Monthly Review: April 2015

Intraday Trading: -$6363.

Swing Trades: -$2526.

Back Account: +$7015. Brokerage is a bit of a killer in this account!

SPI Trading: -AU$3349, US$2577. I actually thought this was a little worse before I reviewed the figures. I guess the point here is that

FX Trading: Approximately +US$1203. This is a little confusing because for some reason on statement the conversion from AUD.NZD to USD has failed... So this is my guess.

ASX Stocks: +AU$557, or US$433.

To sum up the month it really comes down to psychological discipline. The blowout on oil and SPI's wasn't a methodology failure it came down to psychological factors. I found my discipline in the last week and a half or so, and am looking to build momentum on that.

This month provided some interesting lessons on trading with conviction; which I am hoping to implement going forward. I have shifted to doing most of my trading in my SureTrader account, which I have considered to be my back account because the act of going to the account (web browser based) seems to act as a physical filter for my best ideas. Using this physical filter seems to be helping me to improve on my patience, but it is slowing me down and causing me to miss fills etc - but thus far it seems to be well worth it.

You could almost break the month down into two parts. Effectively I traded the last 1/3 of the month working really nicely on the faults from the first 2/3s. For now I am happy to continue trading the way I have been for the past 2 weeks or so until I find my rhythm; that is primarily on the back account - and focus working on controlled disciplined trades on oil on main account. However, this will need some shaking up and changing round at some point.

Strengths:
(1) Psychological resilience. I took a beating this month in terms of day to day volatility, and while I did take some required time off, came back stronger than ever.
(2) Have improved with patient low risk entries, but further improvement needed.
(3) Have improved with placement of stop-losses (allowance for flush), but further improvement needed.
(4) Nailed some really nice high conviction trades with decent size. Really incredible!

Weaknesses:
(1) After locking in profit on a particular stock slipping back into negative. This resulted from poor size management and too wider stop-losses.
(2) Not managing some of position quick enough. Need to exaggerate this for a little while so the behaviour can sink in.