June 4th

Logged into the market around 11:15 am and stayed until the end, although the last hour was a maze of distractions. The markets still appear sluggish to me based on where they were a couple months ago but as I've noted before, this appears to be the new norm. I paid attention to my stops today and looked for some trending opportunities as I paper-traded SKF, V, and AAPL. I'm still in the process of creating a format to measure how much of a trend I am able to capture... Also trying to pay close attention to how price and volume behave in the stock I am playing and how the indices act as the trend grinds to a halt and pullbacks/reversals take hold. This is where most of my skills need to develop, I believe. I am not nearly an expert at entries but I feel reasonably comfortable getting into a stock. Staying in is problematic and as I've mentioned before, I think it is the inability to competently identify exit points. It is my goal to initially take 60% of the move I'm playing. That gives me 20% fudge factor on the entry and 20% on the exit. I'll try to refine the record keeping as time goes on to reflect which moves I should be grading myself on... Ultimately it is my goal to trade into the longer moves of the day and not be so frenetic that I get out during the shortest of pullbacks. I'd like to develop the skill and patience to stay with good trends until serious reversals take place on the trade I'm in. Time will tell how it works out for me. Rather than measure my success in dollars, I want to try to measure success in the quality of my entry and exit points. Good execution will eventually lead to good gains. I'll measure my progress in how much of the trend I increasingly can take as a percentage of the entire move (80% would be nice) and rate it also by my ability to control over-trading. The successful traders who I've followed seem to trade 5-min candles. I'll focus on that even more. I still like the 3-minute chart but I will try to favor the 5-minute. Less information overload may help smooth out the little "bumps" (minor highs and lows) of an extended trend and keep me from jumping in and out too much. Again, we'll see how that goes for me. Right now, I'm still trying to train myself not to trade by fading extremes in momentum. I just love to trade the those quick changes of direction on a trend. However, it only serves me well if the change of direction is a true reversal (I do get some great entries on longer trends in some cases)... BUT... It is dangerous if it happens to only be a small pullback in a strong trend and I don't exit well. Further, the gains tend to be small because the pullbacks in a big move are small.
To make trading a career, I really have to train myself to trade with the momo, not fade it. Fading it is too often a suckers bet to risk my financial health on it.
-
9 for 12 winners, a 75% success rate. Gain of $456 in 4.75 hours of trading.

June 3rd

Closing it down early today because I have two day-job appointments beginning at 3:00 pm. Again my old favorite, SKF, was sluggish today. I picked up 3 trades on it as well as one small gainer on a PBR reversal. I watched my stops today and tried to stay with the trend I was in. Limited success at that. More on that later. I'm in the process of trying to adopt a format for measuring the % of a given trend I take as a gain. I think the best way to improve on something is to start measuring it. I think it will really draw my focus in on this problem of bailing out too early. The reasons I've mentioned before: a lack of confidence in my ability to recognize a slowing trend coupled with the thrill of putting up a "winner" on the board, even if it is for a paltry portion of the overall move in the stock I'm playing. I'd really like to make progress this month on correcting this difficulty I have.

Hope all had a profitable day; in money, knowledge, or both!

-

4 for 4 winners, a 100% success rate. Gain of $233 in 3 hours of paper-trading.

June 2nd

My day of paper-trading was one where I could not focus solely on the stocks because of more pressing things related to the day-job. I have let many of my administrative tasks lapse in favor of the markets and today I tried to do both to get caught up. I didn't do too badly considering my broken attention. The SKF was not moving very much today... the day range and the momo was not great based on other days. I t sure has changed from the month of March when I was just getting into trading the ETF's. Of course, sustained volatility like that only comes around every so often. I have a feeling that trading in the future will resemble more of what we see now as opposed to then, or even less movement/volatility. September 2008 through March 2009 was very unusual, for sure. Today and probably days in the future are indicators that I may have to go back to searching for ADR stocks rather than just being able to count on certain ones to move every day. Not sure about that, but my gut tells me it might be that way. Relying on movement in the financials and their ETF's have made trading so much easier in that no scans or searches have been necessary. Just punch up the SKF, SRS, FAZ,FAS, etc and go to work! We'll just have to see what the future holds. I really don't have much experience in the quieter market times to compare to. I know one thing, I'd really like to see the VIX above forty for the rest of my trading life! As for today, I had some good entries and I seemed to gauge direction fairly well. I just didn't stay with my trades long enough. Same old issue for me. I'm at the point where I'm ready to just take the chance that all my trades might stop out rather than take quick gains. It seems that many of the trades, if I were to let the trend develop, would offset the losers I would take getting stopped out on the trades where I normally take quick gains. I'm going to take a closer look at todays exits and measure them against the eventual reversal to see how much I gave up today. I'll post it if it is noteworthy.

7 for 7 winners, a 100% success rate. Gain of $366 in 4 hours of "inattentive" trading.