Day Trade + a little bit more

Today I was able to make two day trades on TNA as I tried to catch some strength in the market.  My first day trade was a loss and the second one was a gain which left me flat to slight loss for the day. 

However what I wanted to discuss more in this post was one of the novice traders problems, and that is not trusting in yourself.  Everyone in the market will eventually develop an edge and something they are good at.  My edge is technical analysis because I love pouring over charts looking for hidden patterns.  I also have my day trade system that is based on a momentum indicator that seems to work pretty good.

These are my edges, this is what I stick to.  My day trade system gives me a clear signal of when I need to buy in.  When that signal hits, I don't stop to think about if I should enter this trade or not.  I do not fear for a loss or even fear for a win.  I have no fears of the market because I am trading my edge. 

The market was trading down over 1% for almost the entire day, and here I was playing a stock that was betting the market to go up.  As I said, my first trade was a loss.  I entered the trade as soon as I received the signal and exited it the same way.  I traded my edge.  Second time around, I got the same signal and again placed the exact same trade without thinking twice.  However this one ended with a profit.  Again, I traded my edge.

I trust my system as it has been tested and has worked in the past.  I would still place the trades even if that last three trades were losers, or the last ten.  You have to have confidence in yourself and your trades.  Don't stop yourself from placing a trade because your last trades were losers, or winners.  There is nothing worse than waiting to place a trade by thinking about it to long and watching it run in the direction you thought while you sat on the sidelines.


Develop your edge, trade your edge, and it will take care of you..

Day Trade (TNA)

Along with entering MEE I also day traded TNA for a quick profit.  My day trades are all mechanical trades so I don't waste time thinking if I should enter the position or not.  Once I get a signal to enter I do and I use a signal to exit my trades as well.  Not 100% pefect but it works quite well.

/TNA

The green marks the entry and red the exit.

Day Trade (TNA)

This morning I was able to get into a day trade with TNA.  I was hoping to actually get into a couple of earnings plays but the potential plays quickly faded away with poor price action.  TNA however proved to be a good setup and I will go through how it was setup and played.



TNA 1min

 This morning's high (marked in green) was put in at 8:31am (exactly one minute after market open).  After the market dips down and confirms that was indeed the high, I put in a buy stop order.  A buy stop order tells the broker to buy shares when a stock's price goes up and hits a certain price.  My price was set right above the market high at 8:31.  I put it above the high to make sure the market is going to push above that price and hopefully continue going up. 

I drew the line in the graph to show when the price crossed for my stop.  The market quickly moved up like planned but then started to sell off hard.  After a nice little sell off the market turned around and started to push up.  I continued to move my stop-loss price up for a loss, breakeven, .5% gain, and a 1% gain.

The area marked in red at 9:06am is when I closed my full position and walked away with a nice gain.  This was a clockwork trade that net'd me a good profit.  Even though I was watching the trade for an hour I was only in the trade for 15-20min.

And I found out later in the day, to my surprise, that I exited the trade at the high for the day.  That doesn't happen much and it is a great feeling.

Here is price action for the whole day:

TNA 1min

Day Trades

Unfortunately I was unable to play with the earnings bounces that I talked about in my last post.  They are still on the radar and I hope to have a crack at them on Friday.  As for day trading the TNA and TZA.  So far this week I am up with a good trade in TNA on Tuesday.

Today has been another story.  I haven't lost any money or made any money, in fact, I haven't traded at all.  (I take that back, I closed my long CNP after a bad earnings release). 

Here is the TNA chart and how my day trade setups look like:


TNA

 At the bottom there are two green circles on the WLR(90).  Basically this is a momentum indicator based on the last 90 periods.  When the line crosses the horizontal red line I will take the trade.  In the first green circle I would have shorted the TNA (or gone long TZA), and in the second green circle I would have went long TNA.

If I would have taken the first one I would have been very profitable.  I would have also made a profit where the second one sits (at this time --we will need to see how the day plays out before making the final call). 

So why did I not trade?  I just didn't feel like it.  Today I am kinda dragging around and all around I am pretty out of it. 

Lesson here is to trade when you are into it.  You are putting yours and sometimes other peoples money on the line.  Trading is already a stressful and time consuming activity so you need to be apart of it 100%.  There is nothing in the rule books that say you need to jump on every opportunity or trade every single day.  There will be a lot more chances for me to win and lose money in the future (probably tomorrow).