9/28/2010 Over Trading

Hello Traders,

Hope you all had a profitable day! I walked away with a measly 10 ticks. However I screwed up big time. Wondering why?? Because I over traded. Half of my profit was eaten up by commissions. I realize my mistake though. I'll work in the future to minimize my trading by only taking trades at pre-defined, low risk areas. Let's go over the trades, the losing ones are circled in white.

On the first losing trade I tried to fade the initial support area at 1037.50 and support failed. I took a 6 tick loss and looked for another long around the Globex low at 1131.50. The counter trend move netted me a point and I went running before consumer confidence came out at 10:00am EST. I completely missed the long off of 1128.75. That would have been the trade of the day! During my next two trades I was fighting the Federal Reserves POMO auction. I kept trying to fade previous support levels but the money printing machines were too much to handle and kept driving prices higher.

In the afternoon session I expected price to roll over. I took a short too early and got stopped out for another 6 tick loss. After the double bottom that formed I should have known better than to short. Then, of course, price reverses and goes my direction. I was not very happy about that trade. On the next trade I lost a point because of another missed entry. Except this time I wasn't going to let the market run away without me. Once enough shorts were on board they squeezed them hard, giving me my best gain of the day, a 2 pointer. I got out before the 1140.00 IB high only to watch price continue to move in my favor. Everyone was eying 1144.50 as a potential target and momentum carried the market to 1146.00 which was the overnight high. I got short at 1145.25 for another quick point. I didn't want to overstay my welcome with 10 minutes left in the cash session.

Over trading is just plain dumb. I know better than to be making that kind of mistake. I'm very disappointed in my trading to say the least. Some levels to do business tomorrow are the Globex high from Sunday 1149.75, and the open gap at 1147.75 on the upside. If prices fall below 1136.00 I'll look for longs around today's low 1128.75 and then the open gap around 1120.

Good luck tomorrow everyone!

-Nate

9/24/2010 One Trade One Loss

Good evening traders,

Hope you all had a good trading day! I took one trade for a loss of a point. Tweeted it too. Being focused on my Quant Methods class wasn't helping so I just left the screens on and watched.

You ever just watch your DOM sometime? It does some really wierd stuff from time to time. Orders will just pop up, then quickly go away. I'll watch the contracts on the BID go from 4k-12k+ in about 3 seconds then go away again! Comments on that topic are welcome

I'll be trading more tomorrow and Wednesday because school is out until Thursday night. Tomorrow I'm watching the 1130-1132.00 price range for buyers to step in. That level puts us at the mean of the volume profile from last week. It also lines up with a few daily trend-lines that could get some swing traders on our side. Until we break out of accepted Value Area I'll be adding to my current profile for analysis. Good Luck tomorrow !

-Nathan

09/24/2010 I Had A Good Day

Good Evening Traders,

I had to get at least one blog post in this week! I have been super busy studying for licensing exams, not to mention my normal course load, and my 5 year old daughter! I still take classes at University of Pittsburgh twice a week at night. That's one of the great things about trading; You have the free time to do what you want! I don't want to get too confident sounding so lets get to the trades.

The first long hit the target almost within 5 minutes. I was feeling confident and shorted initial resistance and gave a point back immediately. that's when I realized it's going to be a trend day and shorts are counter trend only. I like to lighten up the counter trend positions and look for shorter price targets. You can see I only traded one contract on my next two short positions. I also closed them out for one point. So then you are asking why did I trade 4 cars on the final trade?! Here I'll tell you; It was the weekly high and I had been waiting all morning to short it! After that big winner I was feeling pretty pleased with my performance. I took home $512.50 before commissions and junk.

Just to critique myself on a few things. First, I should have taken more trades with the trend today, and second I feel like I over-traded. If you have any other critiques please feel free to post a comment. Also take a look at my twitter posts (bottom right corner of the blog). I usually tweet my trades before I make them, however sometimes I'm too focused on the charts to play that game. Twitter makes me more cautious. It makes you think twice. I ask myself "Is this a trade I want to tweet?" and if I'm not feeling it, then I usually pass.

I'm off to see Wall Street 2 tonight. I hope you guys enjoy your weekend. Please follow me on Twitter, Facebook or where ever it is you choose to express your narcissism! And as always, thanks for reading!

-Nate

09/13/2010 One Trade One Target

Good Evening Traders,

I have been busy studying for my licensing exams so I haven't been able to post much lately. This morning I traded the September contract. Some traders were already using the December contract but I like to wait to switch because there isn't enough data to calculate my indicators properly.

1124.00 was a resistance area I identified in my research last night and given the lack of responsive buyers at the open I was positive it would be a great short. Price had moved to the top of the regression channel and the stochastic was way overbought. When 1124 was rejected I initiated the trade. I also tweeted it LIVE on my twitter account @infected1172.

I'll be back on trading tomorrow morning so make sure to follow along and maybe we can make some money together!

-Nathan