End of Day Journal (6-30-2010)

Summary:

Positive today at +$1832:

Cumulative profit curve:

DO was the big winner - an easy trade, easy calls, but I didn't get it all.

I didn't do so well on the ETF's, a lot of ins, discretionary outs and a few stops. Scott traded the ETF's as well this afternoon and doing some quick comparisons and... there is no comparison... just a lot to learn. I entered 9 times on QLD over his first afternoon entry to exit. He was able to hold onto a 58 tick retrace on TNA; go figure, I would have held till it was ready to turn around and exited at the worst possible time.

That happens a lot to me, i.e., exiting at the worst possible moment. Check out the 9:30 and 12:40 exits on TNA (usually holding at least one more ETF and trading the same): in position, holding on thru some chop, then when I call enough, it turns around; almost immediately. And this is me paper trading - it would seem that my threshold/limit is almost right at the limit of everyone else's; for the trade to regain direction again enough people have to capitulate.

I had some great entries on big moves today, generally market moves, and I came out too early. Again, like yesterday I considered just staying in to see what would happen. I may try that tomorrow...

Good day for the confidence. A few more like this and I may be able to handle some live action.

Trade well!

Details:

CECO (+$81):

CF (+$180):

DO (+$1553):

EDZ (-$115):

HOG (+$30):

QLD (-$160):

TNA (+$299):

VXX (-$17):

End of Day Journal (6-29-2010)

Summary:

A shout out to Scott's post from yesterday.

Timely - the emotional gamut accompanying the beginning trader's path can be/is crushing.

I think I am an average guy, successful in several areas; yet when it comes to trading I realize at times that I don't have a clue as to what I am doing. Very discouraging. Then there are times when I think that I have learned something and it all makes sense now; I have got this thing from here on out. This inevitably sets me up for another fall (at least thus far in my trading career). Those emotions are so real. It is strangely comforting to know that this is normal, and that I am not a complete idiot. The path is well trod, and others have found the way thru and can remember what it was like.

Scott writes about the ability to be indifferent to a trades outcome. I think this requires a couple of things (but better to read Scott's blog if you want an experienced opinion, this is my ownership process) :

1. A real edge
2. Enough experience to trust the edge
3. The realization that the market is overflowing with opportunities (abundance)
4. Enough disposable capital

Almost all of this hinges on experience - it is impossible to define, develop and own an edge without experience. It is impossible to understand the abundance of the markets without experience - without gaining enough experience to know what opportunities don't work for one's personality. Practice.

And the big theme of the post: personal investment - what does a trade actually mean? For me it is not so much about the ego - I am documenting all of the journey's mis-steps on a public forum. Personally it comes down to 'I gotta get this right so I can keep doing it.' I want to change career paths - as much as I enjoy engineering, I do not like the business aspect: clients, billable hours, budgets, employees, and employers. I want to trade. I want to work at home (where ever that happens to be) I want to work no more than 6.5 hours a day. I want to have the freedom to enjoy plenty of time with friends and family. Oh yeah - and I want to buy one more guitar. This raises the stakes for every trade considerably - is it just about the money? A big factor, but not sure how I would categorize all of this. I want to be right about trading so I can keep trading.

And I think I get it, then I am not so sure, then I am pretty sure, then I am ready to toss in the towel.

I seem to have exhausted some of the urgency over the past couple of weeks or maybe just this last weekend. That is, I feel more comfortable with letting the market do its thing and hanging out. Or perhaps I feel more comfortable with the idea that this will take time. 

I still feel like my future career is riding on getting this right, even the practice portion (feelings that came up on the early ETF exits - first trades of the day). An element of this may be healthy; perhaps running thru the emotional gamut enough times brings a sense of perspective and balance. 

Or maybe I will choke when I start trading live again.

Whatever else this new found sense of indifference is, I feel it is still very fragile... 

Ok - onto the day. I was positive at +$2272:

Here is the cumulative profit curve:

First 5 trades of the day were all positive. Primarily traded the ETF's on the market, with a few additional symbols thrown in.

The interesting thing is - the first trades could of easily been tripled, but I exited early. Strangely enough, I remember thinking as I was considering the exit - 'Hey - why not just let it go and see what happens?' But I didn't. If I can't experiment now - when can I? But I won't be too hard on myself, I did the best I could and I was reading an exit time. I can only get better.

Details:

CLF: wasn't meant to be, but this shows the value of a well placed stop; in this case previous open: I was not prepared to lose that much. (Or - after looking at Scott's entry - the value in a timely entry...) (-$28):

EDZ: yipper - early exit on the first entries. This was traded on the market along with TNA, VXX, and QLD. What to say? I did the best I could, and it was money in the bank. Easily could of tripled on all 4 entries (+$286):

GENZ: had some reads, but not the best captures (-$24):

NEM (+$90):

QLD: a series of stops on the 11:50, but managed to find direction and finished off well. QLD and TNA on the last sequence; NT needs basket orders... (+$591):

RIMM: direction and stops, nothing to be proud of (-$13):

TNA: again early exit on the first (+$1027):

VXX (+$343):

End of Day Journal (6-28-2010)

Summary:

I got back from SD Sunday afternoon and spent about an hour in the evening troubleshooting the computer problem. Turns out Windows 7 has pretty good crash reporting and after running the memory diagnostic put the blame on two of the Corsair modules. So I pulled them out and running at 4 GB until I can get these RMA'd. Hurrah for Windows 7. I am impressed. (New comp coming a week =p)

Had a great weekend. No computers, but of course the trading analogies kept coming up...

I should explain that I have tried surfing several times (all of 3 times prior to this weekend when it comes down to it). Each time consisted of renting a surf board and a wet suit and heading out to the biggest waves I could find. I have always been fairly athletic - I figured how hard can it be?  Heh. The first time I went out, I swam out to where all the other surfers were and promptly got my a$$ chewed out by some surfer chick when I kept getting in the way: 'You are going to get yourself killed!' Pfft.

She was probably right.

Well... I didn't kill myself, but I am sure that I managed to look like a complete imbecile the entire time. I don't mind the imbecile part - but I didn't learn to surf either. Here's hoping I can be smarter about day trading.

We had an old timer for a surf instructor (http://surfarisurf.com - great outfit) and he explained that he was going to teach us 6 years of knowledge in about 30 minutes on the beach. I was a little doubtful, but he had us standing up by the second wave. We spent the entire day in the foam, but it was a blast. My son is hooked and dad may as well be.

Our instructor shared a timeless insight: 'The ocean is a patient, tireless instructor.' Watching the waves and my son fighting against them while trying to position for the next one, Scott's affirmation MP3 came to mind. Working with what the ocean offers is the only sane approach. Patient. Relentless. Powerful. Free. Go with the flow.

After one particularly big tumble my son shared some insight as well: 'Dad - surfing is just like trading, huh? It seems so simple but kind of hard to actually do.' For sure.

We finished up the weekend with a visit to Morley Field - the only pay-to-play disc golf course in the entire world if my sources are correct. I came in at 9 over but it was a blast. And it was a morning spent without bad trading analogies. =)

(Yes - I introduced my son to the trading concept. I am thinking about setting him up with an NT license with delayed replay data just to see how he does. If he ends up enjoying it, can you imagine the head start?)

Anyhoo - today was positive at +$880:

NT is showing 109 trades, but to give you an idea of the actual trades, I entered one time on GS (500 share order) but NT registers the entire sequence at 7 trades (partial fills coming in and out). This is about as bad as it gets, average is perhaps 4-5.

Here is the cumulative profit curve (forgot to add earlier):

Trading felt different today, it may have been the weekend break. I didn't seem to have this 'I have to make money right now' attitude. I was content to let the market do it's thing. Maybe because I have been paper trading for over a week now? I hope not, it felt good.

Interesting trades to note: the 8:50 sequence on EDZ, VXX, TNA, and QLD. I exited almost all of them at the worse possible time. It seems I do that a lot. I was expecting to see some resistance at the 45.35 level on the Q's, and we still had a ways to go. As things fizzled, I flattened everything; after which of course, the trend continued (it then fizzled for sure at S/R, but momo pushed thru to the next S/R). Mixed feelings about that, not sure what was telling what what to do: gut, right side brain? There were definitely some emotions attached to the exits. I am going to guess that experience will help clear/sort this out. Here is how I interpreted the market today:

Only 4 S/R lines.

Details:

AFL (-$127):

APC (+$1)

EDZ (-$43):

GLD (-$93):

GS (-$82):

IYT (-$95):

MYGN (+$430):

QLD (+$210):

RGLD: I had noticed this and DGP and GLD earlier; then RGLD lagged as DGP and GLD dropped, so I shorted and waited (+$168):

TNA (+$463):

VXX: (+$48):

End of Day Journal (6-25-2010)

Major fubar computer crashes this morning - 5 of them before 11:00 a.m.; so took off early, picked up the convertible and heading to San Diego with my oldest for some surf lessons...

No computers!

Hang ten everyone!

Have a great weekend!

End of Day Journal (6-24-2010)

Summary:

Pfftt...

Crazy kind of ride today. I finished +$627. But take a peek at the cumulative profit curve below.

Stuck to the plan, no breaks (occasional water fill, A.C. adjustment, and snack). I was in some crazy spreads today, which didn't help matters. I never entered over a $0.05 spread position, but they would swing wildly while I was in trade.

I should say that I mostly stuck to the plan. The afternoon saw me tagging on the market momo with TNA, QLD, VXX, and EDZ. I did pretty well with them. Actually, they pretty much saved the day.

Two things today:

1. I need to more consistent with definite visual stops. This needs to happen, and they need to be where they need to be. Too often I find myself thinking in terms with 'What I am comfortable with losing?' Not  sure what to do exactly, but I will think about it some more tonight.
2. My exits - are freakin' brain-dead. The criteria I set up is just not good. The bump in profit at 8:30 was about half of what it could of been, way too much money left on the table. Going to have to think about this as well.

I think I am going to try and use the market replay to work towards a solution. At the end of the day I want to replay and trade the big moves over and over again. Part of this momo thing has to be in the bid/ask activity - I mean master traders are seeing something, even if they can't explain it. Maybe it will help to play the big moves until I get a feel for them?

Here was the day:

Here is the unbelievable cumulative profit curve:

Heh - I was completely bummed by 12:00 today. Ready to throw in the towel on this trading business. Then I had almost nothing but winners (and the one loss was quite a bit positive before the stops). I need to drum up some consistency with this trading thing. I don't think the 12:00 run is a fluke - I am tempted to say that I do better in faster markets, but I am not sure yet.


And on a finishing note - I saw this on Scott's blog today and thought it sounded rather profound - something to help with those anxious market moments:


'When you feel anxiety creeping into your awarenes, overwhelm it with peaceful, genuine thankfulness. And fill the moment with the power of your best possibilities.'

-Ralph S. Marston Jr.

Details:

APA: Couldn't of done this any better, breaking support with the market behind it (-$125):

APC (+$340):

AVB: Wasn't meant to be (-$206):

AVGO: If I would of caught this last break thru support, watching the action around the prior low would of been a good (-$38):

BIDU: I think the stop placement on these left something to be desired. It looks like the first short was actually the lower one, with the stop just above the prior close. The second entry was a gut reaction - and it was the wrong thing to do - no support. The stop on the last entry has no support at all (-$231):

BP: The market was headed down, which led me to short again after that candle on lowish volume; BP didn't seem to care about the res of the market (-$60):

DO: No complaints, just wasn't meant to be (-$107):

DRI: The other trade I was in got stopped, and with the market coming down, I thought I should bail; DRI had other plans (-$103):

EDZ: heh - almost all winning trades on this one, the long discretionary exit at 9:45 being the one exception (+$590):

LLL: Well - stops galore, and finally a breakout stuck; and I traded on the downside (-$36):

MTB: This stock had a crazy swinging spread. (-$160):

OXY: just a mess - wouldn't have traded it any differently in retrospect (-$205):

PXD: Terrible exit on the first trade, I left something like 50 ticks; all in the name of sticking to the plan... The long came with green on the market, and the stop had no support. The next long was out of plan, same with the next short (no market support). The last short looked all right, but the market was not showing any kind of breakout (-$30):

QLD: Problems on the 10:30 to 11:00 positions, with only one long in the right direction - and an early exit. (+$398):

RIG: could of cared less about the rest of the market on my entries. But - I entered on OXY here as well, same direction. Need the market to break something, but it only felt like wave-ing. Out of plan (-$109):

TNA: Same patterns on EDZ, QLD, and VXX. Consistently wrong on the 10:30 to 11:00. Just a note - I kept some very wide stops on some of these trades (afternoon), opting for visual reference rather than potential loss (+$364):

V: No support for the stop (-$16):

VXX (+$461):

XEC: what to do about these long candles and new highs/lows...  (-$148):