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.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Gap..
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.. :)
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
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.
Monday, February 25, 2008
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. :)
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
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
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
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.
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.. :)
Monday, February 11, 2008
Friday, February 8, 2008
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.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
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.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
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.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
* 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.
Monday, February 4, 2008
Tops and Bottoms -$225
Did the market suck today or am I completely off beat?.. I didn't get today! :(
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