June 29th - Addendum

A review of today's trades reveals a few things of note:

I did not let the first trade of the day go to stop-loss.
Result: Bailed early and missed out on up to a 20 cent, $100 gain.

Fifth trade, I stopped it out at ten cents.
Result: That was the low point of the trade and within 3 cents of the low point of the entire day to that point and as soon as the stop triggered, the trade reversed and went up 39 cents from the stop-out point. It topped out at what could have been a gain of up to 29 cents, $145 gain. There's that frustration point again... so very close (couldn't be closer than that, actually) but just missed on a nice move. Success seems just a hair out of reach, sometimes.

It's after 10:00 pm and a very busy day-job tomorrow so I can't plot and study other trades but I've seen enough to know I am near Nirvana.

June 29th

I didn't get a chance to get to the markets until about 2:00 pm because of my day-job. I decided to watch AAPL instead of SKF as it seemed to be making larger dollar moves. As can be seen from the list of trades, I struggled with my entries and found myself stopping out often. I tried to stick to 8 cent stops but found on some occasions, quick movement blew through the stop and I took a larger loss than I'd like; 2:12 pm was a 10.5 cent, 2:16 pm a 15 cent, and a 13.5 cent at 2:34pm. However, most stops (7 of the 11) were triggered within 9 cents, so stop discipline was strictly enforced today. Also important: NO TRADES ADDING TO LOSERS TODAY. Unfortunately, this resulted in a terrible won/loss ratio and a small loss on the day. I say unfortunately because 4 of the 11 losses representing -$167 happened within 30 cents of the 2:05pm reversal in AAPL at $142.70. (on a stock which moved nearly $2.40 cents from HOD to LOD). There are other cases of being in close proximity to an anticipated turn only to be caught in chop. This seems to be a constant problem for me. I sense the changes in direction are near, so I play a stock to reverse. Then, I stop out numerous times as the stock goes through its machinations at the top or bottom of a trend. I am getting stopped/chopped to bits. My old method of buying and adding more trades to the position if it moved away from me insulated me from losses while a stock was consolidating. I enjoyed high success rates because the little moves in these difficult areas didn't take me out of the overall trade. It's tough eating all these losers while adapting to the new (but preferred) method of trading. It's worth the pain now during the change of style in order to avoid those infrequent but nasty breakouts from consolidation moving against me.

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I constantly look for encouragement... in this, I still seem to have a good feel for changes of direction which is primary to future success. I am now sticking to stops so i won't blow out my account a few times per month and offset the gains I might have. And, with all these losses because of my lack of experience, I still seem to be down very little. I can live with losses this small when I am in only my second or third day of adapting to true momentum/trend-trading. The gains will come eventually. I will sharpen my skills at picking tops and bottoms, I will limit my stop losses to under 8-10 cents, I will see and feel momentum such that I will stick longer with winners, and I will begin to see choppy consolidation areas after trends and not be suckered into them by the market-makers, et.al. Success: it's not a matter of if, it is a matter of when.

... I just hope it doesn't take too long.

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8 for 19, a 42% win rate. Loss of $37 in 2.25 hours of paper-trading. Stops engaged on all losing trades except two, no trades added to losing positions.

EOD - Boot Camp Day

First off, I am very happy and am finishing the day with a positive feeling. I took 15 trades split between SKF and AAPL. It was my first down day in weeks but as I posted earlier, I am not focused on wins/losses or dollars lost/gained today. That wasn't what today was about. That said, after 15 trades, I was down less than $165. By the day's end, I was so confident about my ability to adhere to my stops and sit on my winners longer, that I actually started to paper-trade the big EOD move in the market. Notably, I waited on SKF to sink and at 3:04 pm, went long at $42.13. I caught it two cents from the low of the day at that point and rode the rebound up to $42.34 at 3:17 pm. I sold the move 5 cents from the top, catching 78% of the pop. I must say it felt great to hang in on a run like that but I also must say that I had to force myself to stay in... especially when the trade came down to two cents from my entry, before making its climb.
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Part of the reason I didn't want to focus on the gains or losses today is that I had a few trades stop out that had some respectable positive gains. The first trade of the day, I stopped out at scratch (+$15) after being as much as 46 cents up ($230) before reversing. At that point in the day, I was planning on just going round-trip on trades; ordinarily, I would have taken a good portion of that move. On many of my early stop-outs, I made note that if I had immediately reversed instead of exiting and watching, I would have taken gains in excess of the amount lost. This is certainly something which experienced traders routinely do and I must open my mind to doing this. It only makes sense, right? If I'm wrong in one direction, more than likely the stock is going the other way and not just sitting still. I just have to be aware of choppiness and getting stopped-out to death! Those $40-$50 stop losses add up if one plays every move inside a choppy price-channel.
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I am not going to give a play-by-play of each trade but I did want to note that on SKF, I stopped out on a short at 10:44am at $43.09. SKF felt frothy and I really had a sense that it was going to break down. Well, after the stop-out at $43.17 (8 cents), it ran another 7 cents and then dropped. I was stopped out on a short that was only 7 cents from the HOD! SKF dropped 1.38 to its low of day then closed the day down nearly a dollar from where I went short. What does this mean? It means nothing, really, because every trader can say "if" this, and "if" that to many trades every day. However, I think it is an indication that my trading instincts are not too bad and they simply need refinement. I have reason to be hopeful, and that is what is most important to me now.
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This morning's post mentioned that I would post a chart but I will not be posting a chart as it would take too long to mark all the trades.