For those who follow the blog, you’ve noticed that the past few weeks I’ve not put on too many S&P trades. The reason being is that it is too easy to lose on the S&P (well, that’s what I find but that could be because I’m not too hot a trader)…  anyway, I have been watching every day as usual but just been really careful and I am trying to only enter if I see an entry based on price action.

In the past, I have been putting on trades when I am anticipating a move as the stochastics have been overextended… the stochastics are good but nothing beats price action…  all indicators are formed from the price action and they can be used as confirmation of moves to help your judgement in making a trade.

Anyway, I saw an entry today… there was a trend as you can see in the chart below.. I waited for the price action to move to the trend line and then shorted it. It fell quite nicely but then I was conscious that the market was about to bottom out due to where the stochastics were.. this happened to be a good move as it was the short term bottom as price action move the stochastics above the 20 level.

I shorted at 1356 and close out for +3 at 1353.

This bottom would have been a great long entry as the market is now currently trading at 1363!!

Tags: daytrade, daytrading, emini, futures, investing, live account, makemesomemoney, s&p, standard and poor, tca, Trading, trading blog, trading psychology

I have been busy today and posted quite a few times in a short space of time!

Anyway, I entered another trade after the previous and make all the losses back to close at 0.3 points in profit! Hoorah, at least it wasn’t a loss!

As I mentioned earlier, I was talking about the head and shoulders pattern. It wasn’t a perfect pattern but as I write, the market has indeed reversed and hit my targetted endpoint at 1388 and indeed has gone beyond this!

In addition, I didn’t mention my Fibonacci placements.. you can see that the market hit an almost perfect 50% retracement level and went lower. There was round support around the 23.6% level so which was a good point to go long.

As I am watching the markets every day, I feel that I am starting to understand the mechanics of how it works.

My biggest downfall is my inability to hold a trade. Market movement is never in a straight line and zig zags up and down. I need to have the guts to ride through the zig zags and not get out at the next zig or next zag! My entry points aren’t bad when I am disciplined… however, I am let down by my eagerness to get out of a trade either through fear (scare to lose money) or greed (bag the profits I have for trades which are going my way).

Trading successfully takes time.. there are many steps and each day you learn from mistakes. However, sometimes what you think are mistakes are not mistakes but just probability or luck against you.. it’s in these situations when the lesson you think you take away isn’t a lesson at all.

Through this blog, which I use as a reference to my trading progress, I have material which I can use in hindsight to understand what I did write or wrong. In the heat of the moment when you are actually trading, it’s it difficult to see what you’re doing right or wrong.. through hindsight, I can spot my mistakes.

Tags: daytrade, daytrading, emini, futures, head and shoulders, investing, live account, makemesomemoney, peaks, s&p, standard and poor, technical analysis, Trading, trading blog, trading mistakes, trading psychology, trendline, troughs

Today, I saw the perfect Head and Shoulders pattern on the S&P and got very excited. Look at the diagram, the 3 red dots signify the shoulders and head. I have read about this pattern in technical analysis books and in most cases, they signify a reversal pattern. I was looking at the chart moving up to at least 1388!!

Anyway, I went long at the second shoulder.. the market moved 2 points up my direction.. it was looking good and then tanked, breaching the limits of the second shoulder, ruining the perfect pattern which had form and more importantly, taking out my stop for -2.5 points!!

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