End of Day Journal (6-14-2010)

Summary:

 Negative... at -$1149.33:

Days like today leave me wondering if I have any idea at all as to what I am doing.

The morning was choppy, and I came in on APC with a lot of stops... seems it ran out of momo as soon as I started trading it. In retrospect, I would have taken them all again, just the way the morning was.

I didn't feel like I fell apart today. Of course I am disappointed, but I felt like I was consistent in my trading. Here is how things went profit wise:

I don't think I did anything much differently today compared to how I traded last week, but there is obviously something wrong with my approach.

First - let's look at the things I did do differently:

1. I traded more stocks. Today I traded 8 stocks, but 3 stocks only saw one trade, so I don't think this contributed to today's losses.
2. I had a lot more trades today and I had very few entries with direction and stops; but I had several entries with direction after the stop. In hindsight, I felt myself chasing some entries today, which very likely contributed to this.
3. I didn't listen to Scott's MP3 today. Heh, now I am getting superstitious. I mentally reviewed several of the statements/principals and I felt relaxed and confident all day.

Where did I go wrong? Too much trading. Reading too much into the candles. Not having a sense of the momo. This is a fairly consistent theme for me. Again - I don't think I traded much differently than I did last week, it is just that the market was more forgiving last week. I think I need to re-evaluate exactly what it is I am doing here.

After I started reviewing the trades, I decided to go back and set up the charts against the Q's to see if I could find a pattern for which of my trades actually worked. Heh. There is a pattern - THE MARKET - but unfortunately I didn't trade on the market today - at all. I think I have noticed this before. Pfft.

Scott traded some of the same stocks I did today. As a comparison and just in case I might actually learn something, I marked his trades on my TNA and APOL charts. Humble pie. One trade on APOL kind of matches (the last one of his and the last three of mine... lol); and I caught something like part of his short in something like a gazzillion entries on TNA (his 9:20 entry). I am seeing things, way too many things, and not the right things. Mine are like graffiti on his Mona Lisas. His are punctuated with market indecision and then direction, mine are simply indecisive. (These are at the bottom of the details if you are interested. Red marks his short entry/exit, lime green a long entry/exit.)

I was not paying close enough attention to the market today - and reading the candles before they were candles. I was focused, but just not on the right thing. I think that those are my biggest problems.

If you notice anything else, feel free to expound.

On a side note: I upgraded to Trade-Ideas Pro to try it out today, it does not even compare to the Lightspeed ticker. The Lightspeed ticker gives a much better sense of the market I think. Also - strangely enough, it was pretty much steady all day today, with the occasional flare up; sign of an unforgiving market?

Detail:

APC: Morning chopfest. Stop after stop. Finally some direction on the 8:30, with some messiness in the middle on the continuation, and finished with a long. All the stops were reasonably executed... this looks busy, but the stops led me to reverses, which got stopped again (-$258.69):

APOL: Caught my attention after the 9:00 and I entered on the retrace. I saw continuations on the downtrend three times from 10:00 to 10:15. I didn't have the heart to go long after the third try (but the market was signalling). I couldn't seem to get direction at the top. The market's long green at 12:10 spooked me out of the 12:05 position. Posting the Q's for comparison (+$238.03):

BP (-$188.43):

CF (-$63.05):

CREE (-$73.58):

CRM: Bad bit of luck on this one (-56.30):

CVC: Great trend, came in with a short as the market was goofing around and the new candle dropped below the prior close, coming off a high wick. Reversed as it turned around and bailed as the market kept going down.Then got stopped on the short at the top. I thought it made sense to go long with the green market, but nobody else did (-$140.84):

TNA: too much chasing with poor entry price. I think I will wire the money next time, less of a hassle (-$606.46):

And - as an exercise in humility and a little bonus, here are my trades on APOL as compared to Scott's:

And TNA: