Another good day of trading...

While it is true that it was pretty slow today, it was still a good day for trading.  The market looks like it will wait until tomorrow afternoon's FOMC announcement to determine if the current value is good, or it needs to find a new value zone.  Until then, I expect the same opportunity in the morning that was presented today.  It should be a good morning for trading and then it will be time to pull up a chair, grab some popcorn and watch the melee ensue at 1:15 when the Fed makes their FOMC (interest rate) announcement.

We also have some big news about an hour before the cash market opens that could present some decent opportunity.  Consumer Price Index and Housing Starts figures come out publicly at 7:30 a.m.  Those can be like roller coaster rides and are not for the faint at heart.  There is no planning for those trades. It is all reflex and reaction.  A run can be over in seconds and back down in seconds again.  I trade very small or in "sim" in those cases.  There's no need to gamble when trading.

Monday, Monday, Just love that day!!!

I read a lot of complaints today about the market movement today.  Some said that it was too slow, while others said it was too flat.  It is true that price wasn't flying around today, but I had another great day and even surpassed my target this morning.  I took two trades.  The first took about 30 seconds.  The second trade took about an hour and a half!  That is a long time in a trade.  It started out against me, but because I did my homework and waited for the price to get to where I wanted, it did not go far against me.  Then it turned around and moved right on up to (and actually through) my target.  After that, there was one more trade, but I had a meeting that I had to get to and I decided to take my money and wait until tomorrow.

Unfortunately, I have a few meetings in the morning and might have to miss trading tomorrow.  That's always when the best days happen.

As the market turns...

Friday was another great day for trading and another target day made.  The market is never predictable, but sometimes it acts "normally" and trades within a range, turning up and down.  The challenge of course is knowing when to go up and when to go down.  That has been the fun part.  Doing the work, studying the market, making a daily plan, and then executing the plan and staying with it until you hit your profit target, or the market tells you to get out.

I was able to hit my target with two trades on Friday, which is unfortunate for my broker, but good for me.  Don't worry about my broker though as they will have their day with me.  Besides, there are a lot of other people paying them plenty of money, making a bunch of trades every day.

I am looking forward to Monday...

A Great Trading Day

Wow!  Fun, fun, fun!!

I woke up early to go over the market (my homework) and found the places where I wanted to put trades on.  I set my trades to execute if/when price got to a certain level and then I went to breakfast with some friends.  When I got home from breakfast, I found that my orders were hit and my profit targets were automatically filled while I was gone.  I was then able to get into a trade just before market open for another great trade on the Russell e-mini index.

It pays to do the work, because then....there is no work.  Get it?

Homework

I remember that when I was a kid, I was never a homework fanatic.  There was always something else to do that was certainly more fun and memorable.  I can honestly say that now that I am a little bit older, I view my homework in quite a different way, especially with trading.

Homework is necessary every night and especially every day before the trading begins. When it comes to investing, who do you rely on to do your homework?  I remember that I would spend 15 minutes every year reviewing the single page summary sheet of the various Fund returns, in order to make a selection for how I would divide up my 401K account.  That was it!  Unbelievable.

Now I do my homework every night, so that I can review the trade day in the morning, set my targets and plan at the beginning of the day and then watch, modify (if necessary) and execute the plan.  It can be a fair amount of work, but it makes the execution of a trade significantly easier and a lot less stressful because if I get into a trade, I have done the work to know why I got into the trade and have waited for that specific scenario to get into a trade.  I am no longer reacting to stale pricing data, but rather acting from my plan and a position of expectation.

Trading is not hard, but it is work.  The only magic to trading is to make your current perceptions and paradigms disapear so that you can actually learn.

Doing my homework and creating a plan to trade with gave me my single largest profit day this week and two other profitable days to make three for three this week.  I am having a blast doing it.  In fact, for those who know me, they would be shocked to know that I would rather do my homework, and plan for trading and actually trade than I would rather go golfing!

P.S.  I gave my golf cart away.

Good Friday

What a great trading day it was on Friday!  I waited and waited until price got to where I wanted and went in.  I think that my trade on Friday morning was the closest thing to a "sure thing" or "all in" trade that I have ever seen and or made.  It was definitely worth the wait.  I had to close it out to run to a meeting, but if I could have stayed, I would have made another 80% profit!

There is still a lot of work to do and plenty of more research and studying, but as long as I keep doing the work, I am seeing the results.  I can honestly say that my results are so much more consistent now and the amount of trades that I am actually making are way down.

I have been at this now for six months and I love it more today than I did when I started.  Maybe I have just been getting on a lucky streak lately, but I am starting to think that it's something other than luck when I am beginning to be able to call my targets to within a few ticks.

I know that there are days that I am going to lose, but I am also implementing a max loss from now on that will keep me from doing anything stupid or too damaging to my account that I cannot easily recover.  There is always another day.  Time to do some reading.

It's been a little while

I haven't posted for a while.  I haven't been able to do much trading as I have been working on a few projects in my consulting role.  I am hoping that I will be able to pick it up again soon.  I am continuing to have good success on the S&P e-mini (ES#F).  I hurried my morning trade a few times this last week and tried to do the trade without the appropriate studying.  Needless to say, it was difficult to read and I picked up a few losses.  It is just evidence to me of the work that is required to trade, every single day.  If I don't put in the work, I should not be trading.  When I have done my homework and have the proper focus, I am finding good success consistently.  I don't know why I think that it is like anything else, or any other job.  To do well requires a great amount of attention, preparation and focus. 

I was able to make some trades in simulation today and came out pretty well.  I rode the early morning ride up for about 6 points!  I could have been live, but once again, I am trying to stay patient and only trade live when I have done my homework and am prepared to respond to the market.  Soon.

Bada-boom, Bada-bing

I signed in late this morning and missed my morning trade.  I got connected just in time to watch the market in a free fall and as my trading teacher and mentor has always said, "don't try to catch a falling piano".  So I stepped aside and waited for the bottom...eventually there is always a bottom as there is always a top.  After it finally bottomed out, I looked over the market and found two trading opportunities that both netted the profit that I was targeting...bada-boom, bada-bing.

I did simulate a trade during the fall this morning and learned a very valuable lesson about trading within the day's initial balance (IB).  The "sim" trade was very profitable and I enjoy those as much as my live trades that net real cash profits.  I enjoy the art of the trade so to speak.  I never thought that I would say this, but the trade means more than the profits, because if you can get the trades right by reading the market correctly, then the money will come.  The profit starts to become expected.

My second trade today, for example, went against me right away.  I used to get pretty uptight when a trade would go against me, but I had a pretty good idea of where it was going, so where it was at the present time didn't bother me.  I was not anxious.  I just had to wait a little longer to hear those words..."target filled".  The profit is great, but knowing that I read it right was even better.

I know that a potential losing trade is right around the corner.  When I have one of those days, I will let you know too.

Withdrawal

I was out of town in an all day meeting yesterday and on a plane today, (Wednesday) at 7:00 a.m. .   I couldn't trade yesterday or make my morning trade this morning.  I was going through a little bit of withdrawal.  I was home by 10:30, promptly ran to my computer, (after saying hi to my oldest and youngest who were at home), and then looked over the market.  I was starting to feel better....and then there it was, a great trade set up.  I placed my order, got filled and waited until I heard those beautiful words....."Target filled"  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, I had my fix, I felt much better.

I am looking forward to tomorrow morning's trade.

Good week

I am in North Carolina until Wednesday this week, which means that I won't be able to trade or even look at the market until Wednesday afternoon.  It will be a good test to see when withdrawal will set in.

It was a great morning.  I hit my target within the first 5 minutes of the day and then kept an eye on the market until I had to go to the airport.  It looks like the S&P closed over 1,100 today.  That is good news.  We have more financial news this week yet to come out.  Most of it is pre-market tomorrow and Wednesday.  I don't and won't try to make predicitions as to which way the market will move because the market is going to do whatever it is going to do and what it does is all that matters, not what I expect it to do.

I am now learning how to read the individual candles and the story they tell about price based on how they string together.  There is always something to learn, but for me it about focusing my learning and right now my learning is on trade management, which includes candle reading and how to appropriately turn a losing trade into a profitable trade through trade management techniques.

I am looking forward to trading again on Thursday morning.

Friday the 13th

There is no "lucky" or "unlucky" in trading, there is only prepared or not prepared.  Preparing take a lot of work, luck does not.  Preparing brings profits, luck does not.

No time for live trading during the day while I am working on a project, but I was able to make some trades pre-market.  I do not do that too often, but sometimes there are some good setups after 8:30 a.m. EDT.  Anyway, I am done with my work for now and am looking forward to many hours of simulating trading, reading and preparing for next week's trades.

The S&P emini broke through 1,100 this week.  That is pretty significant.  It is acting a lot like it did when it tried to sustain support over 1,000, earlier this year.  It would peak over, and then come back down and rotate below 1,000.  It took about a week for it to sustain price over 1,000.  I think that everyone expected 1,100, but I think that anything above that is suspect.

There are other financial metrics that typically move in sync with the major indexes.  They have done so all year.  They are not yet supporting this 1,100 level, so something is out of sync.  Either they need to move up in a big way, or the DOW and S&P are over-valued and need to move down.  The market always seems to find this balance and I would expect it to do it again.

Either way, it makes for some very good trading opportunities for the next few weeks.

I love that morning trade

I am swamped with a consulting project, but I am able to spend the first 3 to 5 minutes of the opening of the cash market to make my favorite trade.  The cash market opens at 8:30.  Today was quick.  I was in at 8:30 and hit my target at 8:31, and I was done for the day.

I am just now looking at the market and wish that I would have been trading all day long.  Excellent set ups and rotation today.  Today was a great day to trade.

Oh well, what I know about the market is that there is always another good trade just around the corner.  I used to get frustrated when I would miss a trade and now I am happy to have just been able to say that I read the set up correctly.  There were three phenomenal trades in the first half hour of the day.

In the beginning...

This is my first blog on trading. I was introduced to trading the e-minis, (primarily the S&P 500 and a few trades on the Russel), on the first day of the summer trading season (ugh!). I have had a lot of positions in my career, from mail room to a CIO in a Fortune 50 company and I can honestly say that none of them has been more challenging and rewarding as trading.

Trading has forced me to unlearn and "learn how to re-learn". It has forced me to be able to change my biases and paradigms on an hourly basis and how to work within a context that I cannot control.

I love to learn and I love to work, they are both passions for me. Trading offers both to the Nth degree.

Lastly, I used to think that trading was all about making money. I was wrong. Trading is about learning about myself, working very hard to create a daily trading plan, (that can change hourly) and practicing like Tiger Woods. It is not easy, there is no system, except for literally thousands of hours of work, practicing, preparation and then execution of the plan.

I am having the time of my life first, and actually beginning to consistently make money second.

I don't teach, promote or sell. I just trade, and that is what this blog is about, sharing my trading experience.