TraderGav.com

Gav's trading blog - Perseverance, Consistency, Confidence

Gav

Day trades that got away from 02-Oct-2006 to 06-Oct-2006

by Leave a Comment

Inspired by Estocastica, I think it is a good idea to keep some “Day trades that got away” in my trading diary. It helps to improve my pattern(setup) recognition ability. Skills come from continuous practice.
I have studied charts of ER2, YM and NQ for the past week, there were couple of setups that attracted my attention.

[photopress:NQ_15_fib.jpg,full,pp_image]

1) Is the trend up or down? Would you be looking to get long or short this futures contract?
Down. Looking at short

2) Where would you get long/short this futures contract ?
Below 15th bar low.

3) Where would you put the initial protective stop?
Above the 15th bar high

4) When would you stop trading for the day?
After position is established or 2pm NY time.

5) Where would you exit the position?
Fib extension level 61.8%

More trades here… [Read more…] about Day trades that got away from 02-Oct-2006 to 06-Oct-2006

October 2006 : Week 1 review

by Leave a Comment

Dear diary,

Before I leave home for the movie “World trade Center”, I think I gotta post my ugly weekly review.

Ah…I closed the week with -1.95-R loss. Total 6 trades were made, 3 in small profit/break even while the other 3 stopped with less than 1-R loss each. It seems like these few weeks, I am such a struggling trader. No, that’s not what I wanna achieve. I know I can trade well. Let’s start next week with fresh. I need to focus on the quality of each trade.
Lousy Trading is so easy. Trading = Buy-> Sell -> lose money.

I will stick to the rules that I have posted which attracted a lots of link to my blog.

J.C wrote some great posts again. I guess, he should write a book.

ok, gotta run to catch the movie.

Postmortem 05-Oct-2006

by Leave a Comment

Dear diary,
No dummy trade for the day. After watching YM as well as NQ moving around OR (opening range) in 15-min chart, I hesitated to get in Long position. Indeed, they broke out from the range only in the afternoon.
People were waiting for the tomorrow’s NFP(Non Farm payroll) report.

No fun. It was a boring day. I made one squeeze trade with 1-R loss. That’s a small R. So no big deal.

Since my choice is pretty limited for stocks index( now, only NQ, YM , ER and ES) , I need to implement different trading approaches to squeeze some profit out. This is going to take some time.

Quality of trade is something that I need to take care. Blindly get into any setup is not something I am interested in doing.

By the way,  Mercado de Estoc?stica is another blog that I found to be excellent. He showed his real trades. His approach is kinda similar to Trader-x. I learnt something from them.

Ok, enough.

I will trade better.

Trading diary: 05-Oct-2006 Thursday ???

by Leave a Comment

Dear diary,

Let’s look at what is going on in the first 30 minutes of regular session. I see rather flat opening. Volume is good. NYSE TICK stayed above zero most of the time while TRIN stayed above 1. I don’t want to predict direction of market, I will see what can I do later. Overall, I am not bearish though.
btw, tell you a secret. First mistake of the day, I sold the wrong contract!?! I was supposed to sell YM and accidentally sold ES. With 2 ticks loss. (this kinda mistake is unacceptable, I was lucky, my account did not allow me to trade big volume). Ok, you may laugh at me now.