Accountability, Patience, and Endurance

[wjrusnak 10]

I decided to get this thing going. If you aren't familiar with myself or my strategy, I'll give a brief summary. I've been trading for a little over a year now and have been sitting at break-even status. With stocks and futures, I've gained a nice amount of money, gave it back, gained it back, and gave it back... you get the idea. I've been through many of the indicator strategies and read more trading material than any of my assigned reading for school this year. In retrospect, I am blessed to be at break-even, as I still remain learner of this market.

 

Honestly though, no matter what strategy you choose, most of the trading comes down to your psychology anyway. Even though I really only started trading futures according to price action and Wyckoff principles beginning this year, my training started last summer when I was mindlessly picking stocks that "seemed like good companies". In that light, I've progressed immensely. Believe me.

 

Why the log then? This is part of the psychology part. Being able to day-trade has led me down another treacherous path. I find myself over-thinking, becoming fearful of losses, and most deadly, over-reacting. All of this leads to over-trading, more stop outs that one could imagine, and cutting profits so short that I am sometimes barely a scalper. Once you lose faith in your entry, you'll exit at any profitable chance, even if that is $10, only to find that had you trusted your stop, you'd have made your week in profits. Anyway, I'm sure you'll get a feeling of what I'm going through as you observe my charts.

 

I'm going to post individual charts with as much detail as possible in order for the reader to understand why I placed a trade. That is the ultimate goal here: to define the "why" of the trade and to be accountable for it.

 

And so we begin... (RED ARROW = SELL; WHITE ARROW = BUY)

 

 

Even though this trade went sour, I am fully satisfied with my judgment here. 1480 was an interesting level in the past few days, so I expected a reaction there.

 

 

Both of these trades are decent after reviewing. 8780 was also an area of interest (basing this off larger TF charts), so I again expected some reaction here. When there was hesitation at previous intraday resistance, I decided to take the short. That second trade would have been extremely hard to catch, so I really just missed it and that's all I can so about it.

 

Any insight is greatly appreciated. Especially from those who are on this price action/Wyckoff path with myself.

 

-- Bill

[Head2k 10]

I guess you are not timing your entries on 1m chart, so posting a 5s (or whatever you use) could be helpful too, especially to find out why some of your entries are premature.

 

As for the first YM trade, I think you need to define which trend (scale) is relevant for your trade. You say the trend is down, in fact. Which trend? The one marked with the long violet trend line? If so, then ask yourself where is your entry in this trend. Fine, it is near the trend line, but on a retest of it after a failure to make a lower low (14:30 vs. 10:15).

If you mean the trend marked with the shorter violet trend line, that one is clearly broken and a trend of that scale is clearly up at the time of your entry (the turquoise demand line).

 

As a side note, don't you have troubles reading dark blue volume histogram on a black background, or is it just me?

[wjrusnak 10]

I guess you are not timing your entries on 1m chart, so posting a 5s (or whatever you use) could be helpful too, especially to find out why some of your entries are premature.

 

Generally I watch the setup on 1m and get ready to enter by watching a 1 tick. I'll consider posting "zoomed" areas of my entries.

 

As for the first YM trade, I think you need to define which trend (scale) is relevant for your trade. You say the trend is down, in fact. Which trend? The one marked with the long violet trend line? If so, then ask yourself where is your entry in this trend. Fine, it is near the trend line, but on a retest of it after a failure to make a lower low (14:30 vs. 10:15).

If you mean the trend marked with the shorter violet trend line, that one is clearly broken and a trend of that scale is clearly up at the time of your entry (the turquoise demand line).

 

You're right. This was a macroscaled generalization of the day. I failed to consider the fact that the down trend was fairly weak. In that light, I was trading counter-trend and trying to justify the trades. In reality, I missed the reversal to the up side and was trying to catch the next reversal to the downside.

 

As a side note, don't you have troubles reading dark blue volume histogram on a black background, or is it just me?

 

In this case, only for the dotted points of R. It shows up more clearly on my screen, but yes they are troublesome. I should probably just switch to the white background/black price theme for ease of viewing.

 

Anyway, thanks for the input. This is what I need.

 

-- Bill

[wjrusnak 10]

Only one trade today, which ended up at break even (+1YM point).

 

As you see in the 60 min chart the YM was following a nice down channel in which it was right at the top. In addition to that, it was the top of an up channel (on 1min chart) as well as sitting at 8694, which I had marked as a point of R. After price failed at 8692 on my 3 tick chart, I entered 8690.00 and my stop was initially at 86.94. I moved the stop to b/e after price moved in my favor for about 7-8 ticks. Soon after my stop was hit and then the enormous afternoon rally began, which ran through the R (8750) I had marked on my chart. The final line, drawn at 8820, was put there after the fact, so it wasn't a prior level of R that I was looking at.

 

Fortunately, I sat tight and watched the rally, not attempting my usual "short and stop-out" the entire way up.

 

[jonbig04 10]

Kudos for starting the journal!

 

I took the same short (different markets though). Price had other ideas it seems. Nice job on not chasing it.

[wjrusnak 10]

I followed my rules today on all entries, so I wasn't entirely disappointed in this day, but it ended up at -11 YM points (2 stop-outs and 1 break-even). What I was disappointed in were the red circles that I have painted below. These trades are ones that met my qualifications (especially since they were with the overall trend), but I failed to take them. The middle circle was especially disappointing since I had no reason not to take that trade since I took the short (that was stopped to the tick) a few minutes before it. These three opportunities were missed due to fear and hesitation. As mentioned in the CouldWouldaShoulda thread yesterday, I would be the first to admit when I was psychologically unable to make trades. Here were three examples in one day.

 

[wjrusnak 10]

And I'll add these last two trades here... a break-even and another stop. Sticking to the plan was the key today, with exception of the misses above. Possibly today's issue was sticking with the trend. The trades I took were definitely counter-trend in a few cases. The ones I missed were all with the trend. Something for me to ponder...

 

[wjrusnak 10]

Better Day. At least made up for my losses and came out with a bit of profit for the day. Trades were pretty straight forward and as described below, one was a regrettable trade (logging it helps to prevent future occurrences).

 

[wjrusnak 10]

I wanted to take the time here to analyze what I found to be a lesson in flexibility. DBPheonix has written in a number of threads about this very subject and I didn't realize this was a perfect example until I didn't take a short at certain levels today.

 

 

In the above chart, I did not add the 8435 level until this evening. This level would most likely have gave me a better indication to take a short had I been aware of its presence.

 

 

Anyway, I took the break of 8495. In trade #1, I would have closed the trade for ~+15 profit had I been aware of 8470, as indicated above (instead of my target of 60). Trade #2 and #3 were according to plan and #3 was closed simply due to the fact that it just wouldn't push any lower before 4:15pm.

 

Also, I think for both situations (short and long), I exemplified the importance of "looking left" as I read in one of the Wyckoff threads earlier. Had I done this in both situations, I probably would have had a more successful day.

 

I'm finding some difficulties in marking levels. I don't want my charts to look like a striped shirt, but today that almost would have helped. Above you can see that I was dead on about 8420 and had I been there in the morning I would have had a good shot for a long. As for those upper levels though, I had a bit of trouble identifying them and it definitely threw off my judgment. Flexibility (do I need to stretch...yoga)? [cheezy...]

[wjrusnak 10]

Today made up for the week. Ended with +20 YM Points on Tradestation and -1.25 NQ points on Ninja. That leaves me with a whopping $25 profit for the week. Even so... its profit!

 

The main thing this week is that in 95% of my trades, I stuck to the plan. I did miss a few good points and I took one trade I shouldn't have, but overall it did not hinder my performance. I also became more flexible around levels, as I should be. Doing that helped a lot, not only with entries, but with psychology. I wasn't baffled today when the YM pushed above the level I wanted to short, only to fall soon after. In other words, I let the market do its thing and "went with it". I got the entry later and profited from it.

[jonbig04 10]

Have you considered taking multiple times frames into account? I find it very helpful especially in determining levels.

 

ps you can see what I do with my Friday nights lol :missy:

[jonbig04 10]

Also I would like to commend you for trading while pursuing med school. I know trading, and I'm sure your classes, take up a lot of mental energy and I think its awesome you're devoting so much of it to some tough goals. Keep at it and I'm sure you will have the world in the palm of your hand at a very young age. After all, thats why we're doing all this anyway right?