9/2/2011 6:50 AM
Pretty bad day today. The market was heavily bearish before the open but really chopped around for the first 15-20 min or so and I got killed trying to trade around the chop. Five trades all in all, not a single winner, -5, -4, -6, -6, -7. I’m going to have to do a lot better than this…
9/1/2011 6:35 AM
Yesterday was a tough day but I managed to squeeze out a tiny profit (+1 after comms). My trades were -9, +3, -4, +11,+1, and +2. The +3 trade was a bit of a disappointment because I had about +10 in the trade but I got greedy and tried for more. I exited at +3 when the market started to turn against me. The final +2 trade was only to put be in the black for the day.
Today was much nicer, a quick one-and-done at the open. The market showed no bias so I was looking for either shorts or longs. After moving down a bit, the market pulled back a little, then stalled out. I took a short entry and made a quick +10.
8/30/2011 6:42 AM
Much better day today. The market was bearish and I was looking primarily for shorts. I got a nice stall at the open and took +10 off the move.
I did watch the market a little more to see about trying to recoup more of yesterday’s losses but I didn’t see anything else that I felt comfortable with, so I called it a day.
8/29/2011 7:33 PM
Wow, pretty bad day today. These are the kind of days I need to eliminate if I’m ever going to have any sort of consistency in this business. The market was bullish before the open, but for some reason I thought I’d try to take shorts. Because of all of the negativity in the markets lately, my preconceived bias tainted my ability to make good trades because I’ve been doing so well with shorts. There are too many bad trades to post screenshots, but I’ll just summarize with 7 trades, 6 losers and 1 tiny winner to end the day -38 net.
On the positive side, I’m still ahead since I’ve been back to trading. I also learned that I need to throw my prejudice away at the door and trade what is in front of me. Had I been focused on trading with the trend, I am certain I would have had a better day. Hopefully tomorrow will be better…
8/26/2011 10:43 AM
I decided to take the day off from trading today so instead, I’ll post an updated summary of my progress so far. I’ve been back to trading for a month and it’s been a good month:
That includes missing several days in the first couple weeks, as well as a week-long vacation last week. It’s interesting to see that I’ve had more losers than winners, but I keep my losers small and have had some decent size winners.
8/24/2011 8:42 PM
Nice day today. Got short right after the open but didn’t get my target set in time so I was only able to get about +6 instead of +10. I decided I wanted a few more ticks so I waited for another nice setup and took +2 to end the day +7 after comms.
+6 and +2
I’m going to start using bracket orders again tomorrow since I’ve missed a couple good +10 trades due to not being able to get my target in quick enough.
8/23/2011 6:37 AM
Much better day today. The market was up pretty big in overnight trading but had been working it’s way down in pre-market, so I was looking for shorts. I missed the entry I wanted but ended up taking a nice pullback good for +10 and I’m done for the day, 4 minutes after the open.
8/22/2011 8:51 PM
I’m back from vacation and had a pretty crazy day today. The market was bullish at the open so I was looking for longs. I should have been a bit more hesitant with all of the negativity in the markets lately (and the big gap over the weekend) because the market tanked at the open and dropped about 15 points in the first 40 minutes or so.
However, since I was looking for longs, I was fighting the market and started off with four losers (-5, -1, -5, and -2). I then started looking for shorts and took a +10 and -3. I took a few more trades (2 longs and 3 shorts) for +8, -4, -5, +10, and finally +4 to put me ahead (barely) for the day.
Since I had been fighting the market and going back and forth, I decided to call it quits with a small profit. I took 11 trades in the first 15 minutes of the market (way more that I like). Once again though, I was down a bit (about 15 ticks) and was able to come back and not have a losing day.
Trading Summary
Well I didn’t get to trade today because of more technical issues. This time, my entire network connection was down. I’ll be on vacation next week so I won’t be trading, so I thought I’d post a summary of my trading so far since I started back up a few weeks ago. Here is the summary from my trading log:
The P/L column is the number of ticks gained/lost, and the Net P/L is the total dollar amount after commissions (trading 1 contract). I didn’t realize that I’ve missed so many days over the last 3 weeks. Still, I’m pretty satisfied with the results.
