March 31st

Today was not a trading day for me, as the last week of so have been more in sidelines mode due to playing with new software. So rather than post about trades, even though I did enter a few, I will note some of the thoughts I had as the market progressed.

Keep in mind that this is still sort a blog for me that I have made public for those who might be interested in following along. No great prose or any real new market insights, just a passion that is developing to pursue trading seriously...eventually.

So, on to the juicy part...

Today's pre-market chatter:

My first plan, long with R1 as a target very early in the morning, was wrong for the open but proved itself out later in the day as the price reached R1 nicely at 1400h.

My second plan was to play short if I got stopped out initially and hold through a possible PP move to S1. Seeing as I anticipated an overall ranging day I was thinking about using the PP as a reversion target with possible R1 and S1 swings. Not to far off the mark.

Here is a two day minute chart for Global Gold

Note the price ranging about the same for both days. More or less what was expected for the day.

Here is a new chart for me, the cumulative tick chart for the TSX.

If I have this right the chart represents the number of stocks that close the period, 5 minute in this case, on an uptick minus the number that close on a down tick. The black line represents ZERO where all stocks are trading roughly even which would lead one to think that the market in general is not sure where it is going, the same number trading on up ticks as down ticks. The TSX swings into the low 200's in each direction whereas the NYSE ticks swing out to 800s and larger. That just shows the difference between the number of stocks in each exchange.

I found it interesting, in retrospect, that yesterday's tick was all below zero and today's was all above zero and the price ranges were the same. Like any other indicator I doubt that it means a whole if taken completely on it's own as this represents the market sentiment in general. Gold does not follow the market and often inversely follows it so it is tricky playing gold based on market trendds and news...so I just don't do it.

Anyway, that's the end for March.

Jeff.

March Madness continues...

I could not actually place any trades today...well I could have used the web based order entry but it is so cumbersome I would not want to use it for daytrading. I am waiting for my platform to be re-established under the Pro version. Little wrinkle there.

So in the interest of playing I did some fake trading to just try out a cute early morning strategy.

I figured today was going to be mostly range bound, at least for gold, so I tracked opposing trades in the Horizons BetaPro Global Gold ETFs, bull and bear.

I should mention that I have my RRSP account transferred and accessable so I am no longer restricted to a single trade at any given time...although I have to be a bit careful which trades I make in my TFSA I still want to concentrate on growing it first.

So entering the respective ETF trade based on resistance and support established off the start had me in three trades for some small gains overall. Probably not the best method but I was still playing.

The proper trades would have been in the financial market as that is where the strength was this morning. I entered BNS late as I waited for a nice convergence of SMAs and a pivot point and netted a decent 40 cent move. Ideally I would have been watching this earlier as I saw the strength early on due to now having a page with just my favourite indices and cumulative tick charts. I would have no qualms about entering a small position early based on the indications in the market.

I am going to like working with esignals.

All this boils down to me deciding, or realizing, that while my previous strategies would work, the real comfortable trading is based more on leading information rather than the price of the moment. I now have easy access to some decent information streams to put the information where I need it, when I need it. I will play with putting some of my new charts up, they may not be as pretty as the stockcharts but they are certainly more flexible and better for the live workings.

I am done for today and I have little to do for trading over the weekend other than a bit of reading so I will most likely be back on Monday for some real, and perhaps more serious, trading.

Jeff.

March Madness

That's what it feels like right now...madness.

I downloaded and signed up for a new charting service with a free 30 day trial. I also upgraded to the highest end trading platform that Questrade have, Questrader Elite. Elite and Pro I am sure are just canned platforms from somewhere else as they seem familiar from elsewhere.

So, on scales of 10 the Questrader Elite gets a whopping 0, yep ZERO. I could not find a manual for it anywhere but a lot of the features were in the Pro manual so I just checked it out there. I found it cumbersome and difficult and I could not find anywhere that let me place stop orders. I blew about $60 in commissions and small losses in order to figure out how it works. I ordered a downgrade back to Pro before lunch anyway.

Esignal on the other hand....


The charting package on trial on the other hand is great. I spent the last few days just concentrating on setting it up. I felt that it was important to get it looking good first, playing around with options second and perhaps trying some trading from it last.


I cannot trade directly using it so I still have to use Questrade's platform, which is no big deal. As long as I have either dual monitors or two computers it is good to go.


Functions that I wanted and found are:


- audible adjustable alerts, more than I care to try to list here
- lots of lines
- formulae for auto daily, weekly and monthly pivot point plotting
- formulae for custom applications or modifying existing ones (I already have two mods)
- multiple pages setup for particular purposes, custom as well
- templates for default charts for various purposes
- longer intraday data archiving
- easy chart replay
...and more


The downside are some of the fees that go along with it. $125 per month plus data fees of about $40 for what I need...or want. I think I will be fine with these as I am sure that the functionality with pay for itself over and over again. I had pretty much decided that I needed better data anyway and also that better then I had was not going to be free.


Fee justification.


How's this for justifying the extra fees:


Commissions for a month at 60 trades per = $297
ECN fees, guesstimate = $70
Charting package fee = $125
Data access fees approx = $40
Total monthly costs = $532


Given 60 trades that is $8.86 per trade rather than just the $4.95 from Questrade or if I consistently hit even my 1% average daily goal I have covered the entire costs in two weeks of trading. Later as 1% is a larger absolute gain it will be easier to swallow.

So, here's to getting serious as serious is needed when te costs go up.

Jeff.

March 16th, Return to the basics

Today I played with a return to stocks as opposed to ETFs, at least not ETFs exclusively. I have determined that ETFs are too restricting in the method that needs to be used to trade them intraday. The volume means little to nothing most times as traders scramble to place their best idea on the table while I attempt to take potshots at their offers and bids. The trouble arises in my information is not of the best quality or of the best speed so I am behind the ball when it comes to trying to really call the next move and make the trade.

Stocks, on the other hand, reveal more in their quote stream than does the chart, often. So combining a streaming quote and chart for a stock that is familiar, liquid and moving well enough gives almost all the information that one needs to make good on the fly decisions about placing trades based on ideas formed from the information at hand.

Yamana Resources Inc., YRI.TO.

This stock is one of the stocks held in the Global Gold Index so it is at least as familiar as gold is to me in general, it tracks reasonably well with GD, not as nice as Agnico-Eagle Mines (AEM) but at over $50 AEM is slightly out of reach if I plan on using stops for my trading in my TFSA.

In addition to trying a stock back on for size I decided to use minimum position sizing for each and every trade today. 100 shares. I have been tied down to staying in a trade and not being able to make any other trade at the same time. As much as I want to concentrate on a particular trade I do need to have the flexibility to enter additional positions on other issues, or even adding to the same one should an idea work out well. Seeing as I am trading related stocks and ETFs I figure this is not too great a stretch.

YRI today:

Not a bad trade. 20 cents per share. So only $20 for my single lot gross profits, but that is not specifically the point here. Getting good trades does not mean making loads of cash.

HGU:

I was not even going to do anything with the bull Global Gold ETF but it was setting up so sweet that I couldn't help myself, besides, I kind of wanted to do some simul-trading.

6 cents per share gained. It didn't run like it might have and I didn't exit as early as I could have, letting the stops work for me right now gives me the minimum gains for these small momentum moves...if I am breaking even the end will be catching the larger moves and then seeing profits. So I don't mind.

HGD:

This is my plan now, play the stocks for the up moves, perhaps play the bull ETF in conjunction with those moves and play the bear ETF for the downside...at least until I get going and have some cash to add to my margin account to do some real short selling, then I will probably give up the ETF altogether. I am not as impressed with them as I thought that I might be.

These two trades totaled 4 cents per share gain.

Seeing as everything was 100 shares I lost a bit due to commissions and small position sizing BUT the small sizing let me not have to consider, as much, the downside if I was wrong....Of course I would pick a marginal day (not a loser, just marginal) to drop my sizing.

Today's total are $30 gross, about -$12 net due to commissions and fees. Trading stocks between $8 and $11 @ 100 shares makes it hard to dig out from a $11 commission unless some decent moves are captured well. But that is all part of the game.

Now, had I been trading full positions, I would not have been able to trade HGU as I was in YRI so the totals would be like this:

YRI for 20 cents at 300shares = $60

HGD for 4 cents at 400 shares = $16

Commissions and fees = $36

Net gain = $40.

Considering the small moves today and not much trading to pick from I still would have been happy enough to have seen a small gain.

Jeff.

March, mid month review

This week's trading has me thinking over my trading strategy, kind of a mid month review...or even a post trading review for the last couple of months.

All in all I am down right now. That does not concern me in the least though. I am still testing the trading waters and getting more and more familiar with the market activity. I think that most people might be more concerned in my particular situation than I as there would be an expectation of having made money by this time. My only real concern is that I cannot add any more cash to my TFSA account due to the $5K annual contribution room so that will eventually restrict my trading power should I not turn profits...eventually.

I am waiting for my RRSP to be established in my trading account and I can do the exact same trading in that account so I am not terribly concerned about being restricted over the longer term.

What is a little disconcerting to me is the spiral of the ETF pricing right now. As the bear and bull funds' (Horizons BetaPro Global Gold, HGU and HGD) prices cross the crossover continue to get lower. The last time that I noted the crossing price was somewhere around $12.50. Last week it was about $10.20. Each successive crossing will continue to get lower as the nature of a leveraged ETF drives the valuation down.

This leads me to wonder what will happen to the ETFs as the price gets lower and lower, consolidation, re-valuation, closing of the funds, perhaps they will become a penny stock equivalent.

Recently I have noted the cost of ECN fees as I pay 37 cents per lot when I use a market order, generally. As the price gets lower my position sizing gets larger and my ECN fees climb. Right now with commissions and ECN fee for a round trip trade I am paying about $12. Still a good rate though so perhaps I should not be too concerned.

All this has me looking at stocks again. There are advantages to day trading stocks over ETFs as well. The volume and quotes of the stock mean more than those of an ETF as the ETF follows the valuation of the index it is tracking. The price stands on it's own as it is not dependant upon an index even though an index came be a nice correlating indicator. The disadvantage is that I cannot short inside my accounts of choice.

So, this is not so much a review as a bit of a rambling. Later today I will be going over all of my charts and trades to come up with a better more concrete set of guidelines for trade entries. I will still continue trading the ETFs at least until the end of March but I hope to have a more flexible entry and exit strategy. I am fixed in one mindset for a day and that usually is based on the previous day or two and whatever method I am considering at the open. That has been most of my downfall I believe. This past week was the week for playing with stops so I was looking for larger moves. Some of my entries were decently profitable had I been just exiting based on weaknesses, enough that I would at least have been up overall.

Jeff

March 13th, perhaps I should be superstitious?

I am not superstitious but I do recognize that superstitions do affect other peoples' decisions, even if unconsciously. Did that have a factor in my trading on Friday? Probably not.

S&P Global Gold index chart:

Not a pretty day for me. I took trades in the wrong direction and did not have the agility to reverse the trade to make any profit from the resulting moves. My one right direction entry was stopped out for the sake of a penny. I was too quick in moving my stop to try to get me 'into the money".

Friday trading bites me once again.

Jeff.

March 12th, getting into the real use of stops again

Today was a day to try out the stop orders again for the first time in many months. The trouble with testing out a variety of things is that the real profitability of a trade is secondary to the testing of the function. As a result I was in a little bit of a hurry to get some trades in to get my stops set and I picked slightly wrong timings on the midday trades.

Here is the chart for the day, the red box was the only profitable real trade of the day. Overall it was not a great day for trying stops out as the moves were not that large.

Stop setting in Questrade's Questrader Pro is simple enough but you have to enter the price twice, once in the stop field and once in the limit field. They have to be the same number so I don't know why they bother with the limit field anyway. Once the stop order is placed and accepted it is an easy matter to adjust it. Right click on the pending order and select "modify", ratchet the prices (again, both the stop and limit) and hit OK. The old order is cancelled and the new order placed rather quickly.

Interesting note about the stops getting activated. I normally expect that the stop price, say $11.80, would get triggered upon the bid reaching that price. It does not until an order is placed at that price. I am sure that this is a change from the way it was when I first starting trading as my stops would be activated upon the bid hitting my stop price.

Anyway, my midday trade that turned a profit was less profitable than it might normally have been as I was letting the stop do the work for me. I could have exited for almost 10 cents ps more than I did but chose to leave the price have some breathing room. Today was not that kind of day though and I should have realized that. Oh well.

Jeff.

March 11th

I think that I will no longer carry on about not making the trades. When I decide to track a trade the only difference between my tracking and the actual execution is about 30 milliseconds should I actually hit the order button. Seeing as my day is interrupt driven I have little control over my missed entries . This is why I am starting to lean more toward a stop controlled position as I am able to enter the trade and if it moves in my favour I set a stop and check it every once in a while. Should it move against me I will exit quickly as I do not intend to let a trade get behind my entry parameters. I may be wrong on the trade direction or wrong on the timing.

I can set alerts on my platform to tell me of price moves within certain boundaries. I need to play with those once I have a longer term active trade to see how they work though.

I will continue to use the working capital as the basis for my progress though.

Having said that, I will mention if a trade was using hindsight if it was not tracked live as this is all about studying the charts and my focus is on live data streams and real decisions based on those live streams.

Today started out as a nice trending day. The chart is self explanatory. The box represents the trade tracked.

S & P Global Gold: Click on the chart for a larger view.

Questrade, Daylight Savings and Pre-Market Trading

Questrade have a quirk in their QuestraderPro platform, perhaps this exists in the Elite version as well, that it (they) does not acknowledge the new daylight savings time change.

This makes all the charts and quotes appear as if they are one hour late. At 1000h the charts show 0900h.

The only way to get around this is to click on the little clock in the lower right corner of each chart to display the pre and post market trading, otherwise you will not see the fist hour of trading in the morning. It is a little disconcerting at first but manageable. I have not bugged them about it again this year yet though.

The trades happen in real time as the time on the platform does not affect the order process.

This quirk led me to seeing the pre-market activity that I knew was there but was ignoring. I was trying to gauge the opening price based on other markets, which is not necessary but I liked to try to predict where the opening will happen. I do not bad. So I saw yesterday that it was tracking along since 0830h.

ETFs do not appear to be traded pre market, although I thought they were capable there was no activity this morning at all.

Now I am reminded of this additional tool to use to gauge some of the morning activity...right after I pretty much exclude the early morning from my sights in favour of the more established trending patterns of late morning and afternoon trading.

Ultimately this is mostly inconsequential but an interesting exercise that may be useful while managing stops on medium term trades in future.

Jeff.

March 10th, MACD

Today's chart for Global Gold:


I added the MACD after noting that the pattern would be a positive divergence, it fit to a "T". I feel that is one of the keys in trading is to get to know the price movement without having to rely on additional indicators.

The prime trade of the day started before the London market was closed, the setup was nice and the index was bucking the London market as well as the TSE. This pattern would be the SPTGD heading down, the London heading up the most likely outcome would be that when the London market closed the upward pressure would abate leaving the SPTGD to continue to find it's bottom.

I am finding less need to label some of these patterns or to even log them as a library of trade setups as they are becoming more and more apparent as I keep reviewing these days and going over the trades and fake trades of each day. Familiarity is the key. I just need to turn the key more often to produce some consistent gains based on these very same setups and calls.

I did figure out one of the reasons that I have not made most of these trades. I feel a need to perform out of a need, rather than just a desire. I do not NEED the income from trading therefore I do not NEED to actually make the trades. Perhaps this is a form of risk aversion. I do have a desire to know how all this works and be able to prove, at least to myself , that I am capable of trading profitably. I am doing that.

Jeff.

March 9th, the day

I posted the first trade earlier...the completion was HGD from $8.96 to a stopped exit at $9.08. A 12 cent per share gain. An OK trade.

Here is the chart for the Global Gold Index for today:

I noted that I anticipated a drop off the close of the London market. The reason is due to the pattern that seems to be reasonably apparent upon checking the FTSE against the Global Gold for each morning. The general trend is that if the SPTGD is wallowing and the FTSE is heading either up or down then the SPTGD will most likely head in the opposite direction of the FTSE upon closing. Seems to be a trading tension thing, I recognize the pattern but I have not investigated it's real reasoning. For now I will trade with it and see how it goes.

Today was a $134 net day. Not a bad start.

I tried tracking the moves of previous days for SPTGD and calculating the rough percentage returns possible with a few trades following my updated rules. I figured that I might be able to make better than that return as the ETFs are leveraged 2x. I calculated the return today and found that I did better then the GD index tracking by about 140%. So that follows my 30% fudge factor closely.

Jeff.

March 9th, initial trial...not by choice

Today is the first day of implementing my newer rendition of my PP200 trading plan by incorporating the London effect and a long haul approach to exiting the trades. My initial intent was to just come out fighting and trade these calls for real to see some profits or performance reflected in the cold hard numbers on the account balance. That was not to be the case, once again.

As I type I am in the middle of a trade that I was prepared to take as I watched the moving averages converge and squeeze the price out. I ended up having to take a call that I could not put off so I just jotted down the worst case inside quote entry price. Had I had 60 seconds more before the call came in I would have been in the trade and still been able to take the call based on my stop approach allowing me to not have to track the trade so closely.

HGD at $ 8.96.

The momentum took the price of HGD up to $9.10 quickly and I placed my stop at the breakeven point of $8.99. I chose to follow the 50sma of HGD for stop movement for now so I have my stop moved up to $9.02.

Note that these will be real stop loss orders placed when I am trading these for real. I am liking the idea of letting the price run rather than sweating over every penny and deciding to take the profit or let it run...well...I don't actually sweat about it, it was fun, but the relaxed approach is a much better plan to use over the longer term. I can still get some regular stuff done while the trade progresses.

It is worth noting that our daylight savings time is not followed by those across the ocean so the London market is now open until 1200h our time instead of 1100h. Interestingly my entry point shifted exactly one hour later, helping to prove my point and giving me that much more confidence in my new method.

As I finish this post my virtual trade is at $9.11 (inside bid) and my stop is at $9.06. My profit, if stopped is $40 based on a 400 share position, less $12 in commissions. $28 tax free for the sake of placing the trade and moving a stop every once in awhile. It's only the beginning.

Jeff.

March 6th, the waiting game

Today was a no trade day as last night I decided to just watch. Very often I give myself a little kick when I do this as my trade calls are either bang on or just good movers after one or two mediocre trade calls. Today was no different. Here are the charts for the day, I posted both the Global Gold and the related trading ETF to show the actual trade plottings this time.

Global Gold in the AM:

The corresponding HGU chart for the major trade:


The Global Gold for the afternoon:


The corresponding HGD for the trades:

Total trades for HGU captured 53 cents ps at 300 shares grossed $159

Total trades for HGD captured 69 cents ps at 500 shares grossed $345

Even assuming one or two false starts that is a very good return.

Jeff.

March 5th

No trading day today. I decided to watch the London effect up to 1100h. Their market was declining and the Global Gold jumped off the start then chopped about right up to 1100h. I was going to just place a trade at an opportune technical entry where indicated on the chart but I was not in a situation to monitor a trade properly so I let it slide, I jotted down the price and set three exit plans up to see what would happen.

The red lines and notes are the normal exits that I might take given a jumpy morning market expectation, out at the first sign of weakness to capture my profits.

Green lines are a more moderate method using pivot points and/or moving average crossovers at the 50sma.

Blue is the long haul trade of the day of just entering and setting my stop just above my entry to capture a minimum of profit, then resetting the stop as each of my targets are passed. convincingly. That would basically follow the 200sma with perhaps a little jump to the 1/2 R2 once it was crossed then just exiting at the end of the day.

Needles to say the long haul was the most profitable today. I intend to go back and review the last 20 days of intraday trading to see the real effect of the London market then to see how a long haul approach may work for more relaxed trading. As long as I see a small profit in a day I feel, without checking yet, that I may capture more of the larger moves. Starting later in the day appeals to me, fits my schedule better and just going in to check stops a few times sounds interesting. I likely will not trade tomorrow.

Jeff.

TSE, Global Gold and the London market influence

I noticed something in my review today that really made me think and take a closer look at things.

I knew how the market had been affected by the Eastern and European markets over this week.

I watch the 24 hour gold prices to judge opening prices for indices, ETFs and stocks here.

I have noted how gold varies depending upon which market is open at the time.

These points added to today's observation led me to check something out a little more thoroughly. I expected that today may have had an up day overall following the modest gains started in the Nikkei and followed through in London. I noted how our market was choppy (I lost a bit as a result which is partly what prompted my closer look) then, rather than continuing to rise it started dropping almost as if it drove over a steep embankment moments after 1100h.

So London was not a great influence once closed and we must have been fighting their move up the whole time. I have noted this in related stocks once it is determined that one is fighting the other, one capitulates and they both head in the same direction with great gusto.

Red vertical line is 1100h.

So what the heck happened at 1100h to prompt such a drastic change in the market?

London closed.

I have noted how not having the NYSE open on offset holidays affects the TSE, so why not London?

I checked the last 10 days. Following is a 10 minute chart (just a little cleaner) with the green lines representing the TSE/NYSE open, the red lines represent the London close.

It is plainly obvious that the market takes a shift at 1100h or minutes afterward. Sometimes it is a sudden change in direction, sometimes it is just a correction or a smoothing out of the movement. Only one day out of 10 was the market move unchanged, last Tuesday and I am not sure why, perhaps it was Obama's address day or something as I recall the market not having a favourable response and that would be a large enough North American influence to be able to ignore the European markets.

I recall a professional trader saying once that he always waited until 1030h before even looking at the market for his daytrading. He never mentioned why but I suspect that he was looking for the change in direction at 1100h to make his first lucrative trade entry.

I am going to try just that tomorrow and see what happens, ignore the market altogether and not be fretting over moves missed prior to the tumultuous morning period when we are fighting the influence of another market. That certainly explains a lot.

Jeff.

March 4th, PM

Chart for the Global Gold Index.

The afternoon trading seems to be a bit more relaxed than the morning trading. Nice single passes through the various points of entry, perhaps a test here and there. These trades have about 3.5% return based on the index. Using the Beta Pro ETFs that are twice the return that would make them a 7% return on the actual trades...allowing for fudges and spreads that would be about 5%.

My estimates mean nothing as I need to get some decent trades in at these times when the charts are not so choppy, but they are interesting. That seems to be my lot in trading is to only be in when the market is churning, go figure.

Jeff.

March 4th

Here is the Global Gold Index chart for the morning trading. This time, as I mentioned, I did some trading and got caught in the morning churn. The overall up day that I was anticipating did not happen as of yet, but that is of little concern as I follow what the averages, pivot points and price movement are doing, so even a bias is not that big a deal.

I should have stopped trading sooner than I did once I realized what was going on...or more appropriately, what was not going on. The spreads were unusually wide, as much as five cents at a time which is unusual and probably is a good sign that the market is undecided...now this is only in the ETFs HGU and HGD. So there were no defined moves.

It should be noted that these quotes do not drive the market as they are reflecting the sentiment of ETF traders. Seeing as they were unsure I should have just stayed out. A good chunk of the actual loss of each trade was due to the spread as I entered three or so cents farther away than I needed in a lot of cases. I saw a number of even 100 lot quotes on both sides and about as far away from the inside bids, they did some dancing about as well. I suspect that these were the market makers doing their job of providing the necessary liquidity as they showed up when the quotes were very thin for quite some ways away from the inside. I definitely stayed away then as the spreads were larger and the price was flitting about.

I happened to try to trade off of the averages a bit. I should know better than to do that when they are so close to one side of a pivot zone. Although my rules were fine for yesterday and Monday I think that I will change my entry criteria a bit for tomorrow. Use the averages ONLY to determine if a trade has too narrow a target, the good ol' squeeze play. Confluences must be more confluent.

So, taking my plan back to some bare bones entry criteria now to eliminate the questionable trades and only sticking to those that are more defined. I think this will give me fewer trades as I use patience to wait for the setups, perhaps I will employ some limit orders again as they slow me down a bit. I never had enough of a move today to use them but I was going to use some manually trailing stops had I got on the right side of a decent moving trade.

Overall another learning day.

Jeff.

March 4th commentary

Monday the eastern markets dropped, Tuesday they dropped, I tracked some very nice trades as a result of those days as I knew, or expected, a similar trend in the TSE. At the very least a fairly wide swing. I was not able to actually get into the trades, which was too bad.

So, my trend has been to track some very profitable days only to decide to jump in the next day and get churned about in a tight ranging market. Today has been no exception.

The worst of today is I knew that the Eastern markets had at least gained a little, which would lead me to believe that the TSE would be rather tight...or at least Global Gold would be as I pay closer attention to that than the market in general.

So a few small profits and more small losses as I get whipsawed out of trades. I should have waited for the moving averages to close the gap to 1/2 R1. I kind of expected an up day, but overall. If I could have called the bottom I would have done OK but the bottom did not correspond with any of my indicators, so no bottom trades. Although once it was established I could have made two bottom trades as there are three bottoms around the $299.50 mark. Once again, not on any of my indicators so I left them.

I will do some more trading a little later and see how it goes.

Jeff.

March 3rd, PM

Chart for Global Gold Index in the afternoon.



There was an extra $124 net in these trades. Not bad for a couple of hours trading. So today's total would be $343. Applying my various fudges, 30% reduction is $240, dropping my top two trades leaves $148. Either way the return is tax free so I would take them.

Jeff.

March 3rd, the AM, stuck on gold still.

Annotated chart for the Global Gold Index for the morning activity.

As usual red arrows indicate a short trade (Long HGD the bear fund)and the green are long trades (long on HGU the bull fund).

This is a far quicker method of noting these trades. It makes it easier to review them for me so they must be easier for someone else to read as well.

I am playing with a manual method of trailing stops so I am not actually trading these but using the stops to check how much of a particular move I may take. I was having trouble getting too far in the red on trades last week, even though they were small losses the small loss adds to the commission cost and drives down my profits. I determined that the stops are not great at profit protection (I knew this but it is a good reminder, they are called stop loss after all) so I will use them to keep me from taking a greater loss than I planned on and to also act as a safety in the case that I have a connection problem like I did last week.

My tracked trades today netted $219 prior to the noon hour. I was only able to use 300 shares per trade due to the price being around the $10 plus mark. The last trade was nice in that I used the stops and did not jump them too soon, I figured that since I was far enough into profits that I could let it sit until the next target was reached before moving it up...it worked to keep me in the trade past that little consolidation period.

Jeff.

March 2nd the afternoon missed...chart analysis

Oh well. I considered trading in the afternoon, stuff came up so I was not near a computer long enough to check any of this.

While I may not be actually trading every day I feel that it is still important to analyze the charts afterward, and during in some cases, to stay familiar with the action and to notice any particular patterns that emerge that may have been missed otherwise.

I have changed my format a bit here so rather than carrying on about the trades I put the notes right on the chart. I figure this keeps my word count down, makes the notations mean more and makes the written notes relevant right where they are needed. I used to do this for my charts and I found it problematic due to all the lines and notes I used to keep. Now with the pivot points and the simple moving averages being all that are on the chart it is a much cleaner notation environment and easier to keep up. So just click on the chart for the full view and you will see pretty much everything.

Do Keep in mind that these are as much for me to keep track of my ramblings as they may be for others to read. So if anything isn't clear and you would like it to be then let me know. Otherwise, read or ignore at your leisure.

So here is The Global Gold Index for the afternoon trading:

I did a quick estimate on the trades in the PM, out of curiosity and found 51 cents per share (at 400 shares over four trades that is $156 net.

I am finding that in order to be consistently profitable I think that more time might need to be spent in front of the computer. While I am not trying to scalp every small move with huge position sizing, the "classic" day trading stereotype, I don't think that I can do the 1 hour in the morning and be profitable every day due to the large and fast moves early on. They are great when they materialize but they are a little aggressive, not to say that I won't trade them though.

Jeff.

March 2. The morning missed

"...The Asian markets are taking a hit...".

I am not one to trade on news but the opening markets on the other side are a very good indicator for the morning bias, especially when the news is "bad". So, even though I had decided to not trade I did keep one of my charts up to see what was happening while I did the mundane regular work that I am required to do.

Global Gold Index. This is the morning activity. As usual red arrows are for short (buying HGD bear fund) and green are for long (HGU bull fund).

I may change one of my rules to allow for more trend following trades rather than playing in the chop. Usually one or two days a week exhibit a really good initial trend and that can be traded far more profitably than trying to get in on the chop.

Today was a nice example of one of those days. Even though the first trade setup was minutes into the morning I would have jumped on as the price peaked and passed 1/2 R1. For reference the HGD entry price was about $8.65 (playing 5 cents higher than my likely entry). The price dropped so cleanly through the primary pivot point (PP in blue) that there was no way I would have bailed on this trade. The price dropped to just below the 50sma, a decision moment as it hovered between the 50 and the 200smas..."Asian markets are taking a hit", the bias is still down for me. There was no rally back above the 50 and that was the sell point for me at this point.

Gap down under the 200sma, now breaking above the 200 would be my sell point. It held and plummeted yet again clean through the 1/2 S1, no sell trigger here either. The price bounced off of the S1 and I would most likely have sold here...but...I held a strong bias to the downside and I had $260 unrealized gain so far...I could afford to hold through and I may have with a very firm mental stop...with this much of a paper profit I probably would have placed a stop order to secure $200 and it would not get hit as it turned out. This is a good application of a VTSO of about 15 cents...that is hindsight though. I would ratchet this manually at 10 cent increments once the price has moved 20 cents away from my stop, raise it 10 cents. Should I want I can just keep moving the stop tighter to secure more profits or cancel the stop and place a market to exit.

I would use the stop moving only after a decent profit is already built in and I had a good feeling about the move. This method this morning would have captured me $1.25 per share...at 400 shares that is a nice $500. I used a trial forex account last evening to practise my stop moving as I have not used stops in a while. Made a decent chunk of virtual change for my playing too. It appears that pivot points have their place in forex just as in stocks...and 24 hour trading.

On the flip side the price followed a very similar pattern back up. The first trade, using the profit stop at 10 cent increments would have kept me in until the time at the 200sma when I would have exited anyway. Getting back in would have been clean right after passing the S1 line on the upside. Nice couple or few trades there as well but I didn't calculate the profits, about 70 cents possible capture though.

All in all a good day had I been in the market. If this follows true to form what will happen is that I will decide to trade tomorrow and the day will be flat and I will have to fight for pennies again. This will just point out that my idea of having to be in the market every day in order to capture the larger moves is better than trying to pick the day that a large move may occur.

Jeff.