A Beginner's Price Action Trading Journal (mostly es, Al Brooks style)

[futurescat]

11/21 TUE

very meh day, small trading range day; better than BE but barely so.

i spent hours backtesting an idea after the market closed, lost track of time; will post my simple plan for tomorrow and not much else

simple plan

^i made the plan shortly after today's market close. now with new backtesting findings, I think the said high prob minor bull case may already be done based on time MM tgt.
rest of bull/bear case broadly stands. there is another follow-up bull case--if bears manage an open bo to below LoD and meet an MM tgt in the 2nd or 3rd 60m bar, and if PA shows climactic behavior and good reversal+ft setup, then bulls have a chance to turn it around into a 2nd and last 60m BO test, for a shot to reclaim the 60m ema.
--to keep it simple, the key for me to watch tomo is bo fight on the open (first 18 bars or so). today's unfilled open gap is not great for bulls. we'll see. LoD is def a level of interest.

^started adding cancelled/unfilled trades (purples) as well. lots of LO small scalps today. not great trading environment for my style.

 

[futurescat]

11/22 WED

not happy with my trading today. i know quickly after the fact what I did wrong but that doesn't prevent me from making unforced errors at least once. the only bright spot is pnl still green and better than Monday and tuesday.
having followed the market cycle framework for a while and backtested for a while, I must admit that I have been a bit sloppy reading deeply into PA bar-by-bar. in hindsight, I can always see how a purely PA-driven approach would have saved me from making some mistakes or gotten me into a desired trade sooner. otoh, without the cycle model, I know my plans wouldn't be nearly as clear to me and I would probably drown in information noises and lose focus so quickly in real time that I probably would not really benefit from a purely pA-driven approach net net.
a plan to resolve this conflict is to get more screen time, and get better at digesting PA in real time faster. main situations I want to avoid: PA reading adding noise and confusion; PA becoming a distraction from my plan logic; me favoring yesmen in PA when I am really overly attached to a trade premise.

btw happy thanksgiving

es 5m

^htf notes--the 60m cycle is being stretched out time axis wise. the market has been good at timing out follow-on pushes into the beginning of the next session. it is probable the 3rd push should come and complete this cycle. however, if holding overnight risk was difficult last night, it's even more so tonight given US thanksgiving holiday (futures will trade but NYSE on holiday)
^dailies and higher tf--odds are increasing that the market will BO above earlier year high made in july, deeper BO PBs may come afterwards, but it is also increasingly more probable the recent gap on dailies that created the island bottom will become a midway gap, and can send the market to test ath

 

[futurescat]

11/24 FRI

I took today off (placed one LO to scalp short in B14, not filled, and then I basically signed off afterward). Recent history suggests the shortened Friday trading session after Thanksgiving is often a light and small day. Not sure how reliable this stats is though. I did spend some brief moments watching the markets in the morning. I thought the moves in GC was the most clean and reasonable (successive BO PB then BO attempt, following constructive PA setups).

Super busy weekend ahead. looking forward to next week--end of month, GDP, pce, should be a more interesting week!

 

[futurescat]

11/27 MON

Market felt as though it was still on holiday. Sleepy cyber Monday, small TRD. I was forcing trades and executed very poorly. While reviewing, my takeaway was that the trade logic wasn't terrible, but my management certainly was. each trade idea materialized to some degree (they have to be somewhat reasonable that a curious market gave it a shot). Problem was I was stubbornly holding part swings even as new PA information clearly told a TRD story.

I trade small, especially on Mondays when I don't feel quite there yet. That's about the one thing that went well today.

5m es

^quick planning thoughts--market is coiling tightly into BOM on 60m scale. am watching 3 dip buy scales (4520, 4503-00, 4490ish) if pb occurs and PA is right ofc
^some nanosecond scalp trades on 5m scale don't care (eg. dt db on the open, usually as part of a 5-tr cycle if it happens to fall on the open)

 

[futurescat]

11/28 TUE

(posted 11/29. did not hit post reply button the night before lol)

Not a great day. The high-level plan covered today's scenario however I couldn't execute well. One big problem was I had other stuff on my mind Monday and Tuesday. I wasn't able to fully concentrate before B54. Afterward, I felt compelled to make up for it but the game plan for "garbage time" was not solid and trading became sloppy, breaking my own rules left and right.

Note to self--I must concentrate between B7 and B54.

5m es

some near term (~day or 2) planning thoughts: bulls not maintaining swing high BO cadence, partly attributed to thanksgiving holiday break timing, partly, end of month shyness perhaps. dailies still have healthy bullish characteristics, without serious and heavy bear hits, PBs should be absorbed.

 

[futurescat]

11/29 WED

was finally able to concentrate today. pnl a little better as a result. i probably used up most of my focus capital. have just enough energy to post two slide markups.

5m es

^what was most interesting to me today was there were a few places where I got stuck debating scenarios in my trade plan--i thought the cases for either bull/bear were 50-50 and it was a frustrating moment for me. in hindsight, there were ways for me to deal with it, eg a 50% prob with a >1R risk profile is good. or I could have picked up subtle PA clues as to why probabilities were more imbalanced than I had anticipated. around B18-19 BO area for example, it was a straddle situation for me--i didn't think of how best to implement my view at the time.

 

[futurescat]

11/30

EOM. An interesting day. Weak bear channel first half day; the market eventually found itself more stuck-short before the final hours of November and resolved upward into a late-day reversal/month-end covering rally.

I took the PM (after B54~) off as I didn't have good experience trading the final hours on EoM before. It's the best EoM day in the last three months (not much to show before that either)

No markups today unfortunately. Hit with a pretty bad case of vertigo since dinner and couldn't stare at the screen any more. Hopefully should be over by tomorrow morning.

 

[longandshort]

What’s your cumulative pnl so far? You started on Oct 9th right?

 

[futurescat]

making up for missing elements in journal entry 11/30 THU

es 5m

hi, @longandshort -- thanks for the question. my cumulative pnl is close to BE since Oct 9th, ugh

because it's friday, I'll throw in more details for entertainment:
* I trade in my training account--it's equities, no leverage, and long only. My plan was, to only trade etf products in the first 6 months. for es, that is a lot of spy or spxl spxu (not great tracking down at very small timeframes IME, but not so bad it hurts pnl)
* I have been quite inconsistent with my position sizes. ranging from 1-500 shares (of the etf products mentioned above) but never bigger than the equivalent of 1 micro es. i wasn't going to be too obsessed with size optimization before I figure out my "edge" so to speak.
* I have longer-term investment holdings in the "training" account so to get the exact number each day I have to manually calculate the part associated with my active trading. I take a snapshot of trading activities each day for my record. example of yesterday's record below. at the end of each day, i have a rough idea of whether it's a net green/red day but often i don't bother to run the exact numbers. my size is so minuscule most of the times, it is not material in any way (e.g yesterday, i had to calculate this by hand lol, i made 30-something cents, at about 1/100th or 1/1000th the size of 1 /mes in each trade)

I was listening to this guy from smb capital who said to not have any pnl expectations in the first 8 months. That's for those enlisted in a structured and guided prop shop training program.

anyway, my goal is to keep an online partial copy of my trading/learning journal, and to provide some entertainment value to fellow traders. I'm self-conscious about posting those embarrassing details, but in my defense, I'm still new. if by the grace of God i somehow managed to pull this trading thing off (consistency, solid process etc) i'd love to level up, learn to size up, and share more meaningful performance metrics as I'm sure that's what most are looking for in other's journals. before i have my process down, that won't happen.

have a good weekend all!

 

[ironchef]

making up for missing elements in journal entry 11/30 THU

es 5m
View attachment 328634

View attachment 328635

I was listening to this guy from smb capital who said to not have any pnl expectations in the first 8 months. That's for those enlisted in a structured and guided prop shop training program.
have a good weekend all!

I am amateur retail, these are opinions & observations, not trying to give you advice:

1. In your chart, the first quarter and last quarter PA are what I look for and very tradable. The middle two sections are not tradable. How do I know in real time? I don't know that but if I were in I would know.

2. The smb guy is wrong. If your system works, it should produce profit right from the start, if not, you go back to paper (or backtest), adjust your model until it is profitable. Go live again, if not profitable go back to paper and adjust....

3. If after a couple of months it is not working, you know there is a fundamental issue with the model. Don't keep beating a dead horse. Go back to the drawing board.

4. You have been trading for 2 months, essentially BE => random??? If it were me, I review my model now. Why I said that? Been there done that.

Merry Christmas & a profitable new year to you.