My journey to long term consistency

[DrSafari]

Demo account

Long Paccar
650 Shares
Reason of closure: trailing SL got hit
Opening rate: 55.02
Opening time: 6/22/2016 4:22 PM

Close rate: 55.00
Close time: 6/22/2016 5:33 PM

Amount risked: € 126.28
Initial Stop loss: 22 pips = 54.83

Net P/L: €‪-11.53‬


Chart
Green arrow is where I opened position and red arrow is where it got closed. Chart is a 15 min chart.




Personal notes
A lot of losing trades right now. Went up after it went down again so could argue the validity of the system (tight SL's) but that's the whole idea behind it this is for figuring out if it's valid or not.

Also here is the hourly chart. What I am looking for while scanning stocks looks like what you see in the orange box.

 

[DrSafari]

Today I am not allowed to trade according to the system because of the whole Brexit thing

 

[DrSafari]

Demo account

Long American Tower
300 Shares
Reason of closure: trailing SL got hit
Opening rate: 110.57
Opening time: 6/28/2016 4:31 PM

Close rate: 110.16
Close time: 6/28/2016 5:04 PM

Amount risked: forgot to log around € 120
Initial Stop loss: /

Net P/L: €‪-111.32‬


Chart
Green arrow is where I opened position and red arrow is where it got closed. Chart is a 15 min chart.


Context
S&P500 was in the positive. Most European and American stocks too. Stock market obviously recovering from the Brexit.


Personal notes
Losing trade. Stayed more or less flat the entire trading day. Today it gap opened a lot higher. Too bad, if it hadn't gone down I would be in for nice profit now.

 

[DrSafari]

Demo account

Long Dominion
250 Shares
Reason of closure: trailing SL got hit
Opening rate: 75.43
Opening time: 6/28/2016 4:35 PM

Close rate: 76.42
Close time: 6/29/2016 3:49 PM

Amount risked: forgot to log around € 120
Initial Stop loss: /

Net P/L: €‪221.33‬


Chart
Green arrow is where I opened position and red arrow is where it got closed. Chart is a 15 min chart.





Context
Same as last trade obviously. S&P500 was in the positive. Most European and American stocks too. Stock market obviously recovering from the Brexit.


Personal notes
Perfect trade if you see where I got out. Trading profits were although good modest because the stop loss was a bit wider than usually because of a bit more volatility in some parts of the trend.
Here is the hourly chart [what I am looking for] for future reference

 

[DrSafari]

Demo account

Long First Energy
300 Shares
Reason of closure: closed position because it was going nowhere and some economic news with high volatility was going to come out before US market would open.
Opening rate: 34.19
Opening time: 6/29/2016 4:42 PM

Close rate: 34.16
Close time: 6/29/2016 9:38 PM

Amount risked: € 126.91
Initial Stop loss: 47 pips = 33.63

Net P/L: €‪-8.10‬


Chart
Green arrow is where I opened position and red arrow is where it got closed. Chart is a 15 min chart.





Context
Pretty much same as the day before. S&P500 was in the positive. Most European and American stocks too. Stock market still recovering from the Brexit.


Personal notes
There is a rule in my system to get out when major economic news is gonna hit before opening of market. I have not defined if that has to be a euro event or US event so technically I also have to apply this if a New Zealand eco news is about to come out ... but that would be silly. This I am not going to define this and leave this part discretionary. Both the stock not going anywhere anymore and the major news coming out before market open was enough to get out of this position, trend had been broken anyway.

 

[DrSafari]

Demo account

Long Fidelity
350 Shares
Reason of closure: closed the position to saveguard profits and not going overnight and because of the european economic news the next day before market opens
Opening rate: 71.94
Opening time: 6/29/2016 4:31 PM

Close rate: 72.33
Close time: 6/29/2016 9:44 PM

Amount risked: € 119.71
Initial Stop loss: 38 pips = 71.48

(the discrepancy betzeen the inital stop loss Price and opening price minus initial stop loss pips is the spread. I took a screenshot of the position before I hit the buy button and after I actually entered it. There you can also see a difference.)

Before:


After:

This means the ACTUAL rate is 71.95 but the rate I bought at (wich you conveniently can only see after you bought ) is 71.86 So that's starting with a loss of 9 pips which is the spread. Btw you can see the spread elsewhere just not in this screen.



Net P/L: +€‪122.88‬


Chart
Green arrow is where I opened position and red arrow is where it got closed. Chart is a 15 min chart.




Context
Pretty much same as the day before. S&P500 was in the positive. Most European and American stocks too. Stock market still recovering from the Brexit.


Personal notes
Winning trade. Not much to add to that. Started going down a bit near the close of market at the time I got out. The gap that is visible is actually in line with the trend so according to my current system this does not constitute as a gap.

 

[DrSafari]

This means the ACTUAL rate is 71.95 but the rate I bought at (wich you conveniently can only see after you bought ) is 71.86 So that's starting with a loss of 9 pips which is the spread. Btw you can see the spread elsewhere just not in this screen.

Allow me to quote myself

This also means I should make my stop loss a bit wider since I do not take the spread into account. Latest trades I already put it a few pips wider than my calculations because I instinctively knew it was a bit too narrow. Some trades got stopped out around that point too and then went to the right direction again. So I always should add a few (the spread) pips to my SL..... have to add this in the plan

This also explains a few trades where I mentioned my figures and chart do not seem to add up, I said it was due to spread so I was right but now I know for sure and in detail why. Of course I understood the concept of spread before but I was not sure how my broker displayed it on the screens.

 

[DrSafari]

Demo account

Long Annaly Capital M.
1500 Shares
Reason of closure: trailing stop loss got hit. Wanted to get out the day before (for same reason as previous trades) but could not get a fill
Opening rate: 11
Opening time: 6/29/2016 4:39 PM

Close rate: 10.9
Close time: 6/30/2016 3:36 PM

Amount risked: € 108.01
Initial Stop loss: 8 pips = 10.92



Net P/L: €‪-136.41‬


Chart
Green arrow is where I opened position and red arrow is where it got closed. Chart is a 15 min chart.




Context
Same as the previous two trades. S&P500 was in the positive. Most European and American stocks too. Stock market still recovering from the Brexit.


Personal notes
Should avoid stocks with liquidity problems. This was clearly visible on 5 min charts. Hit the stop loss but went back up again. Frustrating to see but that is exactly what trading is about. If we knew it would go up again everybody would be a millionaire.

 

[DrSafari]

Demo account

Long Genpact
750 Shares
Reason of closure: adjusted trailing stop loss got hit.

Opening rate: 26.68
Opening time: 6/30/2016 5:34 PM

Close rate: 26.82
Close time: 7/1/2016 3:47 PM

Amount risked: € 107.97
Initial Stop loss: 16 pips = 26.46



Net P/L: €+‪92.54‬


Chart
Green arrow is where I opened position and red arrow is where it got closed. Chart is a 15 min chart.





Context
At first the S&P500 was in the red and the stocks were around 50/50 green/red. Than an hour later that changed so I could take on a trade and this is the result.


Personal notes
Narrow SL but looking at this trade it is doing me a favour instead of costing me.

 

[DrSafari]

Demo account

Long Harley-Davidson
400 Shares
Reason of closure: trailing stop loss got hit.

Opening rate: 46.23
Opening time: 7/1/2016 4:27 PM

Close rate: 48.6
Close time: 7/1/2016 4:44 PM

Amount risked: € 114.98
Initial Stop loss: 32 pips = 45.8



Net P/L: +€‪852.13‬ (no that's not a typo)


Chart
Green arrow is where I opened position and red arrow is where it got closed. For once the chart is a 5 min chart so its more obvious what happened on this short time frame.



Context
I guess a lot was in green, dont remember the details.


Personal notes
This will probably henceforth be known as the harley davidson trade. I took on the trade and noticed it making a good profit. Then less than 20 minutes later I looked again and I saw I was stopped out. I was like WTF did it get down THAT fast? I thought this would make me a nice profit instead of turning break even. To my amazement I made a HUUUGE profit and if I didnt have a trailing stop loss it would have been even huger. Still over the long run the trailing SL will be better as this is an anomaly trade. Not sure if I will count it in my results. Maybe Ill talk about this trade a bit more later, gotta run now.

 

[options-george]

That's some decent profit there in terms of R! :clap:

any idea for the reason of the large move in the Harley Davidson stock when you had the trade on?

 

[DrSafari]

That's some decent profit there in terms of R! :clap:

Indeed :cheesy:

any idea for the reason of the large move in the Harley Davidson stock when you had the trade on?

No, I was just following my system. Afterwards I found this article though: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/harley-davidson-surging-174756066.html

 

[options-george]

Thanks for sharing that additional info.

I figured that there must have been a reason for why the stock moved so much so quickly.

This is one of the reasons why I prefer trading entire indices, or forex pairs, over individual stocks - because the likelihood of a major price move on unscheduled news is much higher for an individual stock.

Anyways, nice profit though!

 

[DrSafari]

This is one of the reasons why I prefer trading entire indices, or forex pairs, over individual stocks - because the likelihood of a major price move on unscheduled news is much higher for an individual stock.

Yeah that thought has crossed my mind on several occasions as well. But if it's not overnight you can usually still get a reasonable fill if your stop loss gets hit. Of course it works both ways and you can benefit from it as well like I did here.

That being said this is the reason I don't like to hold positions overnight. At the moment this is not yet fully included in my system but due to the nature of the trades they usually get closed before end of day anyway.

 

[DrSafari]

Demo account

Long Illinois TW
400 Shares
Reason of closure: trailing stop loss got hit.

Opening rate: 105.32
Opening time: 7/1/2016 4:29 PM

Close rate: 105.03
Close time: 7/1/2016 5:07 PM

Amount risked: € 118.58
Initial Stop loss: 33 pips = 104.85



Net P/L: €‪-104.10‬


Chart
Green arrow is where I opened position and red arrow is where it got closed. Chart is a 15 min chart.




Context
Most stocks were green.


Personal notes
A trade that did not work out. Nothing special to mention.

 

[DrSafari]

Demo account

Long Leucadia National
700 Shares
Reason of closure: trailing stop loss got hit.

Opening rate: 17.82
Opening time: 7/1/2016 4:55 PM

Close rate: 17.62
Close time: 7/1/2016 5:19 PM

Amount risked: € 94.44
Initial Stop loss: 15 pips = 17.61


Net P/L: €‪-125.61‬


Chart
Green arrow is where I opened position and red arrow is where it got closed. Chart is a 15 min chart.




Context
Most stocks were green.


Personal notes
Loss is more than amount risked here while the price does seem to match. And the screenshot (were I get my info from) was taken after after I bought it. Strange. For the rest again trade that did not work out.

 

[DrSafari]

REAL ACCOUNT

Short Be
250 Shares
Reason of closure: wasn't going anywhere so exited the position

Opening rate: 1663
Opening time: 7/6/2016 11:17 AM

Close rate: 1677.5
Close time: 7/6/2016 2:38 PM

Amount risked: € 112.52
Initial Stop loss: 1701.46


Net P/L: €‪-42.40‬

Current Equity: € 5 213.16


Chart
Green arrow is where I opened position and red arrow is where it got closed. Chart is a 15 min chart.




Context
Everything was in red!


Personal notes
Position didn't really move anymore after I got in so I was going to get rid of it. But instead of getting rid of it at a €65 loss I remembered something I recently read in Market Wizards and that is to wait for a better moment instead of just getting rid of it on a whim. So i moved my SL to risk 70 and I waited. And surely it started going down and I moved my SL along with it. Finally I was able to close with a €42 loss instead of 65. Good, learned another thing and put it into practise

 

[DrSafari]

Demo Account

Short Monsanto
200 Shares
Reason of closure: trailing stop loss got hit

Opening rate: 100.34
Opening time: 7/5/2016 4:48 PM

Close rate: 100.28
Close time: 7/6/2016 5:14 PM

Amount risked: forgot to log but as usual around € 120
Initial Stop loss: forgot to log


Net P/L: €‪-87.96‬



Chart
Green arrow is where I opened position and red arrow is where it got closed. Chart is a 15 min chart.




Context
I think most was in red. I need to find a way to remember this better.


Personal notes
This trade looks like it should have traded break even. Unfortunately when you short and they pay dividends the money gets subtracted instead of added and that was €‪-97.55‬. Next time I go short I should check when they pay the dividends and dont enter position or hold overnight if they are about to pay them. This was a bit unlucky but it still counts, better to have my results a bit more pessimistic than optimistic once I start using it for real money.

 

[DrSafari]

Hmmm, I am starting to think my timing is off. I wait 1 hour after opening to take a position but usually by then it has already moved a lot in the favourable direction (or not but then I dont take it) and usually backtraces then.... after which it may or may not go up again but that doesnt matter as my SL is hit. I think I should look at the 5min chart and start trading right from the opening...

I will look up in my journal exactly why I wait 1 hour. I think its for avoiding gaps but I will see that 5 min after opening just as good. If the stock moves violently against me the SL will simply get hit, but at least if it moves in the good direction I will have profited from the large move a lot.

Next is a list of stocks that was in my potential trades list of which the last three made it and the others not for reasons stated next to them. When the trading day is done I will investigate what happened to them.

 

[DrSafari]

Anyway, up until just now, when typing this text I had no idea what I could be doing wrong but now something hit me. I am always opening at beginning of the US trading day. Because thats near the end of when I get off from work here. Anyway I have read and also experienced that the beginning of a trading day is a bad time to go into a position, you dont have a good feel of the market yet, alot of newby traders take their positions etc.

This is the reason apparently. Other than it being a "bad time" I dont see any arguments why I should not do it. It is a different strategy right now so what did not work back then might work now because I am selecting stocks with waaaay cleaner charts.

I will change the system with taking position between 5m to 15m upon market opening in my trading plan.

I will have to start over again though but since this is the longest run I will do the kelly exercise on the subset of trades so far, just to see how it was doing. Probably not bad because of the +800 Harley Davidson trade, but almost sure in the minus without it.