2013 [P&L journal]

I guess I'll explain...

I stopped posting because when the owners of this site were dicking around with the new look, I lost a bunch of posts... therefore it's unreliable to put my thoughts here so I can review them. Amway, I don't think there is anything new for me to learn in trading from journaling. I just need the screen-time. Journaling simply helps reflect on ones mind's eye.

I started trading 3 contracts this month, because trading one is really boring to me. 1 contract is just so little money, it's not exciting at all for me. Also, my trades come around less frequently now, because I use a filter based on longer/larger time periods.

I would post screenshots of my trades, but to be honest I don't want to give away what's taken 4+ (part-time) years for me to figure out as well as it is worth at the very least I'm sure 1M/year. the money I made this month is very very very small. The majority of the money I made was in 2 trades that I took this month could have been held on to for around 2 or 3 times what I took from them. I took them off before they hit four full points!!

I plan on returning for monthly updates only.
 

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The numbers seem to check out. Sorry for my skepticism. I was wrong.

Good luck with your trading. Be careful not to over-leverage.
 
Thank you for the reminder about leverage. Leverage is a problem only when you don't understand gambling.

I am sure I will always have enough money for the next X amount of trades according to my plan. At the moment, from real time trading exp, my average risk per trade is a few hundred dollars. With the probability and risk/reward ratios that I am seeing in real time trading at the moment, I think that is plenty small.

I am consistently making money at this point in time. I'm up around 1k for the year. The days that I don't make money, it's due to missing trades or being selective. Yesterday for example, I took one trade, lost around $300, and sat out the rest of the day. There was 1 other trade that fit all my criteria that would have made me positive for the day. I missed it/was being selective/was not paying attention.

Since using multiple time frames, there has maybe been one day that a small loss would have been acceptable. Every other day I have traded I should have made money. Of course it's not all that many days as I can't trade every day.
 
Part of the reason trading sucks part time is there are days you miss which will often make you a winner over time. Of course there are days that suck too (yesterday).

Yesterday I didn't trade at all. The good trades were the day before. Of course I was working that day. Still consistently making money. I'll post my month recap once I have my statement.
 
Well, the curve has finally changed slopes .... it's taken 4 years!

The only problem is the $ is insignificant. One of the big problems is missing days like yesterday (Friday). I also I cut some of my winners short as well as I haven't 100% defined the best exit. I scrapped the 4 points rule because I don't think I can make any money cutting trades at 4 points. In the future, when doing this full time, I will probably end up holding trades for several days. The days with narrow ranges don't hurt me any more now that I use long term time frames.

I have started trading 5 contracts with average risk of a few hundred to make 1k and often more.

I fucked up one of the last days I traded pretty hard.... I made $700 early in the day on cut it early because of some imagined resistance (could have made around $1400). Eager to make more I put on a second and lost around $600 late in the day.
 

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Day after day... week after week...I watch the same thing happen over and over... AND OVER....

For some reason I didn't trade today or yesterday on the edge I've been modifying since last June and have now proven over a small amount of trades. I wish there were a brain surgeon that could pinpoint the problem area of my brain and remove it. I just sat, watch them develop, and did nothing.

Anyway... today and yesterday I just wanted to make one trade according to plan. These trades ran 6-7 points for a risk of around 2-3 points each trading.

I heard a saying that applies to approaching women (but many things in life...): You hesitate, you masturbate. This goes for trading as well, except... You hesitate, you won't make money.

I'm typing this post in hopes of killing previous forms of me.
 
I frequently find myself thinking of a snowball analogy... it's a powerful one in my mind;

Imagine that you are hiding behind a large wall of snow. Someone is throwing snowballs at your wall, and your objective is to keep your wall as large as possible for maximum protection... If the wall is too small, you couldn’t avoid getting hit. But if the wall is massive, then you are probably not going to get hit. The size of your initial equity is a little like the size of the wall. In fact, you might consider your starting capital to be a wall of money that protects you. The more money you have ... the more protection you will have.

Now imagine that the person throwing snowballs at you has two different kinds of snowballs — white snowballs and black snowballs. White snowballs are a little like winning trades. They simply stick to the wall of snow and increase its size...Imagine that black snowballs dissolve snow and make a hole in the wall equivalent to their size. You might think of black snowballs as “anti-snow.” Thus, if a lot of black snowballs were thrown at the wall, it would soon disappear or at least have a lot of holes in it. Black snowballs are a lot like losing trades — they chip away at your wall of security...
More...

+$600 for this week on one trade. Should have been around $3,000+

I wrote in my trading plan I must take 1 trade per day to help kill the past version of myself.
 
Last week or so...

I had 3 down days in a row, which brought me back to my 8k starting balance for this year. Went over the trades and saw I was basically trading counter (major) trend, and could have easily posted gains those days had I been trading biased the opposite direction.

Sometimes (today), it feels like there is a conspiracy against me and my dreams..

Missed out on that 11 point run due to my platform mysteriously just cutting off around market open (830 my time). My internet was working...

Posted a gain regardless.

+$1,200
 
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