AbeSmith 7-26-07 YM

[AbeSmith 10]

Today was a very down day for the stock market, and the first official day that I started paper trading. Today was also the first day I decided to change my charting from Interactive Brokers to Sierra Chart, and also today I found the 5 minute candle chart to be to my liking.

 

I had a total of 15 roundtrips today. And a total of 23 points gained, which added up to $101 fake bucks after commission.

 

I started my trading shortly after the open. You can see my trades in the chart. All trades are labeled with S or B, followed by a number which designates the order of the trade, from 1 to 15. If S is above B then it was a short. If B is above S then it was a long. The gain or loss is recorded below it with + or – followed by the number of points gained or lost. I’m also posting my executions which has all the exact times and positions of the trades.

 

You are probably not interested in this, and I hope you don't feel I expect you to look at them. But in case you are interested here they are. It is very labor intensive to record all these trades on a chart, but it also helps me to review the trades.

 

 

 

Today I continued using the mental stops. Not sure if mental stop is the right word. Is it soft stop instead, or flexible stop?

 

Regarding mental stops, I feel it has its down side, like:

 

1. Potential to be swayed by emotion, lose your trading plan, get hopeful, and lose more money than you would have lost if you had a firm stop in place.

2. Potential to lose a lot of money by accident if you take your eye away from the screen or if your computer or internet brakes down.

3. Also, your hand eye coordination is not as quick as a computer, so in situation where the price moves quickly a human will have a longer reaction time than a computer.

 

But the advantage of a mental stops is:

 

1. It is very flexible. You can enter a trade in seconds and if the market behaves a certain way that might require you to change your strategy quickly, for example from a firm stop to a trailing stop, then all you have to do is decide on those changes and execute. With a firm stop you may not have time to change your strategy if it needs changing. Several times today I got a bad feeling about my position and decided to change to a trailing stop to at least lock in the gains I made. This turned some potential losses into profit, but also turned some profits into less profit or slight losses.

 

Also, today, although CNBC was on the whole time, I found myself less distracted by it, and enjoyed the up to date market info and analysis. But it was not a boring day either. It was almost panicky.

 

So to sum it up, today my trading developed a bit more. I found myself to be tighter with my money and less willing to take a beating. So my trades tended to be very short in duration and I was very quick to pull the trigger if the market misbehaved.

[GCB 10]

Abe it's good that you are keeping good records and reviewing your trades. This will help you develop.

 

A few questions:

 

What is you methodology for getting into trades? I can't detect and overall pattern.

 

You seem to be very active in the market while it wasn't doing much. Then when it started to move you were not in. Why was this?

 

As to your comments about soft stops and changing your strategy while in a trade, this is a bad idea. Although occasionally an experienced trader will scratch (terminate) a trade before it hits a stop or target it is is good idea as a beginner to learn to commit to all trades as planned and see them through. If you get into a habit of bailing on trades early it will be hard to break later. Practice planning the trade, getting into the trade, setting a hard stop and target and then letting the trade play out. Since you are paper/sim trading this is the time to do that.

 

Remember trading is about letting probabilities play out, not about being right all the time. If you don't let your trades work themselves out then the probabilities cannot play out. If you do this you are not really trading at all, you are just churning your account and inevitably losing money.

 

But the last thing you want to do is to change your strategy while in a trade. Never do that. There is no way you can consistently win doing that. It's okay to move your stop in the direction of the trade (only!), but try your best to leave your stops and targets alone. This is the only way you will ever be able to find out if your plan actually works, by letting your trades play out! Otherwise you are going to be in a perpetual fog. If you are constantly changing "strategy" in the middle of trade it just means you have no faith in your plan and you need to go back to the drawing board until you find one you do trust.

 

Good luck.

[notouch 10]

How did you miss the big move? I think you're taking way too many trades in the first hour and missing the "big picture". How much profit would you have made if you take into account broker commissions?

 

Also have you considered keeping all your logs in single thread because every time I check for unread posts about half the threads are yours!

[notouch 10]

Ignore that last comment. I think the way this log forum is set up you're doing it the right way!

[brownsfan019 17]

Abe,

Great job on keeping the log.

 

Few things:

 

1) Get SnagIt to make your chart annotations MUCH easier!!! It's the best 40 bucks you will spend for a trading related software. (http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp)

 

2) I have one big concern right now - 15 trades for 23 pts = 1.5 pts gain per trade. 1.5 pts = $7.50. $7.50 - $4.26 (commission) = $3.24 in gains. My concern is that if your gains net out under 5 ticks on average, it's not going to take much in the form of a losing day to take all that right back and then some. If you average 1.5 pts in gains, that means you should not risk more than 1-2 pts per trade. Obviously that's not realistic, so hopefully you see where I am going with those #'s.

 

3) Also, not sure how you got your net to be $101 after commissions. Gross = $115 ($5 x 23) - $63.90 ($4.26 x 15) = $51.10 net. Did I miss something?

[AbeSmith 10]

Abe it's good that you are keeping good records and reviewing your trades. This will help you develop.

 

A few questions:

 

What is you methodology for getting into trades? I can't detect and overall pattern.

 

You seem to be very active in the market while it wasn't doing much. Then when it started to move you were not in. Why was this?

 

As to your comments about soft stops and changing your strategy while in a trade, this is a bad idea. Although occasionally an experienced trader will scratch (terminate) a trade before it hits a stop or target it is is good idea as a beginner to learn to commit to all trades as planned and see them through. If you get into a habit of bailing on trades early it will be hard to break later. Practice planning the trade, getting into the trade, setting a hard stop and target and then letting the trade play out. Since you are paper/sim trading this is the time to do that.

 

Remember trading is about letting probabilities play out, not about being right all the time. If you don't let your trades work themselves out then the probabilities cannot play out. If you do this you are not really trading at all, you are just churning your account and inevitably losing money.

 

But the last thing you want to do is to change your strategy while in a trade. Never do that. There is no way you can consistently win doing that. It's okay to move your stop in the direction of the trade (only!), but try your best to leave your stops and targets alone. This is the only way you will ever be able to find out if your plan actually works, by letting your trades play out! Otherwise you are going to be in a perpetual fog. If you are constantly changing "strategy" in the middle of trade it just means you have no faith in your plan and you need to go back to the drawing board until you find one you do trust.

 

Good luck.

 

Hey Gary. My methodology for getting into trades is still in development. But I tend to look for reversals, preferably on the side of the market sentiment. So today mostly I looked for shorts in setups where the price was reversing down from a temporary up hump. I like to wait for at least 1 5 minute candle print in the direction of the trend I'm seeking. So most of today, after I see a red 5 minute candle print after a green hump then I go short. I did some longs later in the day because there was a reversal with higher highs and higher lows. I also look for setups near pivot points. I have a tendancy to look for dips, reversals, and such things, so I tend to enter a position on directional changes. I'm having difficulty though following trends, like let's say three red candles in a row. Like, buying high and selling higher. There's alot of money in that also I guess.

 

The reason I missed the middle of the day was because I had some other things to do. There was also a nice head a shoulder drop after trade 11, around 10:10AM C.T. that I noticed but entered the wrong command after researching head and shoulder on Google to make sure it was the right pattern, so I missed my prefered entry and didn't get further involved. So I would have liked to play some of those setups during the middle of the trading day but unfortunately I was away from my computer.

 

Remember trading is about letting probabilities play out, not about being right all the time. If you don't let your trades work themselves out then the probabilities cannot play out.

 

This is so true. I also have noticed that I'm doing alot of trades and they are very short trades and that they miss the chunk of the gains. The longest trade today was about 3 minutes. Many of them were only a few seconds. I think it is because I'm new of course, and have low risk tolerance, even to see my P&L drop $27 makes me scared. So this is forcing me to look at setups where I can get a near perfect short term entry, but as soon as I see the gains diminish a few ticks then I tend to bail out. So basically I'm doing soft trail stops alot of the time. I don't have confidence in the setups I'm taking because I'm very new and don't have a clear long term picture of the market and how these setups play out over time, so it's difficult for me to understand the long term probabilities enough to be able to tolerate wider potential losses. But I think with time, the more I get a clearer picture of how the markets move I will have more understanding and then be able to tolerate longer setups and wider stops. Right now though I'm really trying to be conscious of my daily gains, to try at least have positive days, if not very profitable, even though it's only paper trading.

 

And I must admit that although soft stops are a bit crude, I do enjoy being able to jump on a trade quickly and get out quickly with market orders and it fits my short term trading style. I may try to do some firm stops to see how it is, but I'm sure over time if firm stop is the better strategy then it will play itself out during my paper trading.

[AbeSmith 10]

How did you miss the big move? I think you're taking way too many trades in the first hour and missing the "big picture". How much profit would you have made if you take into account broker commissions?

 

Also have you considered keeping all your logs in single thread because every time I check for unread posts about half the threads are yours!

 

Hey Notouch. Like I explained to Gary I missed the big move because I was away from my computer. Commission is 4.26 per round trip, so times 15 that is $64 commission.

[AbeSmith 10]

Abe,

Great job on keeping the log.

 

Few things:

 

1) Get SnagIt to make your chart annotations MUCH easier!!! It's the best 40 bucks you will spend for a trading related software. (http://www.techsmith.com/screen-capture.asp)

 

2) I have one big concern right now - 15 trades for 23 pts = 1.5 pts gain per trade. 1.5 pts = $7.50. $7.50 - $4.26 (commission) = $3.24 in gains. My concern is that if your gains net out under 5 ticks on average, it's not going to take much in the form of a losing day to take all that right back and then some. If you average 1.5 pts in gains, that means you should not risk more than 1-2 pts per trade. Obviously that's not realistic, so hopefully you see where I am going with those #'s.

 

3) Also, not sure how you got your net to be $101 after commissions. Gross = $115 ($5 x 23) - $63.90 ($4.26 x 15) = $51.10 net. Did I miss something?

 

Hey Brownsfan. Thanks for the software recommendation. I'm sorry but it seems I added it up wrong. it is a total of 35 points, not 23. So 35 times 5 is 175, minus 63.90 is 111.1. I could have sworn though that I saw the total summary in my account statement after my trades completed it said 101 and some change. But now that field is empty in my paper account summary and I'm not sure if there is going to be an account statement for it. But yeah, 35 points.

 

And yeah, it seems I'm doing something very close to scalping now. Is that right? As I explained to Gary, I'm a taking my paper account very seriously and I'm having very low risk tolerance right now. But overtime as I'm able to recognize the market better I will have more confidence to take better longer lasting setups.

[AbeSmith 10]

Well, now that I look at it again there is one point that I got wrong. So it is closer to 34 or perhaps 33. And the reason I said 23 before was that I misread Trade #6, which is actually +18, not +8.

[torero 10]

I have to agree with brown on the stop hitting discipline. After a while your habit will be your undoing and it'll be even harder to undo it once it's set in. I used to do that, now I just set the stop and stop worrying about the trade. I suggest also to remove the P/L from the screen. This will only get you to think in $ and not in the moment/market, ie. possible big move that could be in front of you and you don't see it. Biggest lesson learned from my mentor.

[Nick1984 10]

Mate I reckon that your broker is gonna love you. Its good that you've started paper trading, but to be brutally honest you haven't paid much attention to one of the biggest criticisms we've given you in the past which is that you're over trading.

 

If you're going for reversals then try to time it better. On the down move early on we move back to test the S1 pivot and then price is rejected. Ok you're new (heck I'm new too) and you missed the short at the rejection. There is a green candle that goes up to test towards the S1 pivot again but never quite reaches it. That should be a great signal for you, if you're aggressive you could of shorted right at the close of that candle, or if more conservative shorted at the close of the next candle and gone for a ride down the slippery slope.

 

Also notice how the volume spikes on the down candles compared to the green ones telling you that demand is drying up at these price levels so the bears are taking a swipe at price and driving it further down.

[OAC 10]

Hi Abe:

A little suggestion for you. In the previous post, you said your

objection to setting firm stop was being cumbersome. In actuality,

it is really simple and take only a fraction of a second and one keystroke

with Interactive Brokers.

Try to study on how to set up Bracket Orders and how to set up Hot Keys.

It makes a huge difference in the heat of battle.

[torero 10]

Try not to be a switch hitter (long and short at the same time), stick to one side until the market has proven that it's ready to go the other way (higher high/higher low for longs and lower high/lower low for shorts). Else, you'll be overtrading as been pointed out. For shorts, just wait for the rally, then short, rally then short, etc. For longs, pullback, long, pullback long. Try to do both will mess up your discipline as well as your mental energy to absorb all the trades.

[TinGull 10]

And....something I haven't seen mentioned is the timeframe you're watching. Going for such TEENY moves on a non-scalper time frame is going to be a point you'll want to clear up quick. Decide how big a move you're wanting to take, and then find which time frame is going to give you those moves. Ask any scalper; they aren't in the game to take 400 point moves off a 55tick chart. They want to take 5-10 points per trade off that small a time frame. Me personally, I watch a 5min and a 15min and I look to grab anywhere from a 10 point move to 50+ point moves lately. The larger the time frame is the larger the profits you can realistically obtain. Keep in mind, this also equates to how much risk you can take on with your STOP LOSS IN PLACE.

 

One of the weakest moves you're making right now is a mental stop loss. I am absolutely still a beginner in these markets and I have never even considered a mental stop loss. I think they could be used by only the most disciplined of traders, and even at that, intraday I don't think they are appropriate. Moves can happen SO fast, especially as of late, that a mental stop loss won't get you out in time for a small loss to turn into a HUGE loss. And with taking just 20+ points on 16 trades....1 of those losses is going to put you in the hole by a margin you don't want to dream of.

 

Just my 2 cents

[MrPaul 10]

Abe,

 

At the risk of sounding redundant you really should place a hard stop. The first time you experience a power outage or internet connection disruption while taking those counter trend, high leverage trades you'll understand the importance of having a stop placed with your broker. You can realistically lose hundreds/thousands in a few minutes under these current conditions depending on how long you are separated from your execution software. Getting in the habit of placing them after your order is executed becomes second nature...

 

As far as the screen capture you may also look into Fastone capture, it's free and lets you annotate with arrows etc.

[GCB 10]

I have to agree with brown on the stop hitting discipline. After a while your habit will be your undoing and it'll be even harder to undo it once it's set in. I used to do that, now I just set the stop and stop worrying about the trade. I suggest also to remove the P/L from the screen. This will only get you to think in $ and not in the moment/market, ie. possible big move that could be in front of you and you don't see it. Biggest lesson learned from my mentor.

 

Just makes sure there is something on the screen that lets you know you are in a trade. I've taken the P&L of the screen and having thought my stop was hit did not check to see whether all my contracts were sold. I left for awhile came back to find I was still in a position without a stop. In this case I actually gained something but it could have been a disaster. Now I have something on my screen which lets me know how many contracts I'm long or short.

[torero 10]

Yes, it's hard to remove your eyes from that $ panel. Once you get used to being without it, it's a major relief, believe me, the pressure is not as bad as when it sits there going up and down and your heart is following it's beat. It was a major step toward calm relaxing trade after another. Focus on the market, not on the money.

[AbeSmith 10]

I have to agree with brown on the stop hitting discipline. After a while your habit will be your undoing and it'll be even harder to undo it once it's set in. I used to do that, now I just set the stop and stop worrying about the trade. I suggest also to remove the P/L from the screen. This will only get you to think in $ and not in the moment/market, ie. possible big move that could be in front of you and you don't see it. Biggest lesson learned from my mentor.

 

Thanks for the advice Torero.

[AbeSmith 10]

Mate I reckon that your broker is gonna love you. Its good that you've started paper trading, but to be brutally honest you haven't paid much attention to one of the biggest criticisms we've given you in the past which is that you're over trading.

 

If you're going for reversals then try to time it better. On the down move early on we move back to test the S1 pivot and then price is rejected. Ok you're new (heck I'm new too) and you missed the short at the rejection. There is a green candle that goes up to test towards the S1 pivot again but never quite reaches it. That should be a great signal for you, if you're aggressive you could of shorted right at the close of that candle, or if more conservative shorted at the close of the next candle and gone for a ride down the slippery slope.

 

Also notice how the volume spikes on the down candles compared to the green ones telling you that demand is drying up at these price levels so the bears are taking a swipe at price and driving it further down.

 

Hey mate. You're right about the overtrading. I'm trying to improve on that. Thanks for the good advice. Take care.

[AbeSmith 10]

Hi Abe:

A little suggestion for you. In the previous post, you said your

objection to setting firm stop was being cumbersome. In actuality,

it is really simple and take only a fraction of a second and one keystroke

with Interactive Brokers.

Try to study on how to set up Bracket Orders and how to set up Hot Keys.

It makes a huge difference in the heat of battle.

 

Thanks OAC. I'm also starting to consider that I probably should start placing firm stops. Everyone here is saying firm stops is the way to go and no one has yet told me otherwise. So you guys are probably right and I'm wrong. I will have to experiment with my platform and see if I can have a firm stop in place and also have a sell order ready to go so that way I don't have to modify the stop if I want to bail out, but instead I can just execute the sell. If I can do that then I would be more willing to do firm stops. But if I have to modify the stop order in situations where I want to bail out then that is a bit problematic for me.

[AbeSmith 10]

Try not to be a switch hitter (long and short at the same time), stick to one side until the market has proven that it's ready to go the other way (higher high/higher low for longs and lower high/lower low for shorts). Else, you'll be overtrading as been pointed out. For shorts, just wait for the rally, then short, rally then short, etc. For longs, pullback, long, pullback long. Try to do both will mess up your discipline as well as your mental energy to absorb all the trades.

 

Excellent advice Torero. Thanks.

[AbeSmith 10]

And....something I haven't seen mentioned is the timeframe you're watching. Going for such TEENY moves on a non-scalper time frame is going to be a point you'll want to clear up quick. Decide how big a move you're wanting to take, and then find which time frame is going to give you those moves. Ask any scalper; they aren't in the game to take 400 point moves off a 55tick chart. They want to take 5-10 points per trade off that small a time frame. Me personally, I watch a 5min and a 15min and I look to grab anywhere from a 10 point move to 50+ point moves lately. The larger the time frame is the larger the profits you can realistically obtain. Keep in mind, this also equates to how much risk you can take on with your STOP LOSS IN PLACE.

 

One of the weakest moves you're making right now is a mental stop loss. I am absolutely still a beginner in these markets and I have never even considered a mental stop loss. I think they could be used by only the most disciplined of traders, and even at that, intraday I don't think they are appropriate. Moves can happen SO fast, especially as of late, that a mental stop loss won't get you out in time for a small loss to turn into a HUGE loss. And with taking just 20+ points on 16 trades....1 of those losses is going to put you in the hole by a margin you don't want to dream of.

 

Just my 2 cents

 

Hey TinGull. Thanks for the excellent advice. I will look into doing firm stops and also into doing less trades. Just to clarify, I made a miscalculation about how many points I made. It was actually closer to 33 points and 15 roundtrips.

[AbeSmith 10]

Abe,

 

At the risk of sounding redundant you really should place a hard stop. The first time you experience a power outage or internet connection disruption while taking those counter trend, high leverage trades you'll understand the importance of having a stop placed with your broker. You can realistically lose hundreds/thousands in a few minutes under these current conditions depending on how long you are separated from your execution software. Getting in the habit of placing them after your order is executed becomes second nature...

 

As far as the screen capture you may also look into Fastone capture, it's free and lets you annotate with arrows etc.

 

Hey Paul. Thanks for the excellent advice and for the software recommendation. I think you're right about the necessity of firm stops. I will definitely look into that and try to make it a regular part of my trades. Thanks.

[AbeSmith 10]

Just makes sure there is something on the screen that lets you know you are in a trade. I've taken the P&L of the screen and having thought my stop was hit did not check to see whether all my contracts were sold. I left for awhile came back to find I was still in a position without a stop. In this case I actually gained something but it could have been a disaster. Now I have something on my screen which lets me know how many contracts I'm long or short.

 

I agree. When I was trading real money I was on a short and had made about $100 on that setup and when I wanted to get out I accidentally shorted another contract instead of buying back the short. By the time I stopped celebrating my win and looked back at the screen I noticed something strange with my P&L, and eventually that potential profit turned into a big loss.

 

Yes, it's hard to remove your eyes from that $ panel. Once you get used to being without it, it's a major relief, believe me, the pressure is not as bad as when it sits there going up and down and your heart is following it's beat. It was a major step toward calm relaxing trade after another. Focus on the market, not on the money.

 

I don't know if I can do that Torero. As you can see the P&L can be very useful. And it is only information after all. I admit it can be very distracting and probably has cost me alot of big profit. But it is only information and I think over time I will be able to process it better.

[brownsfan019 17]

Abe - don't let your software be the reason for not using hard stops. There's plenty of brokers and software packages that will in fact do what you want. For example, Open ECry has a nice bracket feature where once your order is filled, your exits (profit and loss) are placed on the dom. You set all the parameters. It's pretty nice in my opinion. I just like that your orders are ready to go as soon as you get filled, so it speeds up the process of your place in the queue. Not a big deal on the YM, but if you dive into the ES, that can make a small difference.

 

Here's an example of a sell bracket on the OEC dom. What I like about it is that you see in orange where your brackets will be.