This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com
I took 10 trades today in my first full day prop trading. Some were well thought out and some were not. I ended up finishing the day -2.5R down, so after yesterday’s gain my overall PnL is now at -0.5R. My win rate is only 30%. Lots of room for improvement. Today was a wild market day, though I made plenty of mistakes and took some unjustified risks on mediocre setups. I traded a lot off of the 1 minute chart, since I could. When I was down, I wanted to make it back. Just a quick scalp. I better watch that! If I wasn’t keeping my position size so small, I could have lost a bunch today.
One downside of graduating from 1 trade per day to 10 is that I can’t go over all of the trades in detail as I did before. Well, maybe that’s an upside for some of you out there. :/ Most of my trades were too tight for the volatility today. I shorted BIDU, got stopped out at a retrace to breakeven, and then it ran to about 3R later in the day. I also entered GRMN on a flag on the 5 minute, before the consolidation broke, and got nailed for -1R as it broke the wrong way. Lots of ~-0.8R losers, and only a couple of winners.
My best trade today was in Continental Airlines (NYSE: CAL), and it was also one of the only trades I took from the 15 minute timeframe (which should teach me a lesson). I entered at the orange line, stops managed by the red lines, and I took a partial at the 119% fib (blue line 1) as price stalled. The final cover came at the 138% fib (blue line 2), which was also just about the low of the day:
Thank you Trader-X for that one. Too bad I missed the entry earlier in the day.
I’ll try to be more selective in my setups from now on, even with my newfound freedom from pattern daytrader rules.
| Stocks Mentioned In This Article | |
|---|---|
| Stock | Links |
| CAL |  |  |  |
This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com
July 26th, 2007 at 4:31 pm
wow, 10 day-trades! You should change your alias to “Quick Draw” or something. The fastest web-based trader this side of the mississippi.
July 26th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
Yeah, maybe more like “Quick Draw-down” :p
I went a bit trigger-happy today. I plan on sticking to the 15-min timeframe for the next week, which should should cut down on my overtrading.
Early on, I had two positions on at the same time, one long and one short. Wyckoff warned about that, and it did mess with my focus, so after that I only traded multiple positions in the same direction for the rest of the day. It helped a bit, but I still ended up getting chopped to pieces, mostly my fault for chasing crappy setups. I now have the freedom to take more than one good setup, and I shouldn’t abuse it by trading indiscriminately. I used to have iron discipline imposed by the SEC, and now it has to come from me! All my complaining, and they really were protecting me. LOL
July 26th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Thanks for your advise over at Jamie’s web. Your web is great and your video is something I enjoy most. Thank you so much.
Btw
Can you the basic requirement to be a proprietary trader?
Where did you locate this job?
Do you share your winning and loss with company?
July 26th, 2007 at 6:22 pm
Been reading the site for a few months and thought I’d finally make a comment.
Firstly. it’s really cool to read about your entry into the professional trading world prospectus. I’m excited to see how it goes!
Secondly. I am not a fan of the 1 minute charts unless you’re looking for very quick scalps. I’ve been paper trading the YM in the mornings while waiting on my IB account to get funded(not enough capital for stock). Anyway I find that the 1 minute is just too noisy. My best results have been on the 3 or 5 minute. And from watching my longer term stocks daily it seems like they move slower than futures.
July 28th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
@Jerry:
I wrote an article about the firm. Just keep going down the page and you’ll come to it.
@Owen: Thanks for the comment. I think that you’re right about the 1 min, and I should stay out of that timeframe. Good luck with your futures! You might be interested in the futures forum at Wallstreak. There’s some good traders over there talking about their trades and the markets every day.