How Much Progress Have You Made?
By Cliff Clark
So you've been trading for awhile now but you still aren't making any significant money. Perhaps you are still losing. What's the problem? Are you making any progress at all? Sometimes we feel like we are just spinning our wheels when in fact we have made some really big moves forward. It's just hard to tell because we still aren't making money. We might just be one or two small changes away from making that big move into profitability. It's time to do a self assessment.
I'll suggest some questions to get you started. I'm omitting the obvious questions such as “Do you have a trading plan?” or “Do you have a pre-trade checklist?” because if you don't have those you are just lying to yourself if you think you will ever be a successful day trader.
Here are some questions to ask to yourself to help stop being so tough on yourself and start embracing how far you’ve come.
1.What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? Are you focusing on the right stuff?
2.Are you getting in your own way? How can you step aside and stop sabotaging yourself?
3.What have you already changed? Has it helped?
4.What are you not willing to change yet? Why? What does this thing/behavior mean to you? What can you do in the meantime while you wait to be ready?
5.In what ways are you too tough on yourself? How can you be more gentle?
6.What is one, small thing you can do today to get you closer to your goal?
7.What encouraging words do you have for someone else on this same road to trading success? What encouraging words do you have for yourself?
2 trades for me today with +1.5R total
1st Trade QCOM +2R
148.39/149.97 exit 143.25
12% gap down under pivot support and 50ma after a strong daily double top rejection,. I took it on a congestion breakdown with a fairly wide stop, leaving my 2R target 50c over its ATR, slow but consistent move down with great RW, hit my target on the penny before it bounced.
2nd Trade AQB -0.5R
9.40/9.70 exit 9.56
I rarely trade stocks under $10 and even more rarely short them. I liked this daily chart as it broke its uptrend channel and stayed under a strong 9.50 support line enough room to its daily 50ma. I entered after a pullback with a fairly wide stop but only 1/3 of its ATR used at the time. It failed to break down with the strong market open and stayed in a narrow range.
I actually broke my plan with this trade as I lowered my stop to a pivot where price made a big bounce earlier at 11am with a large seller sitting there. My thought was that if it breaks that level again then it will likely...
1 trade for (-1R)
I took a BD on QCOM. I was worried about the target being close to the daily range, so I took a tighter stop on the 2 min chart. I am looking through PTS right now, most of the examples have 2 options for where to put your stop. It looks to me like one of the stops would be at the bottom of the main consolidation area, and the other at the bottom of where there has been a shakeout or turnaround bar (if there has been one). Due to the daily range I took the tighter one on this. In hindsight it seems obvious to take the wider stop, but in the moment it looked ok.
I was then looking at the 15 min 3BP on QCOM, but the reason I used a tighter stop in the first place was because of the range. The 15 min 3BP would have needed to have gone even further than the wider stop on the 2 min BD, so I didn't take it.
