QID- What the hell am I thinking?

I'm pissed off. Yeah, I lost money but more importantly, I didn't even trade my strategy!? I had 4 stocks I was looking at for the open, none of them moved so I closed them all out. I look at the market falling so I go short. Like an idiot, I feel I need to trade everything. This happened the first day of last week also. It's hard for me to go over the weekend without trading, and then Monday rolls around and none of my setups work out and then I'll have to go another day without trading. Especially if I didn't trade Friday, which makes it even harder when Monday comes.

 

I don't know what to do. I had to format my PC over the weekend so my little alarm clock thing got erased which might of attributed to the problem but It was me, wanting to trade something. Well, here yo go, you fucking traded a stupid ass setup and lost money. Bought at the top and sold at the bottom.

 

Going short is not even close to my strategy, I don't even have a plan or criteria or anything for going short. I had an idea of where I wanted to get out, which I did. But I mean, fuck...walking away is so hard! Why? I don't know. Maybe I'm a greedy bastard..

 

More Preparation

I got up around 6:40am PST, 10 minutes after the opening bell and I'm a little pissed at myself and I need to look into getting an alarm clock or something, I don't know.

 

I had 3 stocks on my watch list for this this morning, USNA, HIMX and TITN. USNA, you'd be bummed if you bought it Friday or at the open this morning. HIMX is the winner that I missed and it's up about 6% so far. TITN is in a death spiral downward but is still showing a profit only because it jumped so high pre market.

 

Can't win them all but I should of been better prepared for this.

ACTC- Small Gain

Made a small profit trading ACTC. I was a little reluctant to buy right at the open because of the market conditions right now, a little shaky. But I put in a market order when it was around 0.29 cents and didn't get filled until 0.30 Looks to have topped at 0.32 and I got out at .31 for a small gain. Twice the gain of my average gain so I'm stoked about this.

 

I noticed something the other day that kills my objectivity, and that's when I look to see how much I made in my account (ie, keep refreshing). Once I see how much I've made, I quickly go into some kind of, protect mode and I feel I need to take what I have. It totally screws up my thinking. This trade I put on I didn't look to see how much I made until after that fact which kept my mind in the right place and allowed me to get out just before it started to decline a little.

 

Only reason why I do refresh in the first place is because my broker will log me out after a set period of time and If I get logged out when I decide to sell, well, that causes some problems. So I continually refresh to make sure I'm still logged in. Anyway, I don't think I'm in a position long enough anyway for it to really log me out. I wish I knew the time so I can set a time limit or something. Point is, I don't want to see how much I've made!

 

Got worked this morning

Well, where do I begin...This past week has been horrible in so many ways and I know 90% of it is because of me and the way I've been doing things. I'm not going to trade at the open anymore because a lot of it is the public either pushing or pulling the market one way or the other and then by around 8:30-9:30 PST it starts finding a direction. Maybe I'm just pulling this out my ass right now or trying to find some excuse as to why I suck at trading. But, I'll sit down to trade around 7-7:30 PST and let the opening quirks get worked out.

 

I'm way too aggressive with entering stocks. Problem is I feel like I'll miss an opportunity if I don't take it. Fact is, there's opportunities all the time and who cares if I'm watching a stock and it moves without me. I'd rather miss an opportunity than get into a stock and have it tank, haha, which has happened to me 3 or 4 times. I'm still totally new at this. One thing I haven't been doing is learning from my mistakes because I feel like I'm making the same mistakes over and over.

 

My entry and exit's aren't detailed or clearly defined. Which is probably contributing to my volatile equity curve. My mind seems to jump from one pattern to another, to one technique to another. I know there's no holy grail and I'm not looking for one. I'm just trying to find some edge in the market that's profitable over the long run, because what I'm doing now is basically throwing money away. Now that I re read that sentence it probably does sound like I'm looking for a holy grail. I almost felt like throwing my hands up and saying duck it, I can't do this.

 

I'm extremely under capitalized and I'm sure that's also destroying my odds of success. The profit I do make barely covers commission. The trade I made today would of made a profit but I didn't sell because I still would of lost cash even though my account showed a profit because of commission. Yada yada, just more complaining. I think I might paper trade and save what little cash I have left and use that time to develop a sound strategy and come back when I'm confident.

 

Again, I'm still learning and still trying to develop a strategy. I'd love to be able to back test my ideas but I have no idea how to program. If anyone's reading this and knows how to back test, let me know. I'd like to bounce some ideas off you.

 

Mhh.. what else. I read a book called Techniques of Tape Reading and I remember reading a small blurb about volume and price action. I came back over to my PC and spent about 5 hours looking over charts trying to find these patterns. Basically, I was looking for stocks that had a gigantic volume spike and price was in a downtrend. I was figuring that the public finally capitulated and gave up and would be a good time to get in now. Well, I found about 6 and 1 of these this morning ran up 14% (COSI). I was looking at LSI, HOV, UWN, CC, TARR. All had big spikes and were in downtrends. Yet, I didn't trade it, Because I got in on HOV early, like an idiot. I got sucked into all the morning hype and threw money away.

 

I wasn't planning on writing this much and I'm sure there's a lot of grammar errors but whatever, I just needed to get these thoughts out of my head.

 

Took a Giant Hit

I have to get this off my chest because I know this will linger in the back of my mind until I do. I took a huge hit on Thursday. I lost 5 times my average loss. First two trades I got caught on the wrong side of the order flow big time and then the third time I got caught just as the market started to decline at the end of the day. The third one was revenge trading for sure. I wasn't paying attention to anything and saw a stock running and I wanted to jump on. I did, and lost big.

 

I think I needed this though because I've been pretty careless with my trading. But now I have this huge hit which is probably officially my worst loss I'm starting to feel a little more cautious with my selection. I need to wait before diving in right away when I see a possibility instead of seeing the probability. Just be aware of my surroundings (market conditions) before getting in.

 

Also, I need to know when to fold' em. For example, Thursday morning when I sat down I looked around, checked the conditions and even told myself, I probably shouldn't trade today and actually had a...I don't know if you'd call it intuition or instinct or what but I got a flash in my head saying go short and it quickly disappeared and I ignored it. Missing out on a huge decline that day. So, I really need to start trusting myself, pay attention to what I'm telling myself and follow it.

 

Man, this is so much easier said than done. It's like you need a thousand different scenarios running in the back of your head and pick the right scenario when you see certain conditions. Also, I need to realize I'm still going through the learning process. I can't expect to be pro after 6 months of hard trading, learning, and research. I just hope I have enough cash to get me through this phase.

 

Anyway, I feel better now. :)

TPX- Horrible Trade

Oh man, where do I begin. Maybe it's from all the turkey I ate or that I missed a day or what, but I screwed up big time. My entry was fine I got in at 30.04 and I put my stop at 29.80. Now, I have no idea what happened but apparently I canceled my stop order and had no idea because when TPX hit 29.80 I wasn't being sold. I go to check my order status and it says I'm canceled. A few curse words later and I put in a new stop loss at 29.75 and this time I put in a market order to sell not a stop loss. So I immediately sold out at 29.68.

 

1.5R loss because I can't pay attention to what the hell I'm doing. The black line was my initial stop loss but the green line shows where I actually got out.

 

CCC- Umm...WTF?

Ok, so I'm looking around for a good trade even though I probably won't find one and I shouldn't be trading anyway. I come across CCC and it showed a patter I've been trading a lot only problem was that I missed the breakout and got in a little late at 12.37

 

I'm sitting here waiting for about an hour for it to do something. I had my stop initially at 12.10 but soon raised it to 12.20 to try and cut some risk. I had a sell order to get rid of 25% of my shares at 12.47 I canceled the order about 10 seconds before it hit 12.47 and I decided to sell my entire position at 12.37 and just get out.

 

lol, I'm a little pissed. I mean, I got in waited and waited for it to show me something as to why I should still be in this trade. I didn't see anything that should keep me in. I sell, and then it shoots up. Oh well.

 

I didn't execute my plan. I got bored and anxious and wanted out. I'm pissed at myself not because I missed out on a nice chunk of cash but like an idiot, I didn't follow my plan. I knew when I wanted to sell for a profit, I knew when I was going to get out if the it goes against me, yet I sold based on my feelings not on my plan and I paid the price.

 

I got in late, and got out early.

 

TWM- Stupid Rally

Went short a little late but I thought the sell off had more juice in it to keep going. Got in on TWM at 71.19 just under resistance but it was looking good. It shot through resistance and turned it into support which was a good sign. It had one more last leg up and peaked and I thought I should unload some shares at this point but I didn't (I was waiting for a 3% gain to unload instead of a 2%, a little aggressive). I was stopped out at 70.40

 

I held on as it was going neutral. I did notice something that told me I should sell. TWM was on a downtrend but was holding support. A clear sign that a breakdown is in the works. What made me hold on was that I heard a tid bit on CNBC and some guy thought we'd be going lower before the close. That's the only thing that kept me in. If I hadn't heard that there's a pretty good chance I would of got out. CNBC is killin me. I like watching it because it's entertaining and I never do what they talk about unless it's the opposite. But this time it just got stuck in my head and bounced around and I wouldn't sell because of that.

 

QID- Rookie Mistake

Basically I went chasing after a rally. Market was falling and kept breaking support after support and I eventually went short at the bottom. I'm pissed about this trade because I did something that I'm trying to get myself not too. I'm working on the fact that I don't need to be trading every single day chasing opportunity. Every time I do that, I lose money, over and over and I can't get it into my head that trading like that is wrong.

 

Again, what I need to focus on is being carefree, but not reckless. What I'm doing now is being carefree and reckless. Man, that's easier said than done.

 

I got out before my stop was hit because it stopped acting the way I wanted it too. Looked like the decline was over and realized I made an idiotic trade.

 

Getting Rid of Covestor

You might have noticed that I deleted my Covestor Badge on the left which displayed my performance. I was up about 25% a couple months ago and now I'm down about 20%. The dip in performance was mainly me trying to figure out my methods. Unfortunately I had to use my capital to figure it out because I feel it's the best way. No one knows how they will react to something until the shit hits the fan. I've learned tremendously what works for me and what doesn't based on that.

 

Also, I can tell it's been screwing with my Ego. There's been a few times where I won't get out of a losing trade because I don't want it to hurt my performance trend line and I'll wait and wait and all I'm thinking about is Covestor and how I compare with other traders. I was thinking about this late last night before I went to bed. I noticed that Covestor added a new Ranking section so you can see how you fare against other traders. I saw all the people making 800% and it bummed me out. So, I won't be having that badge up here anymore. It's not about winning and losing money it's about making good or bad trades and I feel I've been making a lot of good trades even though they turned out to be losers because I traded my plan.

 

I need to focus on what I do, not what everyone else does and then compare myself to them. That's what I've been doing and it's messing up my ability to think objectively.

Taking a Break

I need a break. The current pace I'm going now I'm going to go broke by the end of the year. I've got to stop trading in my bad market conditions. I don't know when I'll be back to trade but I need to stop and take a breather for a while.

 

I've been making a lot of stupid trades. I need to stop and really see what I'm doing wrong.

Over Trading

I think what I'm doing is over trading. I'm finding opportunities that look good but don't perform. Or still, my time frame for holding a stock is way too short. I need to get over, over trading. Maybe I should try holding my stocks for a few days longer and see if my analysis of the stock will play out if it has time to grow, instead of forcing gains.

 

I also need to develop more strict guidelines for picking stocks. These are my current guide lines; stocks that have made new triple tops, stocks that are very close to support levels, stocks at least 250,000 shares. I need to fine tune this more to where I get to the point that I have a higher probability of the trade performing better than worse. Although I'm not worried about having a trade go sour, I'm worried about my probability of winning trades, which has gone down significantly over the last month or so. On the other hand, I have changed my trading plan since then.

 

Before, I was trading stocks purely based on trending channels of support/resistance. Buy low, sell high in this upward channel. In June and July this was fairly easy since we were in a great trending market. Things have changed and I haven't been able to spot any trades that looked like the ones I traded back in the early summer. That's probably when I started over trading. I felt I had to be in the market constantly to be make money. Which isn't the case as I have, ummm...7 losing trades now in a row.

 

This is all part of the learning process I guess. I'll need to keep fine tuning my system and myself as a trader if I want to be truly great.

This is how you don't trade

I can't believe what I just did. For one, I had a plan for a stock, had it all laid out and I end up buying it at my exit price and selling it for a loss. Green box represents my entry and red box is exit. I feel like an idiot, not because I lost money but because I did the exact opposite of my plan.

 

I hesitated to pull the trigger at my original target entry point and I think it's because I'm putting a lot of pressure on myself to perform. I can only make 2 trades a week to comply with SEC regulations and when I trade I always catch myself trying to trade the best setup so I can make my trading worth while and profitable. I should be focusing on making good trades wether they be profitable or at losses. This is an extremely good example of a horribly bad trade.

 

So, now that I've used my trade, I have one left for this week, 2 more if I push my luck. Before I was doing about 6 trades a week with nice success because I didn't care if I was tagged a day trader or not. But now, I seriously need to control myself and in doing that I'm killing my performance and my gains. I'm way too limited by my capital.

 

 

 

In case anyone notices, I did lower my entry and stop loss targets to account for the drop in support, which, in hindsight was a good idea but I didn't take the opportunity.