NoDoji's Day Trading Log

[trader_david]

sorry,nodaji.

you see today may be a reversal day. buy dip may not work, maybe short the bounce work very well.

I shorted YM at 9780 and ES at 1067.5, did not cover it yet.

Quote from NoDoji:

What part of this post did you miss?



I appreciate your concern for me as a trader, but posts like yours above are non-productive. If you want to be truly helpful, re-activate your journal, post your trades and why you entered and exited where you did.

I learned a lot from watching Oliver Velez and Pristine's Greg Capra trade live on-line, explaining their setups, their tactics, their stop loss placement, etc.

I learned a lot comparing my sim trades with BigHog's trades on certain days.

And I've recently learned a lot testing out strategies in sim. It's raising my comfort level bit by bit each day. I wish I'd sim traded for the first 6 months of my trading life instead of now a year-and-a-half later, but as they say better late than never.

If you are a consistently profitable trader, then offer something to me and the subscriber's to this journal that is productive.

 

[TheAngryHermit]

I shorted ES at 1076.50 and covered and reversed at 1061.00 ... I haven't sold yet.

I don't know why it's so hard for you.

 

[NoDoji]

Hermit, get back to work

+$23

Again sim traded ES using the 2-contract strategy, and again it worked comfortably for me, allowing me to take profits and still have the chance to catch a larger move. I did once cut profits short on my 2nd half by exiting at a specific level instead of just leaving the b/e stop. So in a way I was defeating the point of the 2-contract position plan; but on the other hand taking profits at a significant S/R levels is not a bad plan when a breakout fails.

My mistake was not re-entering. My sim ES profits totaled $330 despite not putting on the best move of the day, because I had then turned to stocks, where I placed some limit orders but missed and I didn’t chase any of them, though all would've been well worth chasing, but I’ve had such poor experiences churning money away by chasing.

Later in the morning, shorted TIF on a 2nd lower high and when a solid breakdown like the first 2 legs of the reversal failed to materialize I stopped out @ b/e and waited for a re-entry.

Reshorted and it moved in my favor pretty quickly. I went to put in a stop at b/e and clicked limit which of course took me out immediately before I had a chance to try and let profits run on this one. However, it turned out that my exit was almost the bottom of the move, as it had fallen quite a ways already: +$23

Today was the first live sim test of one of the automated trading systems we’re developing. To be fair, I use the term “we” loosely because Mr. NoD has been doing all the extremely hard work (programming and backtesting) and I’ve been giving him strategies and ideas, and stock charts that meet the criteria so he can program them (the criteria, that is). Despite IB’s demo accounts giving awful fills, the system generated over $300 profit on 100-share trades. A lot of debugging left to do though because although it enters the trades and places initial stops, it’s not yet managing the exits.

Late in the day I was just about to short a full position of X @ 49.67 on a pullback from overbought and our electric company blew a transformer, knocking our power out and leaving only one monitor showing and it wasn’t the monitor with my X DOM on it. Power came back a few minutes later and X of course had already dropped .25 cents a share and I didn’t want to chase it, though it did eventually drop another .50 cents.

When this happened I started to get those "I'm jinxed" thoughts. Maybe I'm being selective in my memory, but as I recall I've left open positions by accident 3 times since I started using IB and I believe each of them (both long and short) gapped against me $2 a share or more the next morning. I know logically that you can toss a coin 10 times and have tails come up 10 times, but it sure doesn't feel random when this kind of crap happens.

 

[bighog]

Nod, that idea of using 2 (or more later) cars and using 1 as a small profit and riding the other seems to be a good idea for you to work on the confidence issue. Thats cool!!!

Later when you are live again you might revert to all in and all out with single clicks of a mouse. It is less work, ha. Then when you get even better you will go all in and just add-on to the winners like mad badger. Just kidding. But you have the technicals down damn good, Keep working on the courage part now. Sim trade all you want, surely you would not want a Doctor operating on you without first doing the intern learning curve.

PS: I never really perfected the ADD-on part of retraces myself. When i have a good profit i am cool with just taking it and looking for the next trade. never seemed to get my arms around the adding on stuff., Surely that is where a lot of money hides.

 

[duhmentor]

Quote from bighog:

never seemed to get my arms around the adding on stuff., Surely that is where a lot of money hides.

Yes Yes:

Just like you can blow your account out by adding to a loser. If you can hang in there and add to a winner, you can have a few excellent days every so often.

 

[NoDoji]

+ $97

Although I watched ES action, I didn’t trade it today either live or sim.
My pick of the morning was to short ANF, which I did @ 34.03, on a sharp and full retracement of the opening 3-min green bar. Covered @ 33.80 on a pivot: +$44

Short ANF @ 33.69 when the pivot rally failed, leaving a shooting star below the falling 10-period EMA. Covered @ 33.44, pivot off oversold: +$48

Short ANF @ 33.59 pullback from lower high, covered @ b/e when the breakdown failed: -$1

Short ANF @ 33.53 when another pullback from a failed rally broke down the 10-period EMA; covered @ 33.49 when the breakdown failed, leaving behind a slightly higher low: + $6

I should’ve gone long at that point since it left a higher low. It trended up all day. The reason I have a short bias is because it took less than half an hour to fall almost 1.00, but took the entire rest of the day to climb back.

Toast tastes as good no matter which side of the bread you put the jam on, and money spends the same no matter which side of the fence you find it on, and I didn’t trade anything else all day, so my bad for not trading the trend reversal.

Near the end of the day I scalped FAS in my sim account using the ES chart as my guide and netted three very quick profits, less than a minute each trade. I may place this one on my live DOM to take advantage of momentum moves.

 

[NoDoji]

I attached the ANF chart of my morning trades, and the nice reversal that went on all day, which I missed.

This chart makes trend-following look so easy after the fact, but when one of the weakest, most overpriced stocks in a sector (Louis Navellier: D - Sell; P/E 60+) is trading near major resistance, my short bias digs in its heels and makes me very hesitant to join the trend once I miss the initial low-risk entry.

ANF, by the way, started dropping quickly after hours and I put on a small swing short. Later I checked Yahoo to see if there was a reason for the quick decline and saw that shorting ANF was one of FastMoney's "best trades" for Monday morning because "Valuations don’t make sense."

I'm not sure whether to be encouraged or frightened by this, in the current "Alice in Wonderland" market environment

 

[NoDoji]

+ $83

Covered the after hours ANF short early off the round number bounce for +$84.

Traded ANF a few more times looking for a stronger breakdown which never materialized: + $19

Shorted CL as it sat at the LOD, looking for a breakdown. I don’t usually have a lot of luck with LOD breakdown trades and this was a waste, stopped out on a tiny bounce for - $20. It did in fact eventually break down a wee bit and a looser stop would’ve netted a small gain.

Much of the day I sim traded ES, and am still having a very bad time letting profits run. I kept scalping a point or two instead seeing a bigger picture and letting profits run. I did however have a short @ 1058.50 last night that I covered @ 1054.50 this morning, not a bad move.

Our ATS-in-testing caught the PALM breakout.

I tested the trend-is-your-friend theory again with 100-share lots of AIG in sim account when it broke out to new highs. I'd place a limit order to go long .30 cents below wherever price was, then trail a stop, the do it again, and again. It seemed not to matter where you bought, it would go up. Made $195 in a very short time. But frankly that thing is so volatile, I would prefer, if trading live, to trade it out of a consolidation zone, which I didn't do unfortunately. The chart got "that look" right around 43.48 today and that was just about at the launch zone.

 

[duhmentor]

Quote from NoDoji:


Much of the day I sim traded ES, and am still having a very bad time letting profits run. I kept scalping a point or two instead seeing a bigger picture and letting profits run. I did however have a short @ 1058.50 last night that I covered @ 1054.50 this morning, not a bad move.

I'll mention this again then leave you alone.

If you don't have the discipline to follow your plan on a sim, well you know the rest.

A good trade is one where you followed your trading plan. If you are getting out early you are not following your plan.

Your plan should be simple enough that you could hire your husband to execute it. At the end of the day you reward him if he followed procedures even if he lost money and punish him if he didn't do as he was told.

 

[NoDoji]

+ $64

While having my morning tea, I played with AIG in pre-market in my demo account. I bought when it was going up and took immediate profits, then I scaled into a loser as it dropped and took profits on the rebound. (I would never do that with real money, but it was a fun pre-market diversion.)

Despite a day of interruptions, I managed to actively sim trade ES, mainly the 2 contracts. Did one long trade with 1 contract because the market seemed to be leaning toward the weak side at that point. Turned out my early exit on that one left behind a lot. My entry was 1062.50, and I sold the first hint of a pullback for a 1 pt gain. However, if I’d simply moved the stop to b/e at that point I would’ve been in at least to 1066.50, pullback from the upper channel line, and if I’d moved the stop to 50% retracement at that point instead of exiting, another 2 pts to be had. Had I traded 2 contracts on that one, I would’ve stayed in the trade much longer.

I also managed a few live trades:

Short ANF @ 33.59, pullback from a lower high, and only got 100 shares lifted; covered @ 33.37 for +$20.

Short ANF @ 33.46, pullback from another lower high; covered @ 33.41 when priced pivoted from just below the LOD, indicating a possible double bottom reversal (it was). +$8

Took a break because the market action became dismal and returned to see CAT, which I’d been watching a bit today, selling off a double top. Short CAT @ 54.13, only 100 shares because I never traded CAT and it had fallen quite a bit from the high, but it was on strong selling volume so I joined the lemmings. Covered @ 53.91 on the oversold pivot for +$20. Pretty decent .22-cent scalp toward the end of a drop.

ANF suddenly falls off a cliff and I try very quickly to short 200 shares, get 100 shares lifted and take .18 cents of the move for +$16. Made me wish I’d held my previous short the whole time. I covered quickly because it had fallen so far in about 10 seconds and I wasn’t sure how much bounce it would have just above the round number (answer: a good one).