The more I look at swings the more beautiful they become. Although a lot slower to materialize my previous type of trading is very similar to swinging but now I can compare and contrast both types of trades. In intraday trading I only focused on price, but now in my pursuit of swinging I am noticing the importance of volume. In intraday trading the SP500 I look at the general trend and try to capture a small move of that trend. In swinging I look at the larger trend and do similar. The difference is, now I can focus more on other aspects as time is not a worry. Volume was not important in intraday trading to me due to the strength of random moves. In swing trading since market impact is important to larger players the impact matters and sometimes they continue to sell off or accumulate. Also since I used to trade 0DTE options with some success I am more keen on the aspect of strong moves/timing. As 0DTE options decay with time your move must be correct now, not in an hour. Also the benefit of volatility is important as it increases the price of the options as dramatic moves happen. What truly is beautiful is compare and contrasting the differences in intraday and swinging. With a few observations under my belt on daily fluctuations hopefully I can better hone in on what signals are best when combined. A few ideas were already given in this journals by others. I think the most important though is of course the trend, then volume, and lastly the wicks of the daily/weekly/monthly bars. The trend is of course important to determine direction, the wicks of a bar show the decision of a market(multiple bars with a lot of wicks shows that price is still determining direction. Conversely very few wicks shows determination to move toward lower or a higher price. Although the wicks are highly dependent on the time frame you use), and lastly volume determines the number of eyes and the potential for it to have a fomo like move. Take RKLB as an example, although my entry was good, it was cut short and now there are crazy wicks on the daily bars and weekly. Look at HIMS or JPM for the opposite. Seems like I know what I need to do. Although I am not saying all of theses signals together will determine exactly price will continue higher but truly betting on a stock to show continue these signs in the future while cutting ones that don't is what I am going to pursue while I keep observing the market. I am up overall from intraday trading the spy by 16%(0DTE Options, so leveraged gains and losses). For swing trading I am still positive after selling my JPM since it was a very large position, so losses from RKLB and CART are very minuscule. Also injecting cash from my job as well. Life is going well . Edit1: Also today my watchlist was literally all green(around 11 stocks filtered from my already filtered list), so it is most likely the impact of the overall market. I think an interesting idea is that almost all stocks move together on breakouts, that or I am crazy.
You are another faker. If you really traded, you would post your broker statements. You have ZERO credibility here. And your username is fucktarded.
You gotta try options man, it's insane money if your bet is correct. Didn't mean to come off as a faker. I have stated multiple times I am not successful at trading and am still actively learning. Just sharing my thoughts and progress.
It doesn't MATTER if you are successful or not. Without a real-money journal, your journey means SHIT! Just look at MY journal! We don't care if it profitable or not...We care if it is REAL MONEY! Like, Hello? And options are for insane folk. Psssshhhawww
Lol, maybe this is just a lucky streak. If you flip a coin a billion times the chance of there being a long string of consecutive wins/drawdowns gets larger. I appreciate you pointing it out. I am actually pretty confident in my life in general, as my habits are compounding and seeping through different parts. So the way I speak also comes of confident as I have said before. Since I am in this lucky streak I hope it continues or maybe it is all skill . But I can guarantee it is real money. And all of my swing trades have been real time except some of the exits(stop losses), since I work a job. But my words matter not for proof of real money. I am in it to make myself rich and the conversations that happen with others like yourself are just part of opening my thoughts to the general populace. If they help or not is up to me to make use of the information. Thanks though.
Well I am back just to give some thanks. I just want to say thank you to everyone who responded to my journal good or bad. I am doing quite well and conversing with @themickey on this website has helped a lot. A lot of the ideas were already in my head and I still do chase the market. I am now trading intraday more than ever. What I have learned is really to follow the trend and just cut the losses. I have a 54% win rate on over 200 trades right now with a positive EV. Just trying to catch big swings. I expect the price to move quickly in my direction and I follow the uptick or downtick(1s timeframe or 1m mini trends). My trading type is a positive skew with a few big winners and a long tail towards the positive side. It really is a very beautiful game to play. The hardest thing really is losses. I have been trying to develop mental techniques to accept losses. Although they are small and it seems like I am flipping a coin it still is really painful to just see a negative balance on the day. Since I chase I am always fearful of the big moves against me. There is like some underlying feeling, but looking at there 1second or 1minute time frame I usually trade you can just see the selling. I am not sure how to put it in words really since I am still developing ways to counter feeling bad for losing. Another thing is volatility. As it may be different in how we define it between us conversing here but for me volatility means market participants. You can see on days for the SPX that there are just hella people transacting at a certain price area. Like trying to play inside this area unless you are using the smallest of timeframes or tick frames is just going to kill you. A lot of overshoots and undershoots making people get stopped out. So the importance of this game of trading is essentially extracting information. Every bet a poker player makes or check, or check raise will provide information on his range of hands. Similarly with the market. Every cross to hit the bid or ask will give information. That is why it is important to follow the trend. These are market orders showing demand in a certain direction. Why fight this direction? There is someone behind you supporting you. You are just front running everyone else in this and trying to sell to them. In the volatile times(my definition) there is opportunity to make money from these explosions on either side but really if you want to reduce your variance or drawdowns you should probably not play these areas. Another interesting thing is just waiting for explosions when trading. Some traders? Who knows who they are just exit there entire position or there is a book of stops here and once it break it just explodes the liquidity of the market shrinks and the market orders that flood the field just hitting all the limit orders. I am thinking of implementing a limit order for these moves. Since I chase really even in the most volatile times and just cut my losses quickly I can re-enter but that is what I am working on. Trying to extract profits from these random poisson distribution of events(tbh probably not a poisson distribution). The dangerous thing with shorter time frames is that bigger timeframe players can ruin or make you, but that is what I am trying to profit off of now or should I say think of trying to solve or maximize. Really it is the process and the mental. The trend is your friend, just cut your losses and let your winners run. It really is that simple once you can see it. Look into yourself and judge deeply. Anyways peace. I come here every now and then to see the interesting characters here. I just wanted to thank some of the people who helped me. This could all be luck as well the biggest luck that I have had in life . Logging off, see you all later. Godspeed to myself once again .
I know this isn't a swing journal anymore but I just enjoy talking out of my ass. I have been working on adding onto winners and developing strategies to capture volatility when I notice it. Been working a lot on demo trading to develop good habits as well because I am discretionary I have to deal with all these emotions and I really haven't been trying to develop code based on my thought processes. I think what is interesting right now is the adding aspect of trading. I essentially perform very well on chop days with crazy swings while adding into these moves. Trades are still quite short like less than 20 minutes. Also been reading some market wizard books to see how they stop negative ev plays like poker. The biggest for my personal trading it is adding to losers so I cut all of that out already. Another thing is the feeling of hope. I feel as if I hope quite a bit. I think mentally I am ill prepared to handle large moves against me once I enter a trade. I was recently in a trade scalping a few ticks in a the premarket of the SP500 and it lowkey smashed me due to trump tweeting. I didn't have a stop. Blah blah blah. I am talking too much essentially I just want to use this as a board to get out my thoughts and maybe share some ideas. A lot of discretionary trading for me is very emotional. I am still unsure if this is just a crazy luck streak or if it is truly some sort of positive ev skill that I have. I have many process and I have been trying to remove the negative ev leaks I have which are really quite a lot. Small mistakes lead to big mistakes. Let us say I take a trade and it instantly goes against me. If I never prepared a mental idea of where to get out I am already fucked. Now I am in a trade and it is moving against me and I can't think because I am retarded enough to enter a trade without having the basic checklist that I should be going through. This also comes into play with the type of environment the market is in. Market in this case is just the SP500 since that's all I trade. Sometimes it is in some wack ass consolidation, sometimes it grinds slowly higher, sometimes it is some beautiful fucking consolidations that I can easily exploit with volatility. Other times it's a crazy trend initiated by random news and fucking everyone previously. Yeah I am using more express words but I lowkey am in love with trading rn. So let's talk about negative ev things. Firstly I must say that I am a chaser. I add into the dramatic moves and exit with an expected target or at least that is what is giving me success. Stopping leaks is a very important thing in poker. Firstly it starts with your hand and position. But let's not talk poker since no one cares since this is about trading. Adding to losers for me is negative ev. Having no plan and yoloing trades due to boredom is negative ev, again no plan. Not preparing for known events is negative ev. It really does boil down to your plan. If you got a plan then you know if what you are doing is negative ev or not. Even if it is because you don't have an edge you can at least do analysis on it. Did you follow your plan? Did you feel hope? Fear? The most powerful feeling I get now is hope. There are two types. Hoping the price will continue higher and hoping it will move in my direction. I have cut a lot of the latter out. Since reading some of the market wizards there is a chapter where a trader talks about popcorn trades. Essentially these trades are trades where you are up and it reverse back to your entry. Do you have a break even stop or are you still holding this? It depends on your plan. These popcorn trades really initiate the feeling of hope for me. Well that's all for today.