I met with three young traders in my office Friday after the Close.  I tasked for an email sent to me outlining their goals for the next month after a review of April.  I am convinced these three traders will become the next very good traders we have developed.  That is of course if they continue to work hard.

It is interesting they all work hard in a different way.  One is All Pro about thinking and talking about his trading but too light on journaling.  Another could write a trading playbook his work is so solid on keeping a journal of the plays that make the most sense for him.  Finally the last does just about everything you want from a new trader.  He just works at it.  And from my seat this is really the most important attribute for a new trader.  If a guy works I know he will figure it out with some direction and time.  Here is his review of his month.

Bella,

Here are my goals for the next month, some areas of my game I am looking to improve, and some general thoughts.

Performance goals for next month

– 10 ticket average

– 5000 gross

– at least 2 500 days

– hold 400 shares for a point

Process goals for next month

– journal every day

– read journal every morning

– document biggest winner/loser… think about why it worked/didn’t

– eliminate the setups that are not working

– watch tape of the open after the close

– continue to ask questions to my mentor, read, and learn from the success of others

Mistakes I have noticed and am working to eliminate:

I often do a really good job of getting amazing prices on the open and do not do a good enough job of holding some size to for a potential trend.  It is good to play the volatility but I often only take a quarter or 50 cents out of a potential 1 or 2 points.  I am really trying to work on being patient with my exits.

Whenever i average up i often become too tight with my stops out of fear of losing on a trade that I am already in the money with.  I need to make sure that i align my trades with my timeframes… if I add on a held bid i can hit the extra lots but my core is still based on the five or fifteen minute chart.  This also relates to being patient with my exits.

I sweep too much and need to work on bidding and offering more… I think i probably lose 5 to 10 cents hitting out instead of offering out 3 or 4 times a day… this adds up over the month.

Trying to be a little too cute on the open… sometimes i just get into a mode where i make held bid and offer plays in a stock that just has no momentum off those plays… i struggle finding the balance between momentum and position trading… i have developed three strike rule that has helped me out but i can still make improvements in this area.  There are times where I really overtrade the open and churn a lot of tickets.

I trade too much mid – day.  I am going to try to use mid-day as more of an idea generation time and a time to manage my positions.  If the volume is there it is okay to trade, but I trade a little bit too much in the 12:00-2:00 hour and have lost a lot of consolidation and held bid/offer plays in this time of day…

Other thoughts:

I am not really that thrilled with my numbers this month….With that said, I think that I learned the most about my trading this month out of any.  When I struggled the first two weeks I was really able to identify the ways in which i lose money and the things that make me tick.  I also think that I have done a much better job of reminding myself to think about what a strong stock/weak stock will look like… this has helped me hold onto really good plays and then limit my losses on plays that don’t really work.  During the last two weeks I did much better job of doing of eliminating some of those mistakes listed above and I have become more confident with my trading and have looked to bump up my tier size..  This next month I am going to try to use a little bit more size and try to really try to take the next step.

My goal every day is to keep getting better.  The way that I am going to do that is to really just practice, think about my trading, document my mistakes, and work to eliminate them……

What will you be working on this month to improve?  What are you goals?

Mike Bellafiore

Author, One Good Trade