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

[futurescat]

12/28 THU

2nd last trading session of the year. another small range-bound TRD.
i did not find many safe trades from my small playbook in emini today, unfortunately, mostly practiced type-2 playbook trade entry in stocks, tests went well.
the broker with whom I have my training account had a major service outage in the PM--they would fill orders without updating positions in their system, resulting in failures to close out opened positions--a risk i hadn't planned for in the past but something to be mindful about.

will likely take off early tomorrow, busy weekend ahead. EoM EoY isn't my favorite time to trade in any case. happy new year to all!

5m es

^started some time last week, i ran a screen on single stock markets in the dow/nq/spx/r2k universe to find markets suitable for my playbook trade types. each day, i have been able to identify at least one such decent and tradable market in real time (tradable == acceptable liquidity and spreads), usually two.

 

[futurescat]

12/29 FRI

Backfilling journal entry. (had an amazing New Year's)

es 5m

 

[futurescat]

01/02 TUE

the good: type-2 system continues to test well in field. since tightening up a few parameters, the opps that filter through appear to be of better quality.
the bad: sometimes feel rushed to multi-task--filtering opps in real time, monitoring multiple markets, constantly making decisions-- focus muscle is strained; several PA-based trades I may have taken in the past are no-go's for now, because they are not "in the playbook" <-- not necessarily a big con, but if it happened to be a great trade, it still caused pain

goal for the first 3 months of 2024-- dial in a recipe for the type-2 system because it is the one I am most comfortable trading (I was far from having a concrete 'recipe' before, for lack of specific measurements, parameterization, and all that; execution management rules are not systematic enough either).

side note--my workload is going up in 2024. I will have to choose between less trading-related work and losing some sleep (a tough compromise personally). unfortunately haven't made up my mind yet.

es 5m

^tbh in real-time today I was looking at nq most of the time, a bit better structure and clearer directional bias imo

 

[futurescat]

01/03 WED

No report today. Doing deep work tonight.
General comment-- trading range Z day for the most part as planned. odds of trendier PA in the next two sessions may be improving. HTF shifting into more TR regime.

 

[futurescat]

01/04 THU

lots of opps*, at least earlier today the top of the opportunity funnel was too full for me to manage effectively. not all of them converted and I wasted bandwidth here and there. lessons learned.
*since mid-December last year (a little more than two months into this journaling exercise), I have been dedicating more energy and time to developing a particular 60m system I like to apply in single stock markets. on some days when the occasion arises, i may see a lot of tradable markets setting up. i still monitor es/nq, as well as using 5m to find earlier/better-located entries.
i like this system as it is a simple model, has reliable and predictable behaviors, tests well in sample/out of sample, and brings at least one good opp per session. in practicing executing this system, i am also internalizing more nuanced PA lessons that were only paper knowledge before. but finding the right market can be like looking for needles in a haystack. challenging and very frustrating at times. on the flip side, opps are always setting up somewhere in es/nq, as long as one applies the right market model for the session. it's either easy markets that are hard to find, or es. no getting out of jail free card for this newbie at this point. nevertheless, i do believe i am making daily progress dialing in my search process.

good trading all. i am taking this first nfp of 2024 off to catch up on other work related stuff.

nq 5m

 

[futurescat]

01/05 FRI

happy friday, traders and all. took today off, I'll wrap the week up with a quick summary of some takeaways from the first week of 2024

if I find time this weekend, i'd share chart markups and or plans for the coming week. they say there is a big winter storm coming though. i suspect I will be busy shoveling myself out over the weekend haha

 

[futurescat]

01/08 MON

Not a lot of comments on the index today -- strong trend day, no bar below 20ema etc. Exited all of my trades too early today. Scalped where I should have swung, etc etc.

my daily process after the market close was a wreck. overwhelmed with work and the amount of documentation/testing I wanted to do for trading systems, I ended up getting little done in either. every time I bit off more than I could chew the same thing happened. when am I going to learn? tomorrow I will treat my calendar with a more realistic touch [fingers crossed]. also, work comes first...

es 5m

 

[futurescat]

0109 TUE

decent day
what worked--read the market ok, read relative strengths well, adhered to systems, and managed execution very well. <-- really need to template today's process flow
what did not--time management after market close, self-inflicted brain fry (product of poor prioritization, overbooking myself)


5m es

^i go through a lot of similarly structured trigger-pullback cycle analysis on various TF each session. it is becoming a staple.

 

[futurescat]

0110 WED

Not too many my kind of opportunities showed up today.

what worked today--PA (reading relative strength between the two sides kept me out of trouble, internals), 60m channel real time analysis, time of day functions, more productive after market close today;

what didn't work--open drive sector search function (today's 'sector' was index/large-cap generals, overlooked this category; cyber was ok, but 'open' spike came in the 2nd 60m bar which is a borderline case); I didn't force myself to go long in the 5th 60m bar even though I should as PA was setting up (I reasoned there's no way I can short there for obvious reasons, but I didn't like the first 4 60m bars bc small nonuniform bull bodies and I didn't like the location; in hindsight, the market was closer to test key level/stops above at that time, and it was still a valid long even after b57 bo above, the opportunity cost was big enough and selling pressure was too sorely lacking for me to sit on hands perhaps)

5m es

 

[futurescat]

0111 THU

no trades today. waiting for a 120m trade setup to mature--tomorrow and or next week.
there weren't many great system trades for me today mostly because of timescale (mis)alignment. one trade the system would have taken is long index after b39. one requirement of that trade is a pair of qualifying bull bodies functioning as signals--b10(11-13) and b28(29-33) sufficed. but they were in such a steep down bear channel, i didn't know what to do with them. because it wasn't a variant i had specifically tested and i worried that factor may be significant.

what worked today--PA read and cycle model analysis (I know exactly what I would have done a month or so ago, I would have looked for bo pb short somewhere in the bull reversal leg only to be stuck), 60m/120m cycle analysis, sector search function (degree of sector correlation flags stock day vs index day; timescale flags type-1 vs type-2 system);

what didn't work--as explained above, long index after b39 is one acceptable system trade I did not take today (even if I was in, i'd have most likely gotten out after b54 or even before as target would be around b12-14 trap area)

es 5m