2 Week Catch Up

I'm committed to keep this blog up to date, if not for anyone else, simply for my own purposes to look back on. These last couple weeks have been good trading weeks, let me summarize.

Two weeks ago on Monday was the first (and only) loosing day that I've had. It was not fun!! I placed a trade, and immediately didn't feel good about it. Although my trading indicators pointed toward an oversold market, my pressure gauges were all pointing upward. Despite the conflict of indicators, I put in a trade. The market went against me the entire day...slowly but surely. Because I've set my stop loss at such a high amount, I ended up loosing $300 on that trade. Not fun!! But I learned a lot from that day.

First I learned of the importance of market news. News about the economy is what threw the market in a buying frenzy...I obviously didn't get that news. So I've started checking for 15 minutes before I start live trading Yahoo Finance and the Bloomberg economic calendar which tells me what news is scheduled for the day that could effect the market. I have decided not to trade 15 minutes before or after a large market announcement is scheduled, which has proven very fruitful.

Second, I implemented a sim before live trade strategy which simply means that I'm going to make a couple of paper trades everyday before going live. I found that almost every time I've gotten into a trade that I didn't like, it was the very first trade of the day. So I figured, let's make the very first trade of the day a practice one...makes sense right?

These two things seem to be paying off. After the day of loss, I got a little gun shy and changed my goal of $50 a day, to $37.50 a day. This I did successfully for a week. Then I upped my goal to $75 a day, which I did successfully for a week. Today I made $225, which the largest 1 day gain I've had. I'm trading 3 contracts at 2 ticks, which seems to be a good strategy from the time being. I'm going to try to make this amount for a week. My goal is to get to a point where I can make $300/day. I hope to get to that point by January 1st.

I also have had several days where I just didn't feel like the market was a good one to trade in. So I shut down the system and simply didn't trade. Although many of those days ended up being good days had I traded, I still felt a level of comfort that I was able to shut it down and trade another day.

This is the first week that I haven't felt a high level of anxiety. Although, emotions still play a big part in it, I'm finding that I'm able to take emotions more and more out of the equation. So it's taken a good month to get comfortable with live trading. And I'm just as thankful for the day of loss as I am for all the days of gain.

Total Fees - $750
Initial Deposit - $5000

Gross Gains - appx $800

Net Gains(losses) - ($275) - this is because of broker fees

3rd day of Live Trading..nerves calmed a little

So, as I said in my last post, I was incredibly surprised at the emotional impact of live trading. Yesterday, one trade started moving against me, and I got so nervous I thought I was going to throw up...seriously. Luckily the trade turned and I got out of it ahead.

Today was a much better day. Trades moved in my favor, I made 5 trades, all were successful, and I was done in 40 minutes. Right now my goal is at least $50 a day. If I can do that for one month, than I'll up the goal to $100 a day.

I'm trading one contract at 1 tick. This is the lowest possible risk for what I'm doing. I'm setting my stop loss at 25 ticks (which is around $300 loss if it goes against me).

Initial payment - $525
Acc Monthly Expense - $500

Total Acc Revenue (gross) - $325