Dec 11, 2008

Thursday's Trades - 12/11/08

I'm changing my name to The Magician Trader. Instead of pulling rabbits out of a hat I pull trades out of my ass. Today was a complete slaughterhouse for me in the morning. There were a couple of trades that, while they made sense, I shouldn't have taken. But even taking those trades out of the mix (SCHW, COST) it really didn't make a different to my bottomline.

What saved me again and brought me back into decent profits???? ES emini. I went all in again... twice as much as last Friday and ended up catching a nice 9-10 point swing. Of course, it kept dropping after my exit but I was happy to leave when I did. I make fun of pull this trade out of my butt... however, it was probably the best setup of the day - coinciding with the DOW drop. I got spooked out of ACI, JPM and CMI before the dropped big, which really sucks. Can't list all the trades but here are some of the better looking charts and entries. The second arrow shows where I either re-entered the stock or, in the case of ES... added more contracts.

Peace out.








5 comments:

TraderAm said...

Hang on a minute...you said you weren't going to scare us again.

Might have a look at this futures lark myself. Seems really easy..lol

Nice trading.

P.S > Early part of day was very choppy, so you weren't alone in getting whipsawed about.

Tyler said...

00NR7,

I was looking forward to reading what you had to say today. I knew it would be something interesting with the bloodbath this afternoon.

Way to come back!

Tyler

Unknown said...

Ha! Sometimes a temporary blog name change is in order. Good job today.

-AT

Anonymous said...

Careful with the all in moves !

Going all in is a poker metaphor. There are 2 main scenarios to go all in in poker:

You go all in to put pressure on your opponent(s), in this case the opponent doesn't care or even know about your play, so you really are only pressuring yourself. The other reason is one has to make a move because of their dwindling stacks, which does not apply to you.

Pushing harder to get even on days you are down seems like a dangerous strategy. Aggression is good in poker but can be lethal in trading.

Maybe I misunderstand the tone of your posts and you are really taking those late day futures trade with no emotion whatsoever, but if you are pushing trades to get even, take a good look at yourself in the mirror. In this case, the market is the mirror

OONR7 said...

tyler: from my perspective... the bloodbath occurred in the morning session :) I was more than happy for the drop and volume in the PM.

at: thanks man. My late CMI, JPM and ACI trades were an example of trading scared. I totally didn't reap the rewards of a good entry in those.

anon: you're right and I really thought long and hard about whether I should it. However, I had probability on my side as the setups was exactly as I wanted it. Drop below support then a retrace back up showing previous support is now resistance.
The fact I was down on the day did prompt me to buy many more contracts than what I would like... so yeah, it was a bit 'out of my plan'. While I was prepared for the consequences I certainly didn't want that to happen.
I only hope I have the cojones to do the same exact thing when I'm not down on the day. This way I can truly reap the rewards.
Thanks for your comment and advice... makes a lot of sense.