Friday, March 14, 2008

Daily Summary

22800 shares
-430

Today will go into the record as one of my worst trading days. I caught the sell off in the morning with small size but I still I made over $750. After that quick windfall probably around 90% of my trades were losers. It was painful to give it all back. The thought of giving up all my gains put me into a rage and I traded like a madman. I put on numerous trades with 2-3 times my usual size and all of those trades end up being losers. I did not see any setups at all. I went through a lot of painful emotions today. I need to do something to prevent myself from being in this kind of situation again.

5 comments:

Kis said...

sorry to hear that man, trading is a tough business. I go through frustration, anger, regret everyday. Sometimes I wonder if this is even good for my health. I don't know if this will ever go away, maybe someone that's been successful for a long time can comment on that. But I think to be successful at this job, we must find a way to tone down the emotional attachments we have to our PnL. I know that most of my trading mistakes are the direct result of getting emotional, revenge trading, wrong stop placements , taking profits too early, the list is long...

Anonymous said...

Obat,

you still got chops . Maybe what is needed is for you to take a certain amount of money or a limit on the trades in this market.

If you make x amount of dollars call it a day. If x amount of that profit is lost, call it a day and take home the remaining profits. This market is acting screwy and messing up quite a few traders. I think most should even size down.

take care buddy.............

Quentin

OBAT said...

I am going to size down and keep doing 100-200 share positions until I get consistent with 1 trading style. I need to keep doing the same thing until I can honestly say I followed my plan everyday.

Sanglucci said...

OBAT that right there is currently the toughest thing for me to overcome. Loosing my profits and shit... it's so effing difficult sometimes because for whatever reason you don't want to just stop trading but at this point it ain't what we can make now it's what we can take home. I have a stop loss program now where it jus locks me the fuck outta my system if I get below a certain gross level that I set. It's helping a lot but it's a bitch cause I'll be up in the morning set my stop loss and hit it at like 12 then have to stop trading...

Kis said...

For the first week of March, I lost money every single day. Last week I made money 3 out of 5, making around $2500 for the week, which made up the loss for the first week. I'm currently re-reading the Mark Douglas book, the Disciplined Trader. A lot of great advices -

"Before anyone can become successful in an environment with the unstructured character of the trading environment, one needs to develop a supreme sense of self-confidence and self-trust. I am defining self-confidence as an absence of fear and self-trust: knowing what to do at the moment it needs to be done, and then doing it without hesitation. Any hesitation will only create self-doubt and fear. To whatever degree self-doubt exists as a state of mind, to that same degree you will feel fear, anxiety, and confusion.
The negative experiences that result from trading in a state of fear, anxiety, and confusion, will create or add to an already-existing belief of inadequacy and powerlessness. Regardless of how hard any of us may try to hide from others what is going on, we obviously can't hide our results from ourselves If the market's behavior seems mysterious to you, it's because your own behavior is mysterious and unmanageable. You can't really determine what the market is likely to do next when you don't even know what you will do next, regardless of what you may perceive or want."

About Me

I have been trading for 5 years. It took close to a year before I became profitable. I find that I am improving gradually each year. My method of choice is scalping. My edge lies in tape reading NYSE stocks and staying on the side of the specialist. That is the method I learned when I started. As I build up my capital I will try new styles and trade new markets. In late 2006 my trading hit a rough patch after the introduction of the NYSE Hybrid system. For most of 2007, I have been on a search for new strategies that would help me adapt to the market.