Hello everyone, hope you are all having a good day. I am very new to the whole trading experience. I have been studying the market for just a little over a year and have spent the last few months trading on sim. I just started trading live last week and have been really struggling so I thought I would take advantage of this awesome community and post my trades.
First I would just like that thank everyone that participates here at bmt. This is one of the most information and personality rich communities I have ever seen. There are so many positive and helpful people here that it really blows me away sometimes.
Now just some quick background on my experience trading. I went through quite a few different methods and strategies (everything from candlestick patterns, to perry's method, to ichimouku) before settling on volume profile as my method of choice. I trade using footprint bars, daily vps, and vwap. I use sierra chart with 20,000 volume bars as my primary chart and I trade 1 contract on the ES currently.
Any feedback on any of my decisions (not just trade entries and exits, but also the way I display the information, etc) is greatly appreciated. Any thoughts on the way I write my notes would also be helpful, currently I just write down any thoughts I had on each trade at the end of the day
What I have been doing to this point is putting notes directly on my chart and then simply taking a screen shot and saving it for later review, however the pictures did not really show the numbers on the bars very clearly so I changed the notes to numbers and decided to write my notes under each picture.I will be posting the screen shot and notes each day, assuming I take any trades that day. As of now I have tuesday and wednesday of this week (august 7th and 8th of 2012) with notes on each of my entries and some general notes for each day.
You will probably notice a few things right away. I am extremely nervous when I take each trade and this causes me to make poor trade management decisions (specifically entering/exiting trades early), and to be really impatient ("the sooner I am in and out of this trade the sooner I can calm my nerves" and other counter-productive thoughts in this same vein) this is something that I am working really hard on so any advice on managing nerves and impatience is really really helpful. You may also notice that some of my trades seem to be in the middle of nowhere, sometimes if I get distracted from the market for a few minutes when I return my attention to it I convince myself that I am about to miss a set up and that I need to be in the market NOW so I briefly glance at my indicators and decide the trade is good enough (this ties in to my problem with my nerves/impatience).
Anyway, on to the charts and notes:
Each day is split in to 2 pictures. I was not able to fit the entire day on to 1 screen while still keeping the numbers on the bars visible.
August 7th, 2012 Pt. 1
August 7th, 2012 Pt. 2
August 7th, 2012 trade notes
1) Attempted short off retest of opening swing high. Would have liked to get in at a slightly more favorable price. Exit was as low as it could be. Lucky to get 3 ticks off this trade price reversed immediately after my exit.
2) A good example of poor trade management. Tried to short off 1400 price level. Anticipated it would be the top at least temporarily based almost entirely on the fact that it is a nice round number. Once 1400 was broken I began to really worry and closed my position.
3) Took a long at vwap, expecting an uptrend to continue after the retrace. This could have been a slightly more profitable trade if I had let it go for slightly longer.
4) After the rejection of the 1400 level an hour earlier I was overly excited to short again here and did not wait for confirmation that the 1400 level would hold.
5) Still working on the assumption that 1400, or near enough, would be the top for the day I sold immediately after the same level had been rejected 3 times and negative delta began to show itself. This trade was the worst …