Taking $5K to 25K by the end of the year

Alright. Had some extra trades go through that bumped up the initial amount in the account prior to the switch to the new platform today.

Had some decent trades, along with a trade that I misread and got into poorly (with the opportunity to get out later in the day at a profit, only missing that due to the fact I had walked away to go to the bathroom. LOL)

Overall, the end result was ok, considering I was in the red $700 at one point.

3700 shares, Net P/L $77.51

Traded - EMKR (Win), TMA (wash/2 trades), BSC (even), CIT (wash, 2 trades).

CIT was the trade I misread. Hoping for a better day tomorrow.
 

Attachments

Wednesday - rough day. Made undisciplined mistakes. Won't get into details. PIcked a bit up in the afterhours on an ORCL short. Loss for the day around $600

Thursday - lots of trades, generally followed my rules but found myself on the wrong side of the trade alot in the morning, action would whipsaw against me just after I'd enter a position, and had stops taken out. Afternoon was much more positive. At one point in the AM, was down $600.

Ended thursday +65.52. Could have been worse.

Net assets at end of day - $5,528.06. Still above the initial $5000 from monday morning, and at the target for the week.

Still trying too much for home runs. Need to watch more carefully my entry and exit points. Volume was sure weird in the shares I traded today.

Successes - CIT (L/S), EBAY (S), APPL (L), EMKR (L).
Fails - WM (L/S)

Friday hopefully won't be as painful as this morning was.
 
Quote from jazzsax:

Wednesday - rough day. Made undisciplined mistakes. Won't get into details. PIcked a bit up in the afterhours on an ORCL short. Loss for the day around $600

Thursday - lots of trades, generally followed my rules but found myself on the wrong side of the trade alot in the morning, action would whipsaw against me just after I'd enter a position, and had stops taken out. Afternoon was much more positive. At one point in the AM, was down $600.

Ended thursday +65.52. Could have been worse.

Net assets at end of day - $5,528.06. Still above the initial $5000 from monday morning, and at the target for the week.

Still trying too much for home runs. Need to watch more carefully my entry and exit points. Volume was sure weird in the shares I traded today.

Successes - CIT (L/S), EBAY (S), APPL (L), EMKR (L).
Fails - WM (L/S)

Friday hopefully won't be as painful as this morning was.
More...

Hi Jazz good journal so far...

Don't take this as criticism at all but in your original post you stated one of your goals for the journal was to help you with your psychological problems as related to trading. Then above you had a loss due to "undiciplined mistakes" that you won't go into detail. Please share these mistakes, since if you trying to help yourself out of them then the only way is full disclosure. Of course if it is something personal and sensitive in nature I understand, but if not then get it out and start the healing. BTW, made my first trip to Canada last summer it was absolutely beautiful!!!

Good luck,

Stephen
 
Jazzsax,

Great thread. Keep up the good work. If you follow your plan I think you can hit & possible exceed your goal.

J-Law
 
Thanks guys.

No, the mistakes aren;t of a personal nature. I started this to try and force myself to stop doing where I *make* my common mistakes.

Unfortunately, I've had a good win-loss ratio over the past few months, but my downfall has been my losers.

My losers I tend to trade from emotion, rather than the charts. I hold on to them too long, ignore the stops thinking they'll come back, or I chase trades.

Wednesday was a combination of all three. The major one in this case though was chasing trades when the charts were saying there wasn't an entry there. Stubborn me tried to make something out of nothing.

Thursday was the opposite, just simply had trades go in the wrong direction in one stock. Otherwise it was still a good day, since I was able to overall be positive.

I'll post my major mistakes on any down day.
 
End of week update:

For friday - blotter shows +130 or so (in the P/L) section. I suspect though that there's some issues with how the software is calculating things, as my BP was slightly lower. I *believe* it's not accounting for commissions properly.

Overall, today was fairly good, other than one bad trade, just caught a bad move in a stock I was holding, exited at my stop. Followed my rules today, followed stops, didn't let any trades break my loss limit. If the one bad trade (near the end of the day, in the last 10 minutes) hadn't occured, I'd have been up more.

Overall, a net change of around $500 or so for the week (from the initial $5000), so far on pace. Would have been better without the huge loss on wednesday.

I find it hard to just "walk away" when my daily target has been hit (daily meaning $100 since it can take just one trade to make it). I'm learning slowly to not overtrade and take the time to look more for position entries.

Best trades - anytime after 9:45 when I seem to have guaged market sentment, especially in the 11am-3pm range.

Worst trades - first 15 minutes of the market. Getting whipsawed.

Looks like I may need to consider watching the first little bit for momentum and see if that helps.
 
Thats a good idea to watch the first 1/2 hour to hour to get an idea if it is going to range or not....even if it turns unpredictable you still have that timeframe to get comfortable in your seat and work in your gameplan. FWIW
 
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