Matcha's Dow E-mini Journal

Thank you FMR, PO, WentFishing, Boli, Nodoji, sis and everyone for nice and kind words! Thank you all for taking the time reading and giving me feedbacks.

This journals has not only been a trading diary to jog down memories but a motivation to continue learning trading and keeping bad habits out. I would recommend any new traders who has somewhat worked out a system, then started a thread here! It has been a great learning so far!

:p
 
Quote from Matcha:

Then market continued to move slowly… I was out too since I thought the momentum isn’t supporting the move….

Then market shoots to the moon….

This is the 2nd time I missed the trend day. The only thing I improved today is only “Think Bullish”.
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Matcha, don't be too hard on yourself. We've all been here many times.

A couple things to consider:

Do you think your early exit from the second trade was a result of letting the earlier loss have an influence? I often found that if I was holding a loss, I tended to exit a profitable trade way too soon; I was happy to erase the loss or take a small profit and would often miss a very good continuation of the move in my favor. It's difficult to erase the old trade and treat the new one as brand new.

I think your second trade was indeed a great entry and technically all the stars were aligned. Keep in mind that momentum does slow down mid-day usually until around noon your time, though today the breakout came a little earlier than that.

The point I'm making is that if you enter a trade in the doldrums, consider being more patient with it until the late-day volume comes back or a true reversal signal shows up. I often have trades that I put on in the midday mush and get impatient and exit either b/e or for small profit, and had I been patient and waited for the volume to return would've had very profitable trades.
 
You've got it backwards there are many followers here who need to say Thank You for this great journal. All your thoughtful, stimulating posts, and also for the great replies from the Legends of ET here. :D

I'm working on re-evaluating / tailoring my approach and methods to fit my crazy schedule. Rebuilding info system, creating an electronic template for my internal trade journal, lots of prep work. Without question this journal has inspired me to move forward sooner rather than later. Can you share a bit about how you keep notes / records / etc. - when you have time. What do you use for a trading diary? Your clear statements here show that your very organized. I will probably use MS One Note. Preparation seems like at best it can only suggest what may happen on any given day. PA tells the story. Trading it is masterwork :)

Don't lament missed moves - You are moving your game beyond emotion which is very hard to do. There is little that I can see beyond the PA break out this morning which suggested that today would end as it has.

Kudos for keeping your head and playing your game. :)

BR/
FMR
 
Quote from NoDoji:

Do you think your early exit from the second trade was a result of letting the earlier loss have an influence? I often found that if I was holding a loss, I tended to exit a profitable trade way too soon; I was happy to erase the loss or take a small profit and would often miss a very good continuation of the move in my favor. It's difficult to erase the old trade and treat the new one as brand new.
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Right on! The first losing trade always influences the 2nd trade. Plus today, it;s the" runup has already happen in the first hour" day. I didn't expect the "breakout" would happen so quickly today, that's reason #2 when I see the momentum slows down. I thought it might range bound a little more. I haven't seen YM retraced that shallow so far...


I think your second trade was indeed a great entry and technically all the stars were aligned. Keep in mind that momentum does slow down mid-day usually until around noon your time, though today the breakout came a little earlier than that.
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Was impatient indeed. Yes, even thoug it's the greatest pattern, it still needs some time to work through in the doldrum.... Wasn't thinking it through that time...
 
Quote from Matcha:

At 10:15, it formed a bottoming tail, a W bottom. This time I went in. Then market continued to move slowly… I was out too since I thought the momentum isn’t supporting the move….

Then market shoots to the moon….
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Hi Matcha,

For your second entry, like NoDoji said, it was a great one. I probably would have done the same thing to exit early to protect the profit since there were some gyrations prior to that point. One thing I consider doing is to monitor the trade using a higher timeframe to see if the trend is still in place. But this will involve more risk. Also, from where you exit, you might consider a re-entry 4 bars later where there was a pulled back to the MA.

For me, it is always a challenge when I have to decide whether to go for a single, double or a home run.

Best trading tomorrow!

--po
 
Quote from Matcha:


.....
Market retraced back down to YTD’s high at around 9:30PST. I was waiting for a pullback at confluent zone 10616 ( 38.2%Fib, VWAP, S/R etc), then look for a D/B or a W bottom at the zone to enter. But market did not retrace deeper. At 10:15, it formed a bottoming tail, a W bottom. This time I went in. Then market continued to move slowly… I was out too since I thought the momentum isn’t supporting the move….
.....
attachment.php
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Indeed, a day like today... it's "long only". If you missed the first move, the best to do it to wait. Mid-day doldrums. 9:30 am PDT, market went lower... only a tad bit lower. Bounced up for a small protest. Again low at 10:30 am PDT or so... no lower. That's your confirmation to long it and hold to see a second run higher up.
 
Quote from FreeMarketRider:

You've got it backwards there are many followers here who need to say Thank You for this great journal. All your thoughtful, stimulating posts, and also for the great replies from the Legends of ET here. :D

I'm working on re-evaluating / tailoring my approach and methods to fit my crazy schedule. Rebuilding info system, creating an electronic template for my internal trade journal, lots of prep work. Without question this journal has inspired me to move forward sooner rather than later. Can you share a bit about how you keep notes / records / etc. - when you have time. What do you use for a trading diary? Your clear statements here show that your very organized. I will probably use MS One Note. Preparation seems like at best it can only suggest what may happen on any given day. PA tells the story. Trading it is masterwork :)

Don't lament missed moves - You are moving your game beyond emotion which is very hard to do. There is little that I can see beyond the PA break out this morning which suggested that today would end as it has.

Kudos for keeping your head and playing your game. :)

BR/
FMR
More...

Hi, FMR

Besides trading plan, I do have a trading journal where I log entry, exit, patterns, mistakes , comments etcs. I attached a tempelate I did when I started out trading. You can find journal like this on internet too. The key is really to review the trades and think about :why. Then you could find all yout behavior patterns, strength and weaknesses at early stage. On my early weeks, The cost of mistakes column always scrared me! You can have the best trading plan in the world, and you thought for sure you will follow them because it's so flawless. But when you look at the "after affect", look at the journal after market, you will be amazed how much weakness you have while trading. How many trades you made against your trading plan/ How many times you just keep making the same mistakes again and again.... I am still making mine now.... Less mistakes, but still making!

Not sure how far your trading plan goes, The other benefits for the journal is you start to see "things". You will find the most fimiliar patterns/setups which generate most of income in your account. Then you want to keep them. The worst patterns, you dump them. Then you want to go back and edit your trading plan.

Some traders log each trades with charts. I didn't have it now. Since I have already logged my trades in ET here!

Let me know if you can't understand my sheet. I am not too detail-oriented in the sheet. I have some lingos only myself understood....

I know your engineers all like fix things! please don't get annoyed while looking at it



:D
 

Attachments

Quote from PatientOperator:

Hi Matcha,

For your second entry, like NoDoji said, it was a great one. I probably would have done the same thing to exit early to protect the profit since there were some gyrations prior to that point. One thing I consider doing is to monitor the trade using a higher timeframe to see if the trend is still in place. But this will involve more risk. Also, from where you exit, you might consider a re-entry 4 bars later where there was a pulled back to the MA.

For me, it is always a challenge when I have to decide whether to go for a single, double or a home run.

Best trading tomorrow!

--po
More...

err. i wish i had the gut to reenter today. As i said on before, I have never seen YM retrace that shallow before(meaning the bull is soooo strong, people just buy buy buy). This is one of those 20% of the trending day! I couldn't accept that while it's just right in front of me!
 
Quote from Bolimomo:

Indeed, a day like today... it's "long only". If you missed the first move, the best to do it to wait. Mid-day doldrums. 9:30 am PDT, market went lower... only a tad bit lower. Bounced up for a small protest. Again low at 10:30 am PDT or so... no lower. That's your confirmation to long it and hold to see a second run higher up.
More...

The mistake for today is I couldn't "believe" the retrace was shallow. 23.6%. I kept thinking it will come down to 38%, where pivot level;,VWAP line is....And it would break at the last hour...

Of course market shoots again sharply, it's only retraced 23.6%....

Learned my lesson once again...
 
Quote from Matcha:

Hi, FMR
...
Let me know if you can't understand my sheet. I am not too detail-oriented in the sheet. I have some lingos only myself understood....

I know your engineers all like fix things! please don't get annoyed while looking at it

:D
More...

Thanks so much Matcha for sending this along - More than order, engineers also love efficiency - I like the way you've laid this out - It makes perfect sense to me. You've made many wonderful points here and asked some good questions. I'm not sure where my answers lie as of yet.

My previous journaling ranged from printing charts of every trade to scribbling in notebooks. I've always worked toward longer time frames. My best trade were days / weeks long. I need to trader shorter frames for now. I also believe markets have become more efficient than they used to be. Another reason for swing trading. I'll keep you posted via PM :)
 
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