June 1st, new month, new outlook

Today was a day of learning.

That noon trade that I was monitoring got ahead of me, I left it ride and when I came back to it the price had climbing and pulled back steep enough that my stop was likely to get hit. I have learned in the past not to adjust a stop if the price is moving fast, especially on high volume, which this was. In modifying the stop the system cancels the first and reorders the second. I have had these rejected as the stop loss cannot be placed higher than the trading price. I have also had them get placed but the delay is large enough that the price just keeps going and I get a poor closing price. So I left it fro a very small profit.

Here is the TICK chart for the day.

I know it is not the clearest in the worked but I decided to not break the day into AM / PM portions for time constraints. It is pretty clear that trades 2 through 6 were at least at the beginning of the TICK trend change. I need to work on my stops and my earlier entries as I get in a little later than I would like but my TICK timing at least doesn't get me nailed to the wall chasing a price and being way out of whack and getting whipsawed. Some of these trades were held for a longer period of time than my normal, which is a good sign all of it's own.

Chart for SDS and the three trades with the green stop lines.

Of these trades, 2 and 4 were not so great, small loss though. 6 was one of the more profitable of the day as I realised that I need to keep my stop tighter so I managed to snag the exit at the first pullback. I would not have tried for more as the 390VWMA was very close (the pinkish heavy line). i considered more momentum reversion style trades but decided I did not have earlier profits to play with.

Chart for SSO with it's three trades and stop lines.

Obviously missing that morning run up was a shame. #1 was a false start as I may have gotten in earlier or later for a better price so I ended up in #3 instead at the same price. Paying closer attention to #3 would have gained me another few cents at the end as I should have been up just below the 50 SMA and even tighter as the price approached the purple monthly R1. Same deal with #5. Leaving the prices alone too long before looking in on them is an issue today. I will be working on an automatic alert to let me know when a price is in jeopardy of turning based on the faster moving averages in the TICK...need some more research for that one. The entry alerts are doing well.

All up I came out with about $13 and change profit.

Oh, new rule for me lately. I am not counting my commissions in my daily tallies as I do not want to get caught up in trying to break even based on them. I would rather work on having good trade ideas, good entries and exits and let the profits build. The commissions will look after themselves. I realise that they are a cost and must be considered so I do track them very closely in my overall P/L plan and data management, just not for trade dissection now.

For the record, commissions and SEC charges were a little over $60...so, yes, I am down approximately $47.

Jeff.