Chris's Day Trades Log - Feedback Welcome!

[ChrisBowling 2]

     My name is Chris Bowling. For the last 8-9 years, I have been a professional poker player. Recently, I have started learning Day Trading and practicing in the simulator to be profitable first before moving to trading with Real Money. Today, I made $1073 in the simulator.

    Below is my first Day Trade I took. I was planning on watching both for a 1 minute breakout and 5 minute breakout, but ended up trading it a bit different. I saw in the first minute candle huge bullish volume up away from the VWAP. The 2nd candle started trending down. I didn't take this trade because it was extended from the VWAP and I wasn't sure if it was going to consolidate a bit, and keep moving higher, or sell off like it did. After the turn downwards, on the 5-minute candle, again if it pulled back towards the VWAP closer, I was possibly looking to short it after the large bearish 4 minute candle and a lower lows pattern forming. I would be hesitant though because of the large bullish volume in the open. What do you guys think? Then, at about the 13th 1 min candle, there was the large bullish candle that broke back through the VWAP. On the next consolidation back towards the VWAP, I took a long position, with a stop loss slightly below the VWAP. I used the Equalized Risk hotkey to risk 1% of my account ($250) of paper money, $25k starting. At about 9:45, I accidently hit the cover $25 short position hotkey instead of selling and purchased a little more (I tested some in Sim yesterday, but this was my first real day of trying to Day Trade the open). I sold a partial when it appeared it slowed down to lock in some profit. At the next spinning top candle, I sold out. I just felt like it wasn't going to retest the high of the day, so I didn't wait. Maybe I should have kept some? What do you guys think? 

     Next, I think I got in a little late, but intuitively, I was trying to play the reversal after it started to drop. After watching some of Aiman's lecture on reversals today, I don't think I should have taken this trade. I added the 9EMA to my chart after I traded this morning, and it was too close to my entry point. It was very liable to bounce and not keep going to the lows of the day. I sold out when it seemed to bounce. All and all, I made $854 on these two trades in the simulator. I was able to buy a lot of shares because my stop loss on the first trade was tight.

 

     I was going to be done for the day, but since I am new, I wanted to Scout for a possible 3rd trade I could do. I thought at the time, this was a decent trade. At about 9:53, NVDA bounced off the 200 MA, my thoughts were NVDA was well off the highs of the day, and it just was trading up and down a lot higher. It seemed to me that the 200 MA was acting as support. I risked an R that was near the bottom of the bearish wick before. It seemed like I had potential to make 2-3R. In hindsight, I don't think I had good enough reasoning to take this trade. I think I had too few of reasons at the time. What do you guys think?

     I took a 25% partial at $224.50 and moved my stop loss to BE. I sold out completely at $225.50 when it seemed to have stalled, a little lower than the highs of the day and the most recently volatility. But, this kind of looks like a start to the ABCD pattern which I will study more about soon. Maybe this indicates that I should have held 75% of my position for a further breakout? This happened....

 

A big rally happened and I missed out. What should I have done better to not have missed this rally?

 

Things to Work on:

I noticed I need to work on my decision making of when to properly take partials, and completely exit the trade. In the first example, I didn't have clear reasons for exiting the trade and it worked out. On NVDA, I didn't have clear reasons either and it was a disaster.

 

P.S. At 10:30, I have a trade on my chart, but I was just testing some of my hotkeys.
 

Edited March 9, 2022 by ChrisBowling

[ChrisBowling 2]

Hi Peter. Thanks for replying to my post. Yes, I just joined Bear Bull Traders 4-5 days ago and have been doing nothing but learning and getting everything set up. This was my actual first day of attempting to trade. I am trading only in the simulator, I am not risking any real money. After building my trade book and having a big sample size of success, I will then move to trying out real money. And yes, max risk of $250 is not a ton of money to me psychologically. I'm used to $5k-$6k downswings in playing high stakes in poker and had my worse downswing of $15k playing 4 tables with $1k at each table.

What are the key info I should have on my charts that I don't currently Peter? After studying last night, I have these indicators:

-9 & 20 EMA

-50 & 200 SMA

-VWAP

I also marked on my charts this morning for stocks in play:

-High of Yesterday

-Low of Yesterday (maybe there is a way to automatically mark these two?)

-Close of Yesterday (automatically marked)

-Any levels over the past several days nearby that I saw facing consistent resistance or support (I'm not sure on the exact time frames for the charts its best to look at for this. I looked at several time frames this morning)

Like I said, some of these I just added last night after watching some of Andrews videos. Is there some other things I could mark that would help out?

 

I really liked Andrew's video with Ryan on 1 min ORB/D and downloaded the PDF and have started:

-A Word document where I took notes on the strategy

-An excel spreadsheet to keep track of wins/loses with each different strategy

-A blog that I am recording every day my trades in with screenshots and recording my thoughts on it. I am copying my blog post to a single forum post. My future trades I am going to post in the public forum to get more feedback.

Is this enough for a tradebook? Also, I want to be able to build a trade book in another setup that complements ORB/D. Is there another strategy besides ORB/R that you would recommend for me? Possibilities for me are the Rising Devil or Fallen Angel on the open since it helps me to take advantage of either and reversal patterns. That way after there is a break down or break out, I can look out for a reversal. 

In online poker, I typically play 5 tables and I have learned over the years that if I am obsessed with focusing on the learning, the money will come. Im sure I will make tons of mistakes in Day Trading, but want to post my mistakes out in the open to get feedback. I don't want anyone to hold back. Grill my mistakes as much as you can! I can take it and I am hungry to learn!

 

[ChrisBowling 2]

Quote

i would not recommend ORBs to any beginner as they require quite a lot of experience

Okay. Thanks for the feedback Peter. What are a few setups you would recommend to a beginner?

[ChrisBowling 2]

Okay cool. I'll definitely check those out in the advanced trade strategy section and figure out what is best and experiment. What does 4PC mean btw? I tried searching online and counted find out what it means.

[ChrisBowling 2]

@peterB Thanks Peter. Really like that. Will definitely test it out. Going to do some grinding in the replayer this weekend.