Aphie's REAL Trading Journal

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Originally posted by aphexcoil


The daily range lately has sucked. All of the movement has occured afterhours.

The market is "weird" to me lately so I'm sitting the rest of this week out and goign over each of my trades this weekend and asking myself why the hell I took each of them.

This fly-by-night trading has got to end. I told myself I was done for the day and then I started messing around with YM, where I turned a $60 day into a $150 loss.

you have to wait for your pitch...don't force it....
good luck.
 
Originally posted by Tech Analysis
Aphie -

I lost over 8 grand on a 15k account when I first started trading, and that was w/out even touching the futures. Just daytrading stocks. I was a cowboy who knew everything and read all the books first. Then I took off a few weeks and learned the ropes, then came back slowly with slow trades before I dared step back into the daytrade arena.

Your 500.00 "tuition" is cheap by comparison.

Wait out this unusual volatility and hit the daily charts for awhile.

You're too strung up right now; asking for stress mgmt after one day was the key. Realx and take it slow.

Before I started, I told myself the emotions wouldn't get to me. Then, when I'm in a position like ES and it starts going against me, my stomach wraps up, my heart starts pounding and I feel like screaming like a little French girl.

I obviously underestimated the psychological ramifications of trading with real money by a factor of 100x.

10% of my account in two days. WOW.
 
playing a mkt maker in the YM is fun but can be really deadly if all the bids disapear under you. then watch out:eek:
if you want, you could try to swing trade the dow using the YJ i think thats the $2 multiplier. that might not be that rough, but dont do it this week, its crazy! wait till things calm down a bit, but even then a 50 point swing in the dow and you might get nervous. Just do 100 shares of something intra day and pick your shots carefully, you'll have 3 days a week - thats it!
 
Originally posted by janko
playing a mkt maker in the YM is fun but can be really deadly if all the bids disapear under you. then watch out:eek:
if you want, you could try to swing trade the dow using the YJ i think thats the $2 multiplier. that might not be that rough, but dont do it this week, its crazy! wait till things calm down a bit, but even then a 50 point swing in the dow and you might get nervous. Just do 100 shares of something intra day and pick your shots carefully, you'll have 3 days a week - thats it!

Today I learned something new. An advanced trader may be able to use mental stops. However, a new trader better have hard stops to protect against the very thing that happened to me. I would have probably lost $100 less had I had a hard stop in place.

In fact, the thing was moving so fast that I was probably losing $10 a second.

Lessons Learned:

1) Don't be in the market before one of the largest US companies announces earnings afterhours.

2) If you are learning how to trade, don't pretend you're a market maker.

3) Use hard stops.
 
Originally posted by aphexcoil

10% of my account in two days. WOW.

That's nothing, just wait til you "try out" currencies! (kidding, don't even put them on ur screen). :)

Seriously though, catman is right -- unless you're just trading as a hobby to pass the time, there's really nothing to be gained in posting every trade here. If anything, use this forum to just blow off some steam at the end of the day and we can all sympathize with you -- we've all been there before. Or use it to keep a record of your thoughts and resolutions so you can go back over them and learn from mistakes.
 
Originally posted by aphexcoil


Before I started, I told myself the emotions wouldn't get to me. Then, when I'm in a position like ES and it starts going against me, my stomach wraps up, my heart starts pounding and I feel like screaming like a little French girl.

I obviously underestimated the psychological ramifications of trading with real money by a factor of 100x.

10% of my account in two days. WOW.

Be really careful with this, it will make you to do everything wrong and I mean everything. You gotta have a plan and stick to it no matter what. If you don't have one do not trade.
 
Alphie,

The mini's are not as "mini" and "cute" as most brokers pawn them off as.

They can turn evil real fast, and bite u in the a$$.

:D
 
Originally posted by aphexcoil
I took a short position in YM at 4:15 or so and got creamed for $200 when MSFT released their earnings report.

What happened to:

"I am done trading for the day."

"I have one "daytrade" remaining (Thank you SEC)."


You're like a coke fiend who knocks off for the night with one gram left.

In any event, be glad the education curve wasn't on the order of $10K. Make a dozen or so more ET posts before jammy time and you'll feel better.

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
 
Originally posted by Tech Analysis
This week has been murder for the daytrader. 25-point gaps up then 10-point rangebound days. And as an overnighter you don't know what the hell will happen tomorrow. Up 250 then down 200. Typical earnings week. Put up a multi-day 5-minute chart of the indices and it looks like a friggin' square wave: straight up, flat, straight down, flat etc. Next week will probably be the same shit since there's a lot of heavy earnings out too.

murder for one person is heaven for another.

Robert
 
Originally posted by aphexcoil
janko,

Thank you. You are absolutely right. Every one of my trades in QQQ and SPY were profitable -- all three of them. I made one profitable trade in ES today and my first YM was a $20 profit. It was around 4:00pm and I was taking advantage of the spread by kind of making my own little market with YM.

I thought, "Hey, this is cool, the spread is kind of wide so if someone hits me while I'm sitting at the ask, I can go undercut the bid and make a few dollars -- it's nice and calm here"


A wide spread is usually like that for a reason.

Robert
 
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