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Today wasn't my best day. From a P&L perspective it has been my worst in the past two weeks but there were some bright spots. Decent first trade this morning on MYM. After I win one, I can lose my objectivity for a few minutes. I jumped into my second trade riding the high from my first win. I bought at the top on the second leg when it was clearly losing steam. This has been a recurring issue this week so I started tracking it. Third trade I was fine with, probably a little late. Was 2 ticks away from my 8 tick PT.
Evening on MNQ was slow. I also switched up my stop loss. I was going to wait the full two weeks, but the morning made up my mind. If this was real money I would've changed that stop loss on Monday after my testing over the weekend. It's now a trail of 8 triggered at PT 4 and the 2nd step is a trail of 6 triggered at PT 10. I'm going to go over my trades the past few weeks to see how this would've impacted my trades in terms of ticks made/lost based on where I would have been stopped out.
I think my expectations for evening trading on MNQ are somewhat off since I started looking at this stuff around May when things were still moving a lot. Maybe this speed is the norm. 1st MNQ trade was questionable. Wasn't really moving that fast but relative to how slow it was prior to the breakout it seemed fast. 2nd trade was a winner. I would say it was impulsive but it was a trade I would take normally. I was happy with last trade of the day.
Anywho, I view the slow times as an opportunity to listen to some good music. It really makes watching the screen more enjoyable. I know the point is to make money, but I don't think the music would change my decision making much.
Another poor outing. The day was bad, but could've been worse. Not much worse, but could have lost every trade. On the bright side my new trailing stop on the 10 SL 24 PT mitigated some loss. I only won 25% of my trades. Am I embarrassed to show my trade results? Ehh, it is what it is. Losing is part of the learning experience and part of game. Learn from today and give it another go tomorrow. Still above my original $2000 starting point (for now).
Some days you feel like the master fisherman patiently waiting for your setup and other days you realize you are the fish. Today I was the fish.
I also got somewhat screwed on my 1st MNQ trade. I predicted the direction correctly but it moved so fast that my sell order wasn't filled. I guess that's all part of it.
I had one order where I entered right before S/R. I should have waited for price to go through S/R first. I've read some of the threads on random line theory and all that, and there is probably some truth to that, however I have a lot of belief in support/resistance. I draw my S/R lines before I start trading and somehow price seems to respect those lines (for the most part).
I would say in order of importance for me it's:
1. Acceleration/Velocity of price
2. Support Resistance
3. Strength of ST trend (# of consecutive red/green bars)
4. # of pullback bars
I'm also going to start tracking how big of a stop I needed on my winning trades initially and for the trail. Also tracking how many ticks were possible. For example, it moved 6 ticks in my favor but I took a -2 loss since my PT was 8. That happened to me today as well.
Welp that's it for me. Friday tomorrow. Whoop Whoop. Ready for the weekend. Good luck tomorrow!
Will keep this one short today. Trading results for past two weeks are attached. 1st column 8 SL 8 PT, 2nd column 10 SL 24 PT with trailing 12 triggered at 4. 3rd column 10 SL 24 PT with only difference being the new trail I set up on Wednesday which is tighter. Was right about direction on all three trades this morning. That doesn't really count for much, but at least I wasn't completely off. First one was a poor decision, should have closed out at 0 when I had the chance but trying not to manually intervene for now. I'm OK with 2nd and 3rd entries. Stopped out every trade but one. Had I not made that adjustment to my stop loss on Wednesday this would certainly have been a positive day. I will have to evaluate my stops over the weekend to see what the impact would've been for the entire week.
This week was worse then last week which could either mean:
1. last week was beginner's luck
2. I temporarily lost my mojo.
I prefer option 2. Will review my trades and rerun the week in market replay over the weekend.
I'm still getting the hang of journaling. I think it is valuable, however I want to make sure I'm maximizing my time. I have limited time to focus on trading so I've decided to focus that time on MYM for now and cut out evening MNQ sessions. I can spend an hour waiting for something to happen at night on MNQ and feel that time would be better spend in Market Replay at this point since I'm not confident in my entries and consistently executing them.
I start work at 9 AM so I have a few hours to practice before work and promised my wife that I'll stop trading practice/research/journaling at 7:30 PM so I have about 4 hours a day. 1st 1.5 hours for market replay and 30 minutes for open, then work. After work, I have another 1-2 hours depending if I go to gym or not. Journaling takes about 20 minutes to write and upload so need to cut that time down because it's time I could spend practicing.
Also for the next two weeks I'm going to be comparing an entry with a trailing stop vs one without. When I go live, I will start with one contract and at this point I think I'm shooting for 8 ticks. I'm not dead set on the stop loss but know it won't be greater than 10 ticks. Got rid of a lot of the moving averages since I really only cared about the 21 SMA to begin with and by the time I normally enter they are all going same way anyway. I did add the 5 min chart and 1 hour chart on side just to see what's going on in higher time frames.
I've added little notes next to my trades so it's easier for me to see what I was thinking and I don't have to reference my Excel file.
Ok onto today's trades. Took two in morning and one at lunch. 1st trade was bad decision. Tried to guess the open. Always do that and it bites me in the butt. It was at +6 ticks when price had no momentum either way. Should have closed out. Instead took a loss of -11 ticks. Will manually override that in future when momentum/price stall for too long. 2nd trade was better, but questionable based on low volume. Pullback at my S/R line I drew before open.
Since I didn't use my 3rd trade I was watching at lunch and decided to use it when I saw price speeding up. So far the trailing stop is doing worse than if I just let it play out.
So here's my big plan to get better. I'm going to pick a week from a while back in market replay starting at Monday and trade 8:30 - 9:00 AM since that's the time window I can trade live at the moment. I get three trades, but don't have to use them all. If I'm profitable at end (9:00AM cutoff), I advance to Tuesday. Same thing. Profitable - Advance but if I lose I have to go back to Monday. I know you are thinking, but you'll have memorized what happens on Monday! Ya, I know. That's kind of the point. So my first goal is to get through an entire week. Then two weeks. Then a month. And hopefully by the end of this exercise, I will be better at saying, "Oh this is for sure a range day", "Oh this always trips me up", "Oh this never works for me" "This works more than it doesn't", etc.
This is what I did when I was studying for the CPA exams. I just did practice tests until my eyes bled and my brain turned to mush. When I took the actual tests they were a piece of cake. Now, I know academics success does not translate to trading success in any way, but I feel good practice habits can't hurt. We shall see. If I'm still garbage at trading a year from now, I was wrong!
Ok that was a long one. They will be shorter in future. Need to keep journaling time to 10-15 min if possible.
Well another day, more lessons learned. 1st two trades of the day were bad. Placed orders in congestion. 3rd was probably more lucky than good. 4th trade (I broke my 3-trade rule when watching at lunch) was actually good. The good news is I'm learning more and more about what NOT to do. The bad news is I still do those things regardless. My market replay exercise has been frustrating and good. You'd think if you had the answers to the test it would be easier to pass, but you really need to study those answers. I think it's good though.
I start at Monday, if positive P&L after 3 trades, go to Tuesday, if positive, go to Wednesday, etc. Goal is to get through entire week, then two weeks, then month. if lose have to start all the way back at Monday again (which is frustrating if you are at Thursday). It's interesting because sometimes I don't take the same trades even if I was successful on a previous day, so that's a problem. Has been an eye opener. Also often get lured in by the same traps in following days. Restarting at Monday is frustrating so it really hammers home the lesson. Carrot and the stick. Carrot = Positive feeling of winning (even when you know the right answers). Stick = restarting at Monday.
Have received some great advice in the past week or so which has been awesome. Will give them a shout-out when I actually start performing better but don't want to associate them with my current results on Sim.
Anywho, time to practice. May all your trades be winners tomorrow!
Only took one trade today. Closed out too early. It was a little choppy on the way up and just wasn't certain anymore. Probably a lack of experience showing there. Otherwise a decent trade. Fit all my criteria.
Good thing for today is that I had the patience to wait 20 minutes to trade. I missed all the action during work but was checking in here and there and on lunch break.
Short one today. Off to market replay. Good luck tomorrow!
Luck finally turned around today. Could this week be salvaged? Hope so! Won both of my trades this morning.
The goal right now is to zero in on one kind of entry and hopefully get good at one thing instead of being bad at several things. I think today I benefited from being more selective, but also could've gotten lucky. Time will tell.
Right now, I'm looking for a ST trend to break through a S/R line and get at least 7 or 8 bars so fairly decent ST strength, then a 1-3 bar pullback in space with the next S/R line far enough away. I currently am waiting for confirmation on price to start advancing again. Still need a lot more practice. Would be nice to just take a week off from work to practice this one setup but not the best use of vacation time. Oh well, off to market replay again.
Only one trade today. Did not have my ATM on which was a bummer. Mental error there. Closed out immediately since I never practice trading without a stop and didn't want to roll the dice now as I'm taking this as serious as I can on Sim. Despite the error today, felt good about the entry and ended the week on a positive note. I would have ended the week positive $ if it wasn't for my little slip up today. Darn! Oh well.
This week was way better than last week. Exercised more patience, practiced more, better discretion. Still have a looong way to go, but took a step in the right direction this week.
Didn't take any trades this morning on MYM before 9. The big drop happened after that when I was working so missed all that action. I was watching MES during the day when I could and took a few trades. I'm not logging these because they were outside my trading plan and I was only passively watching market. Took another towards close. Most likely was saved by the huge trend of the day on all these trades but I've started looking at volume a bit more. I was focused 100% on price before. Pink bars indicate higher volume in attachments. I'm still looking for some form of a pullback. I'm testing now to see if an increase in volume right before I place my limit order increases my odds of winning my pullback entries. A lot more practice ahead.
Took 4 trades instead of 3 today. Lack of discipline there. Getting a little to lax on my rules so need to tighten up. Today was filled mostly with mistakes, but the silver lining is that I'm learning.
I've been testing out these volume spikes in market replay and think they are valuable. I simply don't know how to use them to my advantage yet, despite good advice on how to.
Notes added to the trades but not to pleased with my carelessness today. I would not have even considered two of these trades previously but am blinded by the pink bars indicating higher volume. All part of the process.
One thing I love about FIO is it connects you with great traders who you can learn from and I am definitely lucky to have a few coaches/mentors that I can learn from now. Knowing what to do and being able to do them are two very different things. You could have Michael Jordan show you how to play basketball or Mozart show you exactly how to play piano, but it doesn't make you better. You will learn something, but it all comes down to practice. They practiced their butts off to get where they are.
Practice does not equal results but there is a higher probability of success the more time you spend on something. Not to plug FIO too much, but I think the Elite membership was a valuable investment. You can see people succeeding which is motivating. They help you along. You learn from their mistakes, repeat their mistakes, make mistakes they don't make, learn some more, and hopefully start making less mistakes.
Even after this poor outing today, my Sim account is right around $2,000 which was the starting balance a few weeks ago. Not where I want to be, but breaking even for now. Next week I'm planning to trade 1 microdow contract one day out of the week live, limiting my loss to $10 a week which equates to 2 trades with 8 pt stop. Small enough that I won't miss it but should help with the discipline. I've become too reckless on Sim and need to build better habits. No lesson like losing money. Hopefully I win a few too. Haha
