IamKarthi

BBT is a great community for the new traders starting out. I have been with BBT for almost 2 years now and based out of Germany. When I joined I had struggle attending all the onboarding classes, because they were planned at 2AM my time (Central European Time). I had to go thru only recording of sessions, but the problem was there was no opportunity to attend live classes or raise questions. Later more classes were planned including psychology sessions and Success webinars based on Eastern Standard Time. So I missed almost all the Live classes. BBT is a Global community and we have as many members outside the US, my suggestion is to either plan additional sessions for people outside US or conduct the classes immediately after the Market close. I see in the chatroom, more new members have the same question. Now that BBT community is growing the proposal makes even more sense. Please do respond to the Poll as you see fit.

@onlyjava Thanks for the nice comments! Below are couple of books, I hv found very useful too as I grew as a trader. Trading Tools & Tactics by Greg Capra The Art and Science of Technical analysis by Adam Grimes.

Oh, You can't be more right! LOL.. There is always action, when I am not around.

While watching the film recording after that, I realized I was away from my system when this opportunity came. I was picking up my daughter from school. Felt a lot better, because this was shouting Add.

03.Jan.19 -2R. One good trade on $LB, got stopped out twice on $OXY. Watchlist: $LB, $LW, $OXY Trade1: $LB. HTook $LB long on 3Bar play. Got wicked out. Once the price came back to my original entry, I Long again (One of my rules, if I get wicked out, but the setup is still valid, I reenter again). Added a bit at the break of 18.5. Took one partial at 18.7 (only the add and was still holding my core position). I should have added after the hammer at 10.30AM, missed a crucial add. Partialed 50% at 18.95, added after the price bounced off 18.75. But price din't pop, so took this out. Another add after the break of 18.95, once it failed to break 19 for 15mins, got all out. Good: This is different from how I trade candlesticks or chart patterns to make 2R trades. Here I find an entry observe the price action and make add/exits at the right places and hold it as long as the setup is Valid. Improvement: Improve on Add and partials. Because my reentry had wider stop, position was small got me 2.5R. I shouldn't have missed the opportunity to add. Overall very happy with my trade on $LB, I want to make more trades like this, this month.

02.Jan.19 1.5R. Green day. I didn't do the premarket preparation today, due to watching my kid who is on school holidays. Caught $WDC later in the afternoon above a Pivot and took 1.5R to the close. Missed opportunity: $AMD setup beautifully with a Harmionious setup near ATH and strong catalyst. 5min had 3Bar play, could have rode this atleast for 3 to 4R. am looking for continuation play, but the Iran news will likely kill the momentum of Market overall.

Year 2020. Wish everyone a successful and a Green year 2020. I am looking to further improve my trading by being selective of the setups I take and sticking to rules (which I don't have any problems lately). Hotkey mistake is something I am addressing to eliminate this year, I may move to streamdeck after couple of months. I am also looking to improve my patience so I get stopped out if my setup doesn't workout and I let the winners run. Otherwise, the improvement plan I captured 2 months back still remains valid for 2020.

11.Dec.19 Due to travel plans, I may not be able to trade rest of this month. Stay Green!! . Had a hotkey mistake that cost me -10r loss on a 3bar play setup, so stopped trading in Dec and calling it a wrap for the year 2019.

10.Dec.19 No trades today. I was watching $CGC and $SFIX. I was long biased on these for multiple reasons. Both played out weaker at the open. I wanted to take $CGC for a short, but no shorts available at IB. So no Trades.

9.Dec.19 +1.5r. Green day. Watchlist: $CGC, $BIG, $M, $PCG Trade1: $CGC. $CGC had gapped up on news of new CEO. $19.8 is a daily level and also had 50MA at this level, I was hoping to catch long above this. When the stock opened volume was almsot nil. Then it flew past this level, so I missed my entry. Stock was topping a bit at 20.6, I wanted to scalp short to VWAP. Took it , but it didn't drop immediately, so I got out (I would have had my 2r). But I stick to my rules. Trade2: $CGC. Took long after the 5min candle bounced off VWAP (at $20) and formed a hammer doji. Added above the level 20.6 and got out at HOD. Good: liked my $CGC trades. Happy with my add on $CGC. Overall satisfied with the day.

Thanks man, appreciate it. 🙂

Weekly summary for week starting 02-Dec-19. When I went live initially, I started trading based on candle sticks (hammer, shooting star, hanging man etc.,) and then moved to chart patterns (3Bar play, Double bottom/top, ABCD, MA bounce, Reversals etc.,). I had a time constraint which meant, I could trade only an hour after the open. Starting this month, I am able to spend more time at the open. I am trying out some new strategies, which will give more RRs. I am also looking to take setups that run longer (Today, I close positions within few mins most of the time). If this doesn't fit my personality, I go back to my old setups, with all the key lessons learnt. The first year of Trading should be all about learning and that is what I am trying to do (incremental learning after more experience). I hope it builds a system that can withstand all market conditions. Red week. -6r. I could spend only few hours last week trading and was not able to post my journal. Hence posting a weekly summary sharing couple of key trades from last week. Trade1: $APA. Long after a resistence turned into a support. Entry after hammer on 2min. Price didn't move as expected got out BE. Trade2: $ROKU. 3 Bar play on 2min. Trade 3: $AMD. Losing trade due to my Confirmation Bias on $AMD. There was no catlyst for $AMD that day (7Dec19). Trade4: $ACAD. HOD breakout trade. I predicted the setup and entered instead of waiting for confirmation (breakout, pullback, retest, strongly claim the level). I watched the trade film after that and added more comments. Trade5: $ESTC. Very interesting trade. Why is it important to watch the trade recording. The setup was perfect for short, but L2 had a Held Bid and stocked popped up to stop me out. This I noted after watching the Film of this trade later. Trade6: $ESTC. This time, there was a Held Ask, but it lifted and the price jumed 50c immediately. Good: Many of my trades had moved atleast 1.5-2r before stopping me out, this is because I am looking for larger moves. I have also watched L2 and prints closely. I want to be in a position to give a trade commentary as the price action unfolds. Improvement: Predicting the setup instead of waiting and Additions (when confirmation is not there). Overall happy with my week, despite down by -6r for the week, due to all the learnings. I am sure I will eventually turn profitable this month too.

November Month Summary. Green month. +21R. I can increase my risk by 10% next month. Positive points: 1. P&L: I have been going Hulk on the last 2 days of the previous months, In fact I would have had pretty decent months in Aug and Oct, if not for my last 2 days of trading. Result: I was conscious of this fact in Nov. Thanksgiving holidays probably helped a bit too 🙂 Final monthly P&L (in R) P&L for the last 2 days(in R) Aug 19 -2,00 -9,00 Sep 19 -10,00 -6,00 Okt 19 -2,00 -12,00 Nov 19 21,00 -1,00 2. My key issue from previous months has been overtrading beyond my Maxloss. Result: For Nov-19 my maximum loss on a single day is -3.5r. 3. I have been taking setups which are not A+. I have been trading a lot at the Open and trading just bias. Result: I restricted my setups for the Open and reduced taking setups that are not A+. My winning % is at 51% (second time in a month, where I had more winners than losers - other being my first month in Apr under PDT) 4. I have been overtrading a bit. I wanted to control this in Nov. Result: I had 280 trades in Oct, this has come down to 127 in Nov. Althought I am overall happy about this month, there are many areas that needs improvement. Improvement areas: 1. It is said that the first 6 months data doesn't matter much(after going fully Live). I am hoping to keep a check on my rules, guidelines and strategies going forward and achieve consistency. 2. My winning % need to improve. My goal is 60%. Accuracy dramatically increases the final P&L. 3. I still take some trades which are not A+. I need to avoid this. 4. At the open, I still took some trades based on price action and bias, I am not supposed to take them. 5. Need to practice more L2 based trade management. 6. Need some high RR setups, as I think this fits my style more.

Thank you! @Rob C @Glenn Budde

29.Nov.19 Green day. +2r. Light volume day due to Thanksgiving holiday and Half trading day. Took $PANW for followup move, one and done. Watchlist: $BABA, $PANW, $PCG. Trade1: $PANW. Yesterday, $PANW opened weak, but had been strong thru out the day and closed strong. Interesting was, it formed a doji hammer on daily at support level. I was biased on a Long trade for today. I still held on to my plan though SPY opened weak this morning. Got my entry above VWAP and held on for 2r. No more trades. Good: Planned the trade and Traded the plan today. Overall happy to close the month with a positive day and overall +21R for the month.

27.Nov.19 -2.5r. I stopped trading after realizing I messed up the $BABA trade at the open, breaking one of my rules. Watchlist: $BABA, $UAA, $BOX, $DELL also $VEEV, $DE, $GES, $PANW (during mid day). Trade1: $BABA. Gapped up, after successful IPO in HK exchange and also an upgrade. I waited as the price action was crazy at the open, looking to trade only 3bar setup today. I got long after the 3bar setup from the premarket high. Added after the pullback fromthe next daily level. Target was close to $200, but $BABA couldn't break the 199 level, got stopped out, so far so good. Trade2: $BABA. i noted the shooting star on 5min, also realized 1min may be setting up for reverse ABCD. STILL after seeing the 1min candle break the previous body, I went long instinctively. This was bad(atleast I could have waited for it to break the 198.6 level) got stopped out again. This is one of my worst trades at this stage. My rule is after 3 losing trades, stop trading. But because I hated my 2nd trade so much, I decided to Stop trading. Later in the afternoon, I took a small trade on $BABA, for the break of 200$. There was so much of action on L2 (that I recorded) and wanted to be in on it. 30% position on this. Good: Started with 3Barsetup, as planned. Didn't overtrade. I remember the last couple of days of Oct, when small loss became big loss. Improvement: I missed so much of good trading today, because of my very bad 2nd trade on $BABA at the open. Overall mixed day. Disapointing because i breached my rule, happy that I respected the consequence and accepted it.

26.Nov.19 Greenday. +1.5r. Watchlist: $DKS, $GBT, $NTNX, $DIS, $DLTR. I liked $DKS (gapped up with big shortfloat) however, there was a conf call at 10AM on $DKS, so was not sure how it would trade so missed it. Trade1: $DLTR. gapped down more than 15% at the open, and was not sure how much it will retrace for the pullback and Rising devil setup. So I took a 1min ORB on the rising devil setup. When I combine 2 or more different strategies the accuracy of the setup increases more. I don't take just 1min ORB, it fails me most times, but when I combine it with other strategies it works well. This is what I have found out and been using, for e.g (MA bounce with 1min MA cross, 3BAR with ORB on higher timeframe, ORB with Risingdevil/Fallen angel). My favorite trade of the day. Trade2: $BBY. Bestbuy had gapped up on good earnings news. was looking for Trendtrade setup. Took long after strong 1min candle on 9MA. Added after the bounce. Now, something happened and my positions got closed while modifying the range order with the revised new increased sharesize. I got back in again, but entry was 10c more so got all out soon. Stock still held above BE to reach 83.6 Later when I watched the recorded video, I found out the mistake I made. I clicked the range order, instead of modifying the new Stop in the Montage, I clicked the chart. I clicked RPL and my positions got closed. Trade3: $NTNX. Gappedup on good earnings. but was selling off at the open. I took a reversal trade that failed, got out at 1r after fading. Trade4: $DKS. This is purely based on L2 action. After missing out at the open (including 3bar play on 5min - also on $BBY), I noticed the $47 level is being held up by a buyer. Everytime it went down below $47 someone bought back up. I took long with stop at $46.95. Got stopped out first time, but re-entered and got 2R. Also my favorite trade of the day. Good: Good trading day, although the P&L doesn't reflect that. Stopped my trading after 3 losses/BE trades. Improvement: Sizing. Human error happens, but I know the issue now on $BBY range order. Overall happy about today, mainly because of the setups I took on $DLTR and $DKS.

May be you are onto something to crack the mystery of trading at the open consistently. 🙂 Yeah, what I meant was if the prints you see come from L2, if not, it could be entries from the previous day after market transactions. Nevertheless, as you mentioned you are looking at the next print after the big print, which indicates the direction. May be someone else is watching these big prints too. It's also my regret that I din't take up L2/T&S seriously while starting out. Well, trading is a journey and atleast we have been using L2 past few months. I had subscribed for this course from Udemy on L2, cost me 10bucks. The guy repeats a lot of stuff, but still very good video on L2 and Prints. https://www.udemy.com/course/tape-reading-101-learn-how-to-read-the-tape-for-day-trading/ We can discuss about L2/prints with interested people and share the knowledge mutually.

It's very intersting how you are analyzing the L2 print on $BABA at the open. Does it give you an indication on the direction of the stock at the open?

Very nice trade on $TEVA. Looks beautiful on the 15min chart partialing nearly at the high of the candles.

Greg, Thank you! the feedback and comments help me a lot. really appreciate it. 🙏

25. Nov. 19 Greenday. +1.5r. It's a tough day as most of the stocks I watched didn't give me a clean large move. Watchlist: $CGC, $UBER, $PDD, $NVDA, $TSLA. Trade1: $CGC. Caught $CGC at the open when it broke the premarket high. This was the only trade I could take in $CGC. It was on SSR and couldn't trade short, sold for the rest of the day. Trade2: $UBER. $UBER had bad news, but was strong premarket near the open. I was hoping to catch a reversal, if the indications are there. I took short on the 200MA bounce with Shooting star. Got stopped out. Trade3: $PDD. $PDD gapped up and was strong at the open. I took wedge breakout to HOD at noon. AON exit at HOD. Trade4: I also took a trade on $NVDA and closed BE. Didn't trade clean, was not setting the trend. Good: Stick to my watchlist despite most of them not setting up for trend trade. Didn't overtrade. Improvement: I had great entry on $CGC. Appears, for my Add, i had LOD as Stop. This is wrong and too wide, which resulted in lesser share size. I should have kept the 2nd candle lower wick as STOP (per 3Bar setup). Missed out on a one-and-done. $UBER, i was so short biased. I should have checked the additional 1min MA cross for reversal (and 15min LL) Overall Flat day.

My Improvement Areas as of 31-Oct-19: After I went fully Live in July, I was like a kid in a candy store. I took all kind of setups and price actions, premarket, postmarket, Earnings, IPOs everything. Once I lifted PDT in July, I enjoyed the freedom to take unlimited trades. As much as it is thrilling to take trades (and lots of it), I forgot sometimes that the ultimate goal in Trading is to make money. The only thing that saved me was that traded with very minimum risk like 10-25$ per trade. Eventually, I Hulked on the 19th July trading $MDLA IPO, made good money before giving it all back and more. I had my worst day ever ~11R (for comparison my best day has been 10R). Next couple of months, I had couple of really bad days that took out most of my profit. 31-Oct I had a losing day that took out most of my profit from October, I ended up Breakeven for the month. The Pareto principle states that 80% of effects come from 20% of the causes. 5 of my losing trades caused me -22R till end of Oct, that is only 1.5% of my losing trades causing 15% of all the losses. If I manage to cut down the big losses and Big losing days then I am in good shape. Below is my improvement plan that I will be tracking each month. My weak areas that I need to improve upon How I am going to improve My most losses are in ORB This is normal, as I trade mostly the Open. But I restrict myself to trade anything except Rising Devil/FallenAngel/3bar setups at the open henceforth, till I see a reason to lift this rule I keep trading after 3 losing trades (which is my limit/day). To bring more discipline, I am going to include an exercise schedule (1hr in Gym/100 pushups) as part of my premarket prep. Failing this I am not allowed to trade that day. If I end up in overtrading situation still, I have setup DAS risk control for my maxloss/day that would save me. I am a bit addictive to trading now, leading to Overtrading. I have set a punishment for me when I overtrade. This is really something that I really hate to do. I have already tried this once, it is so Hard. I am taking a stab at almost every price action that ends up in small losses eating up my profit I have a clear set of setups that I trade. I think i have had enough experimenting in the last 1 year in SIM/Real. My rules are not strict. Although it is necessary to be flexible on the trade management based on how Market behave, it is mandatory to be consistent. And only strict rules can enable consistency I need to define rules for profit taking for different setups to make sure consistency. Should also be different for type of setups (Momentum, Fading, Trend etc,.) I take multiple stabs when I trade price action This is normal for a Trend trade. I need multiple confirmations for Reversals (e.g 1miin MA cross etc.,) I jump in and out of the trade looking for small moves instead of one big move. I need to build my cashcow setups like MA cross pullback or Fading, which may give 1-1.6Rs I don't size my trades properly so miss out on trades that workout although I use Kyle's hotkeys mostly, I am going to use them all the time. With limited trading setups, this is possible. I hate to lose my trade This is something I am still working on and improving. Trading is working in probabilities and everyone needs to lose some trades Usually after my max Loss day, my next day is even worse Skip the next trading day or atleast the open, next day. I find using Montage is not fast enough I have the streamdeck, once I make atleast 20R in a month I will set it up. Overtrading - apart from setups, I try many trades to get a feel Except for defined setups, everything else is for SIM only

22. Nov.19 Blackday. BE. I was out till afternoon today, came back and took 2 trades. Watchlist: $CGC, $M, $TGT, $T (all continuation plays) $CGC: Took short below the daily level on the bounce. Got out of half position to reduce risk (as I wasn't planning to trade today). But when I got my 2r move, din't take it. $M: Took a 2r trade on $M to HOD based on the L2 Ask. I place my profit target in front of big ask and get out AON. Overall light volume day, nothing much to write about.

21.Nov.19 Green day. +5r. Watchlist: $CGC, $TGT, $M $UBER. $CGC. Gapped up. took couple of trades and closed well. I reduced my risk by closing some positions, when the move didn't happen immediately. $UBER: 3Bar play on the 15min, move didn't last very much (and to an extend I expected, which was 50MA on daily). Still good move. $AMD: Doji on the daily yesterday, and it had gapped down today. Took it short at LOD, on a wedge/bearflag. Good move. Good: Caught the right opportunities and made good trades out of it. Improvement: $CGC open was not clean. Could have played it better, by waiting for confirmation (like engulfing candle) . Overall happy with my trading today.