ElecEquity's Active Trading Journal

Quote from ElecEquity:

On the bright side my newest automated system (it's still in testing) had a great day and made $1700 (only 100 shares/position and it doesn't include commissions) hypothetical dollars. So I'm glad to see this thing continues to kick butt.
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What type of ATS are you running? Day Trading? Swing trading? What type of strategies? I understand if you don't want to share too much.

I've been working on a swing trading ATS myself but so far it is not profitable so I'm snooping around for some inspiration on how to improve its performance.
 
Today's results: -$383.28

Still getting to the office late...but on the bright side I finally feel back to normal! Finally feel able to fully resume my normal schedule and trade at my full capacity...glad I didn't lose too much money over the past few days. Nice that earnings are beginning to ramp up. Should be fun.

I'm going to be reviewing my most promising simulator's results tonight as we may be taking it live soon -- but the overall results aren't as good as I expected, but the results don't include loss limits for bad days so that should help a lot.

In my trading today I had a few really small winners...biggest one was 197.32..shows what I did today...

Biggest loser was in CREE & I dropped -$612.30 in it. This was a frustrating trade b/c I was short, then short again, then stopped out and then long then it tanked and it sucked for me...would've been a great short however.

Bottom line, I never function well getting to the office 2 minutes before the markets open. And I'll chalk it up to recovery from 6 or so straight days and nights of partying. I must be getting old. Later.
 
Quote from WarOnYou:

What type of ATS are you running? Day Trading? Swing trading? What type of strategies? I understand if you don't want to share too much.

I've been working on a swing trading ATS myself but so far it is not profitable so I'm snooping around for some inspiration on how to improve its performance.
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I have 2 that are presently running live and have been profitable for just over a year. All of my ATS' operate intraday. They focus on momentum. That's about all I can say about that. The one I have high hopes for also focuses on momentum intraday...but it's vastly different than my 2 live systems.

Why automate a swing trading strategy instead of just doing it manually? I know guys that swing trade full-time, they're not automated swing traders, but they do verrrrry well for themselves...so it is possible WarOnYou. If you have any questions that won't have me compromise my own automated trading, then I'll be happy to help as much as I can. Good luck.
 
Now that I'm feeling back to normal and I expect to be on time in the office today for the first time since last Tuesday (on time for me is about 1.5 hours before the market opens) I'm excited to trade. I'll be returning to trend trading actively if the market deems it worthy to do so. I'll be starting with 1k/position to get my feet wet again in this strategy. The fact is, there are always intraday breakout/breakdown opportunities despite the market's structure...especially now that earnings season is fast approaching. Earnings will also provide some great fading opportunities...but they can be dangerous as well, so be sure to manage your risk if you're new to the game of fading extremities.

This is a random link to an article on a great blog that I follow and it applies to trading/living and trusting your intuition: http://www.intheflowcoaching.com/blog/?p=488

Outlook:

The market is still in correction although there was some strong action in a few of the leading stocks. BIDU, SLV & GLD are a few notable stocks that broke out to new highs. For the first time in about a week, I'll get to go through IBD and create a watchlist for stocks that are setup to breakout or breakdown. Finally! I miss being productive. I may post some the stocks that I'll be watching once IBD's Thursday edition is released. Thanks.
 
Today's Results: -$363.49

A slow day for me. What a great week this has been. 4 straight down days...hmmm must mean that I'm due to be up tomorrow. The good thing is that one decent day should make up for all of these down days this week. Live ATS' did very well today on the bright side of things (+$3k). On to my discretionary trading.

Biggest Losers
EBIX -623
BIDU -358 (learned a lesson on this one today...sold 130.90s in case you're wondering)
ORCL - 356 (trading earnings)

Biggest Winners
ROK +391.36 (got long in the morning)
BBY +295.06 (got short in the morning for a really quick pop..this was a loser before the successful short)
SLW +246.12
TLT +182.40
ESV +128.36

I had no business losing money in EBIX. And that sums up my day. BIDU is still eating me up right now, it could've been a nice winner....I'll be saving and reviewing that chart tonight.
 
Today's Results -$1175.59

The life of a trader. Before this week, Idk how many up days in a row I had had -- only to experience 5 straight down days. At least none of them were too bad. I can't remember the last time I actually had 5 negative days in a row though. I guess it is what it is. I'm looking forward to next week! I have a lot of work to do this weekend and I actually began my work about 2 hours ago --- that's how slow it was today. Thanks for reading. Have a good weekend all!
 
I love watching this television show on BioHD called "I Survived". It's a show told in the first person by individuals that survive some of the most harrowing situations that I've ever heard of. If you've ever seen the show "I Shouldn't Be Alive", it's similar to that show, except that they show three different stories during one episode. At the end of each episode, the participants briefly explain why they think that they survived. The general themes are usually that they decided from the outset that they would survive no matter what and that God had a further plan for their lives. There are people in these accounts that do not survive because they're murdered brutally, or they freeze to death, or drown, but some die because they can't hold together mentally.

I think about those that survive and their mind-state during those harrowing experiences. I, of course relate their mentalities to the mentality that it takes to make it as a trader. The mentality and heart that it takes to recover from a drawdown, to get bigger when you know that you need to, to continue to figure out how the market has shifted when what you're doing no longer works --- overall, just the general mentality/heart that it takes to FIGHT. This business is for fighters. You can't just roll over. I don't know exactly what my inspiration was to write this...maybe just because I'm watching the show now with my girlfriend and thinking about trading tomorrow.

I'm currently watching "I Survived...Beyond & Back". I encourage everyone to watch this show if you don't believe in God. Amazing first-person accounts. I listen to Psalms 27 everyday before I arrive at the office. I just started doing this and it has helped me to go after what I know that I should be doing. Maybe it could help you out too.

Good trading tomorrow everyone. Later.

“Man can live about forty days without food, about three days without water, about eight minutes without air, but only for one second without hope.”
 
Today's Results: -$1889

All of a sudden I'm in a shitty 6 day losing streak. I'm considering taking the last few days of the month off right now or cutting my size down dramatically to finish the month strong. I don't remember the last time I had this many down days in a row. Today was kind of self-sabatoge-like frustration day. I forced a few trades going into the close and it was stupid and it cost me a lot of money.
 
The CNBC Biography on Ben and Jerry might be the most funniest business bio I've ever seen. Awesome story.

Ben's sinus troubles led to their awesome flavoring! Wow.
 
Looking over some of my trading stats from last week and this is what jumps out at me.

Gross/Share Shares Net Profit Median Price
_________ _____ ________ _______
Dn .15-.30 36,672 -3,935.91 50.17
Dn .30-.50 13,414 -2,489.31 59.32
Dn .50-$1 1,900 -688.09 43.00

It doesn't show up very well aligned here, but I basically need to cut out losers that are in .25-$1 range completely. Having losers this large, particularly during periods of low volatility, has never yielded great results for the style that I trade.

There is also a hypothetical stop report that says that if I cut all losers at .15 I would have saved myself $3037.23. That says a lot. Although the numbers are somewhat skewed, b/c the data cannot account for trades that went against >.15 before coming back in my favor, I know that I rarely take that much pain in most trades before at least cutting some of my position down -- so it's useful to a very large extent. So tomorrow, I'll be focusing on making sure that I make good trades and limit my losers to around $0.15. We'll see how that goes.

I'm working to get back into the flow that I had been in about 3 weeks ago. It was disrupted when one of my best friends came into town a week ago and I spent time having a lot of fun with him and focusing less on trading. I guess I'm paying the price for abandoning my discipline for week. Live and learn.
 
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