AMD ver 2.0, HTGM, ZAIS, EYEG

Life is like an Endless Waltz.... - Mariemaia Khushrenada

FFFCCCKKKK !!!!! 

A few weeks back, I took a day trade and turned it into a swing trade... Then during the profit-taking.. I was sleepy and was dozing in and out during the market session til I realized I left 80cents on the table on 400shares which woke me up.

I started a small swing yesterday chasing a bit to anticipate the reviews but for some odd reason I doubled up into a full size with the 2nd half being a daytrade anticipating a gap-up.  After my 14hr drive from Houston>St. Louis.. I was RACKED OUT.... As I had predicted in my last post, since I had two different plans, I ended up confusing the shit out of myself.. To make it worse, I was sleepy yet again.. I actually woke up for the open, saw the reviews on AMD going bad for the gaming crowd and that NVDA was tanking taking down it's sector as usual.. I KNEW I needed to downsize or get my full size out for a small loss and re buy in once AMD finds support/get a better entry for a multi-month swing in the next few weeks... but nope, sleepy me just went back to sleep.  If I had my initial starter, I would've had no problem swinging since my risk had already been set--but now i'm in heavy on my daytrading portion and did not cut losses.. it's very similar to how i got stuck last month.. FML !!!! The swing setup is still intact but the risk downside is massive.. So not worth the risk/reward, but i'll play this on the side to start learning longer-term plays.






~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ MUST READ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Watching Arick Russell + Stephen Dux webinars... I noticed something they've been trading which I have been learning from Ross.  Ross/Arick will trade pullbacks on momo stocks on the 1m/5m candles to make a new high.  Stephen dux was explaining something on a new lesson of his and Inoticed that it's the same chart pattern, but he actually described it based on the the emotions that is being put into the stock.. WHY exactly are these pullbacks making new highs?? Where are all these buyers coming from?? I could never figure out exactly why but That's when I noticed, the price action is currently consolidating near VWAP.  Amateur shorts will get trapped by the VWAP and it will then become a trigger point on the chart for shorts to cover IF it breaks those points, to add to injury, longs will pile onto those shorts covering and initiate a massive squeeze..



**** Buying the first green candle to make a new high after 2-4 red pullback candles ****
**** Risk is set using the low of the last candle ****


HTGM

I started to use more timeframes on top of the 1m/5m when I started to notice that the pattern works beyond the 1m/5m timeframe last month.. In this case, the 1m/5m DOES NOT LOOK CLEAN AT ALL.. but dux started in 2.56 with 10k shares and added 20k more shares at 2.79 first candle to make a new high.. He did it with only his intuition/hunch, but I prefer to see a quantifiable reason behind it and on the 15m chart we can see the pullback pattern.  (I'm shitty drawing trendlines so I prefer to see a pattern)

ZAIS

This one isn't as clean but the same thing appears on the 15m/30m chart this time.. Notice where the price action drops below the VWAP trapping shorts in...

EYEG

I thought the 1h Chart looked a lil' funky, but within those candles.. I felt something was hiding in there..

I went ahead and reset the timeframe to 45mins.  and like magic, it appeared...

Growing up under my dad who is successful in insurance and bonds.  I've always had a knack for actuarial science.  I'm super curious about this pattern because this is quantifiable but very complex to code with my limited skill in coding.  I really foresee a future for me in quant trading. But in the meantime, I need to master my trading emotions first and build up a nice profit cushion before I start testing quants.  I have a feeling that those who can't trade become analysts.. And I want to be a trader..

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On Indicators

I KNOW my chart looks like shiet atm with so many indicators, but that's the reason I joined WT PRO.  I've fallen in love with the equations various indicators have and in the search of the holy grail, i've fck'd myself over.  I told myself that there are a TON of successful traders that uses no indicators at all and only rely on price action.  Through WarriorTrading, I can easily grasp how Ross is reading the price and what is going through his mind.  After I do more tests with Bollinger bands/Fibonacci, I will eventually wean myself off the indicators and just rely on Price action and maybe an indicator or two.

Due to work, I will most likely be able to trade only on thurs/fridays.  And even then, just small size for now since i'm still getting used to DAS and eventually size up once i'm comfortable and not distracted by work.

Books to read for March/April:

The Disciplined Trader

One Good Trade

Momo Traders

Ross's book

December - January really was my first month of actual focused trading and it turned out very well.. Avg'd making 900/wk and losses were around 300/wk for 3 weeks.  But work flipped my trading world upside down and it's tough to trade except on fridays when i'm off.  I'm currently trying to go from Active Duty to guard--hopefully I can get my package through by april.

It's been almost 7 weeks since i've traded a go-to-setup.  Because of my undisciplined experimental trades on TBIO in Jan and the 2 failed experimental gap and go scalps at the beginning of Feb.  I've been too scared to trade and just been papertrading.  My stats shows that the bulk of my losses have not come from the market or executions of strategies but from stupid mistakes/emotional trading.   Impatience, Stress and distractions from work are the biggest factors for me not trading with real cash right now, It seems like i've been missing out on all these plays but I trust that in the long-term--Sitting on the sidelines for now and learning to control my undisciplined trades/impatience will benefit me much more for the years to come... 

This is a marathon and not a sprint !!

AMD, ZOMBIE MODE: ON

AMD

Cute... mindless zombie mode: ON

.. I knew I shoulda had a trailing hard stop on today before I went to sleep.  I felt like this move is unsustainable combined with the moves from 2wks back and I might as well take profits while it's high.  I actually woke up at opening bell, saw NVDA tanking and new it was gonna drag AMD down today like it always do since it's a major player of its sector.  I went back to sleep knowing even if it tanked, the swing trade for a multi-month hold was still intact--but later I realized I could've closed out the position and rebought once NVDA/AMD recovered... woke up a bit later and AMD dropped 60cents to $15 confirming the trend change.. my mental stop for the swing was at 14.40ish so i went back to sleep like an idiot--logged in later and it's around 14.40ish and I started to feel scared that it might tank even more on me since NVDA is still a few dollars from where I feel like it can still drop to.  I wanted to just bail out right there but before I put the order, I made a decision to wake up and fully reassess the day trade..

Logged in to my laptop, saw that it's due for a small bounce.  Saved myself about 20 cents by waiting to sell into the bounce.

Now that i'm awake, I should've captured more gains when it broke to a new high just like I did yesterday or AT LEAST DOWNSIZED my position when it was at 15$ when I woke up with the intent to re-buy once NVDA/AMD started to recover...

I disappointingly closed out the rest of my position for the moment.  The shitty part right now is that I might've sold near bottom at AMD's support, but the risk is that NVDA keeps tanking the rest of the day and drag AMD below the 14.40support. AMD is still lookin' good long for the next few months but I don't like sitting through events and rather just trade the price action after the event.  I'll sit on the sidelines on AMD for now until I see a good entry and I'd like for NVDA to re-test support at the 90-95$ level for a possible buy again to re-test 52wk high.  Might be another 2-4wks till it happens though, hopefully well before the 1Q earnings release.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Left close to 1$/share in unrealized gains on the table due to mostly not being fully awake to assess the position but lessons learned.  Today was a 400$ lesson that reminded me that zombie trading is still alive and well in me and that I need to come up with better measures against it. Fall seven times, get up eight..

 In the future, I will also just take a loss instead of swinging a day trade that went against me.  However, micromanaging a swing trade based on big movements on the daily chart looks to be beneficial but can get confusing since i'm mixing plans for that one stock and that would defeat the main advantage of swing trading which is not having to babysit the position during the day.

One good thing I can take away today is that a personal short strategy i've come up with showed itself in NVDA at $103.5.  I've been lazy this month of vacation however and I haven't kept track of the data but I want to say it's worked at least 80% of the time that i've seen it come up this past month.  I'll probably papertrade it for another month and actually backtest it to get more data.

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Overall, I'm twice the position size from what I've been using in last month but I'm nowhere near being comfortable using my speedtrader account just yet.  That and the fact I haven't been as active daytrading since mid january and been extremely lazy during my 1month leave.  I'll be papertrading this whole month again mostly because I need to focus on my Performance Fitness Test this coming march so that I can request to be moved into the TX Air Natl Guard from Active Duty.  If I can get that through, I'll have all the time in the world and limited distractions from daytrading.

On top of that, I'm also:
1) Behind on the courses in WT
2) Trying to keep up at the pace from the videos from arrick russel/jonk/stephen dux/syke's students mainly
3) At least review Tim Grittani's DVD and watch some DASTrader videos before I touch my speedtrader account.

Will I day trade in the nxt few months? Maybe.. but most likely only on thur/fri if I do.

Unproven setups, IMPATIENCE, Chasing and FOMO

Further, I love the 90/10 rule for traders.  90 percent of your effort is spent each day focusing on your existing trades with edge.  10 percent is spent on experimenting with new setups, with small risk.  Record your results on these new setups and size up those working for you.  A consistent effort to expand your trading PlayBook allows you to trade with edge in more market environments.  This minimizes forcing trades when market conditions change.  For example, if you have Market Play edge, you might have been less likely to force Low Float trades this past week, thus minimizes a negative effect of overconfidence. - Mike Bellafiore

Post in progress...

PULM, DFFN, SLOW TRADING WEEK

January Recap - Hella nice setups going supernova left and right... Work started to stress me out and it affected my trading.  Got into some zombie losses with TBIO and called two weeks off to recover mentally.  Papertraded good set ups.

February - Arrived in houston after a 13hr drive for a 4wk leave from work. February 6 traded PULM but very wary since I know what i've been learning from WT Pro is alot of scalping.  I'm using ToS and the hotkeys are nowhere as good as DAS Traders and I'm still inputting orders the slow/cumbersome way.  Because of this, I'm going in very small since I don't like scalping.  Feb 6 was a super slow morning, had a small quick scalp on PULM.  It worked good but I was waaaay too slow for the strategy, got stopped out for 50$..

Feb 7 was super slow as well and I was getting antsy and impatient.. Scalped DFFN, was good but too slow to execute.. Whipsawed hard and lost 3 times what I wanted to risk.  I've already had a feeling that WT strats are very scalpish and nowhere near where I'm comfortable at/where my profitable trades are.  One thing to learn from is though, all my losses from my normal strategy has been from chasing.  The WT scalp entries are exactly where I would be at when I chase and get whipsawed but they would get out with a profit.  Seeing how they execute these scalps I can learn that:

1)  It demotivates me like hell NOT TO CHASE anymore.  This scalp style of trading is very high risk relative to what i've been doing.  With the proper amount of skill/experience, Ross makes it look very easy.  BUT... I'd rather stick to what have worked for me.  Maybe later on once i'm profitable and have a huge cushion, I can afford to learn this and be a degenerate gambler but not in the near future.

2)  Enables to select my entries through the candlesticks instead of indicators allowing me to have an even better/faster/accurate entries than previously.

*******
I've locked in all my buying power into a swing long to prevent me from making stupid daytrades while I catch up on my courses/review trading tickers and IU dvds.

I'm slowly slowly rather learn the higher priced NASDAQS but only once I've built up a cushion trading tim's style.  I was disciplined for the two weeks I traded it but i also have to attribute the fact that there were tons of plays in January while low float stocks were hot.  Having the patience to wait for the best plays is currently what is I'm having a hard time with.. STUDY STUDY STUDY while the market is slow... ONLY Trade the best setups.
*******
Goal for the next week FEB 13-17:
1) Trade only Tim's setups, ie no Zombie Trades
2) Paper trade my personal strategy for at least a week
3) Vocalize my thoughts in 3rd person while trading

RGSE, DRYS

RGSE

Phew.. Wanted to buy the b/o of pre-market high but it was so close to 6 so wanted to buy it at 6.01.. I didn't get my fill and I let it be.  This had alrdy broke out last night so I knew this was going to be a very quick trade and since it was alrdy at 6.40ish, I didn't chase.. Thankfully, I didn't.. Kind of like how AKAO did in december, it whipsawed HARD..

Ross also only got 200 shares filled at 6. He admitted getting FOMO and was irritated he didn't get a minor fill so he stacked 7500ish at 6.50.. 2mins later it dropped and he got stopped out at 5.75.  Nasty, this is eerily similar to my AKAO loss where I felt FOMO and just chased hard into a whipsaw.  Seeing even Ross get hit hard, 5.5k loss in 2mins.. makes this course all the well worth it if it can get finally get me to change to stop chasing.  If I miss the entry I wanted, I'll let the stock go..



DRYS 

Called out in our FB chat my entry on DRYS before the market open b/o 3.8.  After missing  RGSE and just watching Ross take that nasty loss, I jst decided to sit back and watch.  Called it a day and took a shower when DRYS failed to b/o 3.8.  Looking back.. the 30m chart was downtrending while everything else was uptrending.. As soon as the 30min chart aligned upwards along with all other timeframes--broke out of 3.8 and touched 5.  I've seen this happen before but I still need a larger sample size before I use money on this strategy/phenomena..

REVENGE TRADING and TRADING UNPROVEN SETUPS, PULM

I took a break from trading due to the huge disappointment I had on TBIO.  In addition, work has me crazy, stressed, and sleep-deprived as well so to preserve capital, I've chosen to pause from trading until I've regained my composure.

** Reviewing what happened from Jan 11-13 **

I was having an awesome 3weeks of trading since I had the epiphany about being able to see trends on a multi-timeframe but I was having a rough week at work that sun-wed and went through an emotional rollercoaster.  With my new schedule, i'd only realistically have thur/fri now to trade without being sleep-deprived. Wednesday morning after a rough shift and been awake 10 hrs alrdy, i got prepared for the market day knowing to be careful since I was so sleepy and would not be at peak performance.

Jan 11  - Wednesday
ETRM, I knew was a very high risk position that I held overnight. Half-position size but I knew well that I might lose more than I'd like if I had to bail out Pre-Market.  By the time pre-market opened, I knew that it was damage control time.. Blew past my stop loss but was able to fill on a bounce.  Lost more than i'd like but was able to control the damage.

BIOC, Small position pre-market, opened good, added to my position then locked half my shares in for 284$ profit.. Doubled up on a pullback and watched it fly to the heavens-- I was up $1,200 at one point but failed to lock in any of my shares while it was at the top due to m'fckin GREED wanting it to hit 1.5k-2k.  It whipsawed ALOT and lost a majority of the gains within a few minutes--Locked in another half for 178.96$.  Overall, I became stubborn for 6-10mins and didn't close out my last 1000 when it dropped to 1.6ish losing 219.8$ with another 80$ lost to commissions.  Horrible trade but made a few hundred. I exceeded my day trades though and got my account frozen for 90 days.. FML...

I also, tried to trade a position on E-trade when it was spiking which i got stopped out on because i was too slow in getting my orders in the web platform, I was unable to lock in profits and got stopped out for a small 50$ loss+20$ commissions.

At this point, I walked away like I normally do and I was breakeven I think on the day even with the big ETRM loss.  But I was just so mad about what was going on with work and trading was where I felt at home so I opened up my etrade accnt and tried to trade--which of course was a big nono since I was so heated up from work and that GREED got to me.  As a result of Revenge trading, I ended up the day red 300$ and got that account frozen for 90 days as well. FML right ?? Both accounts frozen... This is the best day of the year...
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Jan 13 - Fri
TBIO.  I was able to request and unlock my accounts and get 2$ commissions lower in my TD accnt due to being military.  I don't remember what I was doing but I just knew I didn't have any go-to-setups in the AM.. There were reversals that I had been studying but My rule was to paper trade unproven setups.. Fast-forwarding--> 3 Trades later --> TBIO Worst day...

Mistake #1:  I traded against the trend
Mistake #2:  Should've paper traded this reversal play since this was not a go-to-setup yet.
Mistake #3:  Preserve your capital... I lost 600$ just to try out reversal trading... FML...

My first red week -$1000.. I told myself I'll be taking a break from trading to cool off and really take the time to assess and work out why I did what I did.

I ended up getting into the Warrior Trading Pro Course that Sunday during a webinar that they had due to a nice rebate program for their course.  I was split on finally being a Sykes Challenge student or the WTPro Course and I think I can learn more from Ross than Sykes currently but looking back now, I think I can learn a ton from the discussions that the millionaire students have with each other inside the challenge.  I might go into the challenge again at a later point but not anywhere in the immediate timeframe.

Never trade an unproven strategy.... TBIO......
Zombie Experiment traded the shit out of it.... sigh.. FML...

2 weeks of steady discipline wiped out in 2 days.  I thought the revenge trade on that wednesday was bad, but after how friday ended--my zombie trading still reigns supreme as the cause of my largest losses with revenge trading my 2nd largest.

MY MISTAKES AREN'T MISTAKES UNLESS I FAIL TO LEARN FROM THEM !!!

My losses from actual failed breakouts or getting stopped out have been minuscule compared to losses resulting from failure to stay disciplined or control my emotions...

Week to week and day to day, I'm no longer going to think about $$ goals and instead have goals that's focused on mitigating risk and controlling my emotions.  The small change of reducing stupid trades from the end of december caused me to have consistent profits.  Even with these nasty losses, I had a 1.9:1 Avg Win/Avg Loss ratio--If I can raise my accuracy closer to 50%, the profits will just flow.

**** Gamblers think about profits, Traders think about Risk ****
Shifting my attitude/mindset from making money and towards:

1)  Risk Management
-  Know risk prior to trade
-  Know stop loss prior to trade
-  Size position accordingly to the stop loss and the quality of the setup

2)  Managing Emotions
-  No more zombie trading (Trading low-quality setups)
-  No more revenge trading

Mandatory Weekly Goals....
A)  Zero (0) Zombie trades
B)  Zero (0) Revenge trades
C)  Trade only quality/Go-To-Setups.. (Think retired trader)

New Rule: If I have either 1 zombie trade or 1 revenge trade during February, I will sit out from trading for a mandatory 1 week cooling off.  This will be a negative incentive that will turn me off from making those type of trades since almost all my motivation and raison d'être currently is daytrading.

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So here I am now, 2 weeks later.  I'm pretty scared of going back into the market, albeit with a much, much bigger account that I'll be opening with Speed Trader.  I did paper trade GLBS last friday with a good solid result to boost my confidence a little bit.

"Don't be afraid of losses.  A loss can be a good thing.  Don't shy away from them, don't be embarrassed by them."  - T. Sykes.

Overall, I've pulled myself out of the red from december and have been profitable since.  I just really need to focus on being disciplined.

PULM

I didn't trade Thursday AM since I was so sleepy but I did take a peek into thur PM for an o/n play.  It had a nice F3/ABCD pattern-ish except for two things that I didn't like:

1)  It had consistent lower lows in the afternoon.
2)  Although it kept most of it's AM gainst, it was 40cents off it's highs.

I thought about buying it, but I went against it since I still wasn't in the mood to trade.
Been awake since I woke up at noon, and stayed up studying all night catching up on Sykes Vid lessons as well as being severely behind my WT Pro lessons--I didn't feel like trading since I'd roughly be awake for 20hrs when the market opens.  I opted to go to sleep instead..

My buddy Greg called out AUPH, CRK, and PULM in our FB Chat while I was out snoring away.  Now, I'm still catching up on lessons at this cafe in St. Louis and I finally took a peek on how the market did today.  Great fckin' CALLS since all 3 ended up with nice spikes. So smexy... PULM was my main stock on my Watchlist too..

Normally, I'd be soo pissed about missing out on it... But by taking that 2 weeks off, I missed a handful of nice setups but in return, I gained some patience knowing that these setups will repeat themselves.  There is alot less FEELING OF MISSING OUT.. Which reinforces that I have to be prepared to nail that entry and NOT CHASE when I miss my entry since these setups repeat themselves.

"Think of yourself as a retired trader" - T. Sykes

Think of it this way, as traders, Our job is to be patient. Most of our time should be spent watching and waiting.” -LX21

"SUCCESS is when PREPARATION meets OPPORTUNITY"  - MSgt Favela

I'm going to leave a link to Tim Grittani's Blog here:
http://tradetheticker.blogspot.com/

This guy's blogs/videos/DVD has helped me HUGE as far as getting me to keep track of my trades/profits/losses on an excel-format document (I use Google Spreadsheets atm).

Undisciplined Trades

8 days later from my worst zombie trading loss in TBIO... Took a few days off to really see what went wrong... 1) TBIO was a nice gap-go.. i can't remember what happened but i saw potential reversal trades or a dipbuy.. Rule: Paper trade strategies that aren't your go-to-setups Rule Broken: Tried to do reversals on TBIO to be cont.

MUST RESIST FROM FOCUSING ON PROFITS AND INSTEAD FOCUS ON MINIMIZING RISK !!!



** Entry from 20170121 TBIO **
I fckin looked at my P/L and saw I was up 600$ then spiked to 1,000$ then 1.5k+... Instead of locking in gains, I held on hoping for 2k+ and a stronger spike.... I got so greedy and failed to systematically lock-in my gains.. 6mins could've locked at 600$... 1min of which could've locked in 1.5$k for the day... stock broke back down under 3 and it took me another 4mins to lock in partial profits..

1) Create watchlists daily/develop patience and only trade what's on my WL > FOCUS only on Go-To-Setups

2) 100% compliance with pre-trading requirements prior to making the trade. If I stick to this plan = 0 ZOMBIE/REVENGE TRADES

3) Stop thinking about money and focus instead of making the right plays. The money will follow.

"Think of it this way, as traders, Our job is to be patient. Most of our time should be spent watching and waiting." -LX21

"Aim Small, Miss Small." -T. Sykes

"No one ever went broke locking in profits !!!"- Superman

I was able to stick to it on the first trading week but the commitment faded on my 2nd week..
From now on:
On the first day of a new trading week:
Must recite the week goals and renew the commitment from last weeks goals..

New goals added:

4) Define the risk, set stop loss/profit targets prior to trade, control risk by appropriate position sizing.