Real account
Long Tele
200 Shares
Reason of closure: stop loss got hit
Opening rate: 48.1
Opening time: 3/15/2016 10:27 AM
Close rate: 47.66
Close time: 3/15/2016 11:28 AM
Amount risked: around € €88
Net P/L:
€-88.00
Chart
Green arrow is where I opened position and red arrow is where it got closed. Chart is a 15 min chart.
Current equity: €4 726.67
Personal notes
The broken record continues, AGAIN it went against me as soon as I opened, this time on my real account. I dont think its a bad trade, it matched my criteria. This system is more discretionary than what Im trying to cook up on my demo account though. The only thing that bothers me is that I first decided not to take the trade cause it started the day in the negative AND most but not all stocks in my watchlist were starting there too. Later, around the time I opened my position, the stock was positive and more stocks in my watchlist became positive as well (for the day so far) . Still the thought crossed my mind that having taken a trade when I first doubted it never turned out good so far. Not sure if that is true but that was the feeling....but feelings can trick you I am well aware of that. A way to track this is to write down my thought process before I take the trade as well, so at least I can track this stuff.
Another thing I could do is make my real account system more mechanical and less discretionary. Then again, I still am making profit since september when I started trading properly. So why change a system that still seems to be working? Although I guess I am not 100% confident in it yet, else I would commit more money to it.
Another observation is again that once a trade is going against you, it will continue to go against you. Rarely have I ever seen that it goes near my stop loss and then recovers to make a profit. It goes straight through it and well beyond it in most cases. Reason the more to make them tighter. That will result in being taken out more often AND afterwards to go in the right direction which can and will be super frustrating. Thats why stop losses should always be set in stone (in my opinion). But my losers will lose much less. I came to the same conclusion in my demo account after all. I will first analyse some of the charts I posted here of the losers and winners of my real account before deciding to narrow down my stop loss.
One last thing, the last couple of trades were all going against me as soon as I opened which looks like the market or my broker is out to get me, luckily it wasnt all on my real account. I guess this is something every trader goes through sooner or later and starts to doubt his system. This happened to me on two different systems albeit similar ones. But I think its more a streak of bad luck. I also play poker and in many ways playing poker is the same as trading, good players can make consistent profit in the long run, over many many games by abiding to their system and play the cards they're handed the best way possible. Risk/reward management is also super important in poker. Anyways, sometimes you have evenings that EVERY time you have a good hand, someone else has a slightly better one causing you to lose a lot of chips. Up to the point you start thinking they are cheating (broker analogy) or the deck is stacked against you (market is out to get you analogy). This is exactely the same feeling with trading, but since I know it also exists in poker and they are somewhat similar I am going to assume this is bad luck and I am going to assume the statistics will balance it out in the long run. Sometimes in poker you also get lucky, that can happen here too. There will be times you will win big with trading too. Anyway, enough ranting. Action points so far:
An action point I have already for my real account is to write down my thought process before I take a trade as well.
One thing to note is that after a gap (up or down) into your direction its best to close your position, after a gap it usually stabilizes so best to reel in any profits. If the trend seems to continue you can always enter again later (3 days later according to the current system)
