Little Lex's YM Daytrading Journal

Best day of the week so far. I ended up +29 points on my 6th consecutive winning day. All the more reasons to be satisfied.

But my winning strategy has one serious flaw. I am not making any money. Over the last 6 trading sessions I am up 120 points which I consider to be a great result for me. But after subtracting commission there is not much money left to spend on food and housing.

I could again increase the number of contracts but I don't feel ready for that.

So I will have to try to improve my strategy and especially the average winner / average loser ratio.

Today: +29
Week: +70

LL
 
Quote from Little Lex:



But my winning strategy has one serious flaw. I am not making any money. Over the last 6 trading sessions I am up 120 points which I consider to be a great result for me. But after subtracting commission there is not much money left to spend on food and housing.

Today: +29
Week: +70

LL
More...

I dont understand. +29 does not count commissions ? Why would u post results w/o commissions ? And why would YOU have to subtract commissions ? The software does it for you.

You also say your 120 points gained were mostly eaten up by commissions. That means you made 120 trades over the course of 6 days assuming your commissions are no more than $5 RT. thats an awful lot of trades for a beginner.
 
I was just about to inquire about your daily average number of trades when I saw your post about commissions eating up your 120+ points profit - so I concur, you would appear to be overtrading, that, or your broker is fleecing you...
 
Quote from wiesman02:

I dont understand. +29 does not count commissions ? Why would u post results w/o commissions ? And why would YOU have to subtract commissions ? The software does it for you.

You also say your 120 points gained were mostly eaten up by commissions. That means you made 120 trades over the course of 6 days assuming your commissions are no more than $5 RT. thats an awful lot of trades for a beginner.
More...


Hi Wiesman,

thanks for your post.

When I started this journal at the beginning of April I set myself the goal to be profitable before commissions. I wanted to find out whether or not I could consistently win YM points. Therefore the results posted in this journal are YM points before commission. However I will post my results in dollar terms when I set myself a new goal for June.

Regarding the number of trades you have to remember that I am trading 2 contracts at a time. So 6 days x 2 contracts x 4$ commission = 48.

So if you have more than 12.5 (= 600 / 48) trades per day than there's nothing left of your profits.

I am not sure if in general 12 trades per day is too much. If there are 12 good setups you can take 12 trades. But I guess you are right. I am still not patient enough and I am not yet 100% "impulse trading free". I suppose my results were better if I averaged only 10 trades per day and let aside 2 losing trades each day :p

Good trading to you,

LL
 
Quote from omelette:

I was just about to inquire about your daily average number of trades when I saw your post about commissions eating up your 120+ points profit - so I concur, you would appear to be overtrading, that, or your broker is fleecing you...
More...

Hi omelette,

I changed my broker because my old one really was fleecing me. Now I pay 3.95 RT per contract which I suppose is ok.

On average I take 10-15 trades per day. I am sure my results would be better with a better trade selection and only 6-10 trades per day. Something to work on...

Good trading to you,

LL
 
Since it's friday I decided to stop early today and head into the week-end. I took 7 trades today and I'm profitable even after commission. :)

Day: +48
Week: +118

Overall I'm satisfied with this week's result because I reached my goal of regaining the points I lost last week.

Enjoy your long week-end everybody,

Little Lex
 
Before heading into the week-end I took one more trade which was a 14 point winner. So here are the corrected results:

Day: +62
Week: +132

Have a good week-end everbody,

LL
 
The final week of May has come and it looks as though I have improved my trading results for a 5th consecutive month.

Time to set a new goal for myself. I have been profitable before commission for the last 2 months. Now my goal is to be profitable after commission during the period from now until the end of June.

I will therefore post my results in both YM points and net dollar terms.
 
Very disappointed because I was up all day before screwing up at the end. It was really stupid because after one losing trade I took another bad one to try to regain the points I had just lost --> revenge trading!

Also I overtraded again instead of waiting for the best opportunities. All in all a disappointing day...

Commission: 15 trades = -118.2
Trading result: -7 points= -35

Net result: -153.20

LL
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top