Its been a yr trading..time to evaluate

D

dmastah

Guest
Hi all,

Its been a yr now since I have started trading the e-mini; s & p.
I have gone thru a lot of pains both financially and pyschologically to get to where i am. And where am I ? At a phase where I am b/e at end of the week or losing a max of 2pts. This has been the case since the previous two months.

My trading method is based on trends. I enter on fib retracements and exit with about 2 pts gain. Occasionally I enter breakouts. My stop loss is between 1 to 2 pts depending on the entry. 90% of my trades are with the trend.

The TA are the 79 and 89 dma, keltner bands and fibs. I use time of day, bar patterns and stochastics for counter trend set-ups only.

The objective of this journal:

1. To evaluate adherence to my method/system
2. To develop discipline.

I will post my daily trades and results. This journal is solely to help towards my development as a successful trader. Hopefully it may be of use to others too.

The final objective is to help me realize my goal ie; to be a master trader.

DMASTAH
 
I entered the day on a bullish note given my interpretation of the daily charts. This was confirmed when the previous days high was taken out.

1. long 1141.25 SL 1139.25 Exit target 1143.25 Actual 1141.25

Entry was on a 50% retracement from low to high. I came out after a couple of bars (early) due to the increase in volatility at that time. Stop was never hit, but did not want to take the risk.
Setup was as per my method but should have held on to the trade till target was reached. Result - B/E

The market then entered into a trading range and was swaying between the lower and upper keltner band. Market Bias turned to neutral and was waiting for a breakout.

2. long 1144.25 SL 1142.25 Exit target 1146.25 Actual 1143.25

This was not a setup as per my method. Could not control the urge to get into the trade. Entry was purely based on price action. Market hit 1144.75 and stalled. Realized that my entry made no sense and got out @ 1143.25. Result - -1

3. Sold 1143 SL 1145.25 Exit Target 1141 Actual 1141.75

Again this was not a setup as per my method. My entry was purely based on time of the day and breaking of the pivot low. Should have held till the target was hit but since the entry could not be justified, i made an early exit. Result - +1.25

4. Sold 1139 SL 1140.75 Exit Target 1137 Actual 1138.25

Once the market had broken down the trading range, this entry was on a 3 min reversal bar. Perfect set up but once again failed to hold till profit objective was acheived. Main reason was that CNBC mentioned that traders commented a lot of buying was on and that this was not a window dressing by the hedge fund managers and there were huge buy orders. Chickened out without any logical reason other than cnbc and there were probably no more than 4 ticks against my position before the target was hit. Exit was on 1138 but lost on slippage. Nobody to blame & No excuse. Result - +0.75

5. Sold 1138.25 SL 1140.25 Exit Target 1135.25 Actual 1137

Once the downtrend was confirmed this was on a close to 40% retracement. Say close to because my entry @ 40% was never reached. So I entered @ market. Again no reason to exit at where i did, also SL was not hit. Guess fear of losing what I had made me exit. In hindsight the market went back two ticks above my buy price. I certainly would have exited @ B/E because it was getting too late to hold on to the trade ( I do not trade after 3.30 PM ) Result - +1.25

Summary : Torn between fear of not wanting to lose what I had and the greed of not wanting to miss the breakout of the trading range when it occured made me take these illogical entries and exits on these trades ( based on my system/method ) .

Hopefully this journal will help me on my discipline.

Regards,
Dmastah
Ended the day with +2.25
 

Attachments

Thanks for the in-depth trade journal.

Can you post the times of your entries/exits or just annotate them on your chart?

Thanks...that would make it easier to do a comparison on our own charts for those that are interested in your journal.

Take care.

NihabaAshi
 
Quote from dmastah:

Could not control the urge to get into the trade.
More...

Uh oh.

Used to have the same problem.

One day I just got sick and tired of being like that.

Poker helped me a lot, because I could see that other people were being like that (playing too many hands and taking them too far), and I just didn't want to be like that.
 
Hi all,

Hope all of you had a good trading day. It certainly was a crazy day for me. Well, the point is my method called for 3 trades where as me, the smart being that I am, did 9 trades. Had 5 winners and 4 losers. All in all a + 1.25 point day.( Gotta figure out if at least b/e given the commissions )

If I had the discipline to stick to my setups and trade with that plan I would have had 3 trades. All 3 were winners but I would have made a B/E exit for set-up #2. Woulda/Coulda/Shoulda blah blah blah blah............ended the day with +6pts and guess what -tradestation would have reported a lot less on their revenues today.

Anyways, no point in crying over spilt milk. There is always a tomorrow. Maybe I will realize the mistakes committed so far and will have a disciplined day. Still waiting for that day. And that day will aaaarrrrrrrrrvvvvvvvviiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiivvvvvvvvvvvveeeeeeeeee

I do remember the saying " try try and try till you succeed " After all, one should never give up hope !


Following Niha's suggestion ( and by the way thanks very much Niha - you were the motivation for my journal ) I have marked all my trades in the attachment. Trades are in sequence with # and all trades today were on the short side. Also I have highlighted the setups triggered bymymethod with a large check mark.

Finally, please feel free to ask for clarifications if you need any.


I entered the day with a neutral bias given my interpretation of the chart analysis. I had to wait until a trend for the day developed. The downtrend was confirmed after about the first hr of trading. Once price action confirmed this to be a strong trend day, I decided to be on the short side at least in the am, until the pm move, if there was any. Well since there was no counter trend move in the pm all my trades today were Sells.

1. Sell 1129 SL 1131.25 Actual 1127 +2.0

This trade was as per my method. Profit target was hit

The rest of the trades except # 9 were based on my what should i say intuition/tape reading/good feeling/should not miss out on this move/ahh this is it....will move now--kind of trades. And the results show for themselves.

Please refer to the attachment for these trades.

9. Sell 1124.25 SL 1125.25 Actual 1122.75 +1.50

This trade was as per my method. Should ve held on till profit objective of 2pts was hit. Also this was a low risk trade with 2:1 profit potential. However geting close to 3.30 and I do not trade after this time. Hence the exit.

Regards
DMASTAh
 
The attachment size is 2.05MB ???????? Yesterdays was 99Kb.

Think there is a problem. Yesterday the file was jpeg today it says bitmap.


Suggestions anyone??

DMASTAh
 
what is the expectancy of your method/system? just a few simple #'s would be fine -- lets say Net Profit, Max DD, and Profit/Trade ....
 
Two suggestions:

1) For the bmp. Open it with your graphics package and save it as a different type of file. Microsoft Paint will let you save it as a GIF file which is usually smaller than a JPG file.

2) For the discipline. Write your entry rules out accurately. Make sure that you exclude vague references to breakouts so that you don't have an excuse. Then maybe write them out in story form so that you have a really good picture of the setup thru to the exit. THEN set one and only one goal for tomorrow --- ENTER AND EXIT ANY TRADE THAT MEETS YOUR RULES.

You might want to publish your rules so that you can't hide.

Keep working on that one goal. Ignore the money -- it will look after itself if your rules were sound.
 
Thanks very much Kiwi trader. Your first suggestion sure did work. I'm sure I'll nail the second good suggestion . I do have rules. Will post them later.


I WILL FOCUS ON RULES TOMMORROW

Also funky i will get back to you with the details later ( pls clarify what u mean by Max DD ). Gotta run...kids have a soccer game..

Thanks and Regards,

DMASTAH
 

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