Hi everyone!
Welp, I'm not gonna sugar coat it: I had a pretty shitty week! Luckily it was enough to still finish with a profit but I was only green on 2 out of 5 days and had only a 42% win rate, clearing green on only 8 of 19 trades. This is way lower than my normal average which is 60-70%. I think a lot of it was just that the market was kind of all over the place, but I also made some mistakes that are pretty easy to fix. On Friday the 6th we had a big red day so I expected a tight consolidation on Monday. Instead we got a big gap up and green day. Then because of that I expected maybe a little more strength on Tuesday and was met instead with a big ass gap down and another red day for SPY. Wednesday was the only day that was somewhat predictable and I screwed up with a stupid mistake (PRSS) I'll talk about in a bit. Finally Thursday we got a nice strong bounce in SPY so I figured ok, another tight consolidation day on Friday and then we're back into a smooth trend for next week...but nope! Bam, big ass gap again, morning weakness, then choppiness for like 4 hours, and a random rally into the close, haha! Shenanigans I say! Personally I have trouble when the market acts like this as is evident given the fact I only finished green 2 days last week, but I guess the good news is that risk was mitigated well for the most part so even though I only finished green on two days it was enough to still make money for the week! That indicates that my risk management was on point which is very important. Anyway, I'm going to try a different format using the rules I've developed so far from the last two weekly reviews and analyze whether or not I've been following them, because I think I probably broke these rules a couple times! After that I'll try to note anything else that could be improved and formulate more rules for next week. Here we go:
All in all, great week. For next week I plan to continue trying to stick to my plans with conviction. There were a number of times this week where I had a plan on a stock and the stock did exactly what I expected, giving me a perfect opportunity to follow my plan and I simply opted not to, either out of fear or laziness. So I'm going to try to eliminate that next week. Hopefully the market will offer some assistance by providing a bit more volatility and increasing my conviction that the market will act predictably instead of just chopping around aimlessly or not moving at all.
So all in all like I said green on all 5 days, albeit VERY small green on Tuesday and I have a few things I can work on: Continue to stick to my plans with conviction...pull back a bit if plans change but don't be too conservative just cause I have to change the plan a little bit, as long as risk is still well managed.
- This was my only rule from the previous weekly review and I think overall I stuck with it pretty well. I actually might have been a bit too convinced on some of these, lol so I will adjust accordingly. On Monday because I was trying to stick w/ my plans w/ conviction I actually violated my plan a bit on CRMD and shorted it at $8.66, lol. Looking back at my plan I can't find this number anywhere so it seems it was a FOMO trade (fear of missing out for those not familiar!) though it was a small loss. So I gotta be careful it seems, to not be too aggressive. There is obviously a fine line between not following your plan at all and being too much of a wuss to adjust it slightly and account for the unpredictability that naturally exists in the market! The only other issue I think I had with planning last week was on SIGM on Monday, where I stopped out at $7.26 (at the low of day!) even though I had planned a $7.24 stop and up to the point I stopped out I had done everything else like I wanted to. I did also catch myself on Tuesday shorting DRRX at $1.78 against my plan to short $1.85-90, but I corrected it and covered it for a small gain so that was good. Looking at the rest of my trades for the week it looks like most of them, even if they weren't in my plans from the night before, were planned out well intraday. More on this when we get to one of the later rules! ;-)
Keep exit orders on spready stocks a little looser so I don't end up missing the sell/cover by 1-2 pennies and giving back a ton of profit like I did on AMWD
- No issues on this. didn't really play any spready stocks this week.
Wait to short front side parabolics until they push through a round number, not UNDER a round number
- I definitely followed this but it screwed me a couple times, lol. First on CRMD on Monday the reason I was shorting at $8.66 was because I refused to short under $9.50 per this rule ... so it caused me to miss the best entry on CRMD but I still think this is a good rule to have so I'm keeping it. It also kept me out of AMPE at $8.60 on Friday because I wanted a push through $9 before shorting. So maybe an adjustment to this rule is necessary to make it a bit less restrictive, but overall I think it's a good idea and plan to keep doing it. If I find it repeatedly keeps me out of good trades then I will adjust it but right now I don't have the data to decide if that's the case.
No front-side parabolics, period on first day momentum like OREX. Wait til the back side
- Check! Didn't short a single front-side parabolic. I even debated it on P on Friday but remembered my rule and saw that it was first day momo and on the front side, so I held off. It would have been a loss too, so...good job, self.
Keep sizing on front-side parabolics small for now as they are "experimental" trades
- Check! Still working on these so I will continue to keep them small.
No "quick buck" trades (EPRS, TSEM) and stick with gut on trades that were not in my plan from the night before (PHMD)
- This is something I still need to work on (don't we all? lol). MPEL on Monday, GERN on Tuesday and SUPN on Wednesday were all "quick buck" trades that I took on a whim. Even the scalp at the end of the day on Wednesday in UVXY was pretty lame even though it worked...I am going to really focus on this next week. I will ONLY be taking trades that I am committed to. No scalps or quick profits because I almost never trade them well and I usually don't trade them w/ enough size to make them worth it anyway.
Continue to avoid blatant disregard for planning (e.g. EPRS short at $11.25 when plan was to short $12+). A bit of adjustment may be required but not too much
- This was another problem but only on one specific stock. I got stuck in PRSS on Wednesday because I chased a shitty entry on it and then to make matters worse I tried to manipulate the stock w/ size and ended up with a big position I couldn't get out of. This was definitely my worst trade of the week and something I almost NEVER do, so it was very uncharacteristic. It was a good reminder of why I don't try to push stocks around and control the market myself...even though I was able to walk PRSS up 10 cents and get it back to a profit, I had to add so many shares to get it there that once I got it there I couldn't unload the position without dropping the stock back down, lol. So yeah...I know this but I have to remind myself every once in a while that I'm not a market maker and the market will ultimately fuck me if I try to do this, haha. The silly thing is we're not even talking about a lot of shares...the stock was just stupidly thin so even a couple thousand shares was way too much. So a couple take aways from that: first, don't trade stuff with completely shitty volume. Thin is fine and I'm actually really good at playing thin stocks, but this one was just too thin. The fact that I was able to push it around myself is telling. So no more of that crap. Secondly, don't try to act like a market maker and push stocks around. All it did was make the trade worse and cost me 4x as much in commission, lol. So anyway, lesson learned...no manipulating stocks just because I can ... the only ones I can really push around are the super shitty thin ones that I shouldn't be trading anyway. As a side note, I actually don't have a problem trading PRSS next week because I still love the daily chart but I think it needs to be a swing trade so I'm going to treat it that way and not touch it for a day trade unless it starts trading at least a few hundred thousand shares.
WAKE UP ON TIME, DON'T BE A LAZY SHIT (AVEO, CREG)
- Done! I was not a lazy shit. In fact I'm gonna go to the gym later! Boom!
Continue to keep morning positions to only 1-2 max, usually only 1 unless I am VERY confident in both trades.
- Check! Never had more than 1 or 2 positions the whole week.
So overall the week was lame for me, but it could have been worse. I had a couple nice swing trades in JOB and NKA which rescued me from my shitty day trading so I guess that's all I can ask for, haha. Part of the game I guess. That being said, for next week I don't really see any new rules I need to add other than maybe one:
- Focus mostly on my own ideas. I talk to so many people during the day I have ideas for trades flying at me constantly and sometimes it gets to me, especially if I'm having a bad day, and makes me trade stuff I shouldn't like PRSS. So for next week, on top of really focusing on not taking any "quick buck" trades and not trading any thin garbage or trying to manipulate stocks myself, I'm going to make it a point to trade size on only my own ideas. On any idea that I get from someone else, even if I really like it, I will trade it smaller since I didn't come up with it myself and there's a chance that I might be biased by that fact and trade it incorrectly.
And just to reiterate to myself and drive these points home so I can quickly reread them in the morning:
- NO FUCKING STUPID QUICK BUCK TRADES. TRADE STUFF YOU WANT TO HOLD FOR A WHILE AND GO FOR A BIG GAIN! and...
- NO THIN GARBAGE, NO MANIPULATION
- Treat PRSS as a swing trade only unless it trades at least a few hundred thousand shares
- Continue to stick to plans as much as possible. Adjusted plans should only be traded with VERY small size at first
- Pay attention to parabolics to decide if rule regarding shorting at round numbers need to be adjusted
- Continue to follow all rules from previous weekly reviews listed above
Hopefully next week the market will be a little more predictable and less gappy but if not I will be implementing all these same rules plus the news ones I've created/reiterated today in order to make sure I'm on my game! I'll be doing my watchlist and review from Friday in a bit and then will be back in action on Monday morning!
Hope y'all find this info useful. Let me know if you have any questions!
Chris
Submitted March 15, 2015 at 06:29PM by greenbartrading http://ift.tt/1EhULwL
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