Will a journal make a difference...

Quote from anita883:

your on the right track . u need to get funded enough to go to IB or another brokerage to get .005 cents a share. keep up the journal. trade the same,
remember - trading you have to controll risk management.
STOP out .
trading requires stopping out 4 out of 10 trades or more.
concistency is realizing you are wrong and getting out.
we have to follow our rules 99.9 percent of the time . that is where we go wrong .
many traders ,including me , build up our account the same and then fail on a series of bad mistakes. kinda like walking on top of a fence and falling off after awhile.
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Right. I had the tendency before to move my stops before because I thought I knew better than the plan I had set out earlier. Kind of silly, fighting with my own rules. I find that when I'm away from my computer, I do a lot better. =P
 
Quote from 88years:

Well, I do love McDonalds =)

Thanks, I'll look into switching over to IB. I'm a little worried about putting $15k more into trading and how that will affect me psychologically, but if I'm going to be actively trading, the commissions and slippage will kill me, as it seems to be adding up already.
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Put in the additional 15k but continue trading with your "cuurent capital".

Good luck and please keep the discipline.
 
Kind of silly of me today. I entered two opposite positions in 2 highly correlated stocks... =(

10:31am Buy 200 PPS 12.55
11:05am Sell 200 PPS 12.27 (-0.28)
-$66

10:46am Short 200 LNC 9.36
11:47am Cover 200 LNC 9.64 (-0.28)
-$66

------------
-$132

month: +$240
 
Somehow miscalculated and took on more risk than I had wanted for ASH... I need to focus!

10:56am Buy 300 M 13.14
11:35am Sell 150 M 13.34 (+0.20)
12:26pm Sell 150 M 13.08 (-0.06)
+$6

11:09am Buy 200 ASH 17.72
12:30pm Sell 200 ASH 17.29 (-0.43)
-$96

11:42am Buy 200 LAMR 16.10
11:55am Sell 200 LAMR 15.98 (-0.12)
-$34

------------
-$124

month: +$116
 
lost on all trades today.

didn't get filled at 21.60 to exit CLF and ended up losing money on that one too... *sigh*


11:03am Short 200 ASH 17.04
12:07pm Cover 200 ASH 17.20 (-0.16)
-$26

11:03am Buy 200 LAMR 16.02
11:17am Sell 200 LAMR 15.77 (-0.25)
-$35

11:31am Buy 100 CLF 21.19
2:12pm Sell 100 CLF 20.88 (-0.31)
-$41

11:50am Short 100 HOT 19.55
1:39pm Cover 100 HOT 19.81 (-0.26)
-$36

------------
-$138

month: -$22
 
This type of journal won't make any difference. The type of journal (for your own use, not suggesting that you need to write it on ET) that will be of any help is one where you write your trades up each night and go through why the trade was a good trade or not and whether you stuck to your plan etc, that is the only kind of journal that is helpful. It forces you to objectively put your reasoning in to words which focuses things and often will clearly show the point where reason and your plan stopped running the trade and where emotion took over. Good luck.
 
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