Objectives - February 2011 - Review

In this post I will review my performance from the past month, determining what was accomplished, what was not accomplished and why. Below is a summary of the objectives I set for myself during the month of February:

• Read trading blog posts daily
• Archive important news and blog posts in searchable database as needed
• Follow the activity of SPY and IWM daily
• Update Market Report daily
• Update Market Breadth Indicators daily
• Simulate trades for mean reversion trading strategy daily using Interactive Brokers paper trading account
• Complete 1 Lesssons Learned per week
• Determine top ten trading prop firms to submit resume
• Add swing trading breakout trading plan post to About Me page
• Create spreadsheet of trading network and contacts
• Complete objectives review for January 2011
• Create spreassheet to track TeleChart long and short mean revesion trades and IB meanr reversion trades to evaluate slippage and commisions
• Study DDE for Excel API spreadsheet for TWS Interactive Brokers and begin using for order entry
• Finish StockFinder layout for mean reversion strategy research
• Improve entry and exit orders for mean reversion strategy
• Create post summarizing performance for 2010

The items in green are the objectives that I completed during the month. The items in yellow are objectives that were partially completed during the month. The items in red are objectives that were not completed during the month. Below is the list of items that I accomplished in February:

• Read 1129 trading blog posts
• Archived 72 blog posts in email
• Posted Market Breadth Report to track sector behavior on 19 days
• Updated market breadth indicators spreadsheet on 19 days
• Monitored intraday SPY and IWM activity for 19 days
• Recorded simulated trades in journal on 19 days
• Worked out on 13 days
• Read 78 pages of Futures for Dummies
• Created Google spreadsheet to automate relative strength investing strategy
• Created Google spreadsheet to track daily trade performance
• Posted trading plan for swing trade breakout strategy
• Updated trading plan for day trade mean reversion strategy
• Created spreadsheet to track swing trade breakout strategy trades
• Created spreadsheet to track day trade mean reversion strategy trades

I completed most of my objectives for the month.   I still spent most of the month focusing on my job search and getting my mean reversion trading strategy up and running using Interactive Broker's trading simulator.  I still did not complete a review of my accomplishments in 2010.  This would be an excellent summary to have and add to my About Me page, especially if firms visit my page via my resume.  I did estimate that I read over 16,000 blog posts and archived over 1,000 of those posts.  That is a ton of domain knowledge to review and categorize, but ultimately it makes me a better trader.

There has been a lack of good blog posts recently on the internet.  The number of quality posts worth archiving seemed to begin to twindle since last summer.  I have begun adding more Lessons Learned posts to my blog to make up for the lack of quality posts.  These posts help me focus on core behaviors and techniques to help me improve my trading.  As I focus more on developing my startegies, I have begun to care less about other people's opinions on the market.  I still keep track of posts that use backtests to predict the near-term behavior of the market, but I could do without all the technical and fundamental analysis that tries to predict what is going to happen.  You can use that information to support a long or short perspective at anytime, so it becomes rather noisy.  Oh how I wish Dr. Brett Steenbarger would return to the blogosphere!

I did make some progress on my mean reversion startegy.  I was able to study the DDE for Excel API spreadsheet and begin entering orders with it, but I am still having some issues with a few of the order types. I made trades daily through February using IB, and I archived the trading records.  I will use these next month to evaluate commissions and slippage.  I have also been working on my StockFinder layout that models the historical returns of the strategy.  Due to the programming limitations of the software, I had to develop some round-about methods to get an accurate measurement on the past performance of the strategy.  The layout is nearly completed and I will use it to explore some of the aspects of the system to see if I can improve the performance.

Right now all my focus is on strategy development/implementation and job searching.  I was able to update my trading plan for my day trade mean reversion strategy as well as post my preliminary trading plan for the swing trade breakout strategy.  I will continue to update both of these documents.  I will be documenting my paper trading results for both strategies in more detail.  I created spreadsheets to help track the trade performance and I am working on commonizing my stock scans.  I would like to have a weekly review of the results of each strategy, noting what I did well and what I could have improved.
I will begin sending out resumes this month to various trading firms.  I will also work my connections to hopefully find a good mentor for my trading, or at the very least, someone I can have engaging discussions with about trading.  I am interested to see how the interview process goes.

I was able to consistently maintain my trading routine this past month.  I was also able to work out during most days, even though it is sometimes difficult in the dead of winter with my additional responsibilities.