January Trading Journals

To all the advice givers,

To give ones opinion and attempt to correct others faults is an important thing, it shows compassion and can be of great service... BUT it is an extremely difficult thing to do...

To give the good and bad points of a person/trader is an easy thing to do, and to throw advice their way is also an easy thing to do... People mainly feel they are being kind and doing a good thing... BUT one must first take the time to judge how well the advice will be recieved! If the person you are giving advice to is not of the disposition to recieve it, then it will be worthless... And whats worse is that you will inadvertantly bring shame to the person, it is comparable to slandering him in public...

1) Try to become close with the person
2) Make sure the person continualy trusts your words
3) When speaking of subjects that are dear to the person try and seek the best way to speak and be well understood
4) Judge the occasion and assess if the right time is the present or after he gets kicked in the teeth
5) Praise his good points
6) Maybe try and use your own faults as an example instead of touching on his, but in such a way that they may occur to him

To correct ones faults is a service, but to give advice to someone who is not of the dispostion to recieve them or simply does not value or trust your words can be of great disservice


Hitman,

In my experience it is has been to my benefit to just graciously accept there kind attempt, but discard what they say... If you come back rudely they may not ever attempt again and I have recieved some of the best advice from people who I never dreamed would have anything to teach me...

PEACE and good trading to all,
Commisso
 
***I never gave you any advice.***

Apparently a lot of people on this board feel I should print out the crap you put up at SI and paste it to my monitor so I can read it everyday.

***What I said was not taken out of the books.***

When it sounds like something I can get out of any book, save the breath.

***You are fixated on idea that all you need is better setup or techniques... many on this board see the flaw of this idea.***

Because those that see the flaw of this idea are either newbies or people who don't want to give out their bread and butter set-ups, nothing wrong with either case but don't expect me to agree with them.

***They tried to point you in right direction and made great points and you dismissed every single one of those advices, with so great anger and so little respect.***

Get off the high horse, the only one that offered and real advices are Tony, Brandon, and Candle with his last post.

***Just think of this: among those that posted here there are many, me included, that survived many market turns. You might or might not find value in what they post, but why display such hostiltiy and disrespect?***

Because I get offended when a chat room vendor gives me a pre-canned message and then people expect me to take it as stuff out of bible.

***As to posting the trades, review them... what for? My trades are based on entirely different system than yours. What, you would drop what you do and start learning whole new system? Apparently not, and there is most likely no need for this. As I and many others said, it's not the system.***

Now, I am not ready to dump what works for me and start out with brand new ideas. But the only thing I find helpful would be you telling me, "look, I did just fine this past a couple of weeks, and here is what I did".

I am not stupid, if you tell me what works for you I would see correlations between that and what I do and I will be able to fine tune my own techniques with it. If you do that, I bow down and appreciate, what hell I will print your post and paste it on my wall and read it every night before I go to bed.

So if you want questions, here is a question, what did you do on Friday?
 
***Yes I know how to get myself ready for a game, thanks, now if you can tell me what you did on Friday it would mean a lot more than 2 cents to me.***

Best of luck getting ready for the next "game". As far as what I did on Friday....mainly news related...but what the heck (not in order...I had to go pull up my trade history just to remb. :-)

-A few little scratch Trades on 500 shares each in DELL, and MSFT, lost comms. Dell upped guidance..I was asleep at the wheel...in after the move..saw i was late and ditched it....same thing with MSFT.

-Bought PECS on a bounce after it pulled back through a 50% retracement...in 1500 total...diff executions between 28.65 abd 28.90 out between 29 and 29.14

-Bought 1000 TYC on news of analyst meeting on monday...in 43.29 out @ 43.42. Told my self it would rip higher....which it did :-)


-Bought 1000 TRAC on it dipping below 50% retracement.looked like it was gonna hold and try to bounce...but it started to sell more..ditched it. In 2.12, out 2.08


-Bought 1k RDRT @ 4.18, another 1k @ 4.19, sold 1k @ 4.18, and sold last 1k @ 4.25. It was below 68% Fib Retracement....just looking for tiny bounce scalps.

-Traded NETA a ton of times...500 each time..netted a couple hundred over all. I have been watching it alot lately..and it has been following the NQ futures pretty good.

-Bought 4k KM on Faber saying they had a good chance of getting financing. In 1.67, sold 2k @ 1.77, and 2k @ 1.75

-Traded IMCL after it reopened...played it all wrong....in a couple hundred each order....broker made $80 or so. :-) I lost on 2 orders, and made the same on the last 2 orders..roughly..so the broker won. But I have some trading buddies that did good on it under $18.00

-Bought 500 HGSI on the Bio weakness @ 27.15, sold it at 27.36 as the futures popped alittle.

-Bought 500 ALOG @ 39.49 on news that they were being asked to work more with FAA on bomb machines (something like that) Sold 500 @ 39.69......tried to pull my sell order...got the feeling it was gonna ramp higher....it closed @ 42.48. opps...missed that..but it is a thin stock with spreads that jump around too much...not my normal style.

-Bought 500 ASML 18.00, bought 500 more at 18.05, and 1000 more @ 18.09, sold 1k @ 18.04 and 1k @ 18.20. This was again a retracement stock..it was below the 50% retracement level..and was showing L2 strength.

I trade alot of Fib Retracements...stocks that I mark in FirstAlert with live Trendlines, and then I watch the L2 as they get into that area for bounces. I also do alot of news plays, but I have traded Gapouts, 2day high breakouts, Reversals (Oz calls Bottom Fisher i think) them etc..I run them all in FA...but at times somethings work better than others...nothing based on magical formulas..just always keeping in mind that the mkt tends to over react in both directions...then I tend to be on the opposite sides of that over reaction.

So there...that was first and last journal entry :-) I still think you are pressing yourself too hard on a tick by tick basis...and not relaxing your brain for one second too see what is going on around you.......but I'm not you, so best of luck no matter how you work things out.

cas
 
Hitman....forget about predicting future trading patterns. Its a waste of time and it will hurt you in the pocket, as it might be starting to happen to you now.Stop looking for a better system or another system.Have faith in your system...I do and I'm not a pure daytrader. From your postings and monthly results ,I've added selective daytrades to my overnite trading.And its funny because since the beginning of the year I made it a point to canvas for a daytrade or two that would yield me a 500-1000 dollar a day score.And its worked and up until the last 4 trading days ,I made money everyday this year with my overnites. Just because I lost money recently I'm not locking myself up in my room and drowning in self-pity. EASE UP on yourself...stop predicting how hard this year is going to be ,because what you hope for might just happen to you and not the rest of us.I stopped looking for new trading systems and techniques a long time ago , what I concentrate on is my daily and nitely routine ,along with psychological mind-set I believe every trader must constantly work on to be able to continue to stay consistant,disciplined and put them in a position to do more in size.Because 11 years ago I avg. 8 cents a share and today I avg. 8 cents. The major difference in my P/L today is because of size and total shares traded. You don't need a new or another trading system to trade except maybe an overnite system. But I wouldn't recommend that to anyone because its two different sports. Keep the system you have and when conditions improve concentrate on doing more size because beyond your lack of battle scars,your biggest flaw I see is doing more size in your trading.But I'm only guessing since I'm looking at your trading from afar.
 
Cas:

Really appreciate it, as I have noticed that news traders are still putting up good numbers in this market condition, as there is still sufficient momentum with news release.

I play retracements all the times, can you give me some addition advices on what make the best retracement plays? It just seems that a lot of stuff that I thought will have a second leg are crapping out on me.
 
Hitman, here's my advice. Practice saying,

"DO WANT FRIES WITH THAT"

Print it out and tape it to your monitor. You will need it for your next job. LOL!
 
Hitman,

I will share my efforts for the day Friday.

I’m trading with 100 shares because I am a newbie.

QQQ; BOT; 38.86; time GMT 15:01
QQQ; SLD; 39.08; time GMT 15:24

On the pullback, held through the wiggle with my stop about .02 away

Went to my day job for a while, then to my chiropractor.

Returned to my little office and did a bit more.

SANM; SLD; 17.73 time GMT 20:18 Shorted
SANM; BOT; 17.75; time GMT 20:44 Covered

Went short for the resumption of the down trend, which never materialized.

Total effort for the day $16.20. That is the actual $ total (incl commissions, I trade with IB).

Then I went back over to work at my day job and quit.

So I now have much more opportunity to try trading. I didn’t quit necessarily to trade, but I shall do much more until I get another job.

I doubt this gives you much insight, but I am happy to share.

I just found this site not too long ago. I am bleary eyed from reading hundreds of these VERY informative posts. Keep up the good posts everyone. Many of us get a great deal from them.
 
Hitman,

-News: Trading news can be very difficult...and is for sure not a good thing for inexperienced traders to try and do...without watching it for a bit. That being said...I tend to read the news and try and put 2 and 2 together...say for example a stock is down on rumors...and the co comes out and refutes it. So I just take note of stocks that are up/down on rumors/previous headlines, etc...and if I see a headline on that stock, my brains says "hey, that is a good spin...go long..or short." Something may happen one day with a stock, and the news may not cross for days/weeks later.

-Retracements: I have no idea if i'm doing them right..lol...doesn't matter...but here is what *I* do. Everynite I pull up the newhighs (52wk), 2 months highs, 3 or more days down, and stocks with strong stochastics that have fallen a few % that day...I look for stocks that have had nice up trends....be it 6 months, or 2 weeks...I then draw a fib on the chart, trying to catch the trend I'm looking at...., and set live trend lines in FirstAlert...if pulls back, I get an alert when it gets near that retracement..I pull it up on the L2, and then my tapereading takes over...if strong bids come in, I'll try some.....etc etc. I may have 100 or so stocks at any one time that are being watched for pull back levels...but a few will hit on any given day. I refresh the list daily...even if I use the fibs wrong (by a text book definition), doing that every day causes me to focus on a set of stocks..and to pay attention to support when it comes in.

That is only part of what I do every day...somedays I won't trade news at all( I watch it all of the time)....but might focus on one particular stock, othertimes I'll play the new highs, short gapups, long gapdowns, but still nothing earth shattering either way.

IMO, don't try and go nuts and drastically alter your style....say like someone who went from strictly TA jumping to trying to be a news trader....just take a breath, slow down and not pressure yourself into thinking each and every day you have to perform. performance should = seeing trading opportunities....that is it. If you are not finding opportunities, then it is your job to take alook around you and see why. Hardest part of the job IMO.

On Tues, I'll bet you couldn't sit all day without one order, see setups happening, and *NOT* try and take the trade. Try it...it might kill you, but it is a very good way to discipline yourself....especially while everyone around you is trading. Trade a bit without actually trading. :-)


Best of Luck,

cas
 
Originally posted by Hitman
So if you want questions, here is a question, what did you do on Friday?
More...

I don't really want them... first, I would like to see you talking like normal trader does whn other traders talk to him, in a calm and respectful manner. But just this once, to show you that bible stuff works...

All plays are to be seen on 1 min chart.

1. 9:38, long INVN at 36.67 on break of open high. Stock is volatile and jumpy, stop is 36.30, too wide for my taste to play full lot, so I took just 500 shares. 9:40, break of 37 on rising volume, took 250 shares off the table and trailed stop to breakeven. 9:45, dumped the balance at 37.43. With full lot on more orderly trading stiock I would sell 1/4 here and trail the stop.

2. 10:26, HLIT is identified as breakout candidate, trigger is 10.65, stop is 10.40 (support formed from 9:50 to 10:10). Trade is triggered and taken at 10:29, 1000 shares in partials with average at .67. Sold at 10.98 in full, stock was somewhat thin to try and ride it higher, this kind tends to tank hard when done.

3. 12:15, shorted QQQ at 38.80 on breakdown through day low. Stopped out at 38.95, 1000 shares.

4. 14:39, shorted QQQ at 38.70, 1000 shares. The same breakdown setup as before, just more confidence as new low was made. Covered 500 at 15:04 at 38.53 and 500 at 15:14 at 38.38.

Saw very nice opportunities on NETA and VVUS early in the day on a long side and on tanking bio sector during IMCL carnage on a short side, couldn't take any because of room running obligations. Wasn't really eager to trade aggressively because of options expiration and lack of follow through last days.

Glad if it helps.

Vadym
 
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