First day of LIVE TRADES
Before I get onto today's trades I must first thank everyone over @ #FuturesTrades for their help. I highly encourage any aspiring traders to make their way over there the chat room is free and I found it to be very helpful today.
Trades for 1-5-04
Trade #1 Short 1115.25, stop @ 1118, covered @ 1116.00 -.75 pts
7:11: This trade was a very late entry to a top that I actually called in the chat room, once I saw the chart barely tip 1118 I knew there was going to be a turnaround, however like a good discplined trader I waited for my signal, that was the only good thing about this trade. This trade was taken off of the 5 minute chart, immediately i deviated from my written plan (which I will post today). I decided that this trade had the potential to go to 1110 (the pivot for today) Why did I decided that ? Greed, Visions of accepting the Nobel prize for the greatest trader came into my mine and I got greedy, in all fairness my signal was taken so late that I could not have achieved my originally shot for profit target (1.25 pts). Well after a while I decided to tighten up my stop so I moved it to 1116 and eventually got stopped out.
Trade #2 long @ 1116.00, stop @ 1115.25, covered @ 1115.25 -.75 pts
About 7:40: The best explanation for this trade was that it was flat out crap. I got carried away after my nobel prize was taken away from me, so i decided to stop and reverse. This was a legitimate signal but I delayed in taking the trade, it didn't matter anyways because I would not have gotten the profit target anyways (.75 pt). Lesson learned, stop and reversing does not work for me after a loser take a break and re-examine where I stand, besides at this point I had a feeling the market was not going up because it couldn't even hold R1 1116.75 this morning.
So after all of this business I decided to stop trading for a bit and look at where I stood at that point, I even let a valid signal and a good winning trade go by to do this. I went on a run and ate some lunch and then came back to the computer after all that.
Trade #3 short @ 1116.25, target 1115.5, cover @ 1117.00
11:40 I still don't know how I feel about this trade. In some ways it was bad and some it was good. First off there was nothing going on here the market was dead, and in fact had setup as a slim jim, therefore if anything I should have been looking for a long entry or just staying out of the trade, but I had been in front of the screen for like an hour with no action whatsoever, so in essence you could say I took this trade out of pure boredom.
So for today I guess it wasn't too bad of a day for my first day trading but I definetly made some mistakes I need to work on. I am looking at whether trades that have a risk less than 1 pt of risk are really worth taking because I usually do not get good enough fills to get the full profit target I am looking for. The most important thing that I learned today about myself was that when I enter trade I need to have AN EXACT PLAN AS TO WHAT TO DO AND DO NOT DEVIATE FROM THAT PLAN. That is why I lost on the first trade and the second trade for that matter.
This leads me to my next point, yesterday I saw the new lord of the rings movie, during the battle scenes I kept thinking to myself look at how organized these troops are and they know exactly what to do. This is because these are trained troops that have an exact plan before they do anything so their effort in a sense look effortless. This is how I need to treat my trading, and in the afternoon it was, however I still took the last trade out of boredom, which is bad news but should be easy to fix.
I will post my chart tonight as well as my trading plan.
Profit/loss for the day -2.25
