Frosty's e-mini journal

F

frostengine

It seems everyone has a journal these days, so here is mine. My biggest problem is cutting winners too soon and letting losers run. I am hoping that by recording my trades here and receiving feedback that I may finally be able to kick this flaw.

My trades are completely discretionary although some of my entries will be loosely based on a mechanical trading system that my bot uses. If the market is not moving too quickly I will try to post my trades as close to real time as possible, but when the market is moving faster or I am unsure about my position I may not be able to post at the time.

I will mainly be trading the mini dow YM, and mini nasdaq NQ. I am going to be using a relatively small trading account, approximately 7K. I will try to never have more than 1 contract open at a time to avoid huge losses that could wipe my small account out. My personal goal is to net $100 a day.

I do not plan to post a daily screenshot of my P/L, however I will if asked.

Todays Trades thus far:
Bot 1 Ym 10782 at 8:14
Sold 1 Ym 10796 at 8:21

Bot 1 YM 10825 at 8:37:03
Sold 1 YM 10834 at 8:37:34

Net thus far: $106

PS: all trade times are listed as central time.
 
Thing that helped me the most was to develop pre-determined stops based on the technical analysis that got you in the trade. That will cut down on some losses and let some winners run longer.

Another piece of advice is take the profit today and STOP. Spend the rest of the day just studying the charts and set-ups. Will be a good exercise to teach you how to resist the greed urge and give back all your money. Simple refuse to place another trade today and record a nice day in profits. Use rest of time for study. The more you get into this habit, the less likely you will be to trade back all your hard fought profits.
 
optioncoach,

Thats a good piece of advice, because generally in the afternoon I do end up giving back all my profits. Nothing worse than seeing me hit my daily goal and then in the afternoon session end up in the red for the day. Its just hard to stick to that, especially when I see that my trades would have worked out well in the afternoon.

Bot 1 Ym 10853 at 11:30
Sold 1 YM 10854 at 11:42

Day Net: +$132.96

Last trade basically a stratch after commissions, but better than a loss. No more trades until after fed beige book.
 
Bot 1 YM 10837 2:24
Sold 1 YM 10842 2:26

Days net +$153.70

If you notice this whole afternoon I have been extremly jumpy after entering the trade and just taking very small profits. What sucks about this situation is I take these profits fast but when i get a looser it will more than likely wipe out today's gain. Luckily today I havnet had to deal with a position go very hard against me yet....
 
Exactly what always happens, I sell too soon.... this last trade I exited for no other reason than I was just jumpy..... not because my entry criteria was violated... and now the Ym is up to 10860's...... thats a lot of money left on the table for NO reason at all.. just needed to hold a few more minutes....
 
Quote from frostengine:

Exactly what always happens, I sell too soon.... this last trade I exited for no other reason than I was just jumpy..... not because my entry criteria was violated... and now the Ym is up to 10860's...... thats a lot of money left on the table for NO reason at all.. just needed to hold a few more minutes....
More...

Hey dude, I went thru this same thing. keep at it, dont let leaving money on the table get to you, it takes years to become numb to the markets. Stick to your risk management, take only the best trades.

When you get up in the morning look in the mirror and say to yourself " Im a winner, I can do it " " you can if you THINK you can"

Try and stay off the message boards, until after the close, and focus focus focus. I had a great day today because I stayed off the boards for about 3 hours, and kicked some butt in the last hour.

During the summer lunch time is a big no no, trade the last hour or even the last 30 minutes of the cash markets.


Feel free to PM anytime.
 
Learn how to use stops and you will have more experiences of letting winners run as opposed to jumping out. I did the same thing. There will be times a nice profitable position will come all the back and hit your stop and you will get mad you let a profit disappear.

BUT, there will also be those wonderful times when you sat on your hands and let the stop do its job and you sat through the wiggles and watch the market move in your direction for a huge gain. WIll make those other stop outs meaningless. ALso you will have smaller losses due to stops. So overall you can come out ahead.

Quote from frostengine:

Exactly what always happens, I sell too soon.... this last trade I exited for no other reason than I was just jumpy..... not because my entry criteria was violated... and now the Ym is up to 10860's...... thats a lot of money left on the table for NO reason at all.. just needed to hold a few more minutes....
More...
 
Yesterday was not that bad of a day, made $153 which is over my daily goal, so I am pretty happy about that. My average trade only netted 7 pts however which is not very good. Want to try and get that number up higher today.

Off to a really slow start.... Didnt pull the trigger on a good entry which would have worked out really well...

short 10957 at 9:06
covered at 10989 at 9:42

This entry was really bad, I had no valid entry on it, infact my mechanical system issued a LONG right when i took the trade... What had happened is I missed pulling the trigger earlier when I had a good long setup, then in somewhat of a revenge trade I justifieid going short because the market had moved so far so quickly.....I knew pretty quickly it was a bad trade but yet I refused to sell it.... So instead I end up selling at a huge loss.. wipping out all of my hard work from yesterday...
 
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