At the beginning of the year I had goals for myself, which I did not achieve. So, I asked myself “what can I change in order to achieve these goals going forward?” I made a few changes and made it through a wild week, which turned out being my best week so far.
The month started like this:
Tuesday: Good day with only three losing trades. I was in the zone all day, but I didn’t use size even though the trades I was in were screaming at me to use more size. I was saying to myself it’s the first of the month, take it easy. But in reality I was holding myself back from making a lot more money.
Wednesday: Was up on the open using a little more size, but never booked my open profits as I was trying to push myself to make more money. Taking a look back, clearly I was being a little too cocky and not getting out of the positions when it was time to get out. So, I lost the money I was up and then couldn’t make a winning trade. It was about 2:30, and I was going to just call it a day and shut it down. But then, our SMB Radar went off. So, I saw a new opportunity. I attacked that new opportunity and made my day back and came close to almost having one of my best days.
Thursday: Awful start to my morning. Trains were delayed by over an hour due to the ice storm. So, I traded from home. As I was trying to place orders but my trades weren’t being executed. I was going insane. Comes to find out my area was having internet issues. I missed the open and my internet came back at around 10am. So, I began trading and it went down again, scared to death, since my platform wasn’t working. So, a few minutes later it comes back on and I’m down money, more then what I should have been down. I didn’t take it to heart as this problem wasn’t in my control. So, I attacked the market again got my money back and ended the day positive.
Friday: My toughest day yet. I was close to getting stopped out as most of my trades went against me. My executions were good but I kept getting stopped out of my positions as I was trying to manage my risk. This was not how I wanted to start my weekend. I stuck with it and eventually turned the day into a decent gain. I decided to use some size as I was looking for a big move in a stock, the potential was there, but it didn’t work out. I still manage to turn another negative morning into a positive day.
So, to recap this week’s trading. I had a wild week, and a lot of obstacles that I was able to overcome. It was a good start to the month as the goals I set for myself for the week were reached. It wasn’t easy but I got there. Let’s see what next week brings!
3 Comments on “Sammy’s Journal: Rolling With The Punches”
I learned a while age when the internet goes down at home and comes back it is likely to go down again so when that happens I switch to sim rather than live trading.
Sound like a lot of revenge trading and to much focus on P&L instead of the process.
Cheers,
Markus
I think Sammy’s ability to turn two negative days into positive are related to the fact that he is hyper focused on the process and is not easily discouraged by trades that go against him.
“I didn’t take it to heart as this problem wasn’t in my control. So, I attacked the market again got my money back and ended the day positive.”
This is the type of attitude that allows him to have positive results in such a short period of time. Many inexperienced or experienced traders for that matter would take losses “to heart” and be unable to perform at a high level after suffering such setbacks.
It is essential to have both process goals and performance goals. Trading is a performance based job and after you have developed trading skills the expectation should be to be positive almost every trading day. day trading is not swing trading so there should be much lower variability in one’s results.
For more info on Sammy’s process and development check out his previous blog post here http://www.smbtraining.com/blog/the-transition