Getting my act together

G

gutsytrader

I hope to use this journal as a tool to help improve my overall trading to the point where I can trade for a living.

I was laid off from a good job years ago. Now I work nights as a convience store clerk approx. 48 hrs./week. My wife has 2 jobs and between the two of us we clear about 35k per/year. Excluding trading, we work about 100 hours/week. The problem is our bills are about 2k/month more than our income and I don't see much chance in cutting our bills further. I'm planning on using trading to increase our income enough so that we can have a return to our old lifestyle.

I stumbled into trading by way of a customer. Since I work the graveyard shift most of my customers are getting booze, cigs, junk food, gas, and lottery tickets. Not exactly the stuff of top caliber people. I do lots of cleaning and one of the things I do is clean and setup for the morning a cappuccino machine. In 2004 I had a customer come in and get a French Vanilla Capp. every night. He wasn't drunk, didn't buy junk food, cigs., or lottery tickets so he seemed like a "normal" person. After a while of saying "high, how are you doing today", I asked him why he came in at night? He told me he was starting his day and was a trader. After a few more months of small talk he asked me about my background and told him my hard luck story. Around October of 2004 he invited me over to his house to see his trading setup, so I went the next morning after work. It was pretty impressive. The front door to his house probably cost more than my house alone! Anyway, I watched him trade and was fascinated by the process. I got invited back the next day and the next day. Little by little he showed me some of what he was looking for in the ES market. By the middle of Nov. 2004 I decided to open a account at Open E Cry with some of my savings. On Dec.1, 2004, I placed my first trade provided from the pro helping me. I made over $400 on one contract! I was pretty shocked and excited. He told me he'd trade my account beginning in Jan. to help me out if I wanted him to get me started. I agreed and waited through the rest of December.
 
In Jan. he was so busy with his own stuff early in the month that he didn't have time to mess with my account. He did trade it some days and also had some overnite holds. In the end he traded my account about 10 days and increased the account by almost $8,000. He explained every trade beforehand and I tried to follow along.

Here's the summary for the monthly statement for Jan. 2005.
 

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In Feb. the pro that was helping me told me to do all the orders and he would just tell me when to buy or sell. He set me up on one of his workstations so I could figure out the trades for myself if I wanted. I tried to pick trades but I was almost always too early. Luckily I waited on him to confirm a trade. Unfortunately, once again he was busy with his own work and my stuff was put on hold. I only got to trade 6 days out of the whole month. I saw lots more trades but didn't do any out of fear. Anyway for the month my account was up over $8,000 so I was already dreaming of trading from the beach.

Here's the monthly statement for Feb., 2005.
 

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Quote from ozzy:

Nice!!

So what's the account at now? You kicking some ass or what?
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I'll get there. Since I consider myself a noob trader that should be a clue. I see some dark clouds coming up.
 
In Mar. 2005 the pro told me to do all the decisions and trading myself. He'd be there to help me if I had a question. Otherwise I was on my own. It was sort of like Gilligan taking the wheel from the skipper. He also told me it was the last month I could hang out at his house as his family was moving out of state.

I knew he'd be checking my stuff so I worked very hard. In the end I made almost $7,000 for the month even though I didn't want to trade after 3/15. I really felt like I would give it all back if I traded. Luckily, that didn't happen.

Here's the statement for Mar. 2005.
 

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Apr. 2005 was the first month I was on my own. My home system uses Win 98. I added two monitors, upgraded the memory, got a internet cable connection, and signed up for Esignal for quotes and charts. It took me some time to get setup so that I only traded about the last week of the month. Everything was fresh in my mind on how to trade so I wasn't too worried about screwing up. Still I traded smaller than with the pro since there wasn't anyone there to help me. I only traded 4 days for the month. I was still able to make over $4,700 in that short period of time.
My dream was intact and I was looking forward to May.

Here's the statement from Apr. 2005.
 

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Quote from wee man:

Can you post a chart showing entry/exit for some of your trades
please?
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The charts won't help much as I use 7 charts to decide on a trade. The trigger is from a six sec. update chart and unless you're sitting next to me you'll have no clue what it going on. I'll give what I can but since it took me a couple of months sitting next to this guy, you can probably figure out that it's pretty complicated. What we're doing is front running institutional orders. If I get a good entry the idea it to hold on until the market shows the direction is about to change.

Here's the daily p/l for the $5,300 winner on 3/15/2005. You can see it captured about 9 full pts. per-contract.
 

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