ShortHipsters Journal

[ShortHipsters]

I repeated this cycle after my $18K loss on STLD options. At some point my (informal) mentor here at ET recommended a book to me, Reading Price Charts Bar By Bar by Al Brooks. It was a dreadful book to read, but I kept spending time with it and gradually things I saw and experienced personally during my daily trading screen time started to resonate. I'd put on a trade that went 1 tick in my favor and immediately stopped me out for a loss, and I remember stuff I saw in Brooks' book about counter-trend traps. One day I decided to buy a new high in a strong trend using a buy stop. It felt so absolutely wrong I could hardly leave the order sitting there as price came up to it. But it worked, more often than not.

Gradually over time, I learned that fading trends and strong trending moves is the hard way to make money. (I now know that it can work quite well under certain conditions and at certain price levels, but even that knowledge came from concepts learned about in Brooks' book.)

Before Brooks I had some good ideas, but no idea about how the markets really worked and why. Brooks opened my eyes to the "why and how" of price behavior in highly liquid markets. I never again endured a loss like that because I learned about risk management. Learning to think in probabilities (Mark Douglas, The Disciplined Trader) was an absolute necessity as well because the best and most thoroughly tested trading plan in world is worthless without the ability to trade based on probabilities, instead of trading based on what you think, feel, and believe is going to happen.

Yeah that's fine in a trending market. I find you can make money both fading moves and going with them. It's the switch between a trending market and a choppy market that I find hardest to determine and adjust.

So how is your trading now? are you profitable and making a living?

 

[NoDoji]

Yeah that's fine in a trending market. I find you can make money both fading moves and going with them. It's the switch between a trending market and a choppy market that I find hardest to determine and adjust.

So how is your trading now? are you profitable and making a living?

Trading is repetitive and routine, and I'm profitable and making a living. Because of the way I manage my entries, I don't endure too much damage in choppy conditions. My max risk per trade is a fixed thing now, which excludes a lot of first entry trades. By focusing on second entries following a long or short signal, and by anticipating S/R at range extremes and at previous levels likely to be defended later on, I can keep my max risk really small.

 

[ShortHipsters]

Trading is repetitive and routine, and I'm profitable and making a living. Because of the way I manage my entries, I don't endure too much damage in choppy conditions. My max risk per trade is a fixed thing now, which excludes a lot of first entry trades. By focusing on second entries following a long or short signal, and by anticipating S/R at range extremes and at previous levels likely to be defended later on, I can keep my max risk really small.

So by taking the 2nd entries you're only taking the very confirmed trades. This is probably good to avoid the chop and getting whipped in or out of positions. It's all about risk reward at the end of the day. Glad to hear you're making a living. My first year goal was to get to $100k which I made in less than 9 months. Next goal is $200k and overall I want to get to $500k after 3 years.

 

[ShortHipsters]

This is for the past 2 weeks;

Start = $132,530
End = $132,980

Fortnightly P&L = +$450
YTD P&L = +$122,980
_________________________

Whilst the above shows a relatively flat two weeks there were some good swings. I made a great trade short on Oil but it got cancelled out by shorting US equities. I've shorted equities twice. The first time I covered for a loss. I'm now short again together with an index short on ESmini. I held and added post FOMC. It was hard to hold but I was very convinced it was a head fake.

I've attached a chart below which shows where I'm short and a larger time frame chart. I think this whole bounce has been a dead cat bounce and I've been positioning accordingly. I think we have now broken the recent up trend (Monday to confirm) and FOMC provided a great short squeeze/bull trap. This market heads much lower over coming weeks and I'll ride it down.

Over the weekend my positions are;
Short 500 AAPL @ $116 = +1.7k
Short 500 FB @ $93 = -$1k
Short 500 NFLX @ $103 = +$0.4k
Short 500 TSLA @ $256 = -$3.3k
Short ES (index) 50 @ 2,019 = +$3.9k

Overall current positions = +$1.7k

Probably the most concerning position is TSLA which has been showing relative strength. As a result I'll likely take 50% of the position off at break even and be quick to exit if this market decides to head higher. FB has also been strong but with this and the other trades I'm comfortable with the positions.

Given I was short everything I took off 50 of ES @ $1,970 to reduce the risk of a bounce after the weekend. However I think Monday will be a big red day!

Wise trading to all..

Chart 1: market breaking the recent up-trend and why I think we head much lower...

Chart 2: shows my ES entries and exits. The one I don't have marked is another cover of 25% at 1970.

 

[nakachalet]

@ShortHipsters

congrats, great accomplishment indeed.

i scanned over all your 3 charts posted here.

and i was trying to find your entry points marked on
each chart, but i could not find any, with the exception
that there were some type-in explanations of sort to
explain the trade.

during one of your next trades, if you are able to and if
you are willing to, plse do favour us with a
live-on-the-chart entry point, woundn't you,
so perhaps we might follow along (if we could) and
perhaps, learn something more worthwhile
to augment our own much less prolific trading
experiences?

thx for sharing so far.

 

[ShortHipsters]

@ShortHipsters

congrats, great accomplishment indeed.

i scanned over all your 3 charts posted here.

and i was trying to find your entry points marked on
each chart, but i could not find any, with the exception
that there were some type-in explanations of sort to
explain the trade.

during one of your next trades, if you are able to and if
you are willing to, plse do favour us with a
live-on-the-chart entry point, woundn't you,
so perhaps we might follow along (if we could) and
perhaps, learn something more worthwhile
to augment our own much less prolific trading
experiences?

thx for sharing so far.

Hey - the little orange "down arrows" are my shorts and blue "up arrows" my covers.

100 Short @ 1980
100 Short @ 2020
100 Cover @ 1990
50 Cover @ 1970

Still holding 50.

 

[nakachalet]

Hey - the little orange "down arrows" are my shorts and blue "up arrows" my covers.

100 Short @ 1980
100 Short @ 2020
100 Cover @ 1990
50 Cover @ 1970

Still holding 50.

great thx

did the chart providers and/or signal providers, automatically stamp those
entry and exit marks for you or do traders have to do that for themselves, pls?

and the explanations on the chart about small loss and such, are automatically
entered by providers too?

the providers of the attached chart automatically enter and show on the
live-chart each and everyone of my trades including the running profit
or loss as well.

wonder if your providers do the same for all traders?

thx for taking time to explain.

 

[nakachalet]

@ShortHipsters

also this is what my providers would do for all traders alike:

updating each position instantaneously.

may i post another pix of the same trade but updated already?

 

[ShortHipsters]

great thx

did the chart providers and/or signal providers, automatically stamp those
entry and exit marks for you or do traders have to do that for themselves, pls?

and the explanations on the chart about small loss and such, are automatically
entered by providers too?

the providers of the attached chart automatically enter and show on the
live-chart each and everyone of my trades including the running profit
or loss as well.

wonder if your providers do the same for all traders?

thx for taking time to explain.

That's handy. No I wrote it on there to explain my trade. Actually the little triangle shows entry and direction if you can notice it at 2020. Currently shorting this bounce in the futures if you're interested... you can see my trades on the attached chart. I'm just using paint but it seems too zoomed out.

 

[nakachalet]

@ShortHipsters

hi again, shorthipsters

thx for sharing your charts. the following is your enlarged chart showing
your marked up profitable trades.

is that a 3 min chart? your markings and executions appeared to be perfect in time. congrats.

perhaps, you could also help me or better yet help all of us--

HOW TO PICK THE TOPS/BOTTOMS TO EXECUTE CONSISTENT PROFITS, like
your charts revealed?

you surely have a very unusual trading skills which, it seems, no
one here could equal or even come close. congrats again.

of course, i would also understand perfectly, if you do not wish to share with the world,
how you could pick the tops/bottoms so accurately and consistently.

hopefully, in years to come i and many others here could also learn to pick the very tops and bottoms perfectly like you did on your markup charts, below.

currently, i must confess, i do not have such accurate and perfect skills as you did,
as yet; what i could was only to follow my tweaked and consolidated charts to take some of the profits on the way down from the tops and vice versa....

and here is my chart with its original computer generated marking and updating as the trade progresses. i really hope that you would and could share some of your
top secrets with us here.

my cyber trading friend, wishing you continued greater successes and profitabilities as well. chow.