Sam's Day Trading Log (With Charts)
- Thread starter Sam Morgan
- Start date
Quote from Sam Morgan:
In reality, I have not been as comfortable trading with real money. It seems that when I converted everything got pushed a notch higher: fear, greed, anxiety, #of trades (increased by the day) and all that good stuff. I had recognized the flows and needed to correct them, but beginners luck had kept me in for this much longer.
.....
Forward to this morning: Yesterdays day out worked like magic. I am rearing to go. No trading however, until I have worked out my glitches and fine tuned a couple of things that were overdue.
I hope to see all of you in a week or two. In the mean time, I will be following your journals. Make some money and hope to see morewhen I get back.
SM
Sorry to hear about your bad day. Trading is ALL about fear and greed. As a great trader once said, you should be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy.
In my experience, and obviously this is different for everyone, I prefer to get right back into to it after I take a loss. Not the same day though because If I hit my max loss then I leave and thats it. But I rarely take a whole day off unless I feel really bad or I'm trading really badly.
Usually I want to get right back in there. Don't let the market intimidate you. The market is there to make you money as much as its there to take your money. If I'm consistently losing for a few days in a row then I reduce my size until it starts to work for me again.
I'm not a psychologist but I think that by taking a large break after suffering a big loss may have start to suffer from some side effects if your not careful. You may start to become fearful of the market when you shouldn't be.
When you get tackled hard, check you haven't broken any bones and then get right back up and back into the game... don't be intimidated.
Hi 4re, this is what I suppose I am lacking. You waited for the trade to come to you..........and it did!. I got half filled (250) at $28.14, at which point SLV started to gain momentum. Hence, my other half never got filled.
I had my stop at $28.63, just below the resistance, and was out. I had wondered if I should hold as the 100MA may provide for a bounce back. However, with the 8, 20 and 50MA breached, I got out.
+$115.50 ($122.50-$7.00[commission])
<img src="http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=3064246".png>
Hi PTMTL, I have to agree with you on this. I was a little reluctant taking the break, but did so, as I felt I had made bad trades. In going back to my reading, I discovered that I had not been trading according to my plan.
I have to be honest with myself, and as of now, I think I have a few more gaps (in my knowledge/education) that need to be filled. Also, my last trading day, when I had a loss of ~$350, I had deviated from my plan.
When I do come back, I want to continue trading with real money, as I think that paper trading does not give me a real indication of my trading abilities (and besides, I'll catch up to Mr. Buffett pretty fast
). I am working on it and will be back soon. I miss trading, and watch the market everyday, with the temptation of placing my trade. I have made a pact with myself, and have agreed to either trade well or not at all.
See you guys soon,
SM
Hey Sam,
I figured you would be ok with your entry on SLV. What you were seeing as resistance on an intraday chart was just a blip on a daily chart. That is why I think that people starting out trading should feel better by slowing down their trading. By sitting there watching the screen it is hard to NOT react and overthink the situation. I like to spend some time in the evening looking at my charts and placing my orders. Sometimes I don't what orders triggered until the evening, so I don't make very many mistakes and my opinion is cut to a minimum during the trading day. I am human just like everybody else and I know that if I watched the screen all day I could talk myself into doing all kinds of dumb trading.
I am not saying that I win every trade because I don't. In fact sometimes I stay in what would have been a small winning trade too long so that I can possibly hit a bigger winning trade. This is part of my strategy and it is easy to look back and say "man I let that profit slip away" but if I stay with my plan my winning trades average double what my losses are. This is part of the expectancy question you should know about your market and your trading plan before entering a trade. I could really go off the deep end talking about mathmatical expectation of the market you are trading. But that is too in depth for a forum.
I am still holding my trade in SLV. It looks like my signal to close the trade will come today. I will watch the market near the end of trading day. If the stock appears to have a strong close I will close with a market order at the open tomorrow. If it is weak at the end of today I will do a market at close order and get out today.
Either way I'll let you know.
Either way I'll let you know.
SLV has taken a beating the last two days but I still have not gotten a signal to close the trade. In fact today gave me another buy signal. I am still holding this trade. I am not trying to prove myself right on this trade I am just waiting until the market takes me out of this trade. Positive or Loss, I still don't know which one it will be.
Hi 4re, a couple of quick questions,1) what is your sell signal, 2) what gave you another buy signal?
I am hoping to re-establish a position with SLV again (swing), but will wait to see some buying action.
SM
My sell signal is a little tricky because I have 2. My sell signal for the winning side side: I would have exited the trade with a market order the morning after the RSI (5period) closed above 75 which it never did.
On the losing side I always have it set for 2% of my trading account. On this trade since the ATR (average trading range) was a little high it told me to use less shares and a wider stop loss. My stop loss is set for 26.00
The buy signal I got today is that the RSI (2) is bottomed out at 0 and the RSI (5) closed under 25 this is a short term buy for me on a swing trade. This is telling me it is oversold.
I wish you could have seen one of my better trades the first time out but it is what it is.