Busy studying my options

For the past 3 weeks I have been tunnel visioned. Turning my attention to really understanding options and option strategies, I have come to realize that utilizing this powerful investment vehicle is another strong cog in the wheel of regular monthly income. I have been spending countless hours listening to lectures on Woodies' site, reading several books on the basics and wrapping my brain around all there is to know to begin to put on option trades AND understand what I'm doing at the same time, hehe. So, one reason TradeLogger hasn't seen any updates this week is because of my focus on that topic. I have added some useful educational option links in the Investor Resources section of my site.

Ready for a good week of trading

OK, we have options expiration and quadruple witching behind us. Any gains you had last week, or any losses are all in the past. A new week of trading is before us and what happened last week as no bearing on what will happen this week. So let's stay focused on our trading plan and be ready to react to the signals that we get according to that plan and not make up anything. A positive attitude without any biases about what will happen will put us in a successful mind frame to do what we need to do to be successful as traders.

On another note, I've begun digging in this weekend to spend the next 6 months to really understand options and how to use them in my swing trading. I've spent the last 18 months really focusing on learning the disciplines for my day trading and now I'm moving on in my education to options. I look forward to any advice, tips and instruction regarding options that you may have. Good trading everybody.

How is your discipline doing?

One of the biggest challenges of new traders is that they have an itchy trade-trigger finger. They have a hard time sitting still and waiting just for the setups that offer them the highest probabilities. Instead, they feel that because they are in front of their screen and their account is funded, the need to trade is very strong. I've heard it said that sometimes the need to trade is stronger than the need to trade well. I used to be like that but as I've progressed in my trading career I've come to realize that I get paid to wait, wait for MY setups that follow MY rules. Developing trading discipline is certainly not done overnight and requires practice and patience, but pin up a reminder next to your monitor that says, "I get paid to wait." You'll find that the less you trade, the more profitable you tend to become. Good trading everyone.

Nice move by the Fed today

Well, the market certainly approved of the 50 basis point rate reduction. Prior to the announcement though trading was very subdued and there was only one trade I took today which was on crude oil and it was a small winner. My trading plan didn't initiate any other trades for me today. Being a day trader is hard to explain to other people. Friends of mine today assumed that I made a million dollars because of the federal reserve rate cut and the large surge in the market. It doesn't always work out like that and people outside of trading don't really understand that. When people ask what I do for a living anymore, I simply tell them that I manage my own investments...that seems to sound better to them.

2 winners, 1 loser -- no problems

Another decent trading day, just trading the patterns according to my plan. 2 winners taken on the 3 minute YM scalping chart and 1 loser on the CL. I'm up slightly for the day though so no problems here. I continue to work on updated features for TradeLogger and welcome your suggestions.

Still working on linking to chart photos feature

A great new feature of TradeLogger is still under construction. The ability to link to a screen capture of your chart to attach it to a trade logged in TradeLogger will augment the Journal feature. This will let you remind yourself what your chart looked like for that particular trade that you logged, helping you to later study and analyze what you were seeing and why you took the trade.

Began training for my first 5K run

My trading discipline requires a good, clear mind free of clutter. One of the ways that I have found to improve my mental attitude greatly, plus lower my blood pressure, heart rate and cholesterol has been to get back into running. I can't tell you what an enormous difference regular aerobic exercise has been to my physical and mental health. Been running again for 4 months on a very regular schedule and my attitude has improved 100% all through the day. I highly recommend any kind of good aerobic exercise 3 times a week to help improve your mental clarity, the physical side effects are excellent as well in oh so many ways!

Quiet trading day today, no trades but stuck to my plan

Today was one of those days where the markets that I trade were in a sideways mode for a good part of the day. My plan calls for me to take only a select few patterns and today none of those appeared on my markets and so I took no trades today. That's OK, tomorrow is a new day and I don't feel the need to have to trade all the time. If my patterns don't show up, then I'm content to sit and wait, after all, that's what I get paid to do is to wait for my entries.

Tuesday was good

One thing I've been watching for about 2 months is both the 3 minute and 5 minute YM chart side by side. I have been practicing taking scalp trades off the 3 minute chart and finding decent success with that. Today I took 2 YM 3' scalps, 1 5' CL trade and 1 5' YM trade, all winners. We'll see how well that continues to go but it's an interesting thing to watch. Sometimes I can get into moves with valid patterns on the 3', whereas the 5' doesn't provide a valid entry.

4 trades, 2 winners today on Dow

Today showed 4 trades on the DOW (YM), 2 were winners, 2 losers stopped out. Ended the day slightly down but still TradeLogger has me in sim mode on the YM so no actual losses to my equity in that account. Currently I'm using a 20 MA setting and a "Cross" type for my settings. I continue to trade 2 contracts, taking a T1 at 10 tics and taking the runner off on the first CCI hook back or a cross of the 100 line.

New upcoming feature for TradeLogger

Hi there, just a quick post about a new feature I'm working on for TradeLogger. Soon it will have the ability to link directly to any saved snapshot of a chart so that it can be linked and associated with a trade and viewed again later. The ability to possibly mark up the chart within TradeLogger might be made available as well. Hopefully this will help people when they review their trades and be able to review the chart that contains the trade.

Working on math for trade dependency

Trade dependency is the characteristic in which one trade depends on the previous trade. For example, in some trading systems or methods, winning trades tend to follow other winning trades, and losses tend to follow losses. This is known as positive dependency: wins follow wins and losses follow losses. In negative dependency, wins tend to follow losses, and losses tend to follow wins.
This concept can be valuable to know when using an equity curve manager like TradeLogger and so I'm working on implementing the math involved in identifying these trends. This will help TradeLogger become more profitable for the end user if the signals can reflect trade dependency. For more information about trade dependency check here.

Quiet trading day on Friday

Due to Labor Day in the United States, we have a 3 day weekend and so the trading volume and follow through was weak on Friday, probably because many traders were starting their weekend early. That's OK, I didn't have any CCI signals to trade anyway so I didn't get involved in any trades. I'll be working on TradeLogger features and tweaks this weekend though. Everybody have a great weekend!