Weeks Profit +£750
I've had a good week, I've scalped cautiously and traded lightly (again). I'm not too far away from being able to live on that kind of net income.
I achieved my target of 5 consecutive profitable days! I still can't quite believe I couldn't catch anything more than £20 yesterday in a 200 point upward move but most of that happened in one wild swing pre-market on NFP and jobs news and was followed by a slow grind higher.
As I've written (and am doing so again to remind myself) I'm a scalper and I trade on volatility that just didn't happen yesterday. it's not my style to take a position and wait for hours for the rise/fall, I don't enjoy that kind of trading.
My scalping performance produced the following:
Monday +£100
Tuesday +£70
Wednesday +£200
Thursday +£360
Friday +£20
My weeks performance
A few words spring to mind: disciplined, patient, cautious. I followed last week's path of less trading and mostly all around 2.30 to 3pm. I'm even more pleased with the trades I didn't make. There were a number of times the 'me' of a couple of months ago would have come in, experience now tells me otherwise and each time I was right not to. That's progress and it pleases me even more than making a successful trade.
I called for a DOW trading range 15850-16200, again I was pretty accurate, the low being 17797 and high 16127. I called the floor at 15750 and so far we've avoided that and it looks like we won't see that anytime soon.
I was a better trader this week than last, I'm learning from mistakes and I was totally disciplined about trading early and calling it a day. I set alerts in the off chance that a support level I fancied a re-entry came good, one was 50 points and miles away but we actually came within 5 points before flying again. That would have been a great opportunity, it didn't happen but I was right to do it and I may catch the next one or the one after that.
Overall a very positive week. My overall position is irrelevant. I've learned that the fastest way to blow my account is to chase losses. I address my screen each day with the ambition of finishing with more money than I awoke to. Follow that and I'll be a successful trader.
'till tomorrow when I shall post my weekly preview.
Hi, a great week, well done. Posting a full positive in my world would be a fantastic achievement. You can draw a lot of positives from this and build from here. I gain some good points for the week only to loose them and more by overtrading and too tight stop losses. Regards BW
ReplyDeleteHi BW, thanks for your kind words. From your comments about your own trading two points stand out:
ReplyDelete1) You've told me the solution to your first problem, trade less! That falls under discipline.
2) How do you arrive at your stop loss? Is it a set number of points? A set figure? What timeframes are you trading? What instruments?
Tight stop losses can be worse than trading without. Also if you're trading in the direction of the trend you can afford a much wider stop loss as there's more chance of your trade coming right than if you're counter trend.
Best of luck!
Hi, I trade ftse and Dow in pm/ eve. 15min charts and s/l based around S&R's. Small trading account which I think is keeping my stops too tight. Working towards consistent pips and compounding later. Thanks for your input, good points for me to think on. Regards BW.
ReplyDeleteMorning BW, It's impossible to trade with an underfunded account. One of the reasons I'm having moderate success now is because I adequately funded my account. Insufficient margin makes you take decisions you would not normally do such as tighter stop losses.
ReplyDelete