The Day Trading Experiment: End of Day Journal (10-20-2010)

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

End of Day Journal (10-20-2010)

Summary:

Paper traded 200 share lots today:

I traded using the new setup today. I have a few things to get used to yet, but I liked the way that I traded on it.

Largest stops:

DRN for $0.32/share.

Largest wins:

GS for $1.62/share.

For the new setup I am using range bars, a few MA's, and some dynamic S/R. For those who don't know (I had to look it up), range bars eliminate the time variable by forming bars based on the change in price. I am using $0.15 per bar after trying it out over the last couple of days. Subsequently, all the MA's and S/R are based on price as well. Pretty powerful, and personally, I think it is a better way to describe what is happening with the stock - everything I see is price.

Here is the big GS trade on the new setup:

What are all the lines??? Heh.

All the curved lines are MA's with different periods. The ones in the main part of the chart are very long period, and the ones on the bottom portion are shorter. The straight lines and shading are dynamic S/R - something that saves me from drawing lines on the chart for breakouts and breakdowns. The purple lines are a Donchian channel.

The trade on the confirmed trend (MA's) and either support or breakout. I ran across the basic setup on BMT.

Part of the setup included finding an appropriate range - if a stock moves a lot the bars can race by. AAPL bounced around over $13 yesterday, today it was a little over $7. The 2:00 to 2:09 took up the entire chart width:

While DRN's entire afternoon fits on one chart:

$0.15 seems to a good compromise. AAPL could of been bumped up to $0.20 or maybe even $0.25 or $0.30; it is trade-able on all of them. After looking at a lot of the trades, I think I will try the $0.20 on everything tomorrow.

I am still becoming familiar with the setup and made two bad entries today, but other than that pretty much did what I was supposed to. I have a good feeling about this setup - as long as I keep doing what I am supposed to be doing, I think it will work.