Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Not an Easy Day

But I learned a lot. There were a lot of trades today, some good, others not so good. I took a decent amount of losses today and some were high ticked out of trades that worked, others were just failed trade setups from the get go. Overall i'm very pleased with how the day unfolded regardless. The one big thing I learned today was that I need to get out of trades once the momentum has left them. I took a very large -2.5 ES point loss today. Had I gotten out once the momentum left the setup, it would've been a -1 point or less trade and made the day much much more profitable.

The other thing I learned is that i'm going to have to be really quick with my orders. Some of these moves fire within seconds and get to par or profit targets just as quickly. Its completely doable but very necessary to be on top of things and ready to get the correct orders placed as soon as possible.

Overall though, it was a day filled with a lot of losses (some that could've been minimized significantly!) and yet I was still able to walk out with some coin. If I had exited that ES trade when logic (and the chart) dictated it would've been a nicely profitable day (+62.50 ES) in both markets. And that's with me quitting early to go mow the lawn before the storms hit this afternoon.



So far this week, so good! I think I could definitely make a living with this method!

Trade Results:

ES: -12.50
NQ: +85.00

3 comments:

Michael said...

Matt, You may want to add volume to your tick chart (option: for volume use tick count),that way you'll see when the candle is about to close.

Not sure if that addresses your problem, it did help me.

E-Mini Player said...

Kudos to anyone who turned a profit on a day like today! Btw, it sucks how the break-down came AFTER I closed down for the day :-/

Matt said...

Thanks 'gents. Michael - I actually use a tick counter available from free on the TS forums. Its called Tick Counter 2000. Check it out!

You'll have to set your charts to calculate off ticks rather than trade volume.

Awais - it was a hard day to trade... lots of backfill, and misdirection in the tapes (and i'm not bullshitting you!) But lets look at the big picture. Its the day before GDP and FOMC tomorrow. We needed to expect idle, choppy, and misdirected tapes today.