Fridays Trades


Trades Page 1

Trades Page 2

Today I prefered to take trade setups in currencies and commodity related futures contracts because of the increased volatility and volume.

Highlights of the day-
EURO/AUSSIE and Stocks bearish at open. Bullish divergence on Dow vs Nasdaq. Real estate sector trending in afternoon. Gold and Crude continue to have good volatility.

Morning Thoughts-
The stock market has been tightening into a range and volume has been decreasing the last couple weeks, so there are less setups to be found. Off the open I noticed the Euro broke 1.468 and was trending down, so I knew there would be a good chance that US stocks would follow and catchup.Also, the European stock market close (last 30minutes) has had a tendency to selloff the last few weeks.

NQ- Winner
1.Short near the open after signal (Reason- Euro/SMH/AAPL weakness)- Winner
2.Long near lows off signal (Euro support/bounce)- Loser
3.Short off signal - Winner
4.Short off signal - Winner

NQ thoughts-
1. I should have held my first short of the day and looked for selling at the European close.
2. I attempted to pick the bottom on NQ @ 1786.5 but was stopped out. I should have averaged in on that trade using less leverage by going long QQQQ or DIA in hindsight.


PBR- Winner
1.Short near the open (Reason- Crude/Euro/XLE weakness)- Winner
2.Long-  midday (Reason- Crude/XLE support/bounce)- Winner

Euro - Winner
1.Long scalp near the European stock market close (Reason oversold/support)- Winner

Euro thoughts- After getting stopped out on NQ, I was still convinced there was support and bullish divergence on the Euro, so I entered long 6E (Euro futures), the trade took awhile and I entered a second contract  when I was up 10 ticks. I scaled out at my targets while at the same time scaling out of my Gold long.


AIG - Breakeven
1.Short - Averaged into Breakeven (should have Scaled out on dip)


AMZN- Winner
1.Short (Reason -Tech/SMH weakness/ at PIVOT) - I should have used a tighter stop and taken a loss instead of averaging into this trade. Trade was a winner


GLD- Winner
1.Long (Reason- Pivot/Euro support/bounce) - Winner

GLD thoughts- I decided to scale into the Gold etf (GLD) instead of the Gold futures contract (GC) because I wanted to take on less risk due to the increased volatility and my entry was essentially an attempt at picking a bottom based off Euro Support (confidence was 70% on this trade). I later exited for a profit when the Euro bounced.


IYR- Loser
1.Long (Reason- relative strength, but bad timing) - Loser
2.Short - Averaged a short position for the most of the day (I may have held a bias to the short side after being stopped out earlier on my long earlier in the day, overall, a bad trade on a trending stock) - Loser

IYR Trend chart


SMH - Loser
1.Short -(Reason- NQ/Tech/AAPL weakness)- Should have scaled out on dip, bad entry/exit- Loser

Today was a fairly choppy day in the morning. I didn't see any good setups in the stock indices today, so I looked for what was moving. AMZN and the Oil sector were IN PLAY today, so I looked for setups in those. I traded smaller size so I could average into my XLE trades. GS was the stock of the day after the news came out on them, but I didn't trade it. I prefer lower priced stocks that I can average into when the market is slow.

IB YM Trades


IB EURO Trades


IB NQ Trades

IB Gold Trades


QT Full YM chart

Tradestation YM Trades



Tradestation FULL CHART

Here's a list of some worthwhile Blogs

These Traders post there trades or P/L each day they trade-

TraderAM - He Trades Morning opening GAPS

PRD Trader - He trades Forex pairs and has set a Million dollar challenge for his 20K account

A list of US index Futures Traders that post daily P/L-

MBAGearHead

Jay's Futures Trading Journal

Other Worthwhile Blogs-

Capital is Scarce- By Trader Solfest - Trades Crude Oil

Long & Wrong - Index Analysis and stuff

For more Trading Blogs Checkout Market Roll

Bollinger Explains Four Ways to Trade the Markets

Trading Psychology and Common Problems for Traders


Traders - What's the Squeeze Play?


Trading Expert Explains Intermarket Relationships


Wayne McDonell Discusses How to Benefit from the Carry Trade

The Interactivebrokers main webpage has a new design.

Now how about improving the charts?

I've put together a list of posts I find particularly helpful when it comes to trading psychology.

Dr. Brett goes over A Few Trading Psychology Observations

I'd like to highlight a few key points I like from his post-
- Traders develop plans and trade patterns that simply don't work; they're based on randomness.
- 90% don't/can't sustain the process of keeping a substantive journal. Among the group that does journal, well over 90% of the entries are about themselves and their P/L. I almost never see journal entries devoted to figuring out markets.
-In every performance field of note--from Olympic athletics to Broadway--performers spend more time in practice than in formal performance. That is how expertise develops. The ratio of "practice" time (time spent on markets outside of trading) to trading time is a worthwhile indicator of a trader's prospective success.

-"It's a common observation that traders fail because they don't stick to their plans. My experience is different. Traders develop plans and trade patterns that simply don't work; they're based on randomness. When the patterns don't work, traders become frustrated and abandon their plans. So it looks like lack of discipline causes trading failure. But planning doesn't create success; sound planning does. Sticking to plans based on randomness is no virtue."

How do traders enhance there trading skills while the market is closed?
-Back Test your strategies (are these strategies profitable?)
-Review your charts and setups (Are you taking Impulse/emotional trades or backtested planned trades?)
-Review your past trades, look at trade frequency, share size, max drawdown, max gain
-Review the trading day with tick replay feature if your charting software provides that feature
-Trade on a trading simulator if your broker has that feature
-Review your trading journal to find trading mistakes you keep making, so you can focus on improving those problem areas
-Record the Trading day and review it later using screen capture software like Camtasia studio or !Quick Screen Capture

Denial as a Trading Motivation

Trading on Tilt: Regaining Self Control

I'm still working on my ATS. I plan on posting its results on my blog on a regular basis to give this blog more content and help me track its progress.
I have the ATS sending orders to an Interactive Brokers Simulated Account.
Today I took the same trade that the ATS fired and it worked.
I am still working on this ATS for trading NQ.

The ATS only signaled 1 trade today. A 2pt set stop and 3 pt target we're fixed in place. I manually adjusted the stop down and the stop was hit for 1.5pt profit. The trade statistics can be seen in the picture.

I think I will provide a full view of the ATS trade statistics for all the trades taken at the end of the trading week/month and put these results in an EXCEL/ GOOGLE Pivot table as shown below. Perhaps when I accumulate more statistics on the trading I will provide a chart of the P/L performance along with the corresponding trade statistics. I love Pivot tables.

HPT ATS TRADE STATISTICS

PIVOT TABLE

How to run two instances of QuoteTracker

Make a copy of the entire QuoteTracker folder, not just the stocks.exe file. (Ex. If your current folder for QT is "c:\program files\quotetracker" make a folder "c:\program files\quotetracker2" (or whatever)). Then copy the entire contents of the "c:\program files\quotetracker" folder (including sub-folders) into the "c:\program files\quotetracker2" folder.

After that, make a shortcut to the stocks.exe file in the new c:\program files\quotetracker2 folder. Your original shortcut should point to "c:\program files\quotetracker\stocks.exe" and the new shortcut should point to "c:\program files\quotetracker2\stocks.exe"

Both of these shortcuts now need the "allowdup" command line argument added to them in the Target box, so that they will look like this:
"c:\program files\quotetracker\stocks.exe" allowdup
"c:\program files\quotetracker2\stocks.exe" allowdup
(Note: allowdup is outside of the quotes and there is a space before it.)

After that final step, you can double click the 2 shortcuts and each will start a separate instance of QT.

For more answers to FAQ go to the QT forum.

Jeff Quinto has a video on the CME website on how to setup a trading plan.
Here are the key topics Jeff suggests and my answers:

Which contract or stock will I trade?

I'm trading stocks and futures.

What time period will I trade?

I trade the first 3 hours of market open primarily, while liquidity is best.

What setups will I take?

I discretionary trade the automated signals I have created. I determine if the current market condition suites any trade signals my system generates and then I choose whether or not to take the trade.

What Risk parameters do I use?

I have a max daily stop loss in place in case I make too many bad trades.

What do I do after 3 losing trades?

I determine if I should stop trading based on if I'm feeling frustrated or if I should keep trading my signals until my daily max loss is reached.

What is my strategy for increasing or decreasing my trading size?

I trade 1-2 contracts for the initial position and only add to winners on clear trending trades (market internals heavily favor bulls/bears -ie TICK and NYSE A/D favor bulls/bears).

How many ticks or points am I trying to make per day?

I don't have a set target, I only take what I can get.

How many trades do I make per day?

I only make 3 to 5 trades per day on average. Most trading days only make 3 significant swings, so my primary goal is to be apart of the primary move or catch a reversal swing or continuation trade.

How long do I plan to hold winners or losers?

I hold winners as long as possible, scaling out as I see fit. I hold losers for as long as I need to as long as my stop is not hit.

How do I record my progress?

I keep a journal of my trades with trade statistics and a chart showing where I placed my trades.

Who do I call if my computer or internet has a problem?

I have stops in place for all my trades so I'm covered, however I can also access my account from my phone or call my broker.

Gold is nearing 1000, JPY is the most bullish currency, the Canadian dollar and Peso are weakest currencies. Bond futures (ZN -10 yr bond future) has good correlation with JPY lately. ES and Crude correlation has also been good lately.