- Today was not a very good day for me in terms of trading. I felt like I could not do anything right today. The market was making some moves up and down, but the moves were really choppy and I got ripped up all day long. Breakouts to the upside rarely seemed to follow through. Levels were difficult to play because the price would consolidate for a few bars, then shoot up all of the sudden during one bar to the upper half of my range. I could not enter/exit fast enough to take advantage of these momentary spikes.
- There seemed to be a lot of selling pressure today. Unfortunately, I only trade long right now. The easy money was in the shorts with nice long, clean trends. Most of the day I wanted to start shorting, especially when my early longs were not working.
- I created a summary of all my trades so far with performance metrics broken down by the hour of the day. I trade best during the middle of the day. My winning percentages during this time is around 52% and my win to loss ratio is 2.27. This may be due to the fact I can follow the market more closely during lunch with very few distractions or it could be due to the lower volatility. Things seem to move a little slower during the middle of the day, so it is easier for me to analyze what is happening.
- I don't seem to trade well on the open or the close when there is a lot of volatility. My winning percentages during these times is around 25% and my win to loss ratio is 1.11, that is pretty bad. This is primarily due to the order entry methods on the trading platform. I will need to be more selective when choosing my entries.
- I started getting frustrated today. My first 4 trades were losers. I started getting stupid and entered a position at 73.75 when my indicators said it was a bad time to enter. Then I was really stupid and averaged down at 73.71 on the same position with no indication of increased buying. DUMB! As soon as I entered that second position, the market ripped down and I loss -0.19 and -0.15 on the positions for a total loss of -0.34. They were my largest losses of the day.
- I recognized during the day that I was getting frustrated and my trading style was not working well, but I continued to try to trade. If anything I need more experience in all types of markets so my actions were more for education than anything.
- Although today was by far my worst day, I did get good practice at cutting my losses short. Besides the two poor trades mentioned above, the rest of my losses were less than -0.09, with an average loss of -0.06 (not including the two stupid trades from above). I have to be pleased with that because I know if I can keep my losses around this level during a good day, it will lead to a very profitable run.
- I need to develop some rules to stop me from trading if things aren't working. Something like an intraday loss limit or setting a limit on how much money I can give back. Perhaps if there are 3 bad trades in a row, I should shut things down. Right now I am still trying to learn, so I will continue to refine my skills. I will need to consider such rules in the future, especially when I begin increasing my size.
- There was a long uptrend in the last hour of trading which I tried to 4 times, but 3 of them were losers. The trend was very choppy with an ATR10 around 0.11, which isn't bad if the trend is moving up quickly. This trend was grinding up slowly, in a choppy manner with some ugly candles. My indicators said there was buying strength for almost the entire trend. If I had had some more patience, my positions could have been more profitable. I kept trying to enter when the price broke up to a new level, but the breakouts were not clean. I should have entered on pull backs to the EMA7 and rode the EMA7 all the way up for about a 0.70 gain.
- WHEN BREAKOUTS ARE FAILING, ENTER ON PULLBACKS TO THE EMA INSTEAD OF BREAKOUTS TO NEW TRADING RANGES.
- I need to make a summary of all my trading rules for entry and exits. I should add it to the sidebar of the blog for easy access and editing.
Daily Trading Summary (08/31/11):
Number of trades (round trips) = 24 (7W, 16L)
Trade Size = 1 share
Average Win (Winning %) = $0.07 (29%)
Average Loss (Losing %) = -$0.07 (67%)
Average Return = -$0.027
Total Return = -$0.65
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