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

Thursday I didn’t trade and Friday was shortened due to technical difficulties. To make a long story short, if you are having data feed problems with Tradestation, make sure that your time zone and calendar are set properly….doh. When I typed in a ticker to look at a chart, it immediately created a new candle. There were stocks breaking out everywhere!

One trade Friday, NEW (New Century Financial Corporation), that I will post later when I can figure out how ;).

“I am always thinking about losing money as opposed to making money.”
Paul Tudor Jones

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!

I am going to guess in print that I won’t be trading today. I was watching Ebay (Nasdaq: EBAY) for new highs, but it chose to roll over instead. Coldwater Creek (Nasdaq: CWTR) did the same, and Hansen Natural Corp (Nasdaq: HANS) didn’t even try to regain any of its lost ground. Maybe I will spot an opporutinity before the close, but to be honest, I’m not even looking that hard. Texas has about 5 or 10 days of fall weather, and I’m trying to get out and enjoy it as much as possible while it lasts.

Anyway, here are the stats for this week. Only 3 trades, just like last week, though these were not as profitable. I took Thursday off, due to social obligations, but I doubt it would have helped much.

So, depending on how you look at it, my winning streak from 8/22 on is now broken. I had that break-even trade on Monday, which I did lose commissions on. So, fine! No more winning streak. I didn’t like the pressure, anyway! :-)

Stocks Mentioned In This Article
Stock	Links
EBAY	| |
CWTR	| |
HANS	| |

Yet another slow week for trades, but another 100% win rate week. So, hard to feel too bad.

I tried a number of other times (ok, maybe 5 other times) to enter trades, but wasn’t filled. Clearly, I’m being very cautious right now, and probably will until we see a few really good trending days. I’m also watching for new types of trades I would feel comfortable making, and trying to check on those ideas.

A difficult week for me, in terms of finding trades I wanted to take. I found four, though. First the stats:

I know I say this about every week and every month, but I would really like to be making more trades than I do. I’m still just not seeing a lot of charts I can really get behind. In addition to these four trades, I had two others where a limit order did not get filled. So, I wanted to trade 6 times, but that’s it. (though it doesn’t matter, my ego demands that I mention that all 6 would have been winners).

My other big goal, letting winners run, is still on hold pending further review. I think it fits my personality better to pick profit targets, rather than try to hold til the close. I may attempt to make that part of my pre-trade routine, and see how that works for me.

Consistency
Obviously, I don’t plan to have 100% win rates that often. But, as I mentioned in my Monday post, I do value making consistent profits over maximizing my overal gains. Drawdowns just don’t agree with me. It’s been a theme of many of my articles on risk of ruin, etc (which are indexed on the Best of MtM page). I need to collect my thoughts and write up something about consistency in trading. Among other things, it would explain why I really want to be making more trades each week. But for now, I can just show you the risk-multiple P/L curve since I started daytrading again (click to enlarge):

That’s a pretty low-stress curve, I think. It got flat at one point, but it never really dropped much. The largest trade on that graph only made twice my risk, though. So, it’s just boring, consistent small profits, trade after trade. That’s the kind of trend I want to see continue. A different trader may prefer a different kind of line. The more risk you can sleep through, the larger the potential profits you can make. It’s just that word ‘potential’ in there that nags at me!

Anyway, I’m happy to finally also be getting into the range where the stats are meaningful (close to 30 trades in this data, now). The expectancy per week is interesting and all, but you have to keep in mind that the sample size was only 4 trades! That makes it a pretty noisy measurement.

I only traded Monday through Wednesday this week, and I have more-or-less decided to take next week off. These just aren’t very tradeable markets, in my opinion. I love my money too much to throw it at low-volume whippage. I would rather throw it at restaurants and hotels, and come back rested after labor day. I will still look at any alerts from my watchlist, and see if they look “obviously” good.

I’ll also try to use next week to put more articles up here on the blog. I know I’ve been posting a little less lately… time to fix that!

I consider it a minor personal trading victory that I’ve had no losing weeks in July or August, though two of those weeks saw only very small gains. There’s obviously a lot of frustration out there in the trading blogs. If you do trade next week, be careful, and good luck!

This was a better week for me than last week. Last week, I could only find one trade I liked. This week, I found seven, and got close to a 60% win rate. My personal preference would be to get as close to 80% as possible, even if that means smaller gains per trade. I don’t mind getting rich 1.5 R at a time–it’s the drawdowns I hate. On with the stats:

This week I learned some important lessons about market tone. Most importantly: Don’t assume you know what’s going to happen for the rest of the day. I left a lot of profit behind, assuming that the market would turn. I need to think harder about reliable ways to gauge market mood. I’ve got some sector ETFs/Indices on my screens, and the QQQQ, and the TICKs. Maybe I should start looking at futures quotes.

On a more positive note, this week I had two trades where I actually entered a stop order, picked an exit target, and walked away. I’m especially pleased that, both times, my target was hit. This is really good positive reinforcement for me. Obviously my brain knows that it wouldn’t mean anything if two trades were stopped out while I wasn’t watching. But, emotionally, it’s always good to start off on a winning streak when trying something new. Maybe I will somehow become a hold-til-the-close guy after all.

My two goals are pretty much unchanged… I still want to make more like 12 or 15 trades a week, so I’ve got more progress to make, there. And, I want to let my winners run more. I think I’m making a little progress in that regard, but overall I’m still failing at that.

I am so tired of August! I can’t believe there’s still two more weeks of it… I thought July was difficult, but August has been the most punishing stock-picking month of the year, in my estimation. Still, I have been green every week, so I can’t complain too much.

Life got in the way last night, and I didn’t get to update my watchlist like I would have liked to. If I had, I would have seen that I wanted to short Continental Airlines (NYSE: CAL) under 22.50, based on the weekly chart action. But, I missed it. There’s a tiny chance I’ll enter some other trades I’m watching, but at this point I’m doubtful enough that I’m going to go ahead and post my weekly performance. (such that it is)

Good Grief! One trade. It’s enough to make me want to get out my TotalView windows and scalp all day. At least, my one trade was a winner. I said yesterday it was 1.5 R, but stocktickr says 1.4 is more accurate. So, 1.4 R this week. Looks like August is going to be a dry month, profit-wise!

I can see from reading other blogs that several active traders are hitting rough spots these last couple weeks. So, I can tell it’s been hard on all of us. In my case, I’ve just not been seeing the kind of entry opportunities I want to see. So, I’ve been mostly out of the action.

Stocks Mentioned In This Article
Stock	Links
CAL	| |

Well, what can I say? There were more trades this week than the previous two. And, if you add in the paper trades from Wednesday, it would be 7 trades for the week. But, I’m still in an awfully cautious mode right now. I’m trying to learn what makes these recent sessions “tick,” if you know what I mean. Consider today, for instance. If you look at the indices at the close, it was a flat day. But, since everything opened so far up (the Dow was at 130+ within minutes of the open), it played out like a big down day. I guess I need to start focusing more on the market direction, and pretty much ignore the amount it’s changed from yesterday.

I shouldn’t complain about a 60% win rate, but I’d really prefer to win 4 of 5… I got chopped out of a winning trade Tuesday that would have made my results much better. I’m going to keep in mind that I should widen my stops a little on sideways choppy days.

Wow, another really really slow week for me! Only 3 trades, just like last week. I am going to do some serious analysis this weekend to see if it’s me or the markets. On the other hand, the trades I do make tend to be winners, so I may come to the conclusion that my trade frequency is just fine. Either way, I’m still also focused on getting more profit out of my winners than I currently get. Here are this week’s stats: