little pink circles win again 6/28/2016

I should have made a butt load of money but instead I had my head up in it. I think of 50% pullbacks of the last swing as being a great place to enter. Very simple system.  Today, it had 11 chances by my count.  Two near misses, eight wins and one loss (last trade).  A win I consider is any trade that goes a point in your favor before going two points against you.  I only made one of these trades today.  Life got in the way on a few of them but I should have taken 4 or 5 more today. I have lost some of my nerve with all the craziness of the Brexit market swings.

Good opening ES range trade 5/20/2016

I love it when everything works out perfectly.
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Coming into the opening, the ES was near the top of a 4 point range. I was hoping for a pullback to the middle of the lower part of the range or about two points. When on the opening minute of trading, the ES goes in the opposite way of the current basis, trading against that direction is highly profitable. The stoc was bullish so the basis in my mind was bullish. The market had been going sideways after a good movement up. I wanted to enter around 2043 with the stop below 2042.  Usually I take most if not all of the trade off at one point but this looked like a good opportunity to try for the top of the range at 2046. Once the market paused at 2043, I entered at 2043.25 and trailed with a one point stop that got hit at 2046. In hindsight, I could have gotten more if I had just a tick or bigger stop, but I will take the 2 3/4 gain.
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Moments later the market gave two great entries to buy the pullbacks at 2046.75 and 2046.25. Both I failed at by trying to get filled at 2045.75 which was a 50% pullback.  Got to be just a hair more aggressive.

Mother told me there would be days like this 4/8/2016

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I have way too many days like this. If I can not turn these types of days around - I will never get the chance to be a full time trader.  Here below is a blow by blow recall of Fridays trading for me.
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1) Market broke back into the morning range. Sold the pullback to 2048 but instead of going for one point, I wanted two - got a tick instead.
2) Tried reselling when the market paused at 2049.00.  Too slow to get the fill at 2048.75.
3) Tried reselling again at 2049.75. Had my order in ahead of time but market did not tick there.
Between 3 and 4) - getting frustrated. Market looks like it is getting bought.
4) Saw huge offers at 2049.75 and 2050.00.  Really stupid - my trading plan does not allow for this type of trade in a non-trending day. Got filled and stopped quickly.  Thestop point is where I should be buying instead.
5) Again breaking the rules playing a type of breakout trade.  Should have bought the pullback instead for a perfect trade. After 7 minutes, made a tick.
6) Frustrated enough to play a video game expecting the market to do nothing.  Instead - it triggers a 50% of days range trade that I miss.  Again the entry would have been perfect.
7) Had order in to short at 2051.75.  Market ticks there but do not get filled. Market quickly moves 1 1/2 points away from my order so I pulled it.  Should have left it in.
8) Tried shorting market on the close of the previous bar at 2049.75.  Seconds late on what would be a perfect entry.
9) Shorted pull back to 2049.75.  Trade went against me for one point where by my rules, I should have added to the position.  I chickened out and do not add. To add insult to injury, I try moving buy stop lower thinking I could get at least 2 or more points, but the market takes me out.
10) Market breaks down pullbacks to last support point but my other half is yelling it is time to go to work. I saw f-it and shut down.  Again another perfect entry.
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Net results of the day :  minus $40.
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What I should have had if I followed my rules and was about 5 seconds faster on few of my trades: plus $460

This Week In Nov Beans

How I looked at the Beans this week. My trades are also the charts with my missed trades I saw as the action happened. Bottom line is this should have been a good week for me based on how I look at charts.

Chart Porn 5/18/2012 - missed opp edtion

I did not trade on Friday. Between being stupid on Thursday, a doctors appointment and Face book coming out - I just could not get off my butt.

Chart Porn 4/23/2012

I think too f-ing much 2/9/2009

This shit drives me crazy. You plan the trade then trade the plan - right? PBI was a big mouth stock. It made a couple of trades close to 25 last night in after hours once the mouth roared. I wanted to start a short position at that area. Just before the open a bid of something like 4500 around 24.90 and 24.95 showed up. Just perfect but with no asks above the price the stock looked like it could open as high as 25.50. Did I take a start position - NO! When it opened, the bid was taken out, then the next trade was 60 cents lower and quickly you could have had a 90 cent gain. Dummy me.
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I thought someone knew something I didn't. I think too much.

This is the one where I did not push the buttoms correctly.......

You can not fuck up a non-trade better than what I did here. I do not know if the coffee was not working or that I had anything else wrong but good god - I could not think and type at the same time and I was afraid if I used a market order, I would get slipped 40 pips. Thank you for the comments below.

Please.....

Please someone make me push some buttoms. So many missed trades - I am going crazy.

Stupid Fear of Over night trading

Stupid - watching the EURO last night with the simple trade idea in my head to go long the EURO if it trades above 1.40 and short a new low (1/2 position) and add on a break under 1.38 (another 1/2 position). I hate putting trades on overnight and I sat on my hands.

Another one that got away

No guts - no glory. One of the problems I have trading currencies is that my signals always seem to happen in the middle of the night. The two buy points of the EURO (1.3070 and 1.3400), I was sitting at my desk watching the action. Both times it was late at night and I said to myself, do I really want to start a position just before I go to sleep. I wimped out both times and lost out at some fast money. I suck.

Crap - missed again.

Comments on the chart. I am sick about it when I point the trade out to others and do not have the brains to follow my own words.

I hate when this happens.

I was in a cafe watching CNN when the vote happened.

Let me work in the Mail room so I can go postal

A method of trading I picked up is to play the hot sectors. This is something DT turned me on to. If the sector up or rallying, find one of the lagers and buy them. If the sector is dieing, the sell the strongest.

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The 3 charts above are from the ag chemicals sector - AGU, CF and MON (you could add TRA). My thought process here is bad earnings from MON pushed the sector down but yesterday there was good news from MOS. So during the MON conference call, I assume the sector would bounce back hard.

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I first tried trading CF. I chased it and chased it and chased it. This I thought was going to be the best bouncer. At point 1 on the chart, it was just breaking out of it small openning morning range. I had an order in at 72.22 - no fill. Then it ran to 72.50, came back to 72.20 and I thought it was in a range of 72.20 to 72.50. Buy it at 72.30 and sell above the break of 72.50. No luck. At point 3 - tried buying at 72.70, then 72.90 at point 4. Ok give up - no luck - go play with something else.

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Later, I see it start to build a big buy point at 74. I am going to lose out on this again. Buy a 1/4 position at 73.95 and a buy stop above 74.00. Get stop on 1/4 position at point 6 - 73.70 but for some reason leave buy stop in. Buy stop gets hit and get stopped again around point 6 again.

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After I created this chart - I went short and covered my earlier losses.

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On the other charts - I missed AGU when I took a break from CF and then screwed up a trade in MON. I bought MON at 88.40 before 11 and then got stopped on it at 88.40 after 11. It runs over 89 minutes later.

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Bottom line - the right stocks, the right ideas - bad execution of those ideas. I missed a lot of money. On top of that, while I was pissing around with my own ideas, MT was making a ton of money with his.

Thursday Trade Review 10/4/2007

As I stated before, I am trying to recover from my trip back home. I only made two trades today and neither are worth the time to write about. I did pull another Rookie mistake. I wanted to short the morning pop in the YM futures if they did not take out the high. I had forgot to bring up my Trade Station because I was running late. I saw the trade developed on my IB charts. Time to make the trade but no TS. I was trying to get TS up but it would not come up fast enough and the trade got away. So what was the mistake you say? I had my IB open and I can trade futures there - so dummy why didn't I?
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The numbers:
Stock: Gross -11 net -13 shares trade 4000
Stock Futures: Gross +25 net +20 contracts 2
Other Futures: none
Forex: none

Stupid Rookie Mistake 9/26/2007

If you look at the two charts above, one daily, one interday, you will see the general idea for the trade. I wanted to buy into support at 37.00 and again at 36.50 with a stop a little lower. When the stock was getting to 37, the bid ask was crazy. I setup my first order and forgot to adjust my buy to 37.01 as IB defaults the ask as the buy price. I hit enter and found I bought the stock a lot higher (25 cents) than I wanted too. I freaked and sold the position quickly not thinking about why or how I was doing things. Support 37 held nicely and it could have been a good trade. I should have taken one breath and bought a little more at 37 and leave the trade on. Stupid me.

Todays Frustration 9/24/2007

I keep missing the Big Mouth stocks by 10-25 cents. Today I missed ZINC by 1 penny and picked the top tick in LMC but did not get filled.

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Right stocks, right idea but no fills. I need to figure out how to get into these stocks with out getting hurt in a fast crazy market of Big Mouth stocks.

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So I assume that LMC would get to 13 and ZINC to 24-25. I am thinking I should then leg in LMC at 12.75 with 200, 12.85 with 400, 12.95 with 600, 13.05 with 800 and 13.15 with 1000 share orders. And do the same with ZINC.

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Frustrating game today.

Trades I should have made 9/22/2007

Big Mouth is Back I hope 9/19/2007

The 3 charts above are all Big Mouth stocks. They finally looked like they were going to wake up after he stated the bull is back. Very few of his buys have worked as shorts this summer. It happened the same way last year.

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I had orders in for all 3 but only got filled on one. I need to dust my brain off on how to game these again. There was no pop in 2 of them that caused me to missed them. I think I need to be more aggressive again and place maybe at 1/4 position on an open trade and fill it the position out if there is a pop.

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I did caught a part of GLS but it was not the true open. I noticed after getting filled, the spreads were crazy so a little voice in my head told me to take a small profit and get out. After the real open pop, I chased the stock down but did not get filled. I totally forgot there is no uptick rule anymore. Damn.

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The numbers:

Stock: Gross +144 Net +121 shares traded 4300

Stock Futures: none

Other Futures: none

Forex: none

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I made more trades today than in a while. I have been fighting a bad ear inflection since I came back from the shore. Most have gotten it from Charlie the Starkist Tuna. It is hard to trade every time you move your head and the room spins.

Missed Opps 9/13/2007

Sometimes if you let it, trading can be very simple. As I have stated before, I like to get up early and see if I can take advantage of the overnite ranges in the futures. I typed my trading plan on the chart and I missed it. The risk on two contracts would only have been about $150.


Again you can make trading very simple. As the ER2 was moving down big but the YM and ES were holding up, I thought the ER2 would be good for a trade (bounce). Each leg down had a little less force to it and others were not falling apart. I was such a sharp down trend, the setup would be only risking $200 (new lows).