Did I miss the forest again? By looking at the chart of NQ after closing bell, I “should have” earned couple more Rs “if” I hold on my position instead of moving my stop to lock in early profit. (I would have been stopped out also even though I only moved my stop to break even point). NQ did a weak pull back by breaking the trend cycle for a while and stalled at previous day’s high for some time before it continued moving up in the afternoon.

Well, for this trade, there were couple of signs that prompted me to exit according to my game plan. So, what can I do? I guess that’s the only sum of money the market was willing to give me.? On the other hand, maybe I should consider making a couple of trades after lunch hour as well… but well, it would be around 3am in Singapore…..
Not so “happy” by missing the afternoon move, but pretty satisfied with my game plan execution so far.

There were some swings in minutes chart of NQ. There was no clear trend, or should I say that the trend was changing couple of times, intraday. I had to be extra cautious and patient to stay out from being chopped around.

I did not trade yesterday, however I saw some opportunities in shorter time frame like 1 minute and 2 minute charts. I am not jumping into these now, but it is worth to have a closer look at how things change in these short time frame. I have couple of new setups added into my library, well, still to be studied.

Still flat for the week.

I actually printed out my NQ trading plan and put it beside me when I was trading. I went through plan when making the trade. Just like an operator who is new to operate a machine. Follow the user manual, step by step, switching on the machine. Sounds stupid and funny? Well, that’s how I trade.

It was a trending day for Nasdaq futures. The mistake I have made was not making myself available when new opportunity appeared.
After I closed the first trade with break even result, I was following the market. And, indeed, I saw opportunity appeared again. no action was taken. In my mind , I was still thinking the market is coming down, the market is coming down, the market is coming down. There was no room for Long opportunity.

Note of the day:
Making yourself available, free up your mind, take the trade when opportunity appears.

From another point of view, today’s action provides me a clearer view of my entry methods. Each entry method carries its own risk/reward ratio and exit condition. The trade I had taken today was , in fact, a higher risk entry. I would be better off if I had tried to lock in some profit at first warning sign. Well, hindsight.

One trade. No profit (oh well, in fact I earned $.0.28 after commission 😆 ). But some lessons were learned.

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My workstation

First of all, Happy New Year!

A great year starts from a plan. Here is my resolution for year 2007, well , a brief one.

I have given some thoughts for my trading in 2007. Now , everything back to zero. I have gained a little bit experience from the past 6 months of day trading. I need to move on with improvements.

I need to draft out a plan before I continue involving in this business for the coming year. I would list out some points here since it is pretty lengthy and personal, I am not so comfortable to dump in all the details on the web.

Futures Trading:

I would continue day trading E-min Futures. At least for the first quarter of 2007, I will only trade E-mini Nasdaq (NQ). Since it offers the lowest dollar risk. I will stop paper trading, instead, I will forward trade my strategy in NQ. I have reviewd my past dummy trades and reading back charts after charts. My current system works much better in NQ than any other index futures. And another key reason is I am comfortable with the risk taken in NQ futures. Yes, the return per tic is small ($5), and the movement is slower. But what’s wrong with that? The objective here is achieve consistency and keep making good trades. I am a table tennis player, so I don’t wanna force myself to play Tennis before I have the strength and technique to swing the tennis racket now.

Second option is to trade YM (mini-sized Dow) futures. The reason I did not trade YM in the later part of 2006 is due to the instability of eCBOT. I am setting up a second trading account to hedge YM by trading ES should eCBOT is down again. Anyway, YM is still my second choice now.

I know I am not comfortable with E-mini Russell (ER2) and E-mini S&P (ES) trading now. As the risk and volatility are still kinda exceed my tolerance. I tend to chicken out or hesitate to enter a position.

Some key points for my futures trading for the first quarter of 2007

• Master one setup before trying others. Making high accuracy trade. It is definitely OK without making any trade if there is no setup found.
• Make sure I know the Exit point before entering a trade.
• Maxium risk per trade (R) is 0.8%
• Losing days are ok. My target is to be profitable every week.
• Continue studying ES and backtesting my strategy.
• Continue studying different futures trading strategies.
• Continue posting my trades, weekly review, and postmortem on the blog.

Swing Trading:

I have been lagging in swing trading for the past few months. Since I am trading from Asia and having a day job, I can only swing trade stocks in Singapore market, and day trade American market in the evening time. Relatively, swing trading requires lesser maintainance. In addition, trading in Singapore market (SGD based) requires smaller capital due to currency difference and It helps to balance out my overall portforlio with different currency holding.

I have some experience in Metastocks programming. So I will do some scannings and studies every evening.

Some key points for my Swing trading for the year 2007

• Master one setup before trying another. Making high accuracy trade.
• Maximum risk of 1.5% of trading capital
• I will limit myself to maximum 2 swing trades per week.
• Losing trades are OK. My target is to be profitable every month
• Continue studying different swing trading strategies.
• Continue posting my trades, monthly review, and postmortem on the blog.

I believe by integrating Swing trading and Day Trading into my overall business plan will improve my overall performance. Sometimes, opportunity appears in different time frames and styles of trading. In addition, I avoid making day trading as the only source of income, this will help to reduce to pressure of forcing myself to trade everyday.

I am not trading for pastime. My intention is to make it as my full time career at some point of time. With the limited capital of mine, I will start slow and grow it gradually. I am not setting a big profit target for 2007, instead I am looking forward to grow myself as a consistent profitable trader.