karoshiman

I should be given a trophy for outstanding trading performance this week... I've accomplished the incredible feat of generating a loss with a long position this week! Not many can copy that... lol

I guess, I was too scared giving back some of my nice profits of last week. My original stop was below the low of the day, but I moved it up... :crap: But I'm not going to chase this market. Waiting for the next trade setup...

Covered long ES at 1622.50 with a loss. Trend line violated too early for my taste.

Long ES at 1625.00 near trend line.

Covered ES long pos. at 1628.00 with a profit.

Long ES at 1614.00 near trend line.

What a move after NFP... I was yesterday several times close to taking a short near/after cash close with a similar reasoning as the last trade (retest of trend line). However, wanted to wait for ON session and NFP in particular as I thought, this might be the safer trade... man, was I right! Seeing this aggressive move up, I guess, many took the short before NFP... the big question now is: Will the uptrend, which we saw in the 1st quarter continue? (i.e. no sell in May? )

Congrats on the 2nd target!

Unfortunately, I was...

Been kicked out of short pos. in ES at 1589 with a loss.

Short again ES at 1581.50. Price retested trend line break area and turned down again.

Covered ES short at 1577.50 with a profit.

Short ES at 1584,75. Break of trend line.

Covered ES long pos. at 1591.50 with a profit.

Trade summary last trade

Covered short with a loss and flipped to long at 1581.25. Looks like my short scenario is not working out. Price seems to obey the previously established upward trend.

Short ES from 1576.75. Break of upward trend line and failed breakout of short downward trend line.

Congrats! First target hit

Summary of my last trade:

If someone is following this thread, he or she will have noticed that I have somewhat changed my trading style recently. Whereas I began this thread as a "swing trading" journal and held positions for a few days to several weeks (the latter would be better characterized as "position trading"), I recently started to look at price movements taking between a few hours to 2-3 days and tried to benefit from these instead of holding positions for longer periods. When I looked at my trades I've realized that my entries and exits were pretty poor. So I've started to try to figure out how to improve these. However, during this process I came to the conclusion, why not try to benefit from these shorter-term moves altogether (now you see, what a journal can be good for... ... assuming that my trading will be more successful in the future than in the last few months ). This might deserve the label "swing trading" also more than my former trading style. Another change is that I now try to focus on one instrument only, whereas earlier I've looked for opportunities in various instruments. Although I think that there are opportunities in other futures markets as well, for me, equity index futures are the "easiest" when it comes to assessing potential movements within the next 1-3 days. Hence, I will focus on these for the time being. The last trades in this regard were with the e-mini Dow, but I will start to trade ES as well (... and maybe focus on it completely). Another change is that I post my account size, in order to provide some more information for anyone who is interested. My current account size is 18,150$ but I plan to cash out a bit and reduce it to between 10,000$ and 12,000$, which is sufficient to trade 1 ES contract, in my opinion, at least for my holding periods / "typical" stops.

Out of ES short at 1581 with a loss.

Short ES at 1573.50. Still overall bearish (see earlier comments). Looks like a downward trend line is being established here.

Covered YM long pos. at 14,642 with a profit.

Long in YM at 14,467. Wedge pattern in YM + same in ES but with a breakout + ES at upward TL (good entry point for long). Assumption: YM follows and we will see a breakout soon.

Agree! Though, I like the chart of ES more than YM, as ES has already made new highs late in the session and YM couldn't. I wait until European session on Tuesday and see how price reacts...