Friday trades and some observations

Posted on July 13, 2007
Tags: Day Trading |

I was really struggling last night with tiredness. It felt like my brain was working at less than 50% capacity. I’m not sure why since I have not slept less than usual but I felt like I was in a sleep deprivation experiment and my actions were mechanic and on automatic pilot without much thinking. Sometimes I can still wing it in that state but when it doesn’t work it’s frustrating.

Anyway, I made some mistakes with entry on CAT and BHI, lost an R on BHI but then re-entered properly and got that back. CAT trade was managed agressively from that point onwards and lost about half an R. AMGN didn’t go very far and contributed the other minus half R. So total is -1.1R. The real issue was that I saw AAPL early on, had orders in the market which were removed later on plan but instead of continuing to stalk it my brain didn’t register what was going on and I moved it off the top list. It would have been a Major win so seeing it explode into a 10R territory was a bit frustrating. In fact I can sense a bit of mental damage there from that.

About 8 hours later the main takeaways from this are:
1. My current time commitments and lifestyle isn’t conducive to doing the job well
2. I need better mental preparation before the day starts to try and improve levels of focus and concentration
3. I’ve been neglecting areas like nutrition and exercise which contribute to better mental capability. This is related to point 1 but not entirely
4. No changes to my trading rules

Things I can start doing straight away are improving on points 2 and 3, they won’t be where I want them to be till point 1 is resolved but every little bit helps.

Comments

6 Responses to “Friday trades and some observations”

Glenn on July 14th, 2007 1:18 am

I was in AAPL all day and down mostly, but it always looked good, finally it moved up for me, came back down and I got out for +0.20 only because I gave up on it, then it ran. I got back in for a buck later. Sounds like you have had some good days of late, you can’t get them all right.
eyal on July 14th, 2007 3:04 am

Glenn, you are correct, can’t catch them all. Which is why I didn’t care much about the -2.8R yesterday, but did care about today’s -1R because seeing the opportunity present itself and not acting on it kindda suck. Looks like you had a good day, nice.
E on July 14th, 2007 6:07 pm

I bet it is hard to see a trade that you were watching, which would have worked on your system but for whatever reason was a non-entry. And I see the effects of stress on health all day in my practice. Be careful!

What type of mistake did you make on your entry for BHI?
eyal on July 14th, 2007 9:23 pm

Hi E, I entered BHI 10 seconds aghead of time (before the candle completed). I remember looking at the clock again after I entered - I watch it extremely carefully when working out the orders and then it registered in my mind: hey it’s not time yet! Anyway it was a weird experience on Friday, a bit surreal.

What field are you in? Any tips then on how to handle stress?
E on July 15th, 2007 10:30 am

Entering 10 seconds early - wouldn’t you want to enter a trade one tick above the previous already formed 15 minute candle? IE you wouldn’t actually be looking at the currently forming candle, but only the price, looking for an increase in price above the previous low risk already formed candle?

I have a general practice but only practice alternative medicine. Stress is tough to fight if you are working a day and a night job! Perhaps have your doc look into looking into your hormone levels that are affected by stress (morning cortisol, DHEAS) - anxiolytics and antidepressants don’t really work if you aren’t sleeping!
eyal on July 15th, 2007 11:28 am

Thanks for the advice, E. I’ll do some research on this.

Your description is correct, what actually happens is that I prepare all the orders, quantities, entry price etc. before the candle is formed so that once the candle is complete I just transmit the prepared orders. Those highly active stocks can move and breakout quite fast when they do. In BHI’s case instead of stopping just after preparing the order I went ahead and clicked the transmit. I think it was my sense of time that was not working well because I thought those 10 seconds had already passed and we were into the next candle.