July 2014 Results

Trades:36
Winners: 16
 Losers: 14
Break evens:6
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Total Gains: $726.50
Total Losses: $-900.00
Avg Gain: $45.41
Avg Loss: $-64.29
Biggest Gain: $100.00
Biggest Loss: $200.00
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Trade Net: -$173.50
Commissions: -$193.62
Short term Trading Net: -$367.12
Month Net: $-367.12
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This has not a good month at all for me but on the bright side even totally screwing it up I only lost $367.  I chased the market a hand full of times that were trades no where near my trading plan. Just on those trades alone cost me  about $800 turning a positive month into a losing month.
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This scenario happened too many times this month. I would miss two or three trades by a tick or two, then chase the market and lose big. Then I would skip the next trade (usually an easy one) and follow it up by ending my day missing another trade by a tick or two.
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I trades i log here fall into one of fours types - long term stock swings (months), short term stock trades (days), selling option premiums (either naked or on my long-term swings), and futures trading.  Futures trading makes up 90% plus of my trades and of those trades - 95% of those are tradings the ES.
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The futures trading has a couple of simple rules using breaking levels, a couple of moving averages and stochastics. Nothing really insane.  The basic idea is to be winners on 80% of the trades with an initial goal of 4 ticks and a stop loss of 8 ticks. The math works out make $100 on 5 trades.
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This month if I sat on my hands - I made 34 futures trades. 22 of them went to the first target of 4 ticks and 12 did not. Say if I trade 2 contracts on each trade - I would have made $2200 on the first target and lost $2400 on the ones that did not. I chased the market 5 times this month where if I waited to get in at the correct time for my rules - 4 out of the 5 would not have gotten stopped before hitting initial target.  This changes the math to making $2600 on the first target and losing $1600 on the stop outs for a profit of $1000 before commissions.  Not a bad month.  The 26 verse 8 gets much closer the 80% win rate.  A course you can sometimes get out of a losing trade before the 8 tick stop out and some of the winning trades you might cut short because of how much time it is taking.
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So August is another month and I already made the chasing mistake yesterday.  My goal this month is to wait for my entry and see how much money I can make.
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I finally feel like I have a true trading plan to make money with - now I just have to get the mental game under control.