Trading...

I have been out of touch with trading futures due to work. My school is starting soon and I will have time again to focus on trading. You might hear from me in the future...

Oil Hits Record High

Run away gap .. realized but still thought the technicals were sayin otherwise. I am getting tired of these string of loses .. I don't think I can trade anymore if I don't find a solution to this ahole market. =)

s&p strike..

NASDAQ first, market was in a downtrend since 7 or so in the morning.. thought it might break that when things looked bullish from undersold but quickly touched the trend line and starting to fall.. I covered very quickly on first hesitation. Usually that hesitation either gets me out of the move early or gets me out with a minor loss and the market goes on in my favor.

Then traded S&P, market looked to have a bit of mo mo falling from the trend it touched on NASDAQ and made a minor double top as well.. waited until I thought the move was actually going down and then entered... took a tiny bit of heat and the market fell in my direction. I stayed in as long as I could but after the big move down and the retirement on the last bar I felt that it might retrace back and I exited early. As you can see I would've ripped a few more dollars had I stayed in.

Now, one thing missing from the picture today are stops.. and yes I didn't use any. I have been feeling the stop-burn alto lately and they have almost always.. 90% of the time kicked me out of the moves. About 20% of the time I thanked the stops but the rest of the time I have hated myself for using it. Some say that even warren buffet uses stops but does he trade futures. It's wrong of me to preach this but I do have a platform stop-loss in place, once that amount is hit I will be kicked outta the move and go back to stops I think.

I will also be using 1 contract from now on, tried to increase my size but that only decreased my profits. I want to completely learn to make money with one contract before I jump onto another one.

Runaway Gap

Realized that it was most probably going to be a runaway gap as soon as the market opened up but wasn't expecting an early sharp breakout so stepped out for something.. by the time I came back market had taken off and I didnt join in half way.

Then waited a while for another break out.. got in with a good entry and placed stop right after, next few minutes .. stop hit and took me out and market went up without me. Pain, misery and frustration are not words that define today.. 'cuz it's worse.

Green Day

• +120
• -7
• a little confident, larger downtrend
• overbought and losing momo, entered with a stoploss (blue line)
• will be trading with 1 contract for the next little while
• when the price retraced at the end, the market seemed exhausted so bailed out and market turned around.
• working and testing a few stoploss placements, today turned out to be good but again needs tons more testing
• left right after the trade so couldn't trade further.

Not gettin better...

+ 15 profit
- 7 comm
not too confident, upward momo was strong
shorted, anticipated a weak down move, turned out to be weaker
overbought and losing steam.. ended up in the right direction
blue squarish line is the movement of stop, still working on it, almost got hit.. right there the trade was a write off... next time itll hit so need to adjust stops.
es, ym and er dont want to break down to bailed out.

I shorted all the wrong break outs.. my feeling is that well have a good shortin opp at the end of the day.. cuz its been playin around all day..

Another day and more frustration..

- 40

- 7 comm

fairly confident of the trade, loss

counter trend trade

mac, stoch crossover

15 min, 200 MA bounce anticipated, failed

2 pnt stoploss, hit in 20 secs

would've stayed in as MAC showin weakness, proved wrong.. out on stoploss = good decision.

Potential Trade

I haven't been able to trade very much lately due to overnight work shifts and sleeping through the market hours. So I have decided to post potential trades that I would take from time to time. In hindsight, yes they will look good and all but when the market is live.. it's a different story altogether. Nonetheless, we will be looking at the most common setups/patterns that trigger me into the market and I hope to hear your setups/patterns/indicators that also point out the same exact move in the market. When there is an opportunity and more then one system/trader recognizes it then there's hope for us. :)

April 02, 2008
Today the futures were a bit slow and sideways due to the large move yesterday. It seems like a pause day as the market adjusts to the changes happening and balances out.

My potential trade came at 10:10 AM ET. As you can see, you have to be really patient with futures as they aren't like stocks where you can enter and exit on small 'cent' movements. If I had logged on in the morning I would've sat there watching the market until 10:10 AM ET today waiting for the right move.

Here's ESM8 5-Min.

• Two bounces off .. confirming resistance. [Yellow]
  
• M shaped pattern with ST having /\ shape on second leg touching oversold (exhausted) [Yellow]
  
• A hammer patterns that follows with a big drop. [Yellow]
  
• Divergence in stochastic as the price action moves higher. [Blue]
  
• First exit target broke through. [Green]
• Since the drop became steep and the stochastic was falling sharply I wouldn't have anticipated a large follow through in this move and would've exited as the ST reached undersold and turning up. [Yellow Box]
• This would've been a good move as there would be no heat taken if entered late as well.
• NQ confirmed the double top as well.
  

Alive N Kickin'

Haven't been able to post for a while and really havent taken any good moves in the market. It's been choppy and confusing for my style of trading. Also the fact that I am running on the other half of my account... I am only looking for high high probabiliy trades. Most of them have managed to stop me out almost always lately. Since the loss earlier in the month I havent caught any good moves to write home about.. so hopefully it won't continue like this and we will soon be seeing a trend in the market. Will keep you posted... much much more green ahead so don't miss out. :)

70% Account blowout.. deep in red.. not much to play with...

An overnight limit order caused a serious blow out to my account, down 70-75% in half an hour while I was away.. blew through my stops. Today made a trade in the right direction bailed out at 1.25 ES point of loss only to have the trade go back in my direction. I don't know what to do lately and how to deal with it. I might take a break or maybe not.

Importance of Trend lines..

For a last month or so I have been using trend lines based on pre-market data and using it very successfully during intra-day moves. Today I couldn't trade because the move I wanted to get into started before I was able to get to the trading desk and I never jump in an active move so I stayed on the side lines kicking some good profit for the greater good. :) Anyways, so the trend lines have been working wonderfully lately and have almost given a point or so of move everytime a trend line is being hit..never expected more then that and so far they haven't disappointed me at all.
Following is a picture from today as I came in at desk around 12:40 and drew trend lines based on pre-market data. These trend lines are more like the secret inner resistance/support that are very different from pivot points. Pivot points are always a straight line and very unlike the market action which is up and down so I use trend lines instead of pivot points to make my decision when to enter/exit. As you can see below, until the very end of the day the market kept bouncing off of the trend lines and when penetrated the move continued strongly in the direction of the trend.

There has been a recent talk about how market has changed and a lot of old traders are taking time off and might've to go through the learning curve again. So in light of that, I have been collecting small material/indicator to fall back on if my setups start to deceive me. In my opinion, it's good to make a $50 down from $500 then to not make any and these small indicators can help do just that. Try for yourself tomorrow and let me know how it goes.

Gap..

Wanted to fade the gap again but the market didn't fill me in and I didn't get in once the move had started. I didn't completely fade. I was down about -562.23 something overnight due to a mistake limit order. Managed to finish today at -212.00 something. Not bad.

Gap fill..

I haven't been able to take any snapshots of my trades lately due to work and sleep. I work overnight.. trade in the morning hour.. unlike before which was totally afternoon. This morning when I got back from work I saw a gap with a clear indication that the market would turn around.. I longed 1 contract, then another one just before the pivot and I was up about $412. I covered 1 contract at the top when the gap seemed to have filled but then the market turned around sharply leaving me with only a $200 of profit when I covered it all. I will try to update this post later on if I get a chance to take a snapshot of my account to show you the numbers of buy/sell. This blog doesnt seem fun without any pics.. :)

For Feb 26, 08

Made a small profit of +185 but couldnt take a picture as it was a limit order and got fullfilled while I was away. It was a short taken at 1385 just went the market slipped down a bit.. i think about 5 points.

Suprise party..

Was in a good trade but didnt think id be invited to the suprise party.. and bam the market shot up in my direction made me $1250.

I guess I am the only one on this site lately.. let me know if you happen to come by. :)

I have been AFT for a while..

.. sorry I couldn't update and let you know but I have to be away from trading for a while, not long.. will be posting results very soon. :)
In the meanwhile, let's enjoy the good things in life..

Water - The best bloopers are here

If your curious...

Hey Tyler hall, thanks a lot... I appreciate the nice words even though I don't think I deserve them. Honestly, I have only been trading for a short while myself and have just started to pick up patterns and what not in the market and as always learning everyday. I make mistakes all the time and sometimes I write them off and learn from them and sometimes I just don't trade for a few days to avoid revenge trading. Also, if I am having a winning streak I prefer to take 1-2 days off too... it pushes your over your head and u start making silly mistakes.
You can tell I needed break this week because last week was good for me. So I guess... my advice is to just learn from people's mistakes and avoid looking at their winners unless they explain what they are doing or you'd have unrealistic expectations. If you starting goal is to make $50, don't change it unless you achieve it. Also, if you’re the kind of person who gives up pretty easily (like quitting gym after a couple days/weeks) then you’d need to change that attitude and focus entirely on trading. Fortunately, I have had the luxury to take time off and actually just sit down everyday and trade; I literally obsessed myself with trading from august to December and in October started live trading once I'd had enough of paper trading.
If you are starting futures trading, paper-trading is probably the best thing you can do for your trading career. Observe your behavior when you lose or win and have a blog or journal where you show your results so you have some motivation to do well. For example, when I post on this blog I do realize that people read this blog and makes me want to take good trade and make more money but if I was just sitting at home and trading by myself I'd probably lose my motivation every now and then and lose all my savings and have nobody share it with or makes tons of money and forget about how I did it two weeks later. You go on a vacation, you come back you can always look back at your trades to get some idea of where you left off and start in the right direction.
Also, don’t make trading complicated. I remember before I left on a vacation recently... I had tons of pivot points littered on my charts and I couldn’t tell which one the price would bounce off of but I had them just to be sure when to enter and exit but that never happened and I usually ended up losing on a lot of trades because I wasn’t able to make a decision comfortable. Whoever says that trading has to be complicated either doesn’t know what they are talking about or they have spent 20 years working on some system that has a 10% winning rate and they don’t want to give it up because it took them 20 years to come up with it. Trading can be done with just MACD and Stochastic but taking default settings and functions won’t get you anywhere.
Keep it simple and always look at the bigger picture. I have seen future traders focus on each candlestick to scalp out small profits which makes it very difficult for them to come out profitable at the end of the day/week/month. Reason being, that they allow their losses to run in opposite direction a lot longer then they allow their profits to run. If you look at my trades I don’t focus on candlesticks I focus on the entire move. If an intra-day down trend has started I like to get into that and ride it out. This allows me to keep my winners running and cut my losers as soon as possible. This also allows me to learn the bigger patterns that happen before a reverse is on its way... I think about 60% of time I am wrong but I don’t leave without any profits/losses or at least learning something from it. I think another important thing to do is to look at the charts over and over and over and over again after market, if you have time, and figure out what’s the best course of action you could’ve taken to avoid the pitfalls. I prefer to look at the charts for individual days as I am an intra-day trader and never take huge 100 points or so trades stretched out over a span of few days.
I have gone through, like many others, the process of trying out every indicator out there for days/weeks/months and then chucking them out the window because eventually they don’t make sense and make things too complicated. When a new person starts trading they think that there is some kind of Holy Grail hidden somewhere and only some people know it and they make tons of moneys… which is completely untrue. There is not one holy-grail… there are TONS. Yup, if there was only one holy grail and shelling out 1k, 2k, 10k spend on some ‘this book will make you filthy rich’ could buy you it then we’d all be rich right now. I am willing to shell out 100k on a product if it promises and guarantees to make me $1000 a day in futures market. Sadly though, there is no such Holy-Grail… those TONS of holy grails I talked about earlier are your own individual systems or I prefer methods that make YOU money. I think I have my Holy Grail down and like me other equity/future traders have their own holy grail. Figure out your EDGE (Holy Grail) and you won’t need anyone’s help or books or products/systems. Avoid buying e-books, video chats, live signals, market commentary and SYSTEMS especially… because they all make money by selling you products and not trading. However, if someone has a method to teach you instead of a system then it worth a look and you should look into it. Methods differ from systems because they can’t be automated or they could be but still require a person behind the screen to initiate, they are based on events that are always changing and based on many variables that change throughout the day. I have a method of making money and I don’t have a system, system basically is when a moving average crosses over you buy/sell. Method on the other hand, requires the MA to crossover then meet certain criteria’s like trending day/ranging day then I use my intuition, experience and lessons I learn everyday from trading to make my decision. Unless you can keep on updating your automated system over and over you will never be able to turn your system into a method and it will be very time consuming and off course a few years down the road will not work. I would prefer to have my energy spent on trading then on programming but again Methods require you to be attentive and focused on trading you have to basically learn to love the market regardless if you win or lose.
Lastly, if you lose money then you have officially entered the world of trading. Where emotions rule, mistakes are rampant, lessons are rarely learned, egos are sky high and being wrong is considered death. So don’t mind it and move on... find an alternate course of action to tackle the market the next day. Specialize with one set of indicators and one method and you will come out on the top.

P.S. Don’t quit your job until you’ve been trading at least 2 years with about 6 months of profitable months. I am working 60 hours a week and trading, getting about 6 hours of sleep but because I love to trade I sacrifice my sleep sometimes.

Tuesday :)

I didn't use any tekinal analisis today. Just thoght the market might crash down further. Oh well.. :)

Beautiful Monday

+350 to -212.50

Couldn't sleep played the afternoon too...

11 some S&P points..

Early weekend...

Am I exhausted or what.. pulling a 60 hour work week (20 bonus and over the coming weekend).. and trading.. getting about 6 hours of sleep and just about to hit the floor. Been working because it feels good to have a constant source of income that doesn't just evaporate the next day and when you have it you can actually go out and spend it... some of you know what I mean. :)

But, man oh man, it's been hectic doing all this.. not over yet 'cuz I got weekend to look forward to that Ill spend working... well at least the futures aren't letting me down.. now that's what you call a 'soul market'.. there for me when I need it to be. :D

Anyway, today I am miraculously done early and will be attending other matters that require my attention at this very moment (tons of sleep). So wish me good look and here's the chart for today... about 13.25 S&P points.

Heated Thursday

Good day profit-wise, abuut 17 points (850).. but again I have been taking so much heat lately that I have lost every strand of hair on my balls. You can see how much heat I took today and what it must've felt like. The only way to not feel the heat is to know that the move will surely move in you direction but futures is very volatile and sometimes doesn't make sense at all. So I usualy end up standing on toes even if I know it's eventually going to go in my direction..7 points is huge amount of heat. Do you guys know of any methods or tricks that would allow me to enter after a breakout has established.. when I try doing it myself I get caught in the false breakout which costs money.

Last ditch effort paid off...

Made three trades, 2 for losses and eventually the last one for over $455.00 profit.. that covered the previous losses.

If you guys are seeing a pattern in the way I am making mistake do shout out and let me know. I want to progress faster because eventually I am going to need this money like the rest of the people but I want to go through the this learning curve asap and with you help. Keeping journals have done me a lot of good too.

* INTRA-DAY UPDATE *

12:55 EST Feb 05, 08

I am up +6.75 S&P, had to leave so I cut my profits short. Just letting everybody know that the market is in a serious channel and spitting money at the moment. This could change anytime so I will jump on the wagon and lock in some profits before the channel is broken or chopped out.

Tops and Bottoms -$225

Did the market suck today or am I completely off beat?.. I didn't get today! :(

Today.. I gambled big time!!

So today I gambled and fortunately beat the house...I missed yesterdays fed move altogether and couldn't enter the market.. so this morning a guilt feeling came over me for losing out on easy money and I decided to gambled. Gamble as in to use up more contracts and wait out longer to let the moves work out in my favor. Average contract size today was 5.. In the morning, I lost over 2G's before I made back that amount and another 1300 or so.. still kept going in the afternoon and ended the day at +$2475 which is great becaue I had been holding back a lot.. being very conservative with my contract sizes and profits.. trying to get over the learning curve with little P&L's. Check out the picture and let me know what I should've improved on. :)

Small loss

Made 165 or so in Nasdaq this morning, then lost over 190 in Russel.

+300..in a hurry..

Take a look at the pic and figure out the buy and sell.. in a bit of a hurry :)

+$200..gave some back to the market

I was over at my 'rents house for the week so I decided to activate my account for the while.. today being the first day I made my first trade after a long time and already made an old mistake. Honestly, it was good to take a break from the market 'cuz it can get really frustrating if you are losing money and can't find any way out. I wouldn't say I lost money everyday but everyday was or is another day and no two days are the same in the market so you need to always come with a fresh and open mind and forget the past even if you have lost a lot like my bruh over at HPT. I am no expert but he really needs to bring down his contract size.. many times when he has made money if you calculate how much net he comes out with.. it'll surprise you that given my commission rates he doesn't make much.

Anyways, today wasn't really a day to talk about 'cuz the market kept going up and down in a channel pattern and it was mostly sideways except one good move that I missed in the afternoon. However, I did catch on when the market was about to close I drew the Fibonacci and realized that the trend might still continue up and bought 1 contract with a $1.5 stop loss and when it broke the next fib level bought in another one.. alas it wasn't meant to make me money. The second contract ended up giving money back to the market. Should've been a bit more patient (hard to be patient when you trade after a long time). Anyway, I hope you all had a good time in the market 'cuz we all have a tendency to be happy when we see someone or something crash or go down the drain and that's what's happening in the market at the moment.

+= Back but Inactive =+

Ladies and Gentlemen,
I have managed to somehow return from a grand vacation. If money wasn't running out I would stretch it for months.. However, due to unstable Internet connection and a new place (Buffalo, NY).. I won't be able to trade for a while but will update the blog from time to time. At the moment, I am trying to get a reliable high speed Internet connection but it's taking forever will update pretty soon.
-ciao-