Brandon R's Trading Journal - Feb 25, 2019

[Brandon R 5]

I feel like this was a decent day of simulator. I made some trades on Friday and broke even but only had one monitor at the time and did not get screenshots of my trades. So this was my first actual day of simulator if you will. I am using an account size of $3000, because that is what I will start with once I go live. I have 12 k I am willing to put towards this, but the $3000 will be used to weather the learning curve. I will only be able to trade the open 30 minutes on Tuesdays and Thursdays while I have class this semester so I am exclusively searching for 5-minute ORBS on those days. The 3 strategies I am looking for on the other days of the week are 5 and 15-minute ORBS, VWAP False Breakouts, and ABCDS/Reverse ABCDS. I am trying to get in good habits now of always respecting my stop loss, 3-trade limit until I get more consistent, and waiting for proper risk to reward. I hit 1.07% profit on the day on my third trade. I could definitely work on patience and get better setups than what I had today. I have been reading Trading in the Zone and am trying to keep in mind the statistics at play in day trading. Even if I am only trading 50-60% profitable trades, I can still make money if I have the risk to reward I am looking for. But this requires me to respect stop losses and allow my winners to reach their potential. This is just a quick intro and I'll flesh out what I'm trying to do with this journal in the coming days. Please feel free to give me any feedback you want. If I am doing something wrong or confusing just let me know. These are my 3 trades I took today (February 25, 2019):

I decided to get in on the short side for GE at $11.51 when I saw what appeared to be a Reverse ABCD pattern. My profit target was the moving average about 30 cents underneath my entry with a partial goal of a 15 cent move. My mental stop loss was 5 cents above my entry, which coincided with the break of a moving average. This was my biggest mistake on this trade. Given that I had such a small size, I could afford to have a slightly higher stop loss, perhaps just above VWAP which still would have only been a small loss of .3-.4% of my account. I got stopped out right at my stop loss, and if I had set a slightly higher stop loss I would have ridden out the movement and gotten the downward movement on the stock I was looking for. 

My second trade of the day was on IQ. I took a short on it at $27.44. I thought one of the moving averages was the VWAP so I mistakenly believed this was a VWAP False Breakout. I will potentially need to change the color of some of my MAs or thicken up my VWAP to make sure this doesn't happen again. My profit target was the low of the day and my stop loss was $27.7. The risk here was relatively high, at about 1% of my account. So it is not a trade I would take in the future. While the stock did not reach my profit target, I was able to take a partial out for a decent gain and then cover the rest shortly later for an even bigger gain. So while the trade itself was not a great idea, I believe I executed well and got out at a good time.

My last trade of the day was on AMD. I saw a VWAP False Breakout and entered long at . My stop loss was a few cents below VWAP and my profit target was high of the day. I believe this trade was fine, and my share size was great. While my profit taking ended up being about as good as possible given the drop that happened in the price after I exited the trade, I believe I still handled the trade relatively poorly. I got spooked watching the price chop on the one minute chart for 7 minutes straight and wanted to end the day at my profit goal of 1% so I took a 50% partial well before my profit target when the price moved in my direction. I then saw the price action indicate that sellers were taking control with lower highs and lower lows and the breakage of some moving averages so I took the rest of my shares out for a small gain. 
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February 26, 2019:

As I said earlier, Tuesdays and Thursdays will just be me looking for a 5- minute orb. Two stocks nearly met my criteria for entering into a trade this morning, but did not quite get to where I needed them to be. So I did not take any trades today. 

This is very wordy but I should get more concise as I begin to understand what I am looking for and trying to do. The formatting is also probably weird so please give suggestions if you have any. I will also try to get better screentshots of my trades that includes more of the preceding price action. I just copied my notes from Tradervue and put them in here. 

EDIT: Added in Feb 26

Edited February 27, 2019 by Brandon R
Added in Feb 26

[Brandon R 5]

Wed, Feb 27, 2019

Total trades: 2 
Total volume: 200
Closed P&L: $-35.50
 

Sleep: 5 hours
Continuing education: Still reading through and absorbing Trading in the Zone. I believe this book is the most important asset I can use to become successful as a day trader. The psychological reasoning in it is very compelling and I am trying to keep the things I read about in it in my mind even during my simulator time. When I trade goes against me I need to objectively analyze any mistake I may have made that caused this. If there does not seem to be a mistake, then I can assume that the trade went against me because of the statistics of day trading (you can't win them all) and I do not need to worry about it.

I will start recording my sleep like other members do in their journals. Seems like a good idea to see how sleep affects day trading performance. I will also have a small section on continuing education. I will put things such as rewatched Bear Bull Trader vids, watched vids from the Youtube channel, and book reading under this. If anything that I learned or relearned sticks out, I will make a note of it. Reached max loss of 1% on the day, but learned some very important things. I did not get pictures of my trades today as I was planning on doing it later in the day but ended up spending 7 hours straight on a math modeling problem set instead. These are my 2 trades:

BBY

Feb 27, 2019 09:45

Shares traded: 100 
Closed P&L: $-15.50

Saw what appeared to be a VWAP False Breakout on $BBY so I went long at $69.310. Got stopped out at $69.00. I feel like the trade was decent and I had a good RR here, just happened to have it run against me. Perhaps I need to give VWAP False Breakouts more time to develop, and not be looking for them in the first 15 minutes of the market. I will reread Andrew's second book on this section to see if that is mentioned.

TNDM

Feb 27, 2019 09:53

Shares traded: 100 
Closed P&L: $-20.00

I was looking for an ABCD pattern here. Saw a second wick form at what appeared to be the support formed by "C". The price started to move up from there and I entered early at $64.26, just slightly above that wick. Profit target was high of day and stop loss was $63.95. I feel like the setup was great on this trade. However, my problem occurred during the trade execution. The price went up to about $64.70, and I failed to take a partial! The reason I did not take a partial here was because I thought the amount it moved up did not equal such a large percent. The graph did not look as if it moved that much. I need to pay attention to the actual percent value of price movement and come up with a loose partial target in my head before/during trade entries. I believe I got filled poorly, resulting in me going past my $15 loss limit per trade, suffering a $20 loss. Or perhaps it was the price just dropping really fast and I did not click my hotkeys soon enough. Bad mistake on my part and will be remedied by turning on the Risk Control functions of DAS. I will turn those on after this journaling. This would have been a very solid trade if I had not let a winner turn into a loser but instead I reached max loss of 1% on the day. These are important things to learn and I feel good about the information I got from taking those trades.

Thurs, Feb 28, 2019

I was not able to do anything today for day trading due to being at a physical therapist for a broken arm. Will be able to trade Friday and I will have pictures of my trades this time.