April Month in Review

Since there’s nothing going on in the markets, I thought I’d go ahead and pull together my April performance numbers. I’ll include April 30th in the May stats next month.

Wow, what a month! New DOW highs… whatever. It was pretty hard for me to find good trading opportunities in April. Seemed harder than March, but then again I think traders always think this month is the hardest month ever. The last time I thought a month was relatively easy was January.

If you look at my StockTickr calendar view, you’ll see that I only found trades on 9 of the 20 days in this trading month. Knowing I had passed on several days, I said earlier that I wanted to find a trade every day this week. I almost made it. I found something every day but wednesday.

I primarily made scalp-like plays, but I got in a dummy trade, a couple triangle plays, and a play on a trendline break. I’d like to have more variety… I spotted a couple box plays (and even had a couple pointed out to me), but for some reason did not play them even though they never lose money, ever! Oddly enough, I spent every morning completely focused on breakout plays, but none of them came about smoothly enough for me to get into them. Still trying to master the opening minutes… I say that’s where the serious money is.

But, I had no losing days, and only one losing trade. That always helps make up for it!

Jaiku

I had declared March the month of Twitter. Now, I don’t even log onto twitter anymore. Funny how fast things change! Now, I’m on jaiku, and so are several others. We’ll see if May sees yet another shift if Wallstreak steals us all away during the trading day. Even if that happens, I think jaiku will remain a big outlet for me, since I love the service and I like the people I’ve met that are developing the site.

Ok, on to the tables:

Overall Performance as of April 2007

	April	YTD
Total P/L:	27.79 R	69.42 R
Trades Taken:	14	52
Winners:	13 (92.86%)	41 (78.85%)
Losses/BreakEvens:	1	11
Expectancy:	1.98 R	1.33 R
Biggest Winner:	4.5 R	9 R
Biggest Loser:	-0.85 R	-1.15 R

Scalping Performance

	April	YTD
Total P/L:	24.52 R	48.26 R
Trades Taken:	10	19
Winners:	10 (100%)	19 (100%)
Losses/BreakEvens:	0	0
Expectancy:	2.45 R	2.54 R
Biggest Winner:	9 R	9 R
Biggest Loser:	N/A	N/A

Dummy Trading Performance

	April	YTD
Total P/L:	2.00 R	4.02 R
Trades Taken:	1	11
Winners:	1 (100%)	8 (72.3%)
Losses/BreakEvens:	0	3
Expectancy:	2.00 R	0.37 R
Biggest Winner:	2.00 R	2.00 R
Biggest Loser:	N/A	-1.15 R

Box Play Performance

	April	YTD
Total P/L:	N/A	3.88 R
Trades Taken:	0	5
Winners:	N/A	4 (80%)
Losses/BreakEvens:	N/A	1
Expectancy:	N/A	0.78 R
Biggest Winner:	N/A	1.06 R
Biggest Loser:	N/A	0 R (breakeven)

Triangle Plays Performance

	April	YTD
Total P/L:	2.12 R	5.32 R
Trades Taken:	2	5
Winners:	2 (100%)	4 (80%)
Losses/BreakEvens:	0	1
Expectancy:	1.06 R	1.06 R
Biggest Winner:	1.97 R	2 R
Biggest Loser:	N/A	0 R (breakeven)

Breakout Plays Performance

	April	YTD
Total P/L:	N/A	9.30 R
Trades Taken:	0	4
Winners:	N/A	4 (100%)
Losses/BreakEvens:	N/A	0
Expectancy:	N/A	2.33 R
Biggest Winner:	N/A	6.19 R
Biggest Loser:	N/A	N/A

MultiDay Pattern Plays Performance

	April	YTD
Total P/L:	N/A	0.22 R
Trades Taken:	0	2
Winners:	N/A	1 (50.0%)
Losses/BreakEvens:	N/A	1
Expectancy:	N/A	0.11 R
Biggest Winner:	N/A	0.22 R
Biggest Loser:	N/A	0 R (breakeven)

Mistakes

These are trades where I accidentally pressed the wrong button, or something like that. I’d obviously like to eliminate them!

	April	YTD
Total P/L:	N/A	-0.5 R
Trades Taken:	0	1
Winners:	N/A	0 (0%)
Losses/BreakEvens:	N/A	1
Expectancy:	N/A	-0.5 R
Biggest Winner:	N/A	N/A
Biggest Loser:	N/A	-0.5 R

Discretionary Plays Performance

The other type of trade I’m trying to eliminate! One discretionary trade in April… which was also my only loss…

	April	YTD
Total P/L:	-0.85	-1.08 R
Trades Taken:	1	5
Winners:	0 (0.00%)	1 (20.0%)
Losses/BreakEvens:	1	4
Expectancy:	-0.85 R	-0.22 R
Biggest Winner:	N/A	0.34 R
Biggest Loser:	-0.85 R	-0.85 R