My Learning Log

[hgalek 10]

Note: I'm not particularly sure where to put this. It's not a trading log, as most of the charts I'll be posting are sim days, I'm still a newbie, I rely solely on technical analysis, specifically price action that could be considered VSA at a stretch depending on the day and how obvious the volume is. I apologize if I've posted this in the wrong section.

 

I'm a young bro with a full time schedule who loves trading. I built a fairly solid account using options after 2008, but realized that it was a lot of luck after a few rough losses that I honestly couldn't figure out. The last several months I've been working on figuring out how to really understand what I see in a chart, how I trade best, and where my weaknesses are. I haven't had a lot of time between work and school, but I'm making a concerted effort to reign it back in and refocus everything. I rarely have time to trade during the day, so the charts will be predominantly random sim trades, or just annotated historical charts. I should specify.

 

I'll be posting charts with annotations- either notes on patterns, notes on things that I feel are worth keeping an eye out, general observations, or notes about what was running through my head. The charts will either be from ToS or TradingSim. Some of the annotations may have a few vulgarities, or may just be completely unintelligible without additional notes. If there are any concerns or questions, please ask.

 

I'm looking for feedback, notes on any biases, flaws, misattributions, observed failures or weaknesses, as well as anything else that you feel may be constructive. I'm open minded, and generally well read on the material.

 

My trading:

-Stocks only

-Discretionary, based on price action, a bastardized form of VSA, and a nebulous "feel" that I'm working hard to define in concrete terms in order to remove ambiguity from my trading.

-I use 15 minutes charts as I've found that I perform best when using them. Multi-timeframe analysis hasn't helped when I've tried it, but I'm open to giving it another go.

-I don't like holding overnight because my mind won't leave the market if I have a trade open overnight.

-I don't examine overnight bars as they currently generate a lot of "noise" for me. I'm willing to give them another shot as well.

-I use stops to keep myself from holding out on trades that I don't belong in, and move the stops by hand regularly to areas of perceived support and resistance.

-I don't use price targets for exits (I'm very much looking for input on this one). I can see them with S/R, gaps, pivots, etc. but I don't like using them. I don't like to close a trade because I've found that I'm much more likely to ride a big move when I let them be. I'll tighten my stops if I'm sketched out at a "target" area, but that's it. The plus side of this is that it allows me to catch some wicked movement when things go big, but it also bites in to my profits a bit when the day only moves a percent or two, and instead of retracing a bit to a perceived area of support, it just turns on me. I need to run the math on which puts me in a better position.

 

Perceived strengths:

-I'm very critical of my thought process, but able to be constructive rather than destructive.

-I don't get trader gut when I open a trade during the trading day or when a trade moves against (this is with money trades, not just paper trades).

-Entries and movement in a bullish market normally make sense and make themselves apparent quickly, and I've got a solid "feel" for up days (not which days are going to be up, but how the market is moving when it does go up if that makes any sense). Once again, the "feel" should hopefully get more fleshed out as I post, examine, and receive feedback.

-I respect my stops.

-I don't normally feel the need to "fix" a failed trade with another.

-I don't over trade as far as I know.

-I've experienced losses in hard money

-I can step back from the market without feeling withdrawal

-I'm don't trade share sizes that are too large for me to handle comfortably

 

Perceived weaknesses:

-I'm bad with down days. They don't move like at all like up days, and I don't have a ton of experience working with them. I'm fixing that now, but they're still unnatural feeling to me. For the sake of experimentation I turned my laptop upside down to see if it was just a visual orientation issue, and traded a few down days, but the movement itself appears to be the problem. I also continually look for bullish reversals on down days, and it biases me, killing the objectivity when looking at the chart. There's a lot of hindsight facepalming that doesn't happen on up days for me.

-Because I don't use price targets, it's difficult to quantify R/R ratios.

-I don't always anticipate a move early enough to keep my risk as minimal as it should be.

-I'm not great at using the previous day's action and the longer term trend to anticipate market action. I don't know if this is a good thing, as it keeps me unbiased, or if I'm hamstringing myself.

-I'm still not always sure of what I'm looking when I'm examining the price action. Some days still leave me guessing or scratching my head.

 

 

I look forward to posting charts and hearing yall's feedback. Thanks for your time!

[hgalek 10]

This first one is a question about a trade that I didn't take. I'm a firm believer in somatic markers as a part of trading, but I've also had it pounded in to me that I need to have a concrete reason that my gut is getting signals.

 

I had a really strong "gut" feeling at the open that it was a position to go long on, and found a reasonable stop. I couldn't figure out the exact details beyond it being so close to support and the previous bar was a doji (not uncommon for the last 15 minute bar of the day), so that casted some doubt on me taking the position, especially because that opening bar was only a few minutes in, and morning can be fidgety. I then took the next step and looked for any reason that I might be wrong, and found what looked to be a pretty solid head and shoulders, casting further doubt. I don't trade H&S patterns, so I didn't go short either, but it was enough to put me on the sidelines instead of taking a trade with a pretty small relative risk.

 

My questions are threefold:

a) Does anyone else see it as a solid long, and if so, why?

b) Is that actually a head and shoulders?

b) Is there anything in the history of the chart that indicated it was about to jump like that? I'm still getting the relevance of the previous days and longer time frames sorted out.

 

The moment where I was trying to make the decision

 

The move

 

Hourly chart