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:

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Was I profitable? Oh yes. If you look at my StockTickr calendar view, you’ll see that I only lost money one day this month. Also, until the last week of the month, I was making trades at least three days a week. Pretty good, for me, though I’m always trying to improve in that area.

What happened the last week? Well, I rarely trade Thursdays anyway, and I had connectivity issues on Wednesday, so that hurt. Also, I think I just (for whatever reason) was too slow to hit the big moves in time. I probably need more sleep!

I hereby declare March the “Month of Twitter“! Once I put their badge on my blog, several others quickly followed. Now, we have a pretty thriving community of twittering stock bloggers. I think it’s a much more efficient way to exchange thoughts and ideas than instant messaging. It’s less “chatty,” though it does degenerate into chat-like atmosphere at times. If you haven’t joined the fun, please do! Yes, they are overwhelmed by their sudden popularity, but have some faith that they will fix their server issues soon enough!

As I mentioned previously I’m going to report performance along each trade type from now on. So, that means lots more tables! Hopefully you’ll find it interesting, but if not the overall summary table is still here like always. I’m also going to start doing year-to-date alongside the monthly numbers. All of this is pulled right out of StockTickr, by the way…

Let’s get started! (If you want to know more about what the trade types mean, check out the post about them, which has the definitions I’m using) Here are the tables:

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I haven’t blogged about it much, but I’ve spent some time formalizing the types of trades I take a little better, so that I can classify them and run statistics on them individually. I’m also hoping this will help me eliminate impulse trades, and stick to only the setups I’ve chosen to trade. Starting in March, I’m going to report on expectancy/winrate/profit_factor on each trade type individually.

Also, I have been thinking that, as I add new types of trades to my repertoire, I’ll start on a trial basis. I’ll trade them at 1/2 size until I have 20 trades in my journal. At that point, I’ll have stats to help me decide whether to keep it, or stop taking those trades. We’ll see if I have that kind of discipline, when the time comes :-)

These are the trade types I have racked up, this year so far:

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On paper, February was not very kind to me. You can see on the StockTickr Calendar View that I traded very little (7 trades versus 17 in January). And, my returns were a pretty meager 1.52 R in the end. Net positive after commissions, but not by much!

So, I am not sorry at all to see February go. Lots of choppy, overbought behavior was keeping breakouts in check. But, I can’t blame the markets, really… it’s mostly a matter of me sleeping at the wrong times. Several days I recall stalking stocks, only to give in and go to sleep before they finally broke. Oh well… most of the time I’d rather be rested than a little richer. But, when doing a month in review post, it starts to look bad after a few weeks.

Luckily, January was very good.

Here’s the table:

If I don’t sound concerned, it’s because I am noting that I have been spotting more good trades than ever, lately… I’ve just been pathetic at managing to catch them in February. Let’s see what we can do about that in March! (uh.. but not tomorrow… I’ve got other plans!)

I guess the only other standout thing about February was the big reminder of a daytrader’s advantage… no exposure to that big drop a couple days ago. That felt nice (though not as nice as massive short exposure would have felt!).

If you check out the StockTickr calendar view, you’ll see that I rarely wound up making trades Thursdays and Fridays. Thursdays, I generally have other stuff to do for a lot of the trading day. Fridays this month were… just plain boring. Still, my P&L, as well as my trade count, were much higher this month, compared to just 6 trades in December. I had one losing day this month, where I was 0 for 4. Until I went and re-read that day’s entry, I didn’t even remember it. I guess that’s a good thing. Man, that day looked like it sucked :-) But, I kept my losses under control.

Here are my results (which you can also view on stocktickr any time you want):

I continue to focus on finding more trades to take per month, to both make more money and ensure that I’m consistently profitable. Obviously, I’m having fun trying out the Box Play, which so far has a 100% win rate for me. We’ll see how far into February that lasts…

You can see on the StockTickr calendar view, that trading was light in December. That’s mostly due to the fact that I took off two weeks of the month. Still I managed to get 3.83 R, and I really only shoot for around 5 to 8 R per full month of trading. So, I count this as pretty good performance.

Here are my results (which you can also view on stocktickr any time you want):

It feels like I haven’t traded in a long time… I can’t wait for the markets to open wednesday (although I will probably spend some time feeling things out, so I may not trade til later in the week… we’ll see!). Right now, I seem to be sleeping from about 3PM EST to 11PM EST, so I should be able to trade as my last activity before sleeping. I guess, if that stays stable, I could just go with it…

ehh…. it’s a fact that I’ve never had a losing month in my daytrading career, but November was the closest I’ve ever come to it. I totaled a measly 0.32 R.

You can see on the StockTickr calendar view, that a couple things went wrong this month. First off, I only seemed to find trades on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I made very few trades total. Secondly, the last week of November I had nothing but losses (3 whole trades), which severely cut into my profits.

The main thing about November that stands out to me, besides not making many trades, is that for the majority of my losers, I was right about the stock direction, but stopped out anyway. I’ve come to the conclusion that the last two months were not a good match for my particular style of trading. I’ve noted based on feedback I get from folks that they are getting better results from my own watchlists than I am! :-) So, the big question is: is it a temporary thing, or do I need to be adjusting my style? hmmm… I think the constant new highs new highs everyday has just made the action at breakout levels much more choppy than it had been before. I may need to execute my trades slightly differently until that changes.

So, two profitable but unspectacular months in a row. That’s why I think it’s funny that I got a comment today saying something like, “it’s all fine and good that you post your trades after the fact, but I wonder if you have the guts to post a screenshot of your broker! No one will believe you otherwise.” Maybe I’m not the best liar in the world, but I think if I were lying I would have at least made up a more successful story. :-) But, anyway, ask and ye shall receive…

They didn’t say what they wanted in the screenshot, but I assume they just want my broker’s homepage, right? ;-)

You may or may not have noticed I’ve stopped with the weekly review posts, and I was considering stopping the monthly review posts. The reason is, I always say the same thing in them, and the statistics are right out of StockTickr (just ask for the last 30 days, or whatever… it’s been on my list to add a way to pick start/end dates for that report). Anyone can look at that, and the aforementioned calendar review page, anytime they want. Plus, no one seemed to notice that I stopped, or if they did, they didn’t care enough to ask about it.

Now go re-read Zoomie’s November review, and I bet it will sound even more impressive than it did the first time!

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

November was a good month for me profit-wise. I let my winners run to their targets, and that made all the difference in my profit/loss column. More importantly, I learned some valuable lessons that I’ll apply from here on out. First, I will continue to cut losses, but I won’t hastily exit trades. My “tape reading” was more about fear of loss, and it caused me to exit trades prematurely. I will, for the most part, stick to letting the candle close before I decide whether or not a trade is proving correct. Secondly, I will not “revenge trade” thanks to some new rules taped to my monitor and forehead. That nasty habit cost me -5.4 R over only two trading days. I traded .67% of my account on each trade. Here are my results:

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

This week was pretty positive, though not as profitable as I would have hoped coming off of last week’s losses. Let’s examine it a bit.

I traded 3 days this week. I passed on Monday, and had lots of things to do Thursday which kept me from watching the markets too closely. Even so, I still made 8 trades. So, that’s two weeks now that I’ve been able to get my per-day trade count up. Last week, that resulted in losses. This week, I showed I can up the trade count and still make money. In a post I’ve been promising you all forever, I’m going to show that making more trades is the only way to statistically assure myself that I will consistently make money. That’s why it’s been such a focus for me.

The main reason I didn’t have a record week was that I was really jittery about holding onto winning trades. I like Ugly’s idea about at least holding onto half the shares, and may see about incorporating that. I just know for certain that holding onto all my trades is not a good idea until the markets get less strained and overbought. New highs and new lows just don’t run far enough for comfort before reversing. Most of my losses this week were caused by buying new highs that immediately stalled out.

The table:

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

This week was a short week as I only traded 3 days due to the Fed meeting and my scanner being down today (Prophet.net). I tried to use a couple other gap lists today to trade with, but I just wasn’t in the groove without my regular scanner. I am happy that I waited for my targets this week but not so happy I took sub-par setups. My charts say it all of course.

Lessons learned: Just because there is a high probability of a stock moving in your direction does not mean there is a low risk opportunity to trade it. And trying to enter it 3 times is not such a good idea either ;).

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

If you’ve been reading, you know this has been a disappointing week, performance-wise. On the bright side, I did find more trades to take than any week in recent history, and I’m still not unhappy with any of them. Many stocks just did not break out this week, reversing sharply instead. If next week is more of the same, I will have to think harder about what’s going on out there. Until then, I see no need to worry much.

The table:

On top of the unfortunate market action, I also had a fair amount of plain old bad luck. Such as, the profitable trade that reversed and stopped me out while I was away from my desk.

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

Thanks, Richard, for the invitation to post my trades! I was hesitant to put my work under scrutiny since I am still learning every day. It turns out that feedback from the GREAT community of traders who visit your site has already improved my trading and mindset.

I have been daytrading for fifteen months, but I’ve only had an unlimited daytrade account for four months. Prior to having a $25,000 minimum balance, I set up three Tradestation accounts so that I could make nine daytrades per week. That was THE best limitation that could ever have happened. Over the first eleven months, I saw only small drawdown- approximately 6%. Since I had been studying the markets and technical analysis for a couple of years, I was hoping to break even. Still, I proved to myself that I was on the right track. When I did get $25,000, I started to lose money from, you guessed it, overtrading. I turned that around by writing out my rules and adhering to them… most of the time ;). I concentrated on cutting losses and letting winners run.

After looking at last week’s trades, I was determined to be more selective. Here is this week’s summary as I don’t trade on expiration Fridays:

Biggest lesson learned this week….5 EMA, and how to use it, thanks to Trader-X.

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

I traded 4 days this week… 3 full days and 2 half days. Managed to make a whopping 6 trades, which is a step in the right direction! I need to take a few more, still, per week, the way my trading is shaping up lately. But, this week was good.

The table:

So, still, 100%. Since 8/22, aside from a 0 R trade a couple weeks back. That’s 53 calendar days. Weird, wild stuff.

But, look, it’s really not that special. I think just about any of the daytraders I know could do something similar. I’m just (1) being really selective on setups, and (2) taking profits on the first surge in my favor. It seems that in these choppy markets, a lot of breakouts reverse rather sharply. Trading this way, I am not subject to that pain. I am also not subject to massive gains the next time the market trends strongly. So it’s a definite, conservative trade-off I’m making.

Had I not made that mistake getting out of my SIRF trade, this would have been a 4.0 to 4.5 R week. Sweet! That’ll teach me…

I traded 3.5 days this week. I took Thursday off, and half of Friday. Even so, I made four trades this week, which sounds pathetic but is on the upper end of my per-week stats lately! First the table:

So, depending on whether you count the 0R trade from last week as a loss or not, I may or may not still be on a winning streak since 8/22. Wow! That’s surreal. But, obviously, things could be better. I am taking tiny profits where I can get them. That keeps me from really capitalizing on a good trending day like Wednesday. There’s a balance I’d like to strike somewhere in the middle. I think I will be a slow-and-steady profit-maker for the forseeable future, but it wouldn’t kill me to take a loss now and again, if it means higher overall gains! If you read last month’s month in review post, you know that I can live just fine making 1.2R a week, but 2 or 3 R a week would be even better.

I used to think I made some of the best introspective trading posts on the web, but lately I’d give JC, the NYSE Scalper that distinction. He’s been thinking a lot lately about how he can improve his trading, and work with his personality instead of against it. That makes for good reading. So, go read it!

It’s hard to think of September without wincing. I thought August was a bad month for trading, but this month was even more difficult, in terms of good opportunities. On a more positive note, I think I responded to the challenge correctly. I made few trades, but they were of high quality from a win-rate perspective. I traded 3 of the 4 weeks (I like to count my months on week boundaries, so I consider September to be the four weeks from 9/4 to 9/30), and only found 10 trades I wanted.

Even then, I was taking tighter and tighter profits, so I was making less money per trade than I was in August. Here are the stats:

So, a 5R month. As a rule, I don’t maintain or try to work toward profit targets. I think that messes with my ability to make good decisions. But, to give you an idea of what it means, I can live a pretty austere existance on 4 to 5 of my-sized R’s a month. On the other hand, 8 to 10 R means I live comfortably, and possibly even put away some money.

So, 5R isn’t bad, but I spent more this month than I made. If there’s one thing I can’t do, it’s live austerely! :-) It’s not really a cause for concern, as long as that doesn’t continue. I’m always making improvements, and am generally ahead of schedule in improving my profitability (I had said in my StockTickr interview that it was my goal to consistently cover my living expenses by early 2007, and until this month I’ve already been doing that).

R Chart for September (click to enlarge):

Cumulative R Chart since returning to daytrading on July 12th (click to enlarge):