I had been rather looking forward to doing the trading full time this week. And as if the markets knew this, they have thrown me a really tough week for starters.
Monday was just hideous. A mistake in the morning drops me 60 points, then the late afternoon sees some wild back and forward moves in crude oil, guaranteed to confuse the trading systems. Around 5:45 there occurs a 140 pt fall in 30 mins followed immediately by 70 pt rally ion the next 15, then a 75 pt fall and a 11o pt rally, all in the space of two hours - nearly 400pts of bar-swing in 8 bars!. The swing trading system hated this, recording a near 200 pt loss for the day - its worst since records began. Moreover this was all so annoying as the swings were pretty much the exact size to catch the system - for the sake of one or two points, 65 points would be lost.
Tuesday was much better. One losing trade first thing, followed by a long and slow uptrend that lasted pretty much the whole of the trading day. 120 pts made back.
Wednesday was a small losing day, -40. But Thursday was another nasty, prompted mainly by the economic data at 1:30p.m. I enter this long US equities and long crude oil. A very brief upmove on the day then a fast sell off. Crude oil drops 50 points in the next few minutes taking out my stops and fliiping the systems to short. Worse is to follow. Crude then rallies 100 pts in the next 45 minutes taking out the short stops and leaving me flat. Had I done no trades from just before the data, I would have been up 40 pts by 14:15. Instead I am down 80. I hate "V" shaped moves.
So I am back showing a 120 pt loss for the week - I had forgotten how traumatising trading could be and suspect that in the run up to the exams I was somewhat distracted from this fact. But now it is there in all its glory. Might this be the first losing week since records began?
But things pick up again late on Thursday - I make another mistake in calculating a trade entry which costs 30 pts but then crude oil settles in a solid enough downtrend and most of the weeks loss has been made back by 18:00
No doubt this pattern of up- and down-fortune will become an everyday occurance going forward
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment