October Trading Journals

I would imagine that commissions would be 25% of net if you only go for small winners.

Here is example of my trading. Today at open i Shorted VISG at 12.9 1k shares. A play on the continuation of yesterdays down trend.

Currently it sits at 11.85. I'm up $1000 on $12 commission. Have a stop now at $12.01.

That is an extraordinary trade, i wish they all worked that well. But when i do have losing days, it isn't because of commissions usually. But because my trades went bad.

Hitman, trading 15k shares a day as you do, i would think that you would have more volatility in your results. Its amazing how few days you have where you make or lose more than 1500.

Do you use super tight stops? I do commend you on the fact that you havn't had many large losing days. Your risk management is great.

you trade much different than many of us. I think many retail traders trade like me, like the above example. Fewer trades, going for big winners. As we don't have the professional setup to make a zillion trades a day.

What is your largest gain in one day? Best trade.

Happy trading, and hope you have that condo by end of year.
 
My best day was 5K back in March.

My worst day was 4K which came two days later.

That condo is going to wait until late next year given the pace of things. While it is inevitable I will expand my game to include more daily stuff, as my sole income it does push me to put up shots. It is just a different style. I have a conservative personality and for me it is more important to be up every day.

As I said, I am more interested in YTD numbers than numbers on any given day. And as I said, if you do come to Worldco, you will understand the culture.

That said, I do admit my daily swing is indeed smaller than most people of my volume, and that is both a bless and bane. I also admit that my ability to hold onto winners is very poor, but that is also because more than 70% of my game is reactionary hence when I get into a position it often doesn't have a good set-up on the daily's.

All of those are weaknesses that must be addressed, hopefully with First Alert (to be installed later this week) and help from Tony Oz I can address them.
 
@silk
This is very interesting - I tend(ed) to overtrade a littele bit - I'm not a professional trader I have to mention (just a part time trader from good old Europe :) ) - and every day I try to just take the best setups and do less trades.

What abou your VISG position - I just checked it and saw that it went vertical at about 2pm - at what price did you get out ? I hope slippage was not too bad !

@Hitman
With your participation our "Tony Oz starting in November"-Thread (which is already open now:D ) will get great !

Harry
 
I've been trading for a while now, over 4 years, my commissions are about 45% of what I take out from the market. When people trade several hundred times a day, that's what happens, your commission eat up lots of your profits. During the summer months I tend to trade a lot less, there isn't as much opportunities, and profits fall a lot as well.
 
Opened up the second half with an acceptable performance given I got the direction dead wrong. Didn't have a single short during the entire sell-off since I thought market closed on its high two straight days, lost most of my morning gains through poor bottom pick attempts and churning. It almost feels like the only time market will rally is when you finally give up fishing for bottoms. Fortunately I was able to catch a small piece of the rally into the final hour, but our quote system went down and I couldn't take full advantage.

11500 shares on 5 of 10 shooting, +767 before commissions, +508 after, no bullets.

Pre-Market: No real news to take advantage of.

9:30: Took ROH at 33.53 anticipating a CEX rally, eventually out for flat when it didn't move on futures rip. Took NSM at 26.84 for a SOX bounce, unfortunately I was shaken out right before futures rip as I lost 20 cents on the trade. Took HP at 26.84, EOG at 33.07 on energy rally, took TYC at 48.80 when futures ripped hard, unfortunately it only moved 20 cents but off 1500 shares it wasn't a bad trade. EOG turned out to be a sweet trade as I took 60 cents and got a quarter out of HP (which eventually went up much more after a few chops). I was up as much as $800 but after I got out of everything I had just $600 left as the market reversed completely.

10:13: Started the quest to pick IBM bottom, at first I thought futures will take a small dip and go higher, didn't happen, I thought futures will bounce off unchanged, didn't happen, lost 10-20 cents each time I tried to bottomfish him and when it fell to 100 I thought it will trade down to 99 to blow all stops then go higher, he did, and I didn't take him then. Churned a lot of GE, NSM, EPG, MU along the way, mostly trying to go long on futures pop just a tons of churning.

3:17: Finally, something sticked, took DOX at 28.90 for a 40 cents move, good stock, he lags behind Nasdaq futures and really works to my advantage, took a dime scalp out of MU and given that our quote system just went out, time to stop . . .
 
A gutless performance as I kept on believing the market will fight back, 3 straight games the market sold off only to come back strong, and I kept on believing the market will come back strong at some point. As a matter of fact the market closed very strong yesterday that I really thought I had a chance in the afternoon for another rally of some sort.

My biggest mistake was the lack of bullets at the critical 10AM cross-point, everything had great, great looking offers, and for some reason, as I get out of my longs I did not do a thing. There were a few very bad trades and I was bailed out, I could have very easily been blown out.

As it is, I managed to save my streak, although it didn't add anything to my account, 7500 shares on 4 of 9 shooting, +190 before commissions, +20 after, tonight is a very important night for me and mentally I was just so afraid to lose and that tied my hands up. I will come back strong tommorrow.

Pre-Market: Good earnings, but IBM's gap-up created an overblown futures that really wasn't as strong as it looked. Positive housing news.

9:30: Took CRA, FLR, ROH long, got 20 cents out of CRA, made 30 cents out of FLR, out of ROH however for flat. Futures came in, took NSM at 27.29 and GE at 38.58, prayed that it will hold, it didn't and I was hit for 20 cents loss on each.

10:20: Took DOX long on what I thought will be a good bounce, no dice, lost 15 cents shaken out at the bottom of that small move. Took CAM long at 39 and OSX was going higher still, but it came in hard and all of a sudden printed 38.5, since I had a tiny position I wasn't really looking and as soon as I saw it I tried to get out, instead I accidentally bought more, it went down to 38.3 and bounced back, I had my fingers on the trigger and I was sooooooo relieved to get out of it with minimum damage!

10:30: Took GS at 84.40 for a 40 cents move. Churned a lot of TER.

2:00: The lack of a bullet (and the fact that I don't want to put one up now that it is afternoon and I may not be able to make full use of one) really hurted, I kept on trying to pick bottoms and lost 20 cents on TER but got 25 cents out of GE. A very poorly played game, what I thought would be a 3PM rally turned into a bullet shoot-out, wrong biase, totally wrong, all day.
 
Hitman-
I enjoy your journals(even though you didn't reply to my last priv message), but I wanted to throw something out to you...
As far as your firm goes...and your stating that everyone there uses that much commission...just because everyone is doing it doesn't mean it's right...you have to remember that the firm is there to make money, so I would think they want everyone to churn away, and they probably want you to make $ too so you keep generating commissions...
Now I've been trading just as long as you, and have worked at a few big firms since 1996,
i guess what i am saying is, i was making 10-20 roundtrips a day, now I might do 5 tops...and my stop is always a lot less than my target,

for example..today I went short 200 QLGC @ 37.46 at 11:40am...I set my stop and stayed away from my station for a while..covered at 34 around 3pm
+692before comm +662 after

Trade what you see, not what you think.

:cool: :cool:
 
uptick,

I generally agree with your approach of making only a few trades per day and looking for larger gains as this is also what I attempt to do (it seems that my profitability is inversely related to the number of trades I make per day/week). However, today is probably not a good example of how this is done consistently since it's not that often that the Nas futures sell off over 120 points off the open. While I love a day like this, the problem is how to trade those days that look like they will be straight up/down versus those that sell off until lunch and end up making a U-turn in the afternoon (or vice versa), or worse yet a choppy session all around. It is here that I think the market makers & specialists have an advantage in that they can see order flow & know if there is any meat behind the move.
 
(it seems that my profitability is inversely related to the number of trades I make per day/week).

you said it better than I did.
 
What you guys can't seem to comprehend is Hitman is developing and refining trading styles/strategies that will permit him to successfully trade real SIZE with real MONEY! Not the two's and fews that you guys dabble in. It's a different ballgame trading 10K shares than 200. It's much more problematic...but that's where the REAL money is. SEVEN figures! This brings a whole new set of problems to the game. Now do you guys get it????

Good.
 
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