I must say that I have not gotten off to the best start since having taken my trading to Level 2 yet neither am I altogether disappointed. For the past 3 days I have slowly felt myself settling back into a rhythm as I become accustomed to dealing with the new influx of emotions that comes with any change in one’s trading routine. For the most part I have traded well with a much smaller number of bad trades than I have historically made.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that I am more tentative with my winning trades and have had difficulty fighting my anxiety and taking them for as much as I did when I was trading with the simulator. Also, my Bad & OK rated trades have really been hurting my PnL statement. I don’t mind the OK trades so much as those are just a by-product of the learning process and only become bad if I don’t incorporated their lessons into my trading the next time similar trades arise. However, they have been undeniably less profitable than they were in my prior trading and is definitely something to keep my eye on.

What really concerns me is these Bad trades that I’ve been making this week. While small in number, they have basically drained any profit that I would have made from my good trades. Towards the end of my last level of sim-trading, I did a much better job at keeping the losses on my bad trades much smaller than I have these past couple of weeks. This shows a reluctance of my pride to accept a loss and change direction, and we all know what kind of messes that line of thinking can get one in…

Consecutive Days Hitting Net Daily Goal: 0
# Days Hitting Goal out of Last 20 (with goal of 16/20) : 2/5
Weekly PnL (Stop = -6.66) : -.63 R-Units
Total PnL this Reset (Stop = -10.00) : -3.43R-Units

Up, down, up, down, up, down. Not only does that describe the movement of the markets today, but also that of my PnL statement as well.

I started the day well with a couple of really solid trades that quickly netted .66 R-Units. I then made another solid trade but it didn’t go my way putting me in a -.33 R-Unit hole. After this, I went on tilt a little and made a couple of questionable trades that put me in an even bigger hole.

I was able to regroup however and managed to trade pretty well for the remainder of the day finishing the day with a net profit of $5.00 :-)

Today was the first day after having gone 100% live that I felt confident enough to make my 2t & 2tr scalp plays. I really should have used them more today as it was a very low volatile day in which scalping for a couple ticks is ideal. I still have a lot of fear to overcome as I continue to stretch and get to a point where I’m as comfortable trading in 100% live mode as I was with the simulator.

I don’t feel like I’m there yet, but I do feel like I am making progress towards that end. Technically speaking, it should actually be easier for me to make money in live trading than in simulated trading as the simulator was intentionally set up to give me worse fills & greater slippage than I ever receive trading live. As always, time will be the ultimate clarifier.

Consecutive Days Hitting Net Daily Goal: 0
# Days Hitting Goal out of Last 20 (with goal of 16/20) : 2/4
Weekly PnL (Stop = -6.66) : +.80
Total PnL this Reset (Stop = -10.00) : -2.00R-Units

While I didn’t hit my daily goal of 1.07 R-Units, I did c0me pretty close netting .80 R-Units on 4 trades. I have to say that I felt more comfortable trading today than I did all last week.

One weird point about today’s trading was that today, on a day when the ER2 was up over 1.50% with little sustained downward movement all day, all of the trades I made were to the short side. Not only that, but they were all profitable! It is yet to be determined whether this counter-trend tendency of mine is a weakness or a strength.

For me, I think that I just feel more comfortable interpreting and trading based off of the drying up of momentum (as measured by divergences, volume changes, and market internals) than I do trading momentum breakouts. As I’ve mentioned before, the days where I am most likely to loose the most money are on strong trending days like today as I’m just not as comfortable following a trend as I am scalping its pullbacks & picking tops & bottoms.

I won’t be able to consider myself actualized as a trader until I am able to fully integrate these two aspects of trading Trend Following & Counter-Trend Trading. But for now I’m happy to make money playing with a half of a deck as long as I don’t loose anything when the other half comes out.

Consecutive Days Hitting Net Daily Goal: 0
# Days Hitting Goal out of Last 20 (with goal of 16/20) : 2/4
Weekly PnL (Stop = -6.66) : +.80
Total PnL this Reset (Stop = -10.00) : -2.00R-Units

What a horrible day I had. I made one very bad oversight on my first trade this morning and then compounded it by accidentally doubling up on my position instead of exiting it. To make matters worse, I was in the restroom and didn’t notice the error until a little while later after price had moved another point away from where I should have been flat! Aye aye aye.

It is my own damned fault too. In trying to save a couple bucks I have been putting off the registration of NinjaTrader (which is the front-end order entry software I’ve been using successfully for the past couple months…I highly recommend their free version for use when paper-trading) and instead have been trying to use TradeStationss Matrix Window for order entry. Well boy have I paid the price over the past few days for a couple of reasons.

1st) Is that NinjaTrader has 1-touch order modification so that I can instantly adjust stop & price targets w/out having to track down my orders in the matrix, then drag & drop them to new levels

2nd) Subsequently, I have found myself over-relying on longer-term trend plays and completely ignoring good short-term scalping opportunities because I haven’t felt confident in my order entry/modification tools.

3rd) In not being as familiar with the layout, I make mistakes like I did today and accidentally double up on a losing position where i meant to have an open stop order to take me flat…I never make these kinds of mistakes anymore when I use NinjaTrader

So a few hundred dollars short and a day late, I finally registered my Sim-version so that I can trade with NT in live mode. And I gotta tell you that just seeing that familiar interface made me feel a lot more confident. I only wish I hadn’t hit my daily stop loss so early today so that I could have taken advantage of some of those beautiful setups that occurred this afternoon.

Oh well, tomorrow’s another day and now I’m once again equipped to take full advantage of my full trading arsenal.

Consecutive Days Hitting Net Daily Goal: 0
# Days Hitting Goal out of Last 20 (with goal of 16/20) : 2/4
Weekly PnL (Stop = -6.66) : -4.57
Total PnL this Reset (Stop = -10.00) : -2.80R-Units