March 12 trade summary

Today I lacked confidence because of the lack of volume and choppiness the markets displayed the majority of the day. I got a good signal right after the preferred key time of 8:30am PFT for a long signal below VAL. The trade went 0.8pts my way and I thought it would run right to my target, so I put in a trailing stop 3 ticks above my entry for protection only to be stopped out and see the price then rally and hit my target 1 minute later. I should have exited at the tick high and I would have gotten a 0.8pt winner instead of a 0.3 winner. Also, I wanted to go long at 793 for a low risk entry right before the afternoon breakout based on what I was seeing in the NYSE A/D chart, however, I kept thinking that it was a bad trade because the last few days the market rolled over during this time period because of the action in the bonds, so I ended up missing the upside afternoon breakout because I wasn't quick enough to get a good entry and I thought it wasn't worth chasing a long entry when price was above VAH. I made a reversal trade on NQ, but that was more of a wash trade in which as soon as I exited my short I went for a long scalp on ER2 and made 0.2pts(could've made 0.5pt but adjusted price target lower because I was impatient).

Overall, I didn't do well today because I failed to realize that given the lack of volume and choppy price action that I should have taken quicker scalps, instead of trying to hold for big winners.

I'm beginning to see that following the NYSE and NASDAQ A/D chart is great. I'm beginning to think that this market internal for the exchanges may be a better indicator for short term setups then NYSE TICK.



I'm going to checkout Ninja trader and Trader DNA software as discussed in Dr. B's book, because realtime analysis of my trading metrics may be helpful in evaluating and learning to improve my trading in relation to the type of trade, position size, and the time of day the trade was taken.