback, all of a sudden it erases my profits and goes into a loser trade.
I have no way to predict what price will do. So in case if I am wrong, I would like to minimize my losses, and in case if I am right, that will maximize my wins. Only one caveat that I see with that right now, is that if say we are in strong trend, and I read trend at the start correctly, since it will be moving in my direction, I would not be able to add to my position. I think at this point I am fine with that. I will deal with that problem later if it will come to that.
But at least for now, it will prevent an issue, where I am getting full position too early with bad average price, and pullbacks start to stress me out and potentially shake me out of my position, kind of like it happened today.
I also think it is a hidden case of FOMO, when I start adding too early, thinking it about to move sharply in my direction.

So bottom line, I should be scaling in by improving my average price. Just as long as my thesis is still valid. Do not add to loser just in hopes that it will turn around. That would be a disaster (done that )

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  #29 (permalink)
 sagor 
Los Angeles, CA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NinjaTrader
Broker: NinjaTrader Brokerage
Trading: YM
Posts: 83 since Dec 2011
Thanks Given: 193
Thanks Received: 126

Good end for this week.
Stuck to my strategy of adding only when price moves against my original entry and it worked great today.
Though I have been thinking if there was a way for me figure out long bias early on, and so far not sure if I could see it.
Something to work on.

One short trade:


1. It felt like move up was weak. In hindsight, now that I am looking at it, I am not so sure that I read it correctly. Will need to look at it more closely on weekend.
2. Adding before ON-H. Still short bias look good. Also felt like we going to revisit 17800, as we reversed right at that number, which is kind of weird.
3. Adding some more, felt like buyers are getting exhausted and minor tick divergence.
4. One more add, tick was drifting lower. I was kind of hoping for last push higher to trap buyers, also 17900 level was a magnet.
5. Added in front off 17900 and OR-Hx1 level.
6. At this point I was very confident that we are about to break lower. It would have been also great location to add shorts, but I was already full.
7. Partial exit (I think too fast, but I also wanted to relieve some of the pressure from holding this position for so long) in front of YClose and OR-H. It could have been potentially a good area for buyers to step in and push it back to high of the day.
8. Fearful exit unfortunately, originally my limit was lower around 17825, but moved it to higher to book some profits. FEAR. Not good.
9. Same as above, original limit was at OR-L, but again, acted on FEAR. Not good.

Overall happy with my adds, if I would have added at lower prices, my average would have been much worse and potentially I at best would have just scratched this trade for breakeven.

I need to look as to why I missed initial 100 tick move from 17800 to 17900. I did have a minor technical issue with my platform at the open, and I missed first 4 minutes of opening range action, so I did not see in real time how price reacted there. Wonder if that affected my initial bias.

My week results:

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  #30 (permalink)
 sagor 
Los Angeles, CA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NinjaTrader
Broker: NinjaTrader Brokerage
Trading: YM
Posts: 83 since Dec 2011
Thanks Given: 193
Thanks Received: 126


Dumbest trading today.
Realized that I have a serious issue. I cannot close losing trade. My ego gets in a way and I start smoking hopium.
I need to find a way to address that. I am thinking about some kind of mental\trade exercises, to help with that.
It happened before, it happened again.

Trade:


1. Entered short, thinking about gap close.
2. Point where I had serious doubts about short. There is simply no selling at all. But instead of closing for a small loss, I started smoking hopium, thinking that it is about to turn and sellers will emerge and my trade will be amazing.
3. Hopium again that it is about to break below break even and at least I can close in green.
4. PUKE.

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