Trader P/L 2009

[Robert Joyce 10]

Ok, so no real trades again today. I had some more business to take care of right in the middle of the trading day for 2 hrs. So I traded on my sim again.... 11 trades, all 2-YM contracts, 1 stopped out for full 21pts, 2 that stopped out at even after hitting my first target and moving my initial stop to 10 under my entry. 2 more were just taking too long so I bailed out at or very close to even and 6 very nice, textbook trades that took both my limit exits. When they work well it is just a beautiful thing to watch. So I ended up $465. pretend dollars.............. eeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr........... The day is coming.....

 

Oh yeah there was the execution error.... how many of you have been concentrating so hard, decide to sell out of a position that you hit a 'sell' market order when you are already short.... yikes.... Lucky for me it kept going south so I was able to get out with a profit but maybe not so lucky next time... But that is the only execution error I have made in awhile... I used to make all kinds of them, like not clearing all pending orders after exiting a trade and getting a surprise entry..... yikes.... lol lol

 

Anyways, tomorrow is another trading day and I'm looking forward to it.

[brownsfan019 17]

I got a little catching up to do on the thread. I have been fighting some sort of upper respiratory bug this week. Not a ton of trading, but here's where I am at...

 

5-26-09

 

5-27-09

 

5-28-09

 

 

 

Been an ok week so far. Fighting this bug has not helped things but hopefully I can shake it completely this weekend.

[bathrobe 10]

Hi Chris,

 

You have 16 trades, with 13 profitable and only 3 losses, but you finish with a net loss. You are letting the wrong trades run.

 

I suspect, though I may be wrong, that you were never more than slightly net positive for the day. More likely you found yourself in an early hole, and your overtrading was driven by a desire to get back to even. In fact, letting your trades run was more likely enabled by a sense of desperation than discipline.

 

Your average winning trade netted just $28.85 while your average losing trade lost $158.33. Turn that around and you will need only 20% profitable trades to make you net wealthy. Failure to turn that around will lead you, quickly, to ruin.

 

It would seem that you are focused too much on winning percentage, which is the wrong thing to focus upon. You must work on cutting your losers, and letting your profits run. Think about it this way: You won 81.25% of your trades today. So whoever took the other side of your trades today only won 18.75% of his trades, but he finished with a $100 profit, while you finished with a $100 net loss.

 

I recall that you were studying Van Tharp. I know he cautions his students against falling for the "high winning %" trap. It is a tough trap to elude and elude it you must. The good news is that you can do it, but first you must decide to do so.

 

Best Wishes,

 

Thales

 

Thales,

 

Thank you for the insight. I started out up $87, then had a $300 loser. And the revenge trading took over.

 

I would say my largest problem is that if I am in a trade and during the course of the trade it begins to turn ugly I do not scratch or close the trade with a smaller loss than I end up with, I always let myself get stopped out at 3 points. Another significant proplem is that my acct. is currently very small so I am trading scared money.

 

You are absolutely correct about letting the wrong trades run. Early in the day I had a short that ran for roughly 14 points, yet I became shaken and exited at 2 ticks.

 

Thanks

 

Chris

[thalestrader 14]

I would say my largest problem is that if I am in a trade and during the course of the trade it begins to turn ugly I do not scratch or close the trade with a smaller loss than I end up with, I always let myself get stopped out at 3 points. Another significant proplem is that my acct. is currently very small so I am trading scared money.

 

You are absolutely correct about letting the wrong trades run. Early in the day I had a short that ran for roughly 14 points, yet I became shaken and exited at 2 ticks.

 

Thanks

 

Chris

 

I would say that your largest problem is that you take 3 point losers and 2 tick winners.

 

There is nothing wrong with letting your initial stop do what it is suppossed to do, which is let it take you out of the trade if you are wrong before a loss becomes ruinous.

 

The problem is not that you take the 3 point loser, but that you don't stick around long enough for the profitable trade to run for that 14 point gain!

 

If you are thinking that the problem is not cutting your trade short prior to you stop is the problem, then you just risk compounding your current problem. Having said that, I do subscribe to the idea that every trade starts as a scalp, i.e. I will from time to time take an early profit or an early loss if I feel that price action isn't behaving as I had anticipated that it would. But, most of the time, I am comfortable letting my inital stop stand, and moving it as subsequent price action develops natural stops.

 

Also, why is your stop loss always 3 points? Sometimes your stop should be less, sometimes it will need to be more. If you are always throwing a 3 point stop on all of your trades, then you are not trading price, but rather you are trading an arbitrary abstract of price.

 

As for the small account, if you are trading scared small, then you will trade scared big. Fear is not a function of capital.

 

Here is how to control your fear: Buy support, sell resistance, use the stops the market gives you, and respect those stops.

 

Now, set a daily loss limit, stick to it, and get on with it.

 

Best to your trading,

 

Thales

[Robert Joyce 10]

Brownsfan, that was quite a trade on the ES today. I am very curious my brother and I have heated discussions about what we call 'double down' when a trade goes against you and yet you still believe in it. He uses this as a way to average down his break even point and usually just bails when it get there. I am real curious of what was happening there in your mind, what was your stop, what kept you in the trade for almost 3 pts. how did you exit this trade. Nice trade though.

[brownsfan019 17]

Brownsfan, that was quite a trade on the ES today. I am very curious my brother and I have heated discussions about what we call 'double down' when a trade goes against you and yet you still believe in it. He uses this as a way to average down his break even point and usually just bails when it get there. I am real curious of what was happening there in your mind, what was your stop, what kept you in the trade for almost 3 pts. how did you exit this trade. Nice trade though.

 

Great question Robert.

 

The trade setup was rather simple in play:

1) Bought immediately on a momentum play. Momentum did not enter as I expected.

2) Price pulled back but did not violate my stop, so I bought on the pull back; which I probably would have done if the momentum filter did not fill.

With that said, you won't find me doing this very often. It could have been that I did not get to the screens till about 2pm or so and felt like the need to trade.

[Mr_black 10]

Today's trades..............

[Robert Joyce 10]

Ok, no real trades today again, I don't like starting real trading week on a Friday so I just sim trade today. 8 trades on the ES, all 2 contracts : 5 winners, 1 loser, 2 stopped out at even. A good day so I look forward to Monday. That was quite the end of the day rally to close at 8500. I guess that is bullish for next week. Can't wait to find out..... lol Have a good weekend.

[Robert Joyce 10]

Mr Black that is a thing of beauty! I love the small 2 pt. profit target. I am assuming you use a 2 pt limit for profit with a 3 pt stop. Outstanding... I would like to know what you use for your entry signals.

[bathrobe 10]

I would say that your largest problem is that you take 3 point losers and 2 tick winners.

 

Fear is not a function of capital.

 

Best to your trading,

 

Thales

 

Currently fear is a function of capital for me as a few losers could wipe out my required margin.

 

Since I have been trading with real capital which goes back about 4 years my winning % hovers around 92%, yes most of these are between 2 and 6 ticks but it far outweighs the 3 point losers 8% of the time.

 

I have stated this before in this thread that I made a personal loan to someone close to me which came from trading acct. so currently I am trading with a small account which makes me nervous, but I would rather trade this than SIM, because I personally treat SIM like an game.

 

Had I been trading normal size May would have been a great month. Yesterday was the first and only day in which I lost money. FWIW, a couple years ago I let trades run for multiple pts. Trades would often take 2 or more hours, which I personally am not built for when trading futures. I want as little exposure as possible.

 

Thanks Thales for your posts regarding yesterday.

 

 

Today, took initial loss. Ended day +.50

[MidKnight 12]

Mr Black that is a thing of beauty! I love the small 2 pt. profit target. I am assuming you use a 2 pt limit for profit with a 3 pt stop. Outstanding... I would like to know what you use for your entry signals.

 

In case Mr Black is away for the weekend. I will say that his charts look like Hershey style trading. You can find many many threads about this on that 'other' board. Search for Jack Hershey, spydertrader. It's based price volume relationships and channels.

 

With kind regards,

MK

[MCM 10]

Howdy folks. Catching up on the threads. I have hit my first official funk of trading career, with a net down 1000 bucks for the week on about 7 trades. Have run the gamut of emotions from anger to disbelief. Identified plenty of trades - and didnt take them - or exited too soon.

 

Lots of internal errors - which affected me so much I did decide to take TH/FR off for the most part except for a couple small trades and a couple sim trades (testing new platform). I typically dont trade much more than 4-5 trades/day...and literally had an 0-7 streak.

 

Am spending the weekend going over each trade (painful) to review - as well as re-reading and recommitting to the trading plan.

 

The only bright spot is I didnt do any irrepairable damage to the account. Feel like a bit of a twit not posting the individual trades throughout the past few days.

 

Next week is new. Will review some favorite passages of some books/notes I have taken during the past year along with self-berating.

 

Any experiences regarding dealing with your first slump (where literally - you felt like you couldnt get on the right side of a trade if you wanted to..and was temporarily insane) would be appreciated.

 

P

[Mr_black 10]

Mr Black that is a thing of beauty! I love the small 2 pt. profit target. I am assuming you use a 2 pt limit for profit with a 3 pt stop. Outstanding... I would like to know what you use for your entry signals.

 

I am using Price and Volume

[brownsfan019 17]

5-29-09

 

 

 

Nothing special from Friday.

[hedonQ 10]

... rather disappointing week.

 

I am starting trading stocks next week as well. I"ll post results from that endeavor as well.

 

 

Good Luck next week.

[Mr_black 10]

Today's trades...........................

[Marsupilami 10]

Today's trades...........................

 

Nice results, Mr. Black. You seem to be one of the lucky ones who could make Jack Hershey's method work for them !

[brownsfan019 17]

6-1-09

 

 

New Month!

 

A decent start to the new month and a Monday.

 

Here's the real bitch of it though - missed some really nice setups on the ZB. Today was a day where I could have cleaned house on the ZB if I was ready and paying attention.

 

:doh:

[HAL9000 10]

It still seems to me, that I am making progress.

 

After a long period of time learning the theory, looking for indicators and setups,

I wasn't (and maybe still am not) able to trade them.

 

But what has changed recently?

I have modified my charts again, and I guess they look horrible,

for anyone else in here, but they tell me a story now.

 

While in hindsight I am able to find nice runners on them; but runners are not for me.

At least not now. The value in them for me is their short term meaning.

I see the noise inside a half wave.

 

Only that the emergency stop has to be placed out of it, so my emergency stop would have been 5 NQ points today. Yes at some point in time it will be hit, but it wasn't today.

I don't executed very well today, still my impatience, but when I entered, my focus was on avoiding losses, so I took them home, whenever there was no reason to hold them longer or my entry was too early.

So unlike taking many small (and big) stops in hope for runner (did that too often in the past moving my stop),

I took many small winners ...

 

So here is my paper trading day:

 

[Robert Joyce 10]

Outstanding Brownsfan and especially Mr Black. I had a tough time with the YM today. I couldn't trade when the markets opened and after all that sideways action I couldn't get a good read on my EMA's so I traded my sim again today. 11 trades of 2 ym contracts, 6 winners, 3 stopped/out at even, and 2 losers for my full 21 pt stop. So 4 of my winners were used up just to make up for the 2 losers. Hate it when that happens.... I ended up $205.

 

Mr. Black was 6 for 6 today I think.... I would appreciate some comments about how you relate volume to your 'price action' for an entry. I could see that you got most of your longs from consolidation points and pull backs to your 20EMA , but how does volume figure into it? Oh yeah and how did you decide to get long on that first trade @934.25?

[Robert Joyce 10]

Brownsfan, can you tell me something about how you decide to bail on certain trades. Today it looks as though you made a number of trades that you decided weren't going to reach your target exits, but great trade on the ZB, I assume that is a currency trade.

[Robert Joyce 10]

Hal9000, looks like you were similar to me looking for shorts all day. I would like to know how to get myself on the right side of things, or to put it another way how to lose ignore bias for the day. I call it 'bouncing ball' trading where one assumes what goes up must come down.... But not necessarily, like today. I strongly suspected that it would not pull back today, but I could not find the right mind set to get long..... except for a couple of trades. I am still trying to get over the real trading anxiety. Anyways Hal nice trading just the same... I am wondering though if you had stayed in many of those trades today would you have been stopped out?

[HAL9000 10]

Hal9000, looks like you were similar to me looking for shorts all day.

 

Hi Robert,

 

My problem today was, that I have missed the first nice long setup around bar 1270 on the attached chart. The low 50 regression band (red) 2 SD's from the center was just touched and then: up we go. But that's hindsight and I was just out of the room, and maybe I would not have acted.

 

My bias basically was long, but yes the first 3 trades were shorts, but dangerous (I knew it before).

Then it was somehow difficult to enter trades, because I make a break after I close a trade, and sometimes I just miss a good trade this way,

while (or because) the last one was badly executed from me.

 

But what seems to work for me is the use of a 50 (red) and 100 (green) linear regression with 2 SD bands. For timing a smoothed very quick CCI or stochastic.

 

I try to avoid counter trend trades now, but sometimes I dare it.

And sometimes my impatience kicks in ...

 

But the very basic idea is, if the regression line is rising; buy the lower band,

otherwise the upper band, and sometimes in chop, you can use both bands.

With just with one contract exit at the center. With more contracts, you have more options. But well, it sounds so easy, but sometimes I just don't follow my rules, and rollovers are difficult ...

 

My interpretation now is that a trend often leads to a price area that is then accepted for a period of time (chop). And then it might or might not go further up or fall down ...

 

Anyway, I still have to play with my pictures a little more. But as a side note, I think its good to just focus on the play, the execution, not on things like money.

 

 

P.S.: Doesn't this chart look horrible?

[HAL9000 10]

I am wondering though if you had stayed in many of those trades today would you have been stopped out?

 

The shorts surely would have been losers, and the longs maybe too.

 

The problem with the longs would have been the exit targets.

But it totally depends, lets say you enter late, so lets take my last trade long at 1476.75.

Now you hope for 1499 or just a new high, because it was up all day.

Hope: You sit in a trap. Stopped.

 

On the other hand, some longs would have been good for more, but ...

you have to make a decision. And for now + is +. And the next wave will come. Maybe with a not so nice result, maybe with an even better one.

 

Anyway, what killed me too often in the past, were too small stops or setting a trade to BE too fast. So first many small stops, and as result I capitulated and used larger stops and adjusted them to even larger stops (win back syndrome). Or in other words, finally I managed a loser, like I should manage a winner, just into the wrong direction.

Result: A very large loss!

 

:helloooo:

[HAL9000 10]

But the very basic idea is, if the regression line is rising; buy the lower band,

otherwise the upper band, and sometimes in chop, you can use both bands.

 

Sorry its late, and I can't edit it anymore, but it should read:

 

otherwise sell the upper band (in case the line is falling).

 

BTW. also interesting are crossings of the 50/100 centers. Often, but not always, that is the beginning of a rollover.

The 50 leads by definition, so the 100 tends to follow.