Every single day I think I say, well it was a slow day, not much has happened. Pretty obvious from this Journal that to me, daytrading does not mean trading every single move of the day. In fact, I think that the its counter productive. To me trading is a lot like hunting deer. It involves a lot of patience. You wait for your setup, others may pass, but you have your edge with a few and wait for those. So far this month I have now done only 16 trades, but using a very conservative margin requirement am up nearly 7.5% (in pratical terms this is $3750 on a $50,000 account). I am averaging 1.6 trades per day, which is right about my average.
------
NQ Long (8:32) at 993.5 and exit 997 (8:34) for a gain of 3.5. On the open the velocity on the initial selling was quite strong, such that it usually holds. We opened up right in the area of the GLOBEX lows, which normally hold on the first test. Also we were right around the area of the 200ma on the all sessions 15 minute chart, another area of support that nearly always holds the first time out. I got in with a risk of 1.5 points that I felt was legit and not holding it too tight, and figured I had a 70% + chance of making 2 or 3 points on it.
Days Return: (after commissions of $6 per one lot) $64. (0.64%)
Months Return: $746.50 (7.47%)
Margin used: $10,000 per contract. (50K account would be up $3700ish this month using this example thus far)
I have had a lot of comments about how infrequent I trade, and that there have only been a few days that I made any "real" money. Both of these are in fact true, and have been so for since I became successful. When I was unsuccessful I traded a lot and had huge up and down days. Now, I average 1 to 3 trades a day (not many) and neither make nor lose very much on any given day. Maybe once a month there will be a great trend day that I will make $500 per contract on, but for the most part what you see here is what I do. It definatly does not have much sex appeal, a lot of people have commented that it seems very boring, but what you see is what you get. Too many people start trading because they are bored with their "real" job and they think trading is exciting. This is using the market as entertainment, and as anyone who's gone to Vegas a few time knows entertainment aint cheap.
Anyway, I hope you guys are enjoying the Journal even if I am a boring SOB. It does not seem like its getting too much activity except the day I decided not to trade....
Brandon