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Showing content with the highest reputation on 02/12/2022 in Posts
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1 pointI admired the other traders that post their trades on the BBT site. I have been trying to get the courage to start. If I am embarrassed to post the trade, I shouldn’t have taken it. So I want that consequence on my shoulder. So I promised myself when I switched from Etrade-pro back to DAS, which is much easier to journal, I would post my trades. I have been live for 3 months now. First week live on DAS. 1st week of February Risk: $25/trade Max allowable trades per day: only 1. I am having an over trading issue that I am trying to resolve. So I have a self-imposed limit of one trade per day. Friday 2/1/19 Well being score of 5.5/10. My one allowable trade was with FB. I do apologize for the chart. This was my last trade with Etrade-Pro which doesn't automatically show entrance/exits. The tech level I drew at 167.51 was too weak to act on (that is why I drew it in yellow - stronger ones are orange) so I let it go by. After the 2min candle the price sat for awhile, until it started to move and I went long. I took a partial at 1R. Price just missed the second partial at 2R by a few pennies. The 5th 1min candle spooked me and I exited. Monday 2/4/19: I gave myself a “well being” score of 4/10, which is below allowable limit to trade live. So I traded on SIM. Made 3 good trades, but since they were on the sim I won’t journal them here. Tuesday 2/5/19 Well being score of 5/10. My one allowable trade was with AAPL. A very bullish 2min candle was created and I went long as it passed the recent premarket high. I didn’t have a strong technical level for the entry or exit so I cut my shares in half (so only a ~$12 risk). Got lucky on the last exit. Wednesday 2/6/19 Well being score of 5/10. My one allowable trade was with MU. Stock made a nice ABCD inside the 5min. I was going to wait for the 5min candle to finish, but when it made a new high on increased volume I went long at 9:33am. It fizzled quickly and I got all out when it looked like it was reversing. Thursday 2/7/19 Well being score of 5.5/10. My one allowable trade was with TWTR. I made a mistake on this one. But, it didn’t cost me much to learn a good lesson. I have learned to be sloppy when zooming in on a chart not to look carefully at the tech levels because Etrade always lists the next level you drew on the edge of their chart. So you always know the next level with a quick glance. So I was careless when zooming in on TWTR and caught the 2nd tech level and not the first. The price dropped below the tech level I was going to short on, but I thought the risk/reward was so large I let the price make a new low of the day. Once that happen I shorted. Once the price dropped a little the real tech level appeared on my chart and I realized I trade now has a 1 to 1 risk/reward ratio. If I was aware of this level I would have shorted at the 31.1 level I drew where the risk/reward was OK or just not trade it. Usually, when I realize the risk/reward is wrong I get out of the trade. This usually occurs when you get a bad fill. But, since the price was moving in the right direction I waited for the 1st tech level to close the trade. It missed by a penny and retraced. Since this is not a real trade anymore, just one I am trying to get out, I stopped out at break even. Friday 2/8/19 Well being score of 6/10. My one allowable trade was with MU. The tech level I drew and the 1min VWAP coincided making it a strong tech level and I really like it when the 1min VWAP and 5min VWAP get a large separation. I took the trade at the 1min VWAP and made the 5min VWAP the first target. This trade had a very tight stop out level (just below 1min VWAP). I took the first partial at the 5min VWAP with the plan to take the next partial at the 2nd target (200MA). But, I got cold feet and made the 2nd partial in the middle of nowhere. Then all out a few cents below 200MA. It's interesting what a different perspective I get on my own trades when I post them like this. After what I thought was a good week trading and was reasonably happy after reading my journal entries, I now look at the these trades posted and I am not really proud of any of them. They look quite haphazard and not well thought out. The Friday trade with MU would be the closest, but not quite. Something for me to think about. Thanks for reading, Rob
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1 pointHey everybody, Today is quite an important day for me. I've finally managed to get back to break even after being in the red for 4 and a half years since I started day trading. I'll be honest, I was starting to doubt my ability to ever become a profitable trader at the end of 2020, and I thought about quitting. Investing so much time and effort for years, only to see money disappearing from your account is very hard on morale, of course. One thing that kept me going was the fact that, even though my account wasn't getting better, I felt like I was always making a little progress on both the technical side and the psychological side. I figured if I kept going, one day, I would finally turn the corner. Well, I turned that corner at the end of 2020, when I changed my approach, strategy and tools all at the same time. It took me 4 years to lose 25000$, and only 6 months to make it back. And frankly, I'm pretty excited to see what the next couple of years will look like as I'm only starting to ramp up my size. I wanted to share this with you guys because this chatroom is one of the reasons why I was able to make it work for me, and I figured it could help motivate and inspire anyone that is still struggling to find their marks and make it work for themselves. As you can see from my total realized P&L of the last 4.5 years, I had a pretty long and difficult journey. I just wanted to say this: As long as you feel that you're progressing at least a little, and if you like what you are doing, make sure that you give yourself the time and the tools to keep going because you never know when you'll be turning that corner. I surely didn't expect it, not more than a year ago I was about to call it quit, and it would have been a monumental mistake. Let this be an inspiration for those still struggling.
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1 pointThanks!! Sure, here we go: 1. the large drops in acct was "hulk" days ? Yes, some hulk days and some "deer in the headlights" days. 😄 2. Which tools u changed ? I went from DAS to TWS+TradingView for 2 reasons: 1- I wanted to trade options instead of shares, and TWS is much better than DAS for trading options 2- DAS is pretty expensive and I felt the monthly cost was pushing me to take trades to "make use of what I was paying for" and I wanted to remove that pressure. TWS is free, and TradingView is pretty cheap (around 300$/yr) compared to DAS, and I was already using TradingView for technical analysis anyways., I just love those charts and I find they are less taxing on my computer when calculating indicators in real time. 3. General or detailed info on strategy/setups and or risk reward as u profits are also very dramatic ? I used to scalp shares of stocks in play at the open using momentum, ORBs, engulfings, etc... kinda like what Andrew is doing. I was watching at least 4 to 6 different stocks every morning. I was also watching the level2 and Times and Sales for my active stock. I was using the automatic share size calculator by Kyle. It's complicated to explain exactly why it wasn't working for me but anyways... When I almost gave up in December of 2020, I decided to give myself only 5k$ for the whole year of 2021, and if I lost it all in the first week, just too bad, no trading for the rest of the year. And so, with such a little account, I had no choice to try options trading. I figured I would try to do the same thing as before, but scalping options instead of shares, and watching only 1 stock instead of 4 or 6. Since TSLA was and is still my favorite stock to trade, I decided to only look at TSLA every morning for a while and try to scalp options on it. It took a couple of months of setting up my new tools and adapting to this new strategy, and I almost blew up in the process (see the big drop to -27000 in early 2021, my account was less than 3k$ at that point), but I was able to recover and it finally started paying off. I also bought a macro keyboard to give me better control of my keyboard shortcuts and I feel like it made a big positive impact. I couldn't see myself trading without it now. So basically, I simplified my trading in many ways. I ditched the Level2 and Times and Sales windows, those were just too much information for my brain to process at the same time. I also went from watching multiple stocks to only one, which allowed me to really connect with the price action on the stock and feel what it wants to do a lot better. And I switched from shares to options and futures (I watch TSLA and MNQ for the market, so I will sometimes take trades on MNQ when I don't see anything on TSLA that I like), using only 1 contract on any normal day. Sometimes I will take more contracts when I'm absolutely certain of a move (I know there's no such thing as 100% probability but some moves can get pretty close to that) and I'll go up to 5 or 10 contracts which allows me to have those bigger green days. I also reduced my trading time to only the first 15 to 30 minutes most days, on rare occasions I will trade for the entire first hour but I try to avoid that as much as I can. Once I'll have a little green cushion (let's not forget I only reached break even yesterday), I will slowly increase my standard position size to 2 contracts instead of 1, then 3, 4, 5 etc. I'm hoping I can get to 5 contracts standard for the end of 2022, but we'll see. Right now I'm aiming for between 200 and 1000$ per day, and my max loss is around 500$ but its all good as long as I keep it under 1000$. I usually have 3 or 4 red days per month at most and they are usually more between 200-300 than 500-1000. Part of the simplification was also letting go of the chatroom, so I don't come in anymore, I trade alone, in silence. I can focus better and read the price action more accurately without the distraction. I hope that answers your questions, if you would like any other info, let me know! 🙂
