Keep Calm and Don't Move Your Stops.....

A little risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning!

The Purpose of Life is Joy!!

Wednesday, November 30, 2016

-1.0%...-1.67% for the week

 This result is from yesterday and yesterday's post was for monday. Somehow I managed to screw it up. Anyway down almost 2% for the week. Not happy about that at all.

Yesterday after I lost 1%, I took off for phoenix to get some injections in my back. The side effects kept me up all night and so I slept through the trading session today.....which is probably a good thing as the risk was quite high on any setups I might have seen.

Back at it tomorrow.

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

-.67%....-.67% for the week

Busy day yesterday so I didn't get to post but I had lots of issues yesterday with regards to technology early in the morning. I think I let it get under my skin because I displayed poor decision making all morning. I let one trade that was up over 30 ticks come back for a break even only to see it thrash around for a bit and then go straight to my original target a couple bars later. After that it fell apart.

This is what Trader Dante talked about in his video about not moaning and start improving. It pissed me off enough that I made the commitment to not trade unless the situation was near perfect. So I am waiting right now for a that to materialize for today's trade.

After I'm done today, I'm headed for Phoenix to get some needles stuck in my back and then back home. I'll be gone about 8 hours altogether. So no post today either. I'll get that done tomorrow I think.

Cheers

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

.50%....+1.17% for the week

Lots of distractions today. Phone calls, in and out of the house for various things, etc....missed the sell off completely and scalped a bit out near the bottom....since it was basically a counter trend day on the 5M chart, I didn't get any real set ups I liked enough to put on multiple lots so just scalping with singles today on a much lower time frame to take advantage of the swings in the 5M....pretty ugly actually, NOT the way I want or like to trade at all. But it is a green day and that is good. Probably done for the week although Friday might be decent. Not trading at all tomorrow as it is inventory day and I can easily lose 1% or more on those days. I finally made the decision to not trade at all on inventory days.

Gotta go wash the car. It rained yesterday and its a mess.....

Cheers.

Monday, November 21, 2016

+.67% today....+.67% for the week

Initial trade was .25%, was a loser. Followed that with a .92% winner with .50% risk. Net of  .67% winner for the day.

Longs only today based on the trend. Kept risk inside 1.0% which is where I want to be on each trade. Less if possible but in truth, when the risk in ticks is small, then I need to size up to keep the risk more or less around .5%.

The first trade was not the best looking one for sure and the reason I went with only .25% of risk. The second trade looked better but I was unsure so I went in with .25% and added as it went my way. Took the trade off at 2X and 3X the initial risk.

Lastly, I removed the trail stop from my ATM strategy. Now it only moves the stop up if and when it gets within 5 ticks of my initial target. I have a few of these strats with different targets and I changed them all to essentially leave the stop alone unless it's close to the planned exit. Then I want to lock most of it in while giving it a few ticks of room to make the full target.

The plan is to make 1% per day by whatever means necessary so fell short a bit today but in terms of executing the money management strategy, I give it an A and will build on it from there.

I did leave another 1% on the table, I went to make some breakfast and when I got back, the continuation had happened a bit faster than I thought it might and I missed it. That happens sometimes.

Getting ready to head out and run some errands today and I have to begin preparing for my fathers memorial service in two weeks. I have quite a lot to do in regards to prepping for that.

Cheers.

Sunday, November 20, 2016

Simplify again

It's a beautiful day in Southern AZ....Cloudy, rainy and about 65 degrees....sitting here drinking coffee, watching The Grand Tour on Amazon Prime and feeling pretty decent about things.

Over the last few days and weeks, I've been working on reducing complexity again. Every few months I drift into more and more complexity. This is never a good thing. It leads to over thinking and second guessing and consequently, poor decision making and even poorer trade management. I know when I am drifting because I spend time reading blogs and looking at other trade ideas. This always results in draw-down. Although I ended the week last week up 3%, it could have and should have been more.

I've set a goal to be 100% dependent on my trading for financial stability within three months. This doesn't discount my re-entry into the mortgage business, it just complements it. The truth is this, I never want to be dependent on someone else signing my paycheck if I can help it. I'm not quite there yet and as this year has gone by, I've really come to realize two things. I am tired of dependency and I am tired of complexity. I like simple. Not necessarily in concept but in execution.

Another thing I've adopted is rethinking my size on every trade. As the risk decreases in terms of ticks, I will increase in terms of size. This will keep my risk constant across a larger number of trades and increase the profit potential of many trades. Another thing I've noticed, when the risk is more than 15 ticks, the likelihood of a successful trade goes down.....of course this doesn't hold true 100% of the time but the probability decreases. Once its around 20-25 ticks, the trade simply shouldn't be taken regardless of what the potential reward looks like. Last week I had a couple of trades with around 8 ticks of risk, those were the best ones.....So I'm looking for smaller risk trades going forward, mostly so I can get in with some decent size.

Anyway, back to enjoying the day.

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Progress

Little by little things are getting better. While my dad's passing has been difficult at best, our collective faith has made this time bearable. We believe in the afterlife and that one day, we will see him again. This alone tempers our grief.

I've been doing a lot of reading this last year about near death experiences. People that have been clinically dead and came back. The stories are fascinating and there is a lot of consistency across many of the accounts. My mom had one and recounted it to my father just before she passed for real and as my dad passed, I saw a transformation on his face as his last few moments on this earth slipped away. He went from the normal death mask to a slight ironic smile in those last few moments.....I can only imagine what he saw as he transitioned from this life to that one.

Trading has become something I love to do and look forward to each morning. At the same time, I am looking forward to a new chapter beginning next week as I take on a new and familiar role as a mortgage banker. I don't know how long this new role will last although I think about 5 years until my daughter is out of high school. At that time, I suspect we will relocate to San Diego and enter another new chapter of our lives.

Today was a near perfect trade, I entered on the third pull back short and took 20 ticks to the LOD. I'm struggling with VP and MP still. Not putting those charts up because frankly I am still having trouble figuring out the nuances of where the entries and exits should be. In the meantime, I'm just scalping. I know how to scalp for ten and twenty ticks at a time so until I really get a handle on VP and MP, I'm just gonna scalp. In the long run, getting better entry and exit prices with VP and MP will make more money with less risk, but currently, I'm just not getting it. I know it will come. It's just screen time.




Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Progress

Today is two weeks since my dad passed. Its been a whirlwind of of dealing with the fall out of death. Legal stuff, financial stuff. Selling stuff, etc.....all of it a pain, all of it necessary. And nearly all of it completed. There area  couple things left to do, one of which won't be done until after Christmas but that is a pleasant one, shopping for the grandkids in dad's name. He would have wanted that so very much.

In the meantime, I've slowly begun trading again. I lost around 2-3% during the 45 days my dad was in the hospital and over the last couple of days, I've gained all that back plus a little bit. Something shifted for me this last couple of weeks. I've been able to sit waiting for my levels and sit waiting for my targets in a way I've never been able to before. Not sure what changed but it did and I'm having much better results.

Lastly, about 3 weeks before dad passed, a large national mortgage company came looking for me to take a position with them here in my home town. They haven't had anyone here for three years and after listening to them for two weeks, I became convinced to at least give it a shot. Dad passed not to long after I accepted the offer and yesterday I started the onboarding process. Yes, I swore I'd never go back to the mortgage business, but this company does it right, has a built in market for me to tap, has lots of marketing dollars to spend, built in referral network and so at least at this point, looks like a gold mine. Besides, I'm been thinking I need to fill my down time. Help take my mind off my dad's passing. I feel best when I'm occupied and get into trouble when I'm not!

I'll have about three hours every morning to trade during the daylight savings time and 2 hours when we revert. That's generally enough time to get in a good trade. I'll just build my trading account balance and live on my mortgage earnings. My wife and I discussed it and for some reason we both feel good about this decision.

I'll be updating my blog hopefully every day going forward or at least a couple times a week. I think its important to maintain some sort of narrative of the journey. I keep a paper journal as well. I like writing on paper with a pen. I also have a sort of a summary type foldout I keep in the paper journal I picked up from Strategic Coach a few years back. I love that thing....one day I'll take a picture and post it here....its pretty cool for future planning and keeping track of progress.

Cheers.