Monday June 8th, play testing again.

Today was a day to play. I decided to not trade, I resisted for all but one trade and I timed it just plain wrong.

I broke the charts into AM and PM for clarity as I may refer to these later, seeing as this is a journal of sorts, and I would like to be able to see more of the detail.

First is the TICK for the AM with the green trade setup arrows and the black trade arrows. From the top are the SDS trades and from the bottom are the SPY trades...I decided to stick with SPY rather than SSO for a variety of reasons.

Any setup arrow not followed by a black trade arrow means that the trade was determined not a good entry due to chart indicators, upcoming resistance, pivot points, 200sma, already in a trade and a variety of others.

Here is the chart for SPY. Note that the first setup arrow without a trade was while in a trade already. I probably would not have entered here as the price was approaching the 200sma as potential resistance. The second was basically the same situation. Not a high probability entry

SDS chart for the AM.

The green lines indicating the stop adjustments are placed real time, as much as they appear to be set to match the price activity after the fact, they are not.

The afternoon TICK chart. Notice how it gets rather hairy in the late afternoon. It is good to be in a trade before this goes nuts as trying to pick an entry is tough when the volume spikes.

SPY in the PM. With better stop management I could have stayed in the first trade for the whole period but I got a little close and stopped out. I considered getting a real trade on the last one but I decided to stick to my plan as it could have easily gone against me...even though most of today's trades went positive.

I am always concerned when my play testing works out so well and the wind rate, let alone the win value, is so high. I know I use the same ideas that I might while trading live but I think that I let the stops go wider longer than when I trade for real. This gets me stopped out too soon on runners and at a loss sometimes when it turns right afterwards. Most of today's play trades were 20 cents on SPY and 15 cents on SDS for initial stop settings.

I'll work out the numbers on these later.

Jeff.