Saturday, October 22, 2022

Friday, October 21, 2022

IWM Patterns

I traded well today and had kind of a normal green day. IWM was easy to read with support and trend lines. It held a major support I drew up 3 times. I looked over a couple weeks of the IWM chart from 9:30 to 9:40 or 9:45 and during this time way more than half the time whatever direction it trends right at 9:40 or 9:45ish it will reverse and that will be the days trend direction. Defintely and repeated pattern here. It can also be very very choppy the first 10 minutes of trading. I decided to just miss the open and didn't start until around 10 today. I plan to just not trade IWM at open going forward to avoid likely bad reads. I am learning to just avoid it when it is choppy. It likes to slow down in the afternoon and almost always has an hour or so of tight range fakeout hell. Sometimes the ranges are tradable but I haven't mastered that yet. It almost always lately has an explosion move the last 30 minutes to close. It will just move fast and straight. When the candles get long and the algo dance isn't going on I can scalp good gains with size.

I'm going to start journaling win rates on different setups it does. I will call one power momo because it just speeds up and goes fast and straight for minutes at a time. This gives the long candles. I'm focusing on setups with the highest overall dollar profit average per trade to get some good days going. Some of the setups I've been taking have high win rate but not high dollar amount. So I think that is why I'm spinning my wheels some weeks. High short interest longs is one of the setups and I think it may be coming back if indexes hold support. Best profit setup is IWM options multi-day. Not a high sample though. Puts on stock bear flags, USO options multi-day, BABA intraday or overnight, and short intra-day overbought are the top setups profit wise. I have been focusing on IWM intraday and 52 week breakdowns because its safe with market direction indecision with some of them but I haven't gotten big size on them. So many days I am just amazed at how well IWM trades with technicals. I always figured with the HFT and computers it was hard to trade. In some ways it is because of how it jumps up and down like Pac-Man eating up orders but it respects the lines. I guess that's the way the programs are setup. Downtrend break on gold and miners.

Thursday, October 20, 2022

Two Day Evaluation

Looked at my overall win rate on IWM intraday and decided to back off trading it today. It hasn't been working this week. I have been trying to force trades to get a big green day. I decided to focus on intraday overbought for shorts because it's a high winrate and I can get good entries and that worked for me though I didn't have ideal size on it. I am having a hard time balancing size with risk and the ability to get a good sized gain. It's either too much risk or not enough risk so not a big gain. I am not sure my expectations on what I can do with an account my size are super realistic. I need perfect entries to put on the kind of size I want. All I need to do in my swing account is trade USO options and hold for 1 to 2 days and I have a 70% win rate but I have been doing stock options too and those aren't working out right now. I am going to regroup that account and keep going daytrading but I'm thinking for my stress level it is best to work a part-time job so I can do what I need to do slowly on the daytrading account. I usually only see a couple choice setups all day on the stocks I trade and it's not enough to have to rely on those for big gainers. Risk management was back today until later in the day I forced some size on scalps. I think I need a break to clear my mind.

Tuesday, October 18, 2022

Crazy IWM Day

Today was one of those days I should have just walked away in the morning. I was down for awhile and never got any good setups on for awhile. I get really determined to come back and took way to many mediocre trades and had a bad red day. It can be overcome but I need to get better at just taking a break if there isn't a clear direction on stocks or IWM. This was one of the choppiest days I've seen in awhile. Huge gap up run and then down and then back. I wasn't reading IWM well and was doing horizontal trend lines. I have success with it with just regular trend lines. The horizontal gave me some bad ideas in the afternoon to long at resistance when I saw a triangle. Bad risk management today and selectivity. We might go into a range here on major indexes. Any rally might take awhile based on todays lack of direction. I traded USO a lot too and caught some good moves on it but IWM was the downfall. I can see good moves coming when the candles get longer and price moves faster. It's getting easier to spot those. USO moved a lot smoother many times. Looking at how I was looking at IWM I was on the right track in the morning but right at noon the chart almost became unreadable and untradable. Should have just switched to stocks or walked away or even USO might have been better. USO was tough in the afternoon too.

Monday, October 17, 2022

Failed Signal Breakdown

The reversal off the lows on the epic Thursday spike has set in motion a strong bear rally. I believe this will continue a bit. Its similar to the failed signal in 2008. The only way to know if it follows through for a long-term low is to see what the FED does. There is actually another big trap reversal today as the reversal red day is now getting wiped out.

Another Green Day

I traded well today despite some mistake reads on IWM. Traded IMUX short side. I was all over USO all day and could have gone more aggressive on the spike down in the afternoon. It was serious momo. I went over the Friday trades and it was another good day for me. IWM has provided a lot of volatility and easy trendline reads. I have a good sample size on the 52 week breakdown stocks I have been trading. Winrate is around 48% about 2% average gain, 2% avg loss. I like the winrate and can work with it. Since some of these stocks don't have a ton of day range it's going to be a task to capture as much of the moves as possible but there is a lot to work with as there are so many tickers like this now near lows. I am aiming at ones with higher day range. I realized I need to keep the stops tight with 2% gains. I sometimes swing them overnight super reduced size. I think it's a good idea to do that only on onees that have a gap down history. Otherwise I'm taking on risk. REV was one I shorted the other day literally the day before the big spike. These ones are some of the biggest gainers off lows too like AVCT today and others last week.

Saturday, October 15, 2022

Bonds and Stocks

I think it is hard to say bonds will outperform stocks in recessions going forward. 2020 was a year we saw the stock market fall and bonds.

Friday, October 14, 2022

Charts of IWM 10/14

I had one of my best green days in weeks today thanks to IWM. Today was one of those days it was moving and easy to read. I got chopped up the first 10 minutes or so at open and decided to just wait to see it develop. When it started moving fast with a long candle on that spike top after open I instinctively shorted and it provided many opportunities throughout the day. I even traded some of the tight channel the last hour of trading and nailed the short into close.

Notes

I need to keep USO on close watch at all times as I missed the start of a breakdown. It was breaking down without SPY or IWM this afternoon. Having one of my best days in weeks today with IWM.

Thursday, October 13, 2022

Epic Bear Trap Day

Overall I traded well today and was green. I spent a lot of time looking at crude oil because I realized it bounced off a support level I had drawn. I had to switch some postions around for that. During this time it would have been better for me to have just been trading IWM. I was looking at my short stocks watchlist at open for weakness but quickly realized we were way way to oversold to not have a high chance of a bounce. I switched to longing stocks and got chopped on a one or two. The highlight of the day was shorting IWM just a couple candles off the first overbought top. It always looks the same near highs. A bunch of super short candles just catching resistance and flattening out going sideways. I could have gone bigger on the size if I had fought for price better off the top and the next top which was a perfect channel. The wicks were very telling and I could have filled some put options. I'm still happy overall but just need to work on entries. I wasn't able to trade the rest of the day and who knows I probably would have caught the next top which was actual high of day. I actually longed the bull flag off trend support I drew up. That was a super easy read. Then I shorted more on the channel break.

Tuesday, October 11, 2022

Monday 10/10/2022 Daily Evaluation

I had a good read on XLE and SPY all day Monday. I traded XLE 9 times with 5 being profitable trades and no big losses and overall good profit to loss. Definitely worth it. That made me a little overconfident trading it at the open today. I was looking for follow through like it has done in the past off the open but it was the worst chop. I ended green today though and have been green 5 of the last 7 trading sessions. There are good and bad days as with everything. Back to Monday. Best winners were XLE SPY CYXT short and the worst was ADEA short which was poor risk management. I don't think I had a hard stop and was super busy with a ton of positions on. It finally faded out today and I participated some. I had 8 or 9 positions on at one point Monday. All breakdown shorts. I've noticed some days IWM SPY XLE are easier than others to read but when they are for me XLE trades very smooth. Aside from ADEA Monday I didn't have any major flaws. Trade management could have been better but with so many positions it was tough. I just wanted to be in the right one because I had high confidence in a red day going in. Having more screens might help in seeing the charts. I set alerts but it takes time to look at the charts still.

My biggest struggle in past weeks was being selective always and not overtrading. I've been better at that lately but need to work on getting better entries and scaling in bigger so I can put on larger size. It's nice to be green but the days could definetely be bigger. I missed a trade on XLE and a short on ZYME today because I was looking at other things. The ZYME I was actually away from the desk for that one. I had my first day of being net down on the day to coming back green today. I'm doing evals a day after because my broker uploads confirms the next day. I need to work on larger sizing going forward and avoid options on indices and TSLA or big-cap stocks. Those were my biggest downfalls on bad days.

Saturday, October 8, 2022

Setups Evaluator

I use Tradersync to track my performance. My best setup by far is crude oil multi-day and it's not even close. Roughly 28 trades total spanning a couple years atleast. I have multiple accounts so I probably missed several trades atleast from years ago which likely would even improve my stats. The past couple years I'm solid on it though. My average winning % on crude is 75%, losing percentage 73% with a 69% win rate. Average winners hold time is 2 days and losers hold time is 2 days.

The obvious thing to do from those stats when I first looked at them months ago was to tighten up the losing percentage. The only thing is I hold the options for days and sometimes would be in the red before they went green. Just based off memory once they went over 50 or 60% red I would usually be wrong for sure. So I decided to have a general rule of stopping out at 55-60%. Because losing 100% at expiration is bad if I know I should cut earlier. I know it's more important to stop out when I know I'm wrong based on technicals alone. So the more I think about it that should be a factor too. In the past though I would just let them ride to zero because I know the winners would make up it. So I am going to monitor them better.

My second best setup has been buying long consolidation triangles. I am super picky on what they are which is good. A perfect triangle doesn't show up much though. But it is definitely a strong setup. I've sort of viewed my multi-day breakdown setups as the same as bear flag setups because they are pretty similiar in nature. I'm going to analyze these a little more so I can screen nightly better. My hunch is lower volume, lower market cap are better setups. I'm doing some backtesting with Stockfetcher this weekend to fine tune this. I'm looking at a gap down screen too for shorts.

My other decent enough sample sizes are long bull flags which to me is a consolidation flag over 3 days. Under 3 days I call high flags. My long bull flag is 39 trades atleast with a 43% win rate. I think over 40% win rate is a workable setup for me. Supernova short setup is 32 trades 47% win rate. Breakdowns are 61 trades 42% win rate. I need to enter in the last week of trades to update all these but I don't see it effecting any significantly to the downside. I have a sample of 37 trades with multi-day breakouts but only 32% winners and average win percentage 10%, loss 6% and still overall it is a net loser. This just reinforces the common knowledge that pure breakouts are usually an overcrowded trade and ceased to be consistent years if not decades ago overall.