Trading rooms

Great post from Robert Sweetman regarding the day trading room at ftseday.  Well worth a read as it worked for me after spending years reading trading books and trying every strategy under the sun.

It's still really hard work to get control over your emotions but just watching other traders work helps massively.  The fact the everyone is helpful and supportive is priceless.

Just don't mention indicators...

Options expiry

I wasn't going to trade today (17/2/12) because I already made 25% on my account this week and it was options expiry which I have been told is trickier to trade than a normal day due to big players moving prices.  When the price came back down to the double bottom around 11ish I couldn't resist grabbing a few points as the R:R was really good.  Got out for +8 just before the price took off, should have held onto this trade but thought the price was stalling.

Tried to short off the 20 level in the afternoon, got my stop to b/e and got stopped out shortly afterwards again just before the price tanked.  Resisted chasing the trade.

Looking forward to Monday as I think we might see the FTSE breakout of the range it's been in for the last couple of weeks.

Over confidence / Over trading

So I blew a few pips yesterday (16/2/11) due to over trading and a lack of discipline.  In the morning I had 5 trades, 4 that got stopped at break even and 1 (the last one) that I jumped out of early with 5 pips profit.  In hindsight I was lucky to get away with this, chances are that one of these trades should have gone against me and hit my full stop but the market was stuck in a tight range and I got away with it.  Fact is that after the first entry, which was a decent set up, I shouldn't have continued entering when the price kept on revisiting the original entry level.  Getting back in the first time would have been reasonable but not the 3 times afterwards (unless I was purposely scalping for the range, which I wasn't).  My final trade that I closed for +5 does raise some questions about is it OK to get out of a trade early or should you leave it to hit the b/e stop.

The afternoon started well, I went short at 70 and doubled up at 75 (both strong levels), the 70 trade got stopped for breakeven but the 80 level held and the 75 trade spiked down and hit my target at 65, +15pts in profit for the day, pretty sweet and looking at my account balance only 5 pips from doubling my original.  Now at this point I should have taken a look at where my mind was at, 7 trades with no losses in a fairly short space of time had filled me with false confidence and I thought I could make those final 5 pips, in fact I thought it was pretty much guaranteed at time, worst case scenario I would at least get a chance to put my stop to b/e.  As the price came back to 75 I jumped in short and got stopped out, same again when the price came back to 80, this time some news about the ECB and Greece caused the price to rise.  +15 pips to -5, alot of hard work wiped out.  This is not the first time that over confidence after a series of wins has go the better of me and is an area of my psychology that needs to be addressed.  Never again !

Now I just need to figure out how to spot this coming and take appropriate action...

My FTSE trading diary

My FTSE trading diary.  OK, so I have been promising myself to set this up for sometime after reading Robert Sweetmans first class blog but after a bad run of trades early 2012 I resolved to finally get it started to try and stop myself making anymore dumb ass mistakes through undisciplined trading.

I have been trading part time since 2008.  Started off with a small spread betting account which I used to trade indices (mainly FTSE), it took me about 2 weeks to blow it up so I decided to move to trading shares on the FTSE 250 and AIM.  The trades I made were based almost 100% on fundamentals and I made decent profits (few grand) for the first couple of years but became steadily more frustrated having to put up with the down swings in the market chipping away at my profits.  This, along with the realisation that it was unlikely I could live off my gains lead me towards trading the indices again.  After reading a load of books and trying to trade every system and market under the sun that I could find I decided to direct my focus on the FTSE, this is partially my choice and partially due to the influence of Mike over at ftseday.co.uk who has been an incredible source of advice.

I day trade the FTSE only now, I am still have a full time job but enough spare time to analyse the market and I can usually get a couple of trades in the morning, lunch time or evening.  I trade off price action alone, no indicators and use support/resistance, gaps and trends to find my entries.

I will try to post some analysis of the market as I see it, some of my trades and general thoughts on the market and making money.  I don't have system I just try and trade what the market shows me.


"I won’t do any trade until there is money lying in the corner of the room and all I have to do is walk over and pick it up."  Jim Rogers