Now I am convinced I need to add in a rule to refrain myself from trading before previous’s day range is broken. I have been thinking about this over the past week, as the success rate of my system is low when establishing position within previous day’s range. I made a short trade today which got stopped out immediately. Short position was taken during the first pull back of downtrend cycle. I was expecting selling to be continued, I was obviously wrong. [Read more…] about Dummy day trading #54 08-Feb-2007: NQ Short trade closed
Dummy day trading #53 07-Feb-2007: NQ Long trade closed
After watching NQ futures broke above yesterday’s high, I was waiting for the first pull back to get into Long position. Indeed, Long position was established around 1035am when NQ futures bounced from moving average. This trade, I applied CBL trailing stop instead of setting a fixed profit target.
One trade closed with + 2.81 R (after commission)
Trade summary
- Long above narrow range candle around 1035am (In 200 Tick chart)
- Initial stop set below recent swing low
- Trailing stop by applying CBL technique. Position was closed when it went below CBL.
- Time stayed in position: 13 minutes.
How is everybody’s health?
I read a couple good postings on Trading for a living at Movethemarkets and Eyal did a follow up as well. There are couple of good points to note. However, I am not very keen in joining the conversation now, to me, when the time comes (Trading for a living), I will know.
A thread “How is everybody’s health?” in EliteTrader caught my attention. To me , this is far more important than struggling about “should I quit my day job now?”. I have wrote a post on similar topic before.
The thread started with this question
“(As a trader) How do you keep yourself FIT, Normal in Society?”
I am listing some good points mentioned in the thread.
- Eat right.
- Work out regularly(preferably outside)
- Maintain good sleep habits.
- Keep your stress in check
- Keep life in perspective
Health is far more important than the “R” you are trying to earn. Make sure you keep yourself fit to enjoy everything that money can get for you.
Crappy day of Tradestation
I have no idea what’s going on with my Tradestation. I have an nice short setup of NQ around 1050am. My sell order was triggered, and immediately I saw some big loss figure in Matrix screen. It hanged, and suddenly showed me losses. That was not synchronized with what I was looking at chart. Without hesistation, I closed my position. And you know what, I was profitable! What the heck. I ended with +0.5 R gain only.
What a crappy day. I planned my trade, but the software failed me. Forget it, I am going to call it a day.
Here is my setup. Ah well…. a multiple R setup. Argghhh….
[photopress:NQ200ticksMistake.jpg,full,alignleft]
Dummy day trading #52 05-Feb-2007: NQ Long trade closed
Long position was established around 1041am (NY time), which was the first pull back of new uptrend cycle. This was the second time NQ trying to test last Friday’s high. I was wrong . Stop loss was triggered with 1 R loss. Since the second attempt of previous high failed, NQ seems to be trapped in the trading range. I am out for the day, cough syrup causes some drowsiness now.
One trade closed with -1 R loss
[photopress:NQ200ticktradeclosed05Feb2007.jpg,full,alignleft]
Trade summary
- Long above narrow range candle around 1041am , which was breaking out from a flag pattrn as well.
- Stop loss set at recent swing low.
- Stop loss was triggered with 1 R loss.
Review week ended 02-Feb-2007
It is a boring Friday morning. I was watching NQ till lunch hour, and decided to call a day. Here is the weekly review of my trading performance.
I achieve my goal by having another profitable week. However, earning is still small. This is a week with full of events like FOMC meetings and Non Farm payroll etc. I start integrating chart pattern with dummy setup. So far so good. In total 4 trades were made.
Summary
- Total P/L(after commission): +2.52 R
- Trades taken: 4
- Winners: 2 (50%)
- Losers: 1 (25%)
- Break even: 1 (25%)
- Expectancy: 0.63
- Biggest winner (after commission): +2.01 R
- Biggest loser (after commission): -1.06 R
The obvious limitation I can see is trading only one futures (NQ) and one setup. The most challenging part is patience. I have to be patient to wait for the right spot to get into the trade. Once consistency is achieved (I am giving myself until end of first quarter of the year), I will start playing around with position sizing, by utilising day trading margin, maybe.
