One of those days.
Paper trading showed several perfect morning entries, playing new high reversals. Mornings and failed new highs/lows seem to be a common theme lately. Afternoons seem to lend more urgency to the breakouts. During the course of the day I reset the NT database, so nothing to show.
Three live trades today: UAUA, and two on FTBK.
I was using NT for monitoring the action. UAUA came up first and after looking at the chart, I thought I had a nice entry at around the 10:45 mark. Things stuttered along until I noticed the chart not updating any more. I switched on some TWS charts and was presented with a completely different picture. I checked SD for some confirmation, and it started to look like NT was acting goofy. Meanwhile, stop loss came and went at ~-$289. A little bummed. I won't even present the chart because there is nothing to look at.
I caught the 11:00 a.m. outbreak on FTBK, came out nicely at ~$1100 at 11:05, but jumped in again too early and ended up at ~$359. With the bummer loss on UAUA only ~$70 for the day.
FTBK was a trade I shouldn't have made. I was coming out of the UAUA debacle and still a little scatter brained. And emotional lol. My palms were sweaty. That should have been the signal.
As it turns out, I was using the latest and greatest version of TWS, and NT recommends using an archived version they have on their site; hence the price discrepancies. It was disturbing at the time. Afternoon went off without a hitch, but I was communicating a lot with customer support and didn't get much trading in.
Despite all of this, I still think NT is worth the effort. They have some great features and a lot of this is just my learning curve. The chart trader is very nice, the reverse position function makes for a clean and fast reverse. The ATM strategy automatically scales as a position is scaled. And - if I can ever get a solid data stream, NT will record the days ask/bid data for later replay and practice trading.
I decided to bump up the account to day trading minimum +5k. It will take awhile for funds to settle and I may keep paper trading for awhile - but I am gaining more confidence. Silly me.
No comments:
Post a Comment