Trading Review: 04-27-2017

 Gross PnL: -$43.

Net PnL: -$79. $9 in borrows.

Disciplined day count: 20.

I more or less covered today in my plan of attack post. Overall was a good day today, and allowed myself to trade today a little bit naturally - and can see the adjustments I will make on Monday to be a good thing.

Plan of Attack

Recently:

- Discipline is currently exceptional, and have zero doubt this will continue. Because if it doesn't I'm not fit to be a full time trader. Besides if I fuck up I will need to do multiple 100 hour Uber weeks which I don't want to do...

- Patience for entry is improving, and probably about as good as it's going to get.

- Seem to be getting wicked out of trades a lot. This is in line with keeping things tight, and I like this mental attitude, however can't keep getting wicked out.

Have been trading with minimum size for nearly 20 days now. Which is a single entry and single exit. In general have been finding that this:

(1) Requires really good patience for the great entry; allows things to be kept tight (with the good patience).

(2) Makes it difficult to hold onto winners. The consistency of taking profits quickly versus holding onto a winner. Often times the stock will provide a re-entry, BUT the re-entry wouldn't be quite as tight and therefore on the "tight, single entry" framework it can't be taken.

Where does this all take me to:

- I am struggling with the single entry, single profit target, tight stop. Some days I nail it; others I lack patience, others I get wicked out. It has helped me refine/improve my patience and discipline (necessary for consistency); but is not helping my consistency overall.

- Another factor to consider is that I have my biggest edge in smaller stocks, where it is harder to run a super tight stop on; and there is a bigger edge on staggering orders.

A quick revisit to prior reviews tells me that I trade the best when staggering orders (which I already knew), but there are some pitfalls:

(1) Because you are scaling on entry, you are actually adding to a loser (on a smaller time-frame). This is fine if it is part of the original plan, but it is the habit and frame of mind that's the problem. I allowed myself to envision how I would trade in this manner today (27th) and I can already feel that tug.

(2) Losers can be quite large if stop is hit straight away.

(3) It's going to be hard to do this, with such a tight leash that I am trying to develop.

Plan of attacking going forward:

(1) Max size:

- >$2 stock -- 400 shares. In lots of 200 shares.

- $2-$20 stock -- 200 shares. In lots of 200 shares.

- $20+ If ATR is less than $2 can do 200 shares.

- For ATRs greater than $2 I am willing to still do 100 shares, but need to be exceptional setups. So will probably just avoid.

(2) Losses:

- Max loss on 1 trade is $100. Which shouldn't be the norm.

(3) Take profits quickly. Size down immediately to allow for a bit more wiggle room, especially if the stock gives a little more trouble than expected.

(4) As always have the stop-loss entered into the marketplace. This will require some good planning.

(5) Try to anticipate and scenario build. If stock does this, am I adding into that move and at what point does it prove me wrong.

Trading Review: 04-26-2017

Gross PnL: -$290.

Net PnL: -$330.

Disciplined day count: 19.

Another bit of a rough day with getting unlucky with stops, and a weird market movement midday.

But it's at the stage where I can't just put it down to weird movement. Didn't keep things tight enough today.

Need to dig through some prior reviews to work out what is going on. Will do this, this coming weekend.

For the next day I will just trade penny stocks to ensure I definitely have an edge.

Trading Review: 04-25-2017

Gross PnL: +$151.

Net PnL: +$90. $3 in borrows, which I didn't use but would have been a home run if I got entry (missed by a cent).

Disciplined day count: 18.

Weird day. Like yesterday I had the wrong bias on quite a few things which held me back quite a bit. However, today I got wicked out on a few which was a shame.
Overall pretty happy with how I re-entered into those trades though, waiting patiently for the re-entry. There were a couple of times I didn't nail the perfect entry, but it was acceptable.

I completely missed some monster trends today, but they were too "consistent" and my methodology doesn't deal very well with things that go in one direction the whole time.
I ended up having the right bias when they made their break, but then not getting the dips I wanted. Kind of funny that I actually ended up shorting them when they got extended.

STRP monster trade that missed by selling where I perhaps shouldn't have. But given the news risk, and that I wanted to lock in a profitable day I am happy. Besides, it serves me right for not selling into original push.

All-in-all, not quite happy with performance today; was on a grind lower then managed to bring it back. I definitely got unlucky in some instances; but it's not quite the trading I was doing last week. It may be worth focusing a little more on individual stocks - and how to avoid getting stopped out.

Trading Review: 04-24-2017

Gross PnL: -$226.

Net PnL: -$272. $8 in borrows.

Disciplined day count: 17

Was a massive gap up in the market today. Ended up having the wrong bias for most of the day, which didn't help; but overall still just not entering at the prices I should be entering at. In part due to bias (and some fomo).
That being said, I feel like if you're going to have a bias; today was the day to have that bias - so let it slide for today.
As usual did a great job of keeping things tight. Didn't take profits quickly today (because of said bias), but probably would have made money if I had taken profits.

A big standout from today was two things:
(1) DELT I realised that I was in a pretty much no edge scenario and got rid of trade.
(2) LRCX I stopped before my stop was hit because it was a very obvious stop.
May not seem that advanced, but is a pretty big step forward; when you consider that I was quite tilted by things going wrong in the morning when I took these off. The temptation to break discipline or hope for a big winner should have been quite high.

Just a food for thought thing: I have found that taking profits quickly helps my consistency. One of the main things is to be consistent about roughly where you take profits. Today I took profits quickly on OPTT, and didn't on TVIX. A home run on OPTT (as it turned out to be) wouldn't make up for the lack of winners elsewhere. And OPTT did provide re-entry possibilities a bit lower.

So. One losing day is not the end of the world, but a very good reminder that I need to stick to my processes. That is:
(1) Pick prices and stops for entry. Don't try to enter on sign of trade working.
(2) Take profits quickly. Reasonable chance a re-entry will be provided.

Weekly Review: 04-23-2017

Net PnL: +$235.

YTD PnL Graph:

Short week with only 3 days trading. However massive progress was made this week I feel. You can see the downtrend in my PnL testing the upper bound of the channel and looking for a trend change. I feel this reflected in my trading. Last two days were superb.

Another thing I would add is that the 18th was one of my best days (process-wise) YTD. I had another one of those the prior week, so feeling good.

Disciplined day count is up to 16, and although I'm not ready to increase size when it reaches 20... It gives me confidence that I am nearly there and just need to hone in on my actual trading.

Big takeaways for the week:

(1) Don't have too many losing trades on the same symbol. Two is enough. Additionally don't make a habit of immediately re-entering when get faked out.

(2) Set orders for entries and forget them. If think that's what a stock is going to do, then don't worry about it at prices that don't interest you. Don't be afraid to miss the trade, because entering too early, getting stopped where should have entered is actually worse than anything. Setting the orders seems to help with my fomo - and it most certainly helps consistency.

All-in-all I feel like I am ready to string together 4/5 or 5/5 positive days this coming week. Provided I stick to my processes and have patience for entry. If I can achieve this, along with continuing disciplined days then I am open to increasing share size (from minimum size) ever so slightly (just enough so as to balance a TSLA trade vs a penny stock trade).

Trading Review: 04-19-2017

Gross PnL: +$232.

Net PnL: +$177. $15 in borrow fees.

Disciplined day count: 16.

Pretty solid day. A nice continuation on from yesterdays good day and for the most part achieved my goals that I set out to achieve.
There were some lapses of patience but am very happy overall. Probably the biggest occurrence of this flaw was when shorting CBLI and I was expecting it to make new highs and pull-in - I ended up shorting at the high and narrowly got stopped (where I wouldn't have if I stuck with the spot) and forced to re-establish.

A smaller lesson from today: When counter-trend trading and don't quite get the perfect entry (which happens) should take profits a little sooner, because now a retracement is going from the pivot high/low which isn't super close to entry.

Overall had the wrong bias on CBLI. Would have done pretty well longing dips. Kinda funny accidentally got long at the bottom print on a vwap test.

I did a good job of taking profits when I had them today (aside form some instances on CBLI), and it saved me on some (in particular NVDA), and also on some of my poorer entries.

Trading Review: 04-18-2017

Gross PnL: +$392.

Net PnL: +$324. $4 in borrows today.

Disciplined day count: 15.

Incredibly good trading to finish the day. Even crazier is that I was stuck long into the IDXG offering, which cost at least $80. So could have been a super good day.
Important to realise that today isn't a break of my downtrend in PnL, even dead cats bounce. So I want to solidify today's lessons and reverse the downtrend. Especially because tomorrow is the last day of trading for the week as am moving house.

Day started off garbage like my prior days and I was actually down to max drawdown with one more open trade (GS short) and was ready to have to Uber for $1000. But thankfully the GS trade worked and gave me a breathe of fresh air.
I have included a zoomed in chart of GS which illustrates the classic mistake I made of not placing stop properly, getting stopped and then almost immediately re-establishing. So I got very lucky!

One thing that really stands out as a lesson from today, is that when I am trying to work on not getting fomo I need to place my order to get short/long and stop looking at the stock, this way I can't let my influence of reading the tape.
For example, I think a stock is a short and I am watching it close to my level of interest and the tape tells me that this is the spot. So I short. At this stage my stop-loss is questionable (because didn't quite trade the level entirely), and I have a 40%(ish) chance of getting stopped. IF I get stopped on that trade and re-enter (either where I was supposed to, or perhaps another tape read); then end up getting stopped on that trade (40% probability) I am done with the stock and can't really throw any more money at it.
Whereas if I had taken 1 trade I could still stalk the stock later for a trade.