December Trading Summary

RESULTS FOR DECEMBER
Contracts:	263
Net $P/L:	-2085
Wins:	149
Losses:	113
Win%:	57
Avg$Win:	64
Avg$Loss:	-103

Out with a bang

10:10am CST - Nothing like going out of 2009 with a bang! Completely out of sync this morning and I'm quiting before I get the urge to revenge trade. Look for a weekend update with plans for 2010 trading which will be much different than 2009.

Just showing my one gold trade today - other trades had a similar story...

Net breakdown: 6E -$147, 6A -$145, ZS -$118, GGC -$204

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	5
Net $P/L:	-614
Wins:	1
Losses:	4
Win%:	20
Avg$Win:	8
Avg$Loss:	-155

1 more day

2:15pm CST - Finished at my low after being up $125 midday. 2 full stops at end of day on GCL and ZS...

Net breakdown: 6E $136, ZS -$126, GCL -$173

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	11
Net $P/L:	-163
Wins:	7
Losses:	4
Win%:	64
Avg$Win:	50
Avg$Loss:	-128

2 days left

2:30pm CST - Was in red most of day so glad to finish on plus side. Made more trades than planned but non-stock index markets were actually moving!

Net breakdown: 6E $66, GCL -$73, RLM -$86, ZS $172

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	10
Net $P/L:	79
Wins:	6
Losses:	4
Win%:	60
Avg$Win:	78
Avg$Loss:	-98

2 Stops

2:50pm CST - Plan to trade lightly this week and that equated to 2 trades today. Had small profits on both trades before stops got taken out. Both went on to hit targets later in day of course. Such is trading...

Net breakdown: GCL -$155, ZS -$80

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	2
Net $P/L:	-235
Wins:	0
Losses:	2
Win%:	0
Avg$Win:	0
Avg$Loss:	-117

Christmas Eve Eve

3:10pm CST - Just 1 trade that went no where today. Merry Christmas to all! Back on Monday...

Net breakdown: ZS $7

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	1
Net $P/L:	7
Wins:	1
Losses:	0
Win%:	100
Avg$Win:	7
Avg$Loss:	0

Monday again

2:00pm CST - It was a repeat of yesterday, finishing at my LOD, after being up $150 mid-morning. Likely no more trading this week for me (I should have said that a couple days ago). Between the lower holiday week volumes, sometimes higher spikes/volatility (with stops to tight), and me being out of sync, it has been a rough week.

Net breakdown: 6E -$181, ZS -$3, GCL -$105, RLM -$75, GGC $39

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	24
Net $P/L:	-326
Wins:	13
Losses:	11
Win%:	54
Avg$Win:	68
Avg$Loss:	-110

Winter Solstice

2:30pm CST - This shortest day of the year couldn't have ended any sooner. Merry Christmas to whoever was on the other side of my trades. I think I entered on every failed breakout on every chart today, except mini-Russell. Had a sell stop order to short CL at 74.30 but cancelled it when I entered a ZS trade. (I like to have no more than 1 open position at a time.) That would have been a good one! Shorted ZS in the last 15 min. of day at 10.675 and covered for a 1/4 cent. It then dropped 6 cents. I was my own worst enemy today...

Net breakdown: 6E -$202, ZS -$338, GCL -$285, RLM $248, GGC -$245

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	28
Net $P/L:	-822
Wins:	13
Losses:	15
Win%:	46
Avg$Win:	72
Avg$Loss:	-117

Beans Giveth, Crude Taketh

2:40pm CST - Too many charts to show today so I just posted the abysmal crude trades. Crude dug me a $300 hole early I had to dig out of. Beans to the rescue! After an initial botch there buying near open at 27.50 I eventually recovered. Added Gold to the mix today also. Note the P/L curve is ALL trades today (not just crude shown on left):

Net breakdown: RLM $177, ZS $316, GCL $-371, 6E $33, GGC $93

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	24
Net $P/L:	249
Wins:	13
Losses:	11
Win%:	54
Avg$Win:	89
Avg$Loss:	-82

70 min.

2:40pm CST - Traded 70 minutes today and quit. Happy with $270 and not wanting to give any back. I'm going to start doing this more in the future - have a goal for the day and stop when I hit it. From the charts, you can see the great potential that existed in my ZS and RLM trades today. Got to work on that too. As I said before, when I start trading 2 lots - one will ride for glory and the other will pay for the gas and tolls.

Net breakdown: RLM(TF) $27, ZS $70, GCL $173

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	8
Net $P/L:	270
Wins:	6
Losses:	2
Win%:	75
Avg$Win:	76
Avg$Loss:	-94

Half

2:30pm CST - I ended up half off my HOD thanks to two 6E trades in the chop after the FOMC. I packed it up after that. It would have been a great day but was just good in the end. Can't complain too much, who would listen? Should have held the first 6E trade and the last ZS trade longer -see chart. But then again, if I had held the first ZS trade longer, I likely would have been stopped out at breakeven instead of booking 3cents. Damned if you do, damned if you don't...

Net breakdown: 6E -$139, ZS $215, GCL $118

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	10
Net $P/L:	193
Wins:	7
Losses:	3
Win%:	70
Avg$Win:	60
Avg$Loss:	-75

Whew

2:30pm CST - I got to trade smarter, not harder. Today my net P/L bounced back and forth from minus to plus or plus to minus 7 times to finish black but $95 off my high of day. I would show you the GCL chart with 14 trades on it but it is too embarrassing! "Overtrading 101" - sign me up!

Net breakdown: 6E -$47, ZS $232, GCL -$182, TF $47

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	23
Net $P/L:	50
Wins:	15
Losses:	8
Win%:	65
Avg$Win:	57
Avg$Loss:	-101

1 Lots

2:20pm CST - A few trades this morning but I'm not happy with myself despite the gain. Take a look at the ZS chart and you'll see why. For now, I am rationalizing this as the curse of 1-lot trading. When I start trading 2 lots, I will work much harder on letting one of them ride!

Net breakdown: 6E $148, ZS $145

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	4
Net $P/L:	293
Wins:	4
Losses:	0
Win%:	100
Avg$Win:	73
Avg$Loss:	0

Happy Hanukkah

2:50pm CST - Just a few trades on this slow day that starts Hanukkah.

Net breakdown: GCL $111, ZS -$118, 6E $141

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	5
Net $P/L:	134
Wins:	4
Losses:	1
Win%:	80
Avg$Win:	63
Avg$Loss:	-118

Less than a second

2:40pm CST - I was going to stop when I got up $200 today but never quite made it but got close. My best trade of the day was the quickest I can ever recall being in the market less than a second! Crude is really wild! (Entry was a buy stop order at 70.20 (fill slipped a tick) and exit was a limit order.) Can you imagine the ES moving 2.75 pts. in less than a second during lunchtime, no news doldrums?

Net breakdown: GCL -$61, ZS $147

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	19
Net $P/L:	86
Wins:	11
Losses:	8
Win%:	58
Avg$Win:	70
Avg$Loss:	-86

Day Off

Took the day off. May take some more...

Chopped

3:00pm CST - Chopped to little bits today trying to hold winners longer. Having my AvgWin higher than my AvgLoss is not reassuring in today's case.

Net breakdown: 6E -$84, ZS -$300, GCL -$67, ES -$78

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	14
Net $P/L:	-529
Wins:	3
Losses:	10
Win%:	23
Avg$Win:	124
Avg$Loss:	-90

TGIF

2:30pm CST - Took it easy today after yesterday's snafu and with NFP report adding a lot of action I didn't want to get into trouble.

My biggest thing holding me back is not having the confidence(?) to hold on for big gains. I've been scalping so long it's engrained in my head and I need to find a way to wrap my head around holding trades, WINNING trades! Take a look at the 6E chart - only 1 trade for 5 pips but could have had 100+.

I've made the move to remove the auto bracket orders (target and stop) that get placed when I enter a position. Now I only have the stop order get placed with no target limit order. That way I can wait for price to make a nice move, in theory, before I place the exit order or exit with a trailed stop. But so far this week, that hasn't worked to well.

Scalping is okay for some traders I think, but I generally risk more on a trade (as many have observed through my avg.win and avg.loss stats) than I get reward for. But to make the numbers work the win% must be high and mine just hasn't been lately. Thus my 2009...

2010 will be the year of converting myself into a swing trader (or a scalper holding for points instead of ticks)!

No GCL system trades for me for awhile until much more forward testing can be done.

Net breakdown: ES $9, 6E $58, GCL $218, ZS -$58

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	11
Net $P/L:	227
Wins:	9
Losses:	2
Win%:	82
Avg$Win:	47
Avg$Loss:	-99

1 Step Forward, 2 (or 3) Back

1:30pm CST - Bad day started early with 4 losing trades on the Euro getting clipped for 10-12 pips each after the Brits' interest rate news. And bad ended with buying the afternoon high in Crude, 76.96 and stopping out at a break to downside of the 15-min. inside bar at 76.69. Should have reversed crude trade right there but I am at my loss limit for the day. I need my head examined. Comments off.

Net breakdown: 6E -$574, ZS -$20, GCL -$475

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	35
Net $P/L:	-1069
Wins:	16
Losses:	19
Win%:	46
Avg$Win:	71
Avg$Loss:	-116

Can Crude be tamed?

3:30pm CST - Made 2 system trades today on GCL and scalped the rest in GLC, 6E, and ZS. By "system" trades I mean mechanically following my new strat and doing what it tells me to do, more on that below. And by "scalp" I mean discretionary trading for small gains. I lost $200 on the system trades today (the 2 GCL trades between 10:30 and 11:00am on chart) but that is to be expected many days.

Net breakdown: GCL $95, ZS $166, 6E $66

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	28
Net $P/L:	327
Wins:	20
Losses:	8
Win%:	71
Avg$Win:	37
Avg$Loss:	-51

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Crude is certainly wild and I wonder if it can be tamed enough to extract some profits in a very mechanical fashion. Of course the hedge funds and others that have access to top programmers do exactly that but with autobots that will always "click the mouse" faster than me any day and with no emotion.

But having looked at the swings in crude, I had an idea for a system and I just completed backtesting every trade that would have occurred in the past year. Without getting deep into the entry details, it basically looks for an overbought or oversold condition and enters on a pullback. The exit details are simple but I would love some feedback from anyone who has studied various exit scenarios to see what might work better. No stops or targets are used after entry (yes I know a black swan could be trouble so an emergency stop could be set). Instead, the exit is a market order. Assuming a long position, the exit would be when the first of 2 conditions occur, 1) the closing print of a subsequent bar is above the high of the entry bar, or 2) the closing print of a bar is below the entry price.

Win% is only 33% and the average trade makes ~5 ticks, or $50 profit. I was more optimistic before I saw the couple near $5000 drawdowns that occurred earlier in the past year and know results can be improved but I don't want to over optimize and have never had much luck with fixed stops/targets or with trailing stops on such systems.

Hypothetical results are below. Commissions are included but no slippage. Slippage of 0-1 tick per trade would reduce results by up to 20%.

1 Bean Trade

2:20pm CST - Spent most of day backtesting crude further back on my new strat. But did make 1 losing bean trade (short in opening half hour!).

Net breakdown: ZS -$243

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	1
Net $P/L:	-243
Wins:	0
Losses:	1
Win%:	0
Avg$Win:	0
Avg$Loss:	-243