PropTrader - Daily exploits

Rubbish day and bad trading. Broke my recent rule of avoiding the first 30mins and paid the price. I was down $1,100 in no time at all. Chop and lack of direction in the market and any sort of conviction on my part.

Citi played its part in me being down... Contributing $700 to the red. At one stage though every one of the 6 stocks I touched turned to red on my blotter. Not a great feeling.

I felt tilting and anger coming on but realized it, took a 2 min walk and sat back down and waited for the $$ to come to me.

Thought I had caught a nice break out on SLE but it didn't really go... Was up about 10c on it but it did a violent pull back and shock me out. NEXT...

Didn't pop up on my radar until it reached top 10 most active NASDQ stocks... ARNA!! It was a great break out and strong up trend and I seemed to be late to the party. But it wasn't so and caught a couple of good pops. Should have made quite a bit more as it traded perfectly pulling back to previous resistance and acting as support would make another move up. Couldn't ask for anything more then that.

So I clawed back my p&l from ($1,100) back to ($300). I didn't want to risk going back up there and felt lucky to have made it back. Gotta downsize this week and play defensive...

($300) ... Month to date: $7,850
 
Your account size?leverage?average % profit/month?
Quote from PropTraderMTL:

Day trader at a Prop firm who is seeking consistency. I think that by keeping a history of my trading exploits each day it will force me to review my trading performance and to hopefully improve over time.

I'm a complete discretionary trader using charts and reading the tape for entry and exits. No overnight positions and never trade pre or post market.

I prefer to trade high volume stocks where I can take decent size 5k-30k. On certain stocks like Citi I will take up to 100k positions. I prefer stocks that move 5-30c a day but I will trade where ever the action is.

I have been on Elite since I started trading 2 years ago. I have never really posted but I have created a new account to keep this thing kind of anonymous. Although I'm sure those I trade with may recognize me.

Feedback, questions and comments are welcome but I don't want any of the annoying drivel that I see on many threads
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Quote from OTCkrak:

post a screen shot and the discussion could get very lively..

-whats your view on vol in the next couple months?
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No problem, here is a screenshot of my month to date. I don't really want to post it for every individual day because first of all the accounting system updates overnight and I would like to comment on my day prior to the next trading day (our platform doesn't show accurate fees... and unfortunately fees are very relevant for me hahaha) and secondly I'm just plain lazy because it doesn't add anything for me. However if I have a very good or bad day I don't mind posting for you guys.

In terms of volume --- You won't meet a more optimistic trader so I hope its going to be great. However my Jan and Feb 2010 were not good (i.e. negative) so I'm not holding my breath. For want of a better word we really need the "dumb money" to pour into this market because paper has been really lacking. I suspect that we will see that in the first few months of 2011 and then we will see the top of this move as hedge funds etc take profit. I make more $$ on the short side as most traders do and so I would like a decent pull back as this melt up sucks.

If you ask any commentators or banks about their view of the market they are all bullish... for me this indicates that a top is near... but I'm not an investor, I'm a trader so I don't care about the direction of the market... just whether I can make $$ on it and a correction means volume!!!
 

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Quote from bharatk8:

Your account size?leverage?average % profit/month?
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I'm a prop trader so account size, leverage, average % profit etc don't mean much to me sorry. We don't have much in common in that sense of money management.

Buying power for me is basically whatever I want... position size is what I'm comfortable with because I have built up trust with my risk manager. I work off max loss per day which is somewhere around $2-3k gross (system doesn't pick up net).

No such thing as a average month for me. I don't trade a "system" so its purely what opportunities are available to me. This month is a bit better then it had been for the past 4-5 months. But I made much more earlier in the year
 
2 trades in total today and very proud of it!

I tried taking a small position of Citi this morning just to see if it would shake me out... of course it did. Its really tough to trade when its not going anywhere and I should not trade it at all because it makes no sense. Especially the sell algo that has been put on it both mornings this week... selling 500 shares on BOSX and EAB... just nails it every morning... no idea if it is a net seller or buy (i.e. wash trading or making the market hits its bids). No idea and to be honest don't care. Down $200 after taking 10k on it.

The second trade was awesome! I have been waiting for this one for a while and its kind of difficult to take for me as I don't trade overnight positions. SIRI has had resistance for a number of weeks at $1.40. Its been banging up against it for a while now and not going. Today it opened above at $1.41-.42... it came down 1c to give me a 10k position @ $1.41. I felt I wanted to have something that I can add to but didn't want any size in case it tried to shake out.

When $1.42 got hit for the first time thats when I took the rest of my position... 40k total position. It held there for a while as they stuffed around trying to get filled on a large position long. Once they had done that it took off (In SIRI terms... its obviously not the SPY). Never gave me any reason to get out until $1.45 as this was the first level to come back... but it got bought up right away so I let $1.46 go through... when I saw $1.47 not getting hit I banged out the whole position @ $1.46 for a $1,600 Net Profit.

SIRI then proceeded to sit there @ 1.45-.46 for 3hrs in typical SIRI style... it broke up at the end of the day but only the computers could have hit the offer.

Didn't take another trade afer closing out my position @ 10:30am. Perfect trading and no fees... love these days!!!

Date: 21/12/2010
Net P&L: +$1,400
Month Balance: $9,250
 
Ok. will you pl. mention trade size along with profit/loss figures?[
Quote from PropTraderMTL:

I'm a prop trader so account size, leverage, average % profit etc don't mean much to me sorry. We don't have much in common in that sense of money management.

Buying power for me is basically whatever I want... position size is what I'm comfortable with because I have built up trust with my risk manager. I work off max loss per day which is somewhere around $2-3k gross (system doesn't pick up net).

No such thing as a average month for me. I don't trade a "system" so its purely what opportunities are available to me. This month is a bit better then it had been for the past 4-5 months. But I made much more earlier in the year
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Quote from bharatk8:

Ok. will you pl. mention trade size along with profit/loss figures?[
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Sure bharatk8, I think its very important to get a clear picture of how much risk is being taken relative to p&l. If you look in my post above I mentioned I took 10k in Citi and total position of 40k in SIRI. Btw in case it's not clear when I say 40k it's 40,000 shares not $40,000.
 
Quote from bb3pt:

Nice trade on SIRI today PropTraderMTL! I was on it also at the open but didn't get near the same size as you do.
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Good to hear someone else made $$ on it hahaha. Where did you get in and out? It trades well for the 5 mins it's not stuck in a 1c range by the algo's. Doesn't matter what your size was... It's all about the trade. The better you get the bigger the size you will be able to take
 
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