March Monthly Review
MARCH MONTHLY REVIEW +3410$
1st week
Coming back to business, feeling good, just trying to
remember where I’m at.
2nd week
Felt like I picked things back up very quickly this time
around. I remembered where I left off, and traded like it. Didn’t make too many
mistakes, caught some nice wins and we move on.
3rd week
Thursday was dead cat bounce day so I got long a whole lot
of stuff. Was getting chopped and tossed around everywhere though. P/l has
never gone from red to green to red to green so many times. Ended the day
nicely green but a huge headache from all the observing. Amazing tape cues easily spotted. Will be a
goal for tomorrow is to add after tape cues if I have time and price hasn’t
moved drastically far. Friday was a totally different day. Got chopped to hell
and had to cool off. Couldn’t catch a good winner but stayed away majority of
the day. Took good trades with good cues, just no follow through. The faster we
can recognize a market regime that day the better we can perform, or stay away.
It was my best trading week of my career, had a best trade
and a best day. Just being on my game and things moving well. I really didn’t
do anything super different. If anything I didn’t shy away from taking trades.
Getting bigger faster and adding to winners is still key to
me trading for a living and upping my game.
4th week
Monday was pretty slow and boring. Was looking for a
reversal day but didn’t get anything good. Things just weren’t moving. Small
green
Tuesday was tough. It was huge reversal day but not before
shaking me out of the names I was looking for and unable to get back in due to
SPY not being strong. Again banked on a couple reversals but towards the end of
the day I stepped in front of a couple trains and turned p/l red. If everything
is rising, there is no need to look for shorts unless it is A+.
Started spinning myself in circles. Couldn’t avoid shorting
reversals when the market was hot and super strong. Got too careless with the
names I was trading and settled for a lot of lesser setups simply because it
worked for me so well in the past.
Getting too big on trades early in the day. My win rate is
low on name I’m trading in the 1st 15/30 minutes. Due to this
environment I need to be more patient in waiting for the market to choose a
direction. I’m getting too trigger happy taking these trades that bust HTF
levels, without any support from the overall market.
Things simply not going the way I think they will. I kept
the long reversal bias and looked for more, got some very good looking setups
with a lot of cues. Just no follow through. Managed risk well and making small
amounts of money in this kind of market. It's disappointing but I am making the
most of what I can. And reducing my risk where I can.
To end the week there simply wasn’t much going on on Friday.
Didn’t force anything, learned my lesson on that. Took a nice ZM win to start
the day and then small losers the rest of it. PTON loss and that was it. sat
around and just watched.
RECAP:
Biggest problem this week was forcing things. I got trigger
happy again. At least I am good enough now that when I make these mistakes I
can still grind out a green day. I was planning on taking a lot of Daily
reversal trades, and ended up getting just that. But I was way too ok with
taking intraday reversal days, despite the market being super strong and names
moving up endlessly. Days like these are where every dip gets bought up because
it is still oversold Long-term to longer term traders. It's ok to take reversal
trades still, but they have to be A+. I cannot settle for less whenever the
market has a theme.
Also having an issue with taking trades just after the open
with too large of size. It's only ok for me to do this if:
-The
level I’m looking at has not broken.
-Clear
pmkt trend.
-Clear
overall mkt trend.
-Volume
cues
-Price
action cues
The open is too wild for me to be putting on size if it does
not have these kinds of cues. Losing too much money on guessing trades that
don’t have enough variables for me to put together.
This is good though. I’m getting these mistakes done and out
of the way to remind myself again not to do it. Shouldn’t be too surprised it
came after another hot streak, but now I am happy to say that even with these
mistakes, I’m able to find enough good trades to bring myself back.
My p/l curves this week give me a headache just looking at
them.
Monday was fine, traded well.
Tuesday I made those poor trades at the open. They weren’t
that bad, but the size and how I managed one was what put me down more than I
should be.
Wednesday just got too careless and took a lot I shouldn’t
have.
Thursday started poor with bad opening trade on TSLA that
was a -3R trade. Other trades simply could bust out for me. They sloooowly made
decent moves but it took way longer than I thought they should.
Friday had one good trade to start, then 4 other ones that
just happened to not go. It was a tough day to sit and watch.
This month I am finding out I am a pretty good reversal
trader. I’m looking for the names that hit my scan, check to see if an ATR move
is in play. Look for over extension. Previous D levels of S/R. Watch tape and
volume and take it the other way. I love these because you know by the next
tick if it's going to be good or not. Again best trades never go against me and
it's no different here.
On range days it's easy to see the ones that get too far too
fast. When the market is trending it's very easy to take the ones against
trend, in the direction of the trend. But it's hard to go against the trend and
still get good setups. The biggest thing for me to remember is if it is in the
direction of the markets strength, I have to make sure it hits all the points
I’m looking for. If it doesn’t have tape/price action/volume cues I am stepping
in front of a train asking to get wrecked.
80/20 rule is real. ¼ profits came from 1 trade. Almost half
came from 1 day. More than half came from one week. When the market is giving
you what you perform best with, gotta step on the gas and make the most of it.
END OF MONTH LOOKBACK
1st month back has ended and it was the best
month in my career. Kind of odd how that happened but I’m not complaining. I
went right back to trading the way I was last year. Waited for the mistakes to
come to fix them and they slowly started leaking in towards the end. Got ahead
of myself and started taking B setups after the big green days.
Other than that I did not have any major mistakes I made
this month. I just wanted to trade and did exactly that. It's a little disappointing
to see that even though I’m not making any mistakes in some of these trades, my
WR and p/l dropped off a lot the last week and a half. The trades I’m taking setup
correctly, trigger, I enter, and then nothing. I guess I got all my wins out of
the way in the first half and the 2nd half all the losers are coming
in. Just a part of the game it seems I really cannot find any major theme here
as to why this is.
I wait til the market is correlated and gives my the go
sign, I chart my levels, I see them in play, stock acts appropriately, all
signs look good. The rest is up to the market gods. The ONLY thing I can control
is how big I am on any given trade. As always getting bigger is a goal and only
getting bigger in the best names. LT
trades are always going fine, those are the only setups I have where I can
really add and get big in a name AFTER the entry. Scalps and reversals are a
one time one shot deal. Rarely do I get chances to add to them but when I do
they are golden.
Scalps have been my worst trades this month. 27% WR compared
to the rest that are around 40%/50%.
Why is this? Took 37 scalps. Avg win 133, avg loss -52. Net
sum only -66$. Id say that’s still pretty good. I can lose 3 out of 4 scalps
and still break even so if I can find the problem and eliminate it, I can bring
it back up like it should be.
At first glance I am taking some with 0 vol cues. Obviously
not according to my plan. Some go right away, some go after it stops me from my
scalp. Happens. It's why I have an LT trade alongside it. the LT trade is
absolutely fine where I have taken these scalps at. What makes it a good scalp
trade is what PA/Tape looks like before the break. I need volume cues and
stacking more variables. It can't just be at the level. Not enough to put size
on for a quick move.
Trades in the 1st 15minutes of the day I am also
performing poor on. 4/20, and currently
the only time slot I’m losing money overall in. I don’t need to go back and
look at the screenshots on this one I already remember what's going wrong. Last
week I went over it because I noticed it then too. I’m taking these trades that
1.
Have no pmkt action
2.
Not enough intraday action
3.
Not following market
4.
Market directionless adding to randomness.
5.
Very low vol stocks.
Plan is the opposite of all 5 of those characteristics. To
only take ones at the bell with clear pmkt action. To be on the same side as
mother market. To wait for vol to come in and be able to read the tape. Patience
is the key thing here. If I don’t have data to work with I cannot form a good
trade. Therefore I have no trade and EVEN IF it breaks the level I’m looking at,
it's only one piece of information I need. I Have to wait for the pb and be ok with
it. I’m forcing too many of these before I get enough.
One more off the top of my head is size in those early
morning trades, or in trades that have wide spreads and not much action. I had
31 of my 196 trades this month went Past my SL for more than a -1R trade. It
sucks to take a loss sometimes, but it sucks even more when it's more than you
expected sometimes double, sometimes triple what you expected.
So quick recap on what to improve upon for next month.
-Scalp
trades must be better quality. Volume is most important variable
-Trades
at open must fit all criteria of plan (pmkt trend, mkt direction, volume after
bell, price action after bell).
-On
widespread low vol stocks, size must reflect worst case scenario as it is more
likely to happen rather than best case on risk.
-Reversals
are also dependent on market conditions. Do not settle for mediocre. Pay
attention to what industry/sector/market is strong or weak and do not fight if
all are one direction.
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