End of Day Journal (9-30-10)

Summary:

Paper traded 200 share lots today:

Yipper. Fell apart at 3:00. Amazing how fast the money can roll out. Hypothetically, it can roll in just as fast as well - just be on the other side of my trades...

Largest stops:

NFLX for $0.66/share.

Largest wins:

NFLX for $1.10/share.

What a morning and early afternoon. I watched and traded. S/R breakouts and breakdowns, stocks changing directions. Things just clicked.

Then what happened?

So here is the deal. 2:55 rolled around and the Q's were starting to act funny. The thought entered my mind that S/R was starting to fall by the wayside and that I should stop right now and call it a day... for all of about 2 seconds. By 3:05 I had my first serious stop of the day (notice all the high stops are in the last hour) and thought I would try to get everything back. I proceeded to call absolutely everything wrong.

How can I go from having such a great morning and early afternoon to falling apart so drastically in the last hour? Why did I keep trading when I noticed the Q's were getting squirrely?

I think greed kept me in. Some interesting things happened. The morning had great entries and some decent exits, but the majority of the exits were early. I remember thinking to myself 'What if?' on the exits (as in what if they would keep going) but I must not of been very convincing. Then this afternoon I was thinking along the same lines 'Just believe' and ended up letting things get away (namely a $1 trade on NFLX that covered at $0.30, and a $0.80 trade that stopped for $0.45).  I think I was reacting to what I missed in the morning. Rather than paying attention to what was happening, I was bringing expectations. Bad move on my part. Because there was money - no doubt about it. I was positive on every entry.

Just the momo was missing.

The second thing that happened was that I was chatting... yes I know... how many times have I talked about this and how many times have I vowed not to do it again? Pfft. Chatting == no trading.

I am glad this is paper. So many things to discover about myself.

Why was I chatting? I was up $528 and I felt like telling someone. I enjoy the company. I enjoy the distraction. I enjoy calling the pivots (and IM'ing them rather than covering and reversing...)

This doesn't mix with trading. Maybe I should come up with something that closes NT whenever I open Skype. I need to think about why I do this some more, maybe I can figure something out.

A few encouraging things, came out of the meditation/visualization session and nailed it this morning. Paying attention to what was happening in front of me, and trading what I saw. Another thing I noticed, was that after I had some good profits, I started acting conservatively (e.g., all the early exits on the 11:30 longs and 11:55 shorts... NAILED those entries. Heh.). Again, not that this is bad - well, yeah, on second thought, it is bad. It is the difference between trading what is happening and trading out of FnG.

It is also encouraging that I actually had the thought to stop trading. I know I didn't act on it, but a guy has to start somewhere. Evidently I picked something up as charts turned into mush. Next step... errr... no chatting while trading (?).

Anyhoo - posting the charts - and all my shame. The last hour was a debacle, and by 3:40 I started doing very stupid things. As Fozz pointed out, probably the worst possible thing that can happen is that I do stupid trades and they work out. So no more of that stuff either. Urge to be stupid == go for a walk.

Lessons everyday. So much to learn, so much to learn.

When trading is easy, it really is easy. The big obnoxious elephant in the room is all about me and my stuff. Practice, practice, practice.

Cheers. Trade well.

Details:

I am going to just upload the charts and make them all big, no comments. They pretty much speak for themselves. I know what happened this afternoon, so no sense in reviewing. I think yesterday's chart review and revelation was a big milestone in my chart reading skills.

Fozz had some great charts this afternoon that I didn't trade.