I missed the first hour and a half of trading today. I came back and felt rushed, like I needed to make up for the morning. It was a tough day. Unfortunately (maybe fortunately?), I didn't see any clear signals after I got settled in.
Trade A: Seemed like the premarket was in a sideways range. Here at A you have a failed breakout of the recent highs AND a second failed breakout of the opening bar. The entry would be at the low of the big doji. The reason is because you are basically shorting at the top of the range so you're looking for it to break back down through to the bottom of the range. In this case, it did, and it continued down further. My only problem was that the EMA was right down below. Cross-referencing off the 1min looks like it would have been a faster mover.
Trade B: Bounce off the EMA into a shooting star. I didn't like this one that much because you had strong support just before and a strong move up on the previous bar.
Trade C: Here was a second entry short with another shooting star, lower high. I had just sat down prior to this bar closing, but I didn't really have a chance to look at the chart and see what was going on so I decided to stay away because I didn't want to feel rushed. I wanted to get myself settled in first. In the case of this trade, if I would have taken it, I would have gotten entered into the trade and then a 10 tick stop would have been hit. This is a good reminder that you really do need to have a survivable stop. A 15 tick stop would have been alright, but you would have taken a lot of heat on this trade. Another problem was that it just seemed "barb-wirey." I'd say it definitely looks like it's going down because of the second entry short signal, but not before giving you some trouble.
Trade D: This had the looks of a shooting star lower high. You would not have been entered into the trade.
Trade E: This trade is based off a break of 86.44, so you'd want to go long at 86.45. 86.44 was a double top area of resistance, which the B bar was the first top. It went up 12 ticks from your entry so you'd definitely want to lock in the trade at +1. If you didn't play the hard target at +11, you'd get at least +1.
Trade F: There was sort of 2 entries here, but this one wasn't as clear to me. The first would be buying the break of the previous bar since it was above the EMA or you could buy the previous pivot high looking for another breakout. You'd have to play this one quickly to get +1. Like I said, it's not as clear to me.
Trade G: Another buy of the break of the previous pivot high in an apparent uptrend. You're getting closer to some more resistance so you'd have to play it tightly. You could get either +1 or +11 on this if you were taking hard targets. You could also maybe buy the break of the previous bar looking for it to break the high of the bar prior to that, like getting in early.
Total: 0
Monthly Total: -53.5
I'm going to be very conservative on the Trade A profits and I'm also counting all of the trades into this next total.
hTotal: -0 (6 trades, 4W/2L) (would have taken a small loss based on my commissions, but it was only a few cents. I am rounding up.)
Monthly hTotal: +68.5 (23 trades, 15W/8L)
Overall, I just felt rushed today. I had to miss the early part of trading because I had to go out. Coming back to a short trading day made it feel like I was playing catch up. Maybe it was just a good thing that today's trading didn't have many clear signals as I would have probably regretted the fact that I felt like I was just jumping into trades without being fully in the zone.
I'm still working on these breakout trades. I don't really consider myself a breakout trader. I think I am more of a momentum trader given how I look for signals. I guess you could throw the idea of momentum trading into breakout trading looking for those extra orders at the extremes to give you momentum to manage your trades. Maybe that is why I have started to look at those types of trades.
Over the weekend I took a look at having 15 tick stops. I'm a little hesitant although I understand that 15 ticks most likely gives me more survivable stops and gives the trades a chance to breathe. I've been thinking about the behavior of CL and how it moves and I think I have started to see somewhat of a pattern. I don't exactly know how to put it into words yet, so I think I'm going to hold off before I go into a big, long wall of text that would put you guys to sleep while I try to explain what it is I'm thinking.
I also finished reading "Your Money & Your Brain" by Jason Zweig. It's a very scientific book, but it's dumbed down so that you don't feel like you're reading a text book. It's really an easy read, but sometimes when I would get into reading the scientific words my mind would end up wandering away. It didn't have a ton of points that struck me as a new idea. Also, I don't know what the deal is, but I've been reading so much over the years that I started to recognize some of what he said in reading other things in the past.
I don't know what I'm going to get into reading next, but I might just take a break to hopefully clear my head. If you really want to know how much I've read in the last couple of months, I suppose I shall write it here, and this is since July when I first started trading in sim:
The Disciplined Trader
Trading in the Zone x3
Brooks's Bar-by-bar x1.5
The Black Swan
Your Money & Your Brain
Started reading The Poker Face of Wall Street
Read a few more pages of The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Read half of Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
Read the majority of 2 annual reports and a small part of 3 other annual reports
Read the first chapter of Devil Take the Hindmost
Tried to start reading Intermarket Technical Analysis
Read one of the recent months of the magazine Fast Company
and I read some financial news every now and then.
Maybe that isn't as much as some people, but I think my brain is going into burn out mode.
So anyways, I think that is all I had to say today. I might have missed something because I keep looking back at my charts.
"Instead of laboring under the delusion that we would be happy if we just had a little more money, we should recognize the reality that we might well end up with more money if we just took a little more time to be happy." - Jason Zweig
I stayed away though because of the volatility of the news.
