Live Journal Exercise – Learning to Trade an Edge like a Casino

[Mike B 624]

July 1, 2019 - $JD x 3  (Early Outs x 3)

Rough start to the month and this sample set. I did not trade well at all today. I got in on $JD on a 5 minute ORBO. It was a nice entry and good setup, I just was not confident and worried more about being wrong in the trade than letting the trade play out, so I got out quickly. Of course it moves to my profit target within the next three minutes just like my setup and entry said it would. No big deal moved on to the next trade, a 15 minute ORBO, and you guessed it did the exact same thing. Entered on a decent setup and quickly got out. This time I re-entered once I identified what I did and held it to a loss of the moving averages and VWAP. Out of all the trades this was the best managed trade of the day once I was in it, although it was still not the best setup of the day.

Today goes to show you, let your trades play their way out and do not enter unless you  are willing to take the risk. I am going to take a hard look at my $ risk per share and see if I need to lower it a little bit. I seem fine with the losses, but while I am in the trade, I am not executing well.

Disappointing day today with how I managed my trades after the entry. 

Sample Set Results,

P E E E 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

 

 

[Mike B 624]

July 2, 2019 - $AMD x 3  (Partial x 2, Early Out)

As anticipated, a choppy market again. I managed to make it through the day, but was not pleased at all with my trading. Today, I really wanted to pay attention to my emotions upon my entry into a trade, as this has been throwing me off the last couple of days. I took three trades on $AMD. The setup on the first trade was good, but once I entered my emotions took over and I couldn’t manage the trade. My second trade was a continuation of the first trade, I was a little more in control on the entry but still not in a spot that I am used to. Additionally, I make the mistake of looking at my P/L after the first trade again. Big mistake and I will be adding a rule tonight to address that. The last trade was based on nothing other than my gut feeling that it was going to break $31 and run up higher. Strangely enough, this trade I was fine after my entry and was able to hold through the pullback and execute my profit taking plan. Overall bad day.

Tomorrow I am going back to sim, as I need to find out what is causing me the issue upon my entry. I would have said it is the $ risk per trade, but than I took the third trade and I had no issue with losing it on this trade. I want to see what my emotions are upon my entry with zero at risk to help narrow down what is going on. From there I will devise a plan to correct it over the holiday.

Sample Set Results,

P E E E P E P  8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Edited July 5, 2019 by Mike B

[Mike B 624]

July 3&5, 2019 - No Trade Challenge

Traded sim on Wednesday for the purposes of seeing how my emotions were after pressing the enter hotkey. To my surprise, the same thoughts were occurring when I entered a sim trade. Obviously, the level of emotion was far less, but the same thought process that was occurring immediately after I entered the trade. I noticed it was not the $ risk per trade that is bothering me; rather, upon entry my first thought is about being wrong, so when the natural pullback occurs it re-enforces my thought process of being wrong and increases my anxiety level. I spent some time on Wednesday and Thursday pondering how I am going to tackle this, but still did not come up with a solid plan, so when no stocks met my pre-market criteria on Friday, I choose to take the No Trade Challenge with William H. I saw a couple of good entry points on $KTPI and $AMD, but I just sat back and watched. Interestingly, when I identified these entry points and it crossed the moving average that would have triggered an entry, I had the same thoughts cross my mind.

Overall the last three days have been quite productive in the psychology realm. Going to go hit the running route now and ponder how to tackle this demon. 

Looking forward to Monday and getting back into the swing of things.

Sample Set Results,

P E E E P E P  8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

[Mike B 624]

July 8, 2019 - No trading today, I ended up in the ER. Looking forward to tomorrow.

Sample Set Results,

P E E E P E P 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

[mahamuni 5]

Hope all is well Mike.

[IamKarthi 342]

14 hours ago, Mike B said:

July 8, 2019 - No trading today, I ended up in the ER. Looking forward to tomorrow.

Sample Set Results,

P E E E P E P 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Hope everything's alright now !!

[Rob C 826]

14 hours ago, Mike B said:

July 8, 2019 - No trading today, I ended up in the ER. Looking forward to tomorrow.

Sample Set Results,

P E E E P E P 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

It was good to see you back in the chatroom this morning Mike (nice trade BTW - I saw the screen cap).

[Mike B 624]

Thank you  everyone. Yeah everything is better, just a real sore throat today.

[Mike B 624]

July 9, 2019 - $AMD (Partial)

I was a little skeptical of $AMD this morning as it had lower volume than normal, but at the open it traded very nicely. I took an entry after it rejected VWAP and broke the pre-market high. My first partial was a hotkey mistake, my second partial was were i planned on taking my first out. I wanted to take another partial at 32.15 and than let the reminder run to the profit target of 32.57, but $AMD did a strong pullback and I got out at break-even. I thought about getting back in around 1000, but I had to go to the train and the stock just did not pullback far enough towards VWAP for me to enter.

Overall today was good as I worked my process upon entering to help with my profit taking. I look forward to developing this a little more over the next month.

Sample Set Results,

P E E E P E P P 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

[Mark D. 435]

On 7/8/2019 at 8:05 PM, Mike B said:

July 8, 2019 - No trading today, I ended up in the ER. Looking forward to tomorrow.

Sample Set Results,

P E E E P E P 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Sorry to hear that. Hope all is well 

[Mike B 624]

July 10, 2019 - Platform Update issue

Did not see the message about needing to update the platform. Tried twice to get into $AMD and both were rejected. Updated platform, tested hotkeys, packed it in for the day. Somethings are just out of your control. Looking forward to tomorrow.

Sample Set Results,

P E E E P E P P 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

[Mike B 624]

July 11, 2019

I am emotionally drain after today. The last time I felt this helpless an unable to control something was in a very different kind of environment. I am so glad I was able to breath and start problem solving my way through it. Well I hope you enjoy the read.

1. I tried to take a long on $AMD around 9:41 mark. My plan was a little different today with $AMD as I figured it would sell off at the open pullback to VWAP and if it broke above would test it again and then try to test the 52 week high if it could break through 34.
2. I got a send reject order similar to yesterday. No big deal figured my hotkeys didn’t save, so I went into the setup saw I was correct and changed my entry hotkeys like I did yesterday.
3. At 9:45 candle I entered just below the 34. Extended from where I wanted to enter but I was willing to risk the money just to make sure my hotkeys worked in my live account.
4. When it could not break the 34 level and drop below the 50 SMA I hit my hotkey to sell all and that is when all heck broke loose.
5. My cover button that worked in sim yesterday did not work in the live account.
6. I hit my panic button, rejected
7. I opened my trade section in the montage and hit the sell button, rejected
8. At this point the stock is dropping, I have no idea how to get out of the position and I felt absolutely helpless. Stock was past my stop loss, I could not get out and the only feeling of comfort was that I had the risk  controls that would limit my loss on the day, which would have been triggered if I didn’t figure it out.
9. At this point, I just took a breath and went into problem solving mode. I knew I had a problem and the only thing I could do is take it one step at a time. I identified that the issue yesterday was the “DAY+” had to be changed to “DAY”. I than realized that on the montage it had “DAY+” instead of “DAY”, so I changed the montage and hit the sell button. Finally, order filled below stop loss but still manageable.
10. Problem was that I did not change the order template to “DAY” so all of my hotkeys that process through the montage were being rejected.

 

Well at least I learned that lesson today. A tough lesson but still valuable.

[Mark D. 435]

great job keeping a cool head 

[Mike B 624]

5 minutes ago, Mark D. said:

great job keeping a cool head 

Not sure if it was a cool head, more of I have no other option but to figure it out.

[Mike B 624]

July 12, 2019 - Sim Moving Average crossover

I was looking at $BIP and $AMD. $BIP had somewhat of a setup but the volume was not present during the first five minutes, so I ignored it as I did not like how the price action or the spread was looking. I moved on to looking at $AMD for a 5 and 15 minute but the price action was not setting up for trading. I figured I might have to wait awhile for an entry.

I was still looking at $AMD for a 15 but never got the entry setup to appear. I than notice the possibility of a Moving average crossover setup. As this is not in my sample set and I am still fairly new at trading this setup I took it sim. The first trade I got stopped out on  and the second one I got a couple of partials before getting out by mistake trying to place a range order. Overall it was a good day as I stuck to my rules, did not chase anything and advance my trading skills. I pretty disappointed in my overall trading this week and the two days of platform issues did not help out. I wish this week went better, but it is ok. The learning process is still going.

Sample Set Results,

P E E E P E P P 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20