Wednesday Trade Review 11/21/2007

Not feeling well, I just should have left things alone but I figured we could have either I fast run higher or lower seeing we were going into a holiday weekend.

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I thought the trade had really good promise. The purge from the highs was on high volume. The recovery was on much weaker volume. I assume if the low was taken out, the market would go to the morning lows with no problem.

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I put the order in to go short at 12880 because I did not want to get my order hit by a new low being only a tick or two. I got filled on a low tick anyway. I had a 20 tick stop and was taken out 4 minutes. I was going to scale out at +5, +10 (move stop to BE) and let the last part run.

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After I was taken out, the low taken out again where my first two pieces would have been filled before I got stopped on the 3rd. Right after that, the market did fall to the morning low and a lot more.

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Damn. Right trade - wrong excution.

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The numbers:

Stocks: none

Stock Futures: gross -300 net -315 contract 6

Other Futures: none

Forex: none

Tuesday Morning Thoughts 8/21/2007

The early bird gets the worm???
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This is frustrating. I have mention before that there seems to be a good turning point in the markets around 7 am EST give or take about 30 minutes. Today's move started at 6:40 and the dow futures "YM" ran 100 points or $500. So many times a test of a high or low is done at this time and the futures ran a bunch of points. Maybe I am nuts, but it would seem if I gave up about 30-45 minutes of sleep, I could pick off a good trade once and a while. The 13100 zone was the place to be this morning.

Friday Morning Thought 8/3/2007

The jobs report is out and the YM dropped about 50 points. Just before the numbers they had rallied for 25 points. Why I do not know but someone had a guess. The EURO gained about 30 pips and that might be the morning sell point. After the numbers come out, I look at the reaction and the re-reaction to the numbers trying to game things. If the EURO comes back to unchanged and starts moving higher then its a buy in my books. I never trade in the first 15 minutes after a very good number. The EURO might be setting up for a buy under 137.0 risk 25 pips and I would figure out at the end of the day if I hold it or not.

What can I say???? 7/26/2007

What can I say? This is a market that traders love and investors hate. When I got up this morning and saw the premarket mess, I knew this was going to be a crazy day. We had already had a few. I noticed quickly my planned trades were going to be a bust and I could not find anything in premarket that excited me so I thought the best course of action was to watch MT trade today.
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I posted in the charts above a few of his trades during the time I could watch. (Damn day Job). As you can see from the results, he makes many thousands of dollars a day while I am still learning. In my defense, I will say I am getting closer.
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The chart to the left shows 3 trades in the NQ futures. The first trade went for 4 points and I was on the phone for work. The second went for 4 points - I nailed this one good. And the last MT got a great trade off but I only paid a commission. I was watching the tick and it looked like I could cover and resell at a higher price. That higher price never came.
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The chart on the right is two trades in the ER futures. The first was a small trade off the bottom. There was orders in the market to add to the position if the market continued to go down. MT got filled at 802.00 and had another at 800 even. I thought I would do him better and buy at 800.50. The low was 800.70 before we started moving up. Because the market internals were so bad, MT kept a close stop on the trade and closed it at 802.80 for a small gain of 0.80. The second trade was to load up again as the market retested the lows. The first order was at 801.50 with a second at 800 even again. I thought to be smart this time and I had my order in too at 801.50. The market dropped just enough to get filled before going on a quick 7 point move. Suddenly, I notice that my order did not fill. Why? I forget to transmit it. Idiot. MT again because the market internals sucked big time was not going to let any profits get away and was stopped out taking 6 of a 7 point move. Amazing. MT took a hit on a couple of stock trades today but made a ton on money on the stock index futures. And I believed he did not have a losing trade in futures today. The best thing about his chat room is I feel I am learning a lot on how to judge the market in realtime.
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The numbers:
Stocks: Gross -50 Net -52 shares traded 400
Stock Futures: Gross +190 Net +170.80 contracts traded 8
Forex: None

Something Different - 6/26/2007

Holly Sh#t - I did something new today. I am trying to add more tools to the way I deal with the markets. First it was day trading. Second was short trading. Third was Forex. Now today I am trying to dust off your knowledge on my futures trading. My first trade, I lost 1.60 points on the Russell. What I did not expect was now it would be reflected in my IB account. I thought I had f-ed up big time somehow and lost maybe $2000 instead of the $165. It took me a while to figure things out. A very big rookie mistake outside the trade sucked too. By the time I got my nerve back, the wife was calling and wanted to get together for an early lunch.
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I did not trade any stocks today.