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1 Winner. 1 Loser. Net gain $115. 47th percentile day.
Trade 1. Got in right after some economic news was announced. Several failed pushes up, left me leaning short. Once news hit, jumped in. Caught a good move. Was patient with stops. Thought about stopping out around 8:54, but market traded down again. Jumped out after first double bottom was put in and began trading up around 9:45.
Trade 2. Thought I was seeing a second failed push up 10:21 and a rejection of $140.25 from a prior day. Market made two more pushes up after that. Stopped out.
4 trades. 2 winners. 2 losers. Net gain $160. 61st percentile day.
Trade 1 was a purchase after a $1 move in 2 bars. Lots of momentum. This should have been a warning sign for a strong up trend day. But not quite the follow through I have seen on this pattern. Stopped out.
Trade 2 was a short after a failure to make a higher high on the back of that strong move up. Trend hadn't really been established for the day, so I was pretty protective with my stop. Moved my stop to cover the loss of the previous trade. Huge volume up bar (30k shares and a $0.75 range bar, my second warning that trend up was underway). I was flat at this point.
Trade 3 was despite the two warnings I had received. Short a little late on what appeared to be a double top. There was a dynamic support line that carried through from the previous day. Lost $15 on this one.
Trade 4 was pretty late in the trend. Apparently JPM had upgraded the stock to Overweight. So I waited for a retracement back to the 21 EMA and the bottom of the channel and went long 200 shares. Was hoping to take $1 swing. Offer got up there but not the bid. With little time left in the day, I closed out as price retreated from the highs. Target was hit about 30 minutes later.
Trade 1 was a push off the 21EMA after a gap down. But some economic numbers a 7am pushed the markets around. Stopped out.
Trade 2 Should have been my trade. Because I was stopped out without taking out the recent swing high, I got short again. Took heat immediately; almost stopped out. When price came back the second time, jumped out at BE. I only had to take another $0.10 of heat and I would have had a good runner on my hands. Ugh.
Trade 3 After seeing the higher low at 7:30, I thought I might be seeing a trend up (despite the gap down and the lower highs so far). That coupled with two stop getting hit, I thought I might be mentally positions the wrong way. So I went long. A brief 3-minute mistake. Done for the day, missed the big move.
Third day in a row of straight losers. 9 in a row. If I were trading 2% stops, i would be down 18%. Scary thought.
Trade 1 was supposed to be a trade off a local resistance at the high of the day. Price did pause, but strength was pretty evident in the approach. Stop was a little tight given the volatility. Wouldn't have helped to have a larger stop, but just noting I got a little greedy.
Trade 2 was in response to the strength seen from 6:45 to 7:09. I was expecting a pullback off the 21EMA. I got one for about 30 seconds. Trade didn't eve last a bar.
At least two nice trades came after these. But I stopped at $80 loss. Another day...
Today was a special confluence of events. I am working on getting an excel journal together, but it has been a while since I placed live trades. Decided to do that today. Thing is, I have this losing streak of 9 trades in a row. Added 2 more to that. At this point, if I was live trading I would stop and reassess. But I am not trading live, so what can I stop? Poor time to try live trades.
Not going to "review" the trades, but I will comment on the day. The other thing that happened today was a hugetrend day down. This should have been an easy day to trade. Usually, you hear the idea "simple, but not easy" regarding trading. Today was flat out easy.
How easy? Up through 11:30am, the first 5 hours of the day, all you had to do was sell. I usually trade with a $0.40 stop (sometimes a $0.20 if the ATR5 is less than $0.20 and i am feeling aggressive/greedy). Using a $0.40 stop, there were only three stretches of 2, 10, and, 21 minutes where a $0.40 stop would have been taken out. First five hours (300 minutes) and only 33 minutes of "danger". Put another way, there were 3487 trades during that time frame, only on 548 (or 16%) of those trades could I have been stopped out. 84% of random shorts put on in the first 5 hours would have done great.
If, if, IF I had the presence of mind to watch price and recognize the down trend. But what do I do? Two longs. Two longs that don't last 10 minutes each.
Very low volatility day. Price basically sat at two prices for 5 hours. Very peculiar. A high volume day too. I have been thinking of recording the "vol" for the day to get a sense of how I trade on different days. Originally, I was thinking I could record the range of the day. The idea being, I should make more money on a $5 high-to-low day than a $2 day. But a day like today would be a $2.50 day, which is on the lower end, but not as "flat" as today's chart shows. May have to think of a different metric.
Trade 1 was a bounce off of a trend started yesterday. Strong reversal bar, so I took an entry. The previous price action was decidedly negative, so I was defensive with my stop. So I bailed after price looked like it bounced off of a resistance level from yesterday. Would have been stopped out.
Trade 2 was with the same trend as Trade 1. By this time a HH/HL had been established twice. But price started to go sideways. After 45 minutes I jumped out at BE.
Trade 1 took a short after 4 failed pushes up and price finding resistance in the EMA21. Was pretty patient with stops. Felt a little anxious at 8:33, but price stalled up and continued down. I jammed my stop down after the higher high at 11am.
Fortunately I was away from my desk. Otherwise I probably would have been tempted to trade a reversal 12:15 or 12:30...
Early close today. Thought about not trading. The fact that I did worries me a little because it shows the inability to sit on the sidelines.
Trade 1 was a short. I was surprised to see a gap down. A LH had been put in, and price was failing to push up, so I put the trade on. Some economic numbers came out, which were positive, and dragged the market up. I benefited from some negative economic numbers yesterday. Need to keep those in mind.
My short bias was strong today. I refused to act on the up trend - even after the move from 7:00-7:15. I thought about getting long at 7:21, 7:39, 8:30, and 8:51. Never pulled the trigger. Last few days have seen such strong selling, I was very hesitant. Cost me today.
Trade 2 was another short. After a break in a trendline and two failed pushes higher after coming down through the $132.50 level from yesterday. I was frustrated with the losing trade - especially when I thought I shouldn't be trading today. All I wanted was to break even for the day. Once I hit BE, price action was suggesting that price would go further, but I felt a strong need to close the trade out. I kept the trade on, and picked up another $0.60 on 200 shares. This was a small victory. You can go broke taking a profit... you have to let them run.
Just a quick post with the equity curve for my trades since finishing up paper trading. Each dot is a day.
Disappointing to see that basically the last 14 of 27 trading days have been a wash. Last 8 days particularly tough. I have a hypothesis as to why that is. Next post.