danfreek's Blog

[danfreek]

I'm back

It's been far too long since my last post! The last trade went against me, as anyone watching at the time will have seen. I did make the money back on the next trade and made a bit from some others, but I've dropped this method due to the time it took each day. I now use a more pure version of Marc Rivallands swing trading, but have dropped Chick Goslin's method for the moment.

I'm going to use this space more as a proper trading journal now, although I will post up my trades. Currently I'm long NASDAQ 100 at 1549. It's a bit of a slow mover, but we'll see what happens. I'm due for a loss now, especially after profiting from the June expiry on the FTSE, but we'll see what happens.

I'm going to be finishing my job at the end of July, I'm going to trade full time for a month through August, intra-day on the Forex, and as normal on the indecies. I'm looking forward to it, but I've got to start testing a system to use now, as I won't have any time in August as I'll have to start trading right away.

 

[danfreek]

damn oil

Ok, I got hurt by the move above $60 for oil yesturday. My stoploss got hit on the NDX. It actually shouldn't have done, my data for the NDX was poor when I made the trade so it led me to place a stoploss in the wrong place. Lesson learned. But to be honest, it's not so much of a problem, the Dow and S&P tanked also yesturday leaving to a second continuation reversal for both of them. A lower low today and I've got a buy signal. They do look a bit on the high side to me, but I have to trust my method, I can't trade on hunches!

 

[danfreek]

contrarian trading?!?

I seem to be going against the views of every other T2W member, I am currently long the S&P 500 from 1200 on the futures, the equivalent of 1194.4 on the cash and have no short positions. That of course makes me nervous, as the general consensus seems to be that the US is in a downtrend, but that shouldn't make me change my mind. I use relativly close stops, so if we are in fact in a downtrend now, I'll be taken out of my long position soon.

The other thing that stops me from exiting my position is that when everyone seems to be on one side of the market, that is often the wrong side to be on. I'm not saying that that makes me right, far from it, but popular opinion is not something to trade on.

 

[danfreek]

Happy independance day

Still long S&P, it's getting close to my stop now, so it's make or break over the next few days. The US is closed of course today, so tomorrow I imagine will be a bit more volatile than usual at the open as people react to news over three days rather than the usual two. the European indicies seem to be steaming ahead at the moment, if the US does turn out to be in a downtrend, then it'll be interesting to see what happens in Europe.

 

[danfreek]

back on track

I've set my stop to break even now for the S&P. Usually I don't have a problem with doing this as it gives me a free trade and alows me to judge the situation more evenly. In this case the trade has needed room to work so far and so I don't like the idea of the trade stopping out for break even simply because of volatility, however, after yesturdays move if it does come back to break even that would be a bad sign for the trade and I would want to scrub it anyway, so it's the right thing to do.

 

[danfreek]

stopped for b/e

I was stopped out for break even yesturday, I currently have no positions. The Nasdaq 100 had its first reversal day yesterday, so I'm looking to go short soon, hopefully, and the FTSE 100 should be seeing a pullbak soon as well. I decided that I should alter my profit taking strategy and use a more active approach to deciding when the swing is ending. I'll go through this in full detail with my next trade.

 

[danfreek]

8th July

Being stopped out meant that I wasn't affected financially by the terrible events yesterday. After this unexpected move the dynamics of the markets will have changed significantly, so any signals that were being generated I have now put on probation. Currently though, there are no trades to be made.

 

[danfreek]

no trades at the moment

There haven't been any trades since I went out of the S&P, all of the markets seem to be in unison though, so before long I imagine that I will be getting signals left right and center.

On the other side, I have made a giant leap in my day trading strategy. I'm not going to explain it until it's finished, but it's designed to catch mini trends during the day.

 

[danfreek]

trader psychology!!

One of the hardest parts of trading has to be retaining consistency. It is so tempting to drift contiuusly from one method to another, but this has to be an easy way to poverty.

The Rivalland swing technique is one of my favorite, having been on his seminar and having a chance to speak to him, I really feel that I know the method well. I have been able to make some very decent returns from it and the win rate is high, but right at the moment I'm bored with it. It doesn't produce very many trades and it feels as if I am missing a lot of market movement, this is very imature of me as a trader though, and I cannot afford to give in to the cravings for action.

My intraday method is almost complete. I'm not sure how much of it I am able to explain on this site as it is based in part on "chick" Goslins end of day method, although not entirely. I will try to post trades for each day up here though, unfortunately this will have to be at the end of the day, but I might start a thread in the main forum where I can post trades on cable for discussion in realtime.

 

[danfreek]

poker

I've been playing poker recently, I've enjoyed the game for quite a while, actually pretty much ever since one of my American cousins showed me how to play five card draw. My favorite game now is texas holdem, I played several hours of the game the other day and it made me realise how similar it is to trading.

The amaturs go in all guns blazing, raising before the flop on hands that any knowlegable player would throw away immediatly, then you have the slightly more advanced players who pick their oportunities carefully, only taking hands that show a very high probability of winning, then eventually the player learns more about odds and begins to bet appropriately for the hand that they're playing, knowing what to do in each circumstance.

Currently I'm in the second stage, hopefully I'll get somewhere close to the third before I go to Vegas in September.

 

[danfreek]

One week to go

Only one week to go until I start day trading, can't wait. In the mean time though I've been having fun with the FTSE. I got a buy signal at 5230 on the 20th, unfortunately because of the events on the 21st the price crashed through my stop. Because I was watching the events during the day I saw it as a countertrend news spike, chick Goslin explains in his book how news spikes against the trend are often reversed, we saw this on the 7th, and so I took the oportunity to go long again at a low price. Since then the FTSE has regained it's advance.

 

[danfreek]

pause in the FTSE

The FTSE paused today, but my medium term momentum indicator just turned up. This doesn't mean in itself that we will see higher prices, but it does mean that the expected consolidation may have passed. Of course there will be significant resistance at the last high and so I will be watching closely to see what happens at this level. I have moved my stop to b/e now.

 

[danfreek]

higher prices needed

medium term momentum is still up in the FTSE, but we will need to see the price move higher soon if it is going to stay this way. The DOW has produced a second reversal day, one more and we'll have a setup to go long.

 

[danfreek]

first day over

I've just finished my first day of day trading. I've gained some confidence in my method now, it seems to work well. Unfortunately my money management needs some work, I'm down 36 pips as a result. For tomorow I'll have to look at a satisfactory stop placement method, and perhaps a profit target.

 

[Baruch]

What went wrong?

 

[danfreek]

losing is learning

Baruch, the problem was that I wasn't defining risk properly. I was using loosly defined support and resistance levels, and I didn't stick stricktly to them. It's a stupid mistake, it's one I have never made before in my trading, but for some reason I went down that road this time. Since then I have started using a trailing stop based on the ATR. It's not something I like usually, but for some reason I am managing to stick to it, so that problem was solved, I hope.

Yesterday I had a lot of luck, I managed to catch the uptrend in cable almost from the bottom and got out virtually at the top, but as I say, that was mostly luck. Fortunately I recognised that and I reduced my position size for the rest of the day so that I didn't give it all right back. Unfortunately today I did just that, I was taking positions when I wasn't getting clear signals, and towards the end of the day I was taking stupid trades to "get my money back". I stopped trading at 14:00 because I recognised the self destructive pattern, I went downstairs and watched England notch up 407 runs against Austrailia. Tomorow is another day, I've redefined my trading plan and I am determined to stick to it, we'll see how tomorrow pans out.

After today though I have decided that no matter how much you read, the only way to learn how to trade is to trade, losing money early on is a virtual certainty and it's simply the method of learning. Fortunately I have my end of day profits which can keep me solvent while I learn to day trade.

 

[danfreek]

back and proud

Right, I'm back!

It's been a long time, and absolutely noone has been waiting for it, but hey, regardless, I'm here.

I decided that I needed to take a little break from trading. I started to see it as easy money, and that's not true, never has been. As a result my results suffered, and rather than trade myself to backruptcy, I took a complete break and didn't even look at a chart for a good few months. But now, I've calmed down a bit, and I'm seeing trading as what it is. A good way to make money based solely on the effort you put in.

I've decided to follow only the FTSE 100, using only the method that has shown me consistent profits (the only one I've found) Marc Rivallands method.

I placed an order yesturday to buy at 6568 (a little over the high for the day), so we'll see if the market triggers that one. From the intraday chart I've got in front of me now, I can see that the FTSE is up just under 0.5% on the day, and has about 50 points to move before my order is hit. Either way though, if the order isn;t hit by the end of trading, then it'll be moved to today's range as todays low is lower than yesturday.

I've got a limit order to sell at 6730 should the order be triggered. Stop at 6514.

 

[barjon]

hi, dan - glad to see you back.

you might be interested in http://www.trade2win.com/boards/showthread.php?t=23749 which is pretty much akin to rivalland swings.

cheers and good trading

jon

 

[danfreek]

No action

Well, the trade went through on Friday. I'm now long on the FTSE (UKX) at 6568. I'm not even going to try to comment on intraday action, but it's not looking unhealthy at the moment. Unless there's a real rally at the end of the day we're not looking at very comfortable signs, but the trade in general is pretty healthy and I'll have to wait until the end of day before I can comment properly on todays action.

 

[danfreek]

staying afloat

The action yesturday gave us a spinning top at the high of the previous day. That indicates some indecicion within the market. That's not automatically a bad thing, it really depends on which direction it starts moving in when it actually begins to pick up momentum.

There's a lot of noise about takeovers this morning. I don't trade by news at all. But I like to be aware of what might influence the market, and takeover news is good for the trade. As always with the fundamentals though, that doesn't mean that other news won't push the market down anyway.