2006-08 Month in Review

August was a tough one! I took this week off, and since I see others already posting their month reviews, I thought I’d go ahead and do mine.

Here are the stats for August (includes 7/31 and 9/01 so we cover full weeks):

If you compare with last month’s stats, you can see by the lower win rate that I struggled a little bit. I made more money, but not in proportion to how many more trades I took. It’s also apparent on the graph below (click to enlarge) that I had a stretch where my losses cancelled out my wins. Those are hard on me, as it doesn’t take long at all to feel like I’m in a rut.

Still, to have 9 R while taking a full week off meets my financial and personal needs. The way August punished so many of us, I consider it a real accomplishment, actually.

So, what lessons does August teach? I’d say this month reiterated the importance of listening to market context. We were in choppy, low-volume markets. I saw my performance, and that of other bloggers, lagging the norm. I saw highchartpatterns.com warning about a difficult month. So, I eased way up on my goal of riding my winners longer. Even when I let a trade run, I chose sub-2R price targets. I tried to avoid trading trendy, directional price moves, because those were turning back around so often by mid-day. Instead, I mainly wanted to trade high-volume breakouts of important price levels, because those seemed more reliable this month. Whether these adjustments helped, or whether it was just luck, I’ll never know. But, it’s plain on the graph that by mid-month I had broken out of my rut.