Futures and hiatus

Been busy with futures and I'm convinced trading futures is where I want to go. Kinda like having a set watchlist but with only 3 stocks every day. The trick for me is to remain patient and pick the best time to enter. Hasn't been working for me for the last two days but I made some technical mistakes today that cost me from having a very good day. Mistakes as in buying when I meant to sell and not realizing it for 20 minutes. 

As for the hiatus... I don't know, been meaning to do it for awhile. Just need a break. I mean, the 3 people who comment might miss it... but the 200 other folks may not. 

Who knows, I may blog again tomorrow when I'm in a better mood.

Smacked

Traded way too many futures contracts today and paid the price. Live and learn. Although, looking back at the charts now of NQ and ES I know where I messed up and what I should be concentrating on moving forward.

Futures... and JNJ

Nuff said. Despite being down early today I managed to make a lot of my losses back. Made a couple of changes mid-day and that seemed to help. My lone equity trade today, JNJ, managed to stop me out for a small loss after revising my stop and dumping half my shares at breakeven.

E-minis

Ended up messing around with the NQ and ES e-minis again. With the wild market swings, gapper candidates are hard to come by. Did well despite placing around 8 round-trip trades. Mostly small winners as I was pretty cautious. If I continue to do well I may do a whole post on it. I was trading on the 1-min chart after pretty much discarding the stocks on my WL. 

Let's see how it goes.

ANF - Short

Found a short entry with ANF after it retraced and formed a nice shooting star on the 12:15 bar. Entered on a break of that bar's low and scaled out my position to ensure profits. Overall, a good day with no losing trades to eat profits (can I get an amen???).

More crap

Shorted SBAC and EL today. SBAC was breakeven and EL was a loss after revising my stop. I passed shorting SWN on a break of the 3rd bar low... wish I hadn't. 

I'm hoping just for one good trading day this week... that's all. I will be very happy with that.

OOBreakeven again

Last 7 trading days or so it seems like I'm doing whatever I can to breakeven... zero sum game. Today was no different as I shorted SAP twice and was stopped out both times. Shorted AAP twice, once on a break of the 11:45 bar low and was stopped out after playing not to lose and revising my stop (stupid). I then shorted again (1pm bar low) and scaled out to breakeven for the day. AAP could've been traded much, much better.

Took a loss

Stopped out of DRYS for a full loss after entering on a break of the 12pm bar low. Then, shorted OSIP off a break of the 2pm bar low and was able to make back about half my loss. A real 'no feeling' kinda day.

Burned... saved...

Burned again. Another choppy trading session today for me. I did have a chance to end up with a decent profit today (GPN) but decided to hold out and see how the position ends up. That decision put me in the red. But it wasn't too bad. Traded FDO for a loss, MER for BE the first time then entered again for a loss, AMGN for BE and GPN was a nice gain that came waaay back down on me. 

I'm hoping next week will be more stable and I can start seeing some follow-thru. Although I may not be able to trade a couple days next week.

Have a good weekend.

Busy day

Took 5 trades today and none were losers but none were big winners either. I found things to be a bit choppy today and with the exit method I'm using now it really took me out of nice winners. Traded SLB, AG, FRO, STO and MT. The best of these trades were MT and FRO (although I jumped ship with FRO before it made the move down... hate when that happens).

Blah

Shorted HK (from Anarco's watchlist) but was stopped out. It was a new type of trade for me as the stock wasn't a true gapper. I reduced my risk accordingly. Let's see how the markets respond to the vote tonight.