From my Tradervue report I can see that my average hold time for scratch, winning, and losing trades for the first half of this week is 1, 7 and 4 minutes respectively.
That means I am cutting my losers, letting my winners work and am avoiding adverse excursion when I enter improperly or have a trade quickly go against me.
The part of my game I’ve recently improved most are my entries. I am nailing them. I aggress improperly (you may recall SIN 1 – FOMO’ING IN, BETTER TO MISS THAN BAD FILL and SIN 9 – ENTERING A CONSOLIDATION IN THE MIDDLE IMPATIENTLY RATHER THAN WAITING TO PASSIVELY ENTER FROM THE SIDE) much less frequently. Aggressing is tricky because sometimes you do want to aggress after a break.
At other times in the current market regime there are many failed breaks. It’s situationally dependent.
That said, I actively avoid entering when I am liable to be quickly “out of position” and I am avoiding making plays based around certain orders that, if adjusted which is free for them to do, can leave me high and dry without exit liquidity. In a sense I am playing a more protected game.
“Calling BS” on a stock getting overextended and then turning over is a core part of both my nature and my current playbook. It’s tricky as you may be aggressing short into a pullback that will consolidate and reclaim highs. Then you’re offsides with the symbol ripping against you and will likely experience slippage on the way out.
Below are two symbols that had massive intraday rallies where my entries were top notch.
I believe these spots were highly asymmetric as so many long positions are either taking profits or panic selling trying to get out before the position moves against them more.
What I need to think about now are my exits! And the reasons for why, how and when to take size off. So many of my exits are short sighted and fearful. Great entries, terrible exits.
What I don’t want to do is confuse two trade ideas though. If I am taking a quick scalp that is different than how to manage size in an hour+ long position. Sometimes when I short overextended tops, it’s only meant to capture that initial leg down. At the time I didn’t consider for EITHER of these trades that they had the potential for 5%+ pullbacks. Yet in hindsight, clearly that was on the table.
Each time I get out prematurely, I’ve been thinking to myself: “Let the trade work!”
Sometimes I’ll run a timer in our software to caution me to stay in the trade for X duration longer.
Sometimes I’ll set my exits for winners and losers and flip the tab so I can’t see it.
Sometimes I’ll sit there patiently thinking about the reasons to stay in or cut early.
Sometimes I’ll be debating with myself and have my fear override my rationality and hit out.
Clearly some of these are novice practices and thoughts. I’m working on it. Let the trade work!
$XNDU
$QCOM
Reviewing my winning trades is just as important as reviewing my losing ones. I’m very happy with my process. I update my trade log and daily report card religiously and have been doing great prep in between sessions. Truly I’ve been putting a massive effort in to improving my trading and it feels like it while I am executing. The quality of my executions is increasing dramatically. I’m clicking less, in more symbols. My entries are much sharper. I’m holding trades for longer durations. I’m expanding my playbook and refining my core trades within it. After each session I review my trades in our charting software and look for details I missed, evaluate the likelihood of different outcomes and assess the quality of my entry/exit reasoning.
I have buried the lede. After executing sharply on Mon & Tues this week, I upped my size substantially & prematurely. I am impatient, I know that. If you could sit where I sit and see what I see and feel what I feel, you would understand. I have such an incredible system in front of me and if I am able to have my fingers dutifully follow my mind in real time, I believe I am already capable of trading profitably. I know that gets harder as you increase your size as there are other challenges for getting fills in some spots and generally managing positions appropriately requires comfort which becomes more difficult as your position is larger. I know all these things. But I did it anyway.
I’m up $5k on the week going into Friday’s trading today and am very proud of my trading overall. This is definitely the highest quality week of inputs to date and I have kept my cool while sustaining larger losses on individual trades.
All I want to do is size appropriately and trade with full emotional control today to close out the week.
It’s my job to execute at a consistently high level.
At this point I just want to execute at the level I am capable of.
Cheers, OTN.