kserra's emini trades

Quote from kserra:

Today I made some good entries that is for sure, but things just didn't seem to go correctly when it came to exit time.
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Do you mean you executed the plan but it left money on the table? All plans leave money on the table. You just have to come up with some measure of how much you are leaving, and continue to measure yourself.

I divide my exit results into "Pass Winner", "Kill Loser", and the dastardly "Kill Winner" and "Pass Loser". Obviously I want more exits to fall into the first two categories than the last two. I think 80%/20% would be nice. At last count I had 15 total trades with 11 in the good category and 4 in the bad. So i'm close (73%).

But my point is: if you don't already know, first make sure you know where you are, then you can get to where you want to go.
And this brings home the importance of strictly adhering to some sort of rules. If you do, you can tweak the rules, and see how things change. If you don't have strict exit rules, there is nothing to tweak and thus the trader is screwed in that sense.
 
by "exits" I mean during the initial phase, when the trade is starting out; not profit taking exits.

"Pass loser" = initial stop hit (always bad)
"Kill winner" = got out, but initial stop never hit, could made $$ (even worse)

"Pass winner" = hit target(s)
"Kill loser" = got out, and it was durned good I did, because it would of hit the initial stop without hitting the targets.
 
Quote from peterfigliozzi:

Do you mean you executed the plan but it left money on the table? All plans leave money on the table. You just have to come up with some measure of how much you are leaving, and continue to measure yourself.

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I would say it goes as follows:

Trade #1: Executed the plan, placed profit target order, profit target reached but did not get filled, got out of trade because of trailing stop. Left money on the table, but followed the plan good trade.

Trade #2: Entered far too early, changed my original stop point before trade went in my favor at all, left a ton of money on the table, would be classified as what you refer to as a Kill winner

Trade #3: Impulse trade, initial stop point hit, exhaustion setting in, by this point I may have well been sleeping.

Anyways as you can tell today was not a great day for my trading.

I am making strides to improve my trading this weekend. I have already begun to analyze my past trades by printing out all of my 5 minute charts since I have gone live and also printing out an Intraday chart of the VIX. I am slowly going through these trades and using a color coding scheme to highlight what was done right and what was done wrong. This has really helped to show me my errors in trading. As NihaAbashi pointed out pretty much all of my good trades have been confirmed by the VIX (also TICK and TRIN which I already use have confirmed these trades as well) I am creating a checklist that will be filled out before every trade that I take. Attached is a copy of the checklist. The first four boxes are boxes that must be checked before taking a trade. Secondary indicators are my breadth indicators TICK, TRIN, and the soon to be added VIX (I have been watching this all week).

The goal of the Trading plan checklist is to create a more structured environment. The more strucure I have the more difficult it will be for me to break my discipline.
 

Attachments

kserra you have a good journal going here. I also keep a journal but not as detailed as you and im learning how to keep a detailed journal by reading yours. Your trading is improving greatly. Good job!

szubaark
 
CHOP IS GOOD.....UP IS GOOD...DOWN IS GOOD....THOUSANDS OF HOURS AND HUNDREDS OF CHARTS FOR BACKTESTING SAY I AM CORRECT. WE ARE THE ENEMY. GOOD SYSTEMS ARE A DIME A DOZEN...

BEST WISHES
 
I did an analysis of my trades over the weekend like I said I would. I printed out every chart I have traded, plotted the pivots (more on this later) and had a VIX graph below every graph lined up. The results are astounding, but in some sense I knew these things to begin with.

My main findings are as follows

- The majority of my losses come from trading the 9-11 period
- The rest of my losses come from poor trade management
- The majority of my winners have been confirmed by my secondary indicators, and as my research indicates (thanks Niha) were also confirmed by the VIX

The breakdown is as follows:

Remember all times are pacific standard

Trades from 9-11:

Gross for time period: -2.25 pts
# of Wins: 5
# Avg Win: 1.56
# of losses: 7
# Avg Loss: 1.21

Trades from 11-12:

Gross for time period: 5.0 pts
# of Wins: 7
# Avg Win: 1.6
# of losses: 6
# Avg Loss: 1.125

Trades from 12-1

Gross for time period: 1.5 pts
# of Wins: 2
# Avg Win: 1.375
# of losses: 3
# Avg Loss: .4

for this last time period two of the losers are scratches, both of which were poorly managed trades that actually ended up going in my favor. The only real loser was 1 loss of 1.25 pts.

These results speak for themselves and confirm what I already knew. DO NOT TRADE DURING THE 9am-11am period, this was one of the first rules that I ever made in my trading plan, and it is also the first rule that I ever broke. I believe the reason that I continued to break this rule is because at first I was rewarded for it and made some of my first profits from this time period. This is likely the result of some sort of statistical anomaly. In the long run trading this period will cause me to lose money.

The second biggest thing that caused me to lose was poor trade management. This can be seen on friday (trades 2 and 3, trade 3 did not even meet my criteria for a trade) as well as in other places in the journal. In my case poor trade management usually rears its head in the form of getting out too early or not allowing the move to properly play out. This phenomenon is what is classifed at pete's place as the dreaded "Kill Winner". The kill winner is definetly the worst trade for me because after making a trade like this I tend to do irrational things, practically entering the market randomly. This does not happen too often but when it does it is ugly. The Trade confirmation checklist I posted should help fix this problem.

In doing this research I have learned a tremendous amount about my trading. I recommend anyone who does not do this sort of thing to do so as I plan to make it one of the things that I do on a regular basis after every trading day. In addition to this I have noticed a pattern in playing pivots that I believe may be profitable so I will be paper trading that over the next few weeks.

Looking forward to trading tomorrow.
 
Hey K, glad to hear of your progress. I think in many ways we are in the same place right now in our trading.

I look forward to hearing about how you handle the initial phase. Like I said, the best thing i've come up with so far is a trailing stop till breakeven, totally mechanical.

Another thing i've noticed with some good traders is that they tend to leave their initial stop in place, maybe cut it a little bit as the trade moves on. This is the result of having a really good (high probability) setup I guess.
 
I Watched the market today, but got no signals.

I Did a good job of sitting on my hands and staying out of a market that ate the shorts alive.

I Will continue trading tomorrow.
 
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