TraderGav.com

Gav's trading blog - Perseverance, Consistency, Confidence

Gav

September 2006: Week 1 review

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It was a short week for me. Only 3 trades were made. As mentioned (or complained?) in my postmortem, Strategy runner was giving me troubles over the week. I closed the week with -1.22-R loss. Since there were only three trades for the week, I am not posting the performance graph now.

I have completed change of trading platform. I am currently on Tradestation. It is a platform with full of features and functions. I am still trying to figure out.

Let’s look forward for a better week with better trading.

Charting headache – Strategy runner

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I can’t make any trade today. Strategy runner charts s*ck the big time. It messed up totally. After confirming with Vincent, I know I am looking at some monkey charts.

Here are the charts of E-mini Nasdaq at the same period, same time frame. Can anyone tell me which one is the correct one?

[photopress:Nasdaq.JPG,full,centered]

[photopress:nasdaq_2.JPG,full,centered]

Same problem for Dow and E-mini S&P charts. No way to trade. I will get my Tradestation up tomorrow or Monday.

Daily Pivot 07-September-2006

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I start doing Pivot calculation everyday, basically, I am just plugging in High/Low/settlement price (from CME and eCBOT website) of the previous session into an spreadsheet. 5-min job.

Currently, I am using pivot levels as profit taking level for dummy trade. I have yet to implement pivot play until my tradestation 8 is up and running.

Here is the Pivot levels for 07-September-2006 trading.

[photopress:pivot_1.jpg,full,centered]

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Postmortem 06-September-2006

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It was a trending day. But, I did not make much money. Was I frustrated? I was. I was trying very hard to jump out from the recent lousy days. Vincent told me a fact that (thru IM) I was not paying enough attention to other indices. I have to admit that. I sticked my eyes on DOW, and ignored E-mini S&P and E-mini Nasdaq. Dummy setup appeared in all of them, and I did not notice.

I made an early exit on Dow trade at Pivot S2 level. As mentioned in my previous post, my mini-sized Dow position was flat for 2 hours, and in fact, S2 level was tested twice. I decided to close the position. It appeared to me that the probability for Dow to play a catch up was low.
(Looking at the chart retrospectively, I would be stopped out with 1-R loss if I were to hold on the position)

I was not sharp enough today. So, I was not good enough to trade today.

Let’s fight another day.

A good news for me is that my Tradestation application is finally completed I should be able to start trading on Tradestation 8 next week. I am long to implement Gap play, Pivot play and tick fade in addition to my dummy trading. (I can’t do that with my current trading platform).

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Dummy day trading #25 06-September-2006: Mini-sized Dow: Short trade closed

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I got a wrong trade today. It was darn slow. A waste of time. I decided to close the trade, after staying flat for 2 hours. I defined it as a wrong trade as E-mini S&P and E-mini Nasdaq were moving actively while Dow stalled.
I see pivot S2 level at 11420, I decided to close the position around this level with 0.14-R gain.

Dow might played some catch up later, but it did not deserve my sleeping time.Today is just not my day. I decided to call it a day and SLEEP.

Postmortem will be posted later.

[photopress:mini_dow_30min_trade_closed.JPG,full,centered]

1) Why would you be paying attention to this futures contract ?
I did not pay attention to it until 930am chicago time, after observing dowtrend established and dummy setup was completed.

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

3) Where would you get long/short this futures contract ? Below 9am (chicago time) candle.

4) Where would you put the initial protective stop?
??? ??? Above 9am(chicago time) candle.

5) When would you stop trading for the day? After position was established.

6) Where would you exit the position? Stop triggered.In this case, I exited the position at Pivot S2 level after position flat for 2 hours.