Day three and position sizing comes up again

Today we had a busy day, 7 trades open and closed. The session ran on though and there were some that had to stay after class... in the interest of finding out what they did wrong to end up stuck in some positions when they should have been out. These were a handful of the new people this week, so it was interesting. I stuck around just out of curiosity.

Today was a $148 day, tax free so it is equivalent to a $246 taxable day. Seeing as $250 was my initial target I figure that $150 in he TFSA is the same target and a decent start. My TFSA average day is $119... yesterday was a $2.30 day... it happens.

We are starting to make more use of stop losses rather than continuing to ride a trade as all of the trades entered this week have been closed on the same day. I don't mind as the longer term plays I am getting into with the other services are for that style of swing trading anyway.

Position sizing today was ranging as I had everything from 1 to 6 contracts per trade... 6 was actually two 3 contract positions in the same contract though. If I considered all trades taken in the three days of TFSA trading thus far as 5 contract trades my daily average would bump up to $403. Now I would need to have a larger capital base to work from and I expect to be there in some short order. I know that $500 days are the target but I would like to aim higher. That may just mean sharpening my trading skills to get in and out of trades faster than the rest of the group and to that end I played with the trading platform a bit today to try out some trade entry tricks to streamline the process.

I have been entering the stock symbol in the option box window to get the contract chains up, which is fine, but was finding the price entry cumbersome trying to click on the price box and enter the price. I found that opening an alternate window gives all the level two style bid / asks which lets me just click on the price I want. Adjusting the price by pennies is just a matter of hitting the arrow keys then hit buy/sell.

Our entries have gone from holding firm to suggested limit order prices to entering "around the range" suggested. I have to have faith that paying a nickle or dime more will not adversely affect the final outcome enough to worry about. In that vein I figure that selecting the ask then entering the order as a limit will get me in with an upper limit on what I will pay. Hitting the ask is about as fast as a market order without the risk of getting a poor fill. In fact I did that today and on one trade I got a 17 better price than expected, which was also 17 cents lower than the highest suggested entry. I made a better trade than the group as a result...sadly it was for a single contract and my exit was later than I wanted as it was closed later in the day... but still at target.

The biggest topic discussed tends to be the importance of a good direct access broker. I like the speed of execution and prices attained through Questrade so I don't expect to switch. I know there are some cheaper brokers in the US that I might be able to use but I figure that the tax advantage of the TFSA far outweighs the possible lower commissions.

I am looking forward to tomorrow's trading and honing my speed of executions some more. As much as I like the idea of trading with a bunch of like minded people I am finding that in order to be successful the others almost have to be considered competition... after all, we are all after the same trades. Today I managed to get into every single trade. Yesterday I think that I missed two... I recall them being two of the more profitable ones two. I've got to take them all to average out the possibility of loser trades eating up capital.