Technical Day Trading Journal

Yesterday I could have made 30 cents per share in a momentum trading, but the trading application just didn't respond.

But that's alright though, I think I got the trick. I should enter a position at the support level if there is any and not in the break out level, I think that this thing will give me the edge.

So far the only thing that truly worked for me was momentum trading. Another thing that I am aware now is that there is only one price correction, the stock is going up or down and then there's a range of support and resistance and then there's a break out. If you missed that, you probably won't get another chance.

I've assembled a list of stocks for day trading.

I was looking for stocks from the S&P and Nasdaq100 that made a move of more than $0.5 in a 5 minute period, 5 minute candle that is. I counted the times for each stocks and here is the top of the lists:

These are the stocks for day trading from the S&P 500:

X

FCX

CNX

MEE

WYNN

APC

PNC

WLP

BTU

HES

SLB

ATI

DVN

CAT

HUM

CMI

UNP

EMN

ETN

PXD

And theses are the stocks for day trading from Nasdaq 100 :




 

WYNN
JOYG
RIMM
APOL
ILMN
GENZ
CELG
CHRW
CEPH
LIFE
SIAL
LRCX
FAST
BIIB
NIHD
AMGN

   

Today was a great day.

I entered 2 trades and both of them were profitable.

I used the same stock twice, AIG, this stock was soaring...
















I noticed that stock in the scanner, and noticed the flag, I entered at 25.56 and exited on 25.70, 14 cents profit.

then I entered again, after the stock broke out of the resistance.

Note the huge volume, this made me very sure of those trades.

The second trade made me 12 more cents and since I'm trading 100 stocks in each trade I made 26 dollars today!

Yesterday the stock market was crazy so it was very dangerous to trade.

I was following a stock, NDN, and when it hit 16 I decided to enter a long position.

The reason for this is that 16 was the highest point in the daily chart and also in the 5 minute chart.

Round numbers are known to be resistance points so if a stock crosses this point it should break out in long positions and the other way around in short positions.

But this time it didn't work, for a few seconds I was losing 3 cents then I was winning 3 cents and then it started to plummet and I noticed the SPY going down so I decided to get out of the position.

It turned out to be a smart move because then NDN fell 15 cents in a few seconds.

It's important to make winning last and to cut loss quickly.

Eventually I lost 2 cents per stock yesterday and I'm still trading 100 stocks per trade so that means 2 dollars gross loss.

See you on Monday

Today I missed 2 trades.

I thought I'd do whatever worked yesterday so I was looking for a new peak or bottom on the daily chart.

I used the 5 minute chart to declare a trend and the entry point would be the daily peak or bottom.

The exact entry point would be based on level II, of course if the daily peak is at 15.00 and I need to get in a long position and there's a huge seller at 15.01 then I would enter the position at 15.02

This could have worked twice.

With the first stock I was too afraid to enter the position because it made a sharp move, 15 cents move in a second, so I figured I'd be better off staying away. but this stock plummeted 50 cents.

The other one I just missed by 2 cents when I noticed it, so I didn't take it which was also a mistake because it made about 30 cents in one minute.

So no gain but no loss either today.

Let's see how we're doing tomorrow.

Today I decided to use the daily chart along with the 5 minute chart.

I only picked stocks that made new daily peaks or bottoms as opposed to all other trading days.

I used my new scanner/alerter and it worked like a charm. No way I could have watched it with my own eyes.

In the last trade, the peak was my entry point and it worked pretty good ( 15 cents )

I made 4 trades today and 3 out of the 4 were profitable.

I made 12 cents in the first one, then lost 8, then made another 4.5 cents and then another 15 cents.


I'll try the same tomorrow and see if it works.

Let's hope tomorrow will be profitable as well.

Today was pretty good.

I entered 3 trades and 2 out of the 3 were a success.

In both trades I noticed a bull flag, the first one DAL didn't break out so I only managed to get 4 cents.

The second one CYCC was working really hard to break and eventually didn't, so I took my 5 cents and baled when I noticed a huge seller.

The third trade was a mistake, I noticed a stock, TWC, that kept going up so I figured why the hell not.  Well, I shouldn't have done this because I lost 3 cents, I managed to cut the loss early, what a waste.

So overall it was a pretty good trading day. There was another trade at the beginning but I was thinking too much and I didn't hit the buy button, and this stock made 20 cents in 30 seconds.
I think I lost my confidence due to previous losses.

The stock scanner didn't come in handy today, I'm sure it'll come in handy tomorrow.

I put the real time stock scanner to test today.

Actually it alerted twice but the first stock was going so slowly so I decided to sit back and watch it.

It made 30 cents after 30 minutes. But at least I didn't lose.

The second stock was too expensive for me, if I can't buy at least 100 shares then why bother at all?

But at least I know now that the scanner is working great and the trading program was not slowing down because of it.

Trading day is about to end and I didn't even make one trade.

I think that's it for today. Better luck tomorrow.

Well today I didn't trade at all , I spent all the time in developing my stock scanner. I don't have 8 eyes and therefore I cannot watch that many stocks. Sometimes I don't pay attention to the screen and sometimes I leave the room. So why lose beautiful trades?

The stock scanner that I built is very simple right now and I will develop it further in the future.
I programmed the scanner to beep when the a stock reaches a certain price from the top or the bottom it doesn't matter actually.

This way when I detect a stock that moves in a range I can set the scanner, or market alerter as I call it, to alert when this particular stocks hits a price.

I'll need to run some tests and then on Monday it's good to go.

If this works I can develop some more sophisticated things like alerts when volume per minute or per x seconds start to rise or when a stock starts to move very fast, this is very easy to do when you have the real time data feed.

So I admit it, I failed as a human trader alone, here I said it.
But why shouldn't I use the help of a computer when I have the proper skills to do that?

See you on Monday guys,

stick around I might let you borrow the scanner.

Yesterday I didn't trade I was just too tired from work.

But the day before I did.

I was following a stock that behaved the opposite from the market. The market went down hard and this stock was still hanging in there without a change.

After a few minutes the market started to rise and my mind and I stepped out of the room.

The whole time this stock, I think it was DV, was on my watch list.


When I came back I noticed this stock rose 50 cents in one minute.

 I was so close.

So I could have made 50 cents in a minute multiply it by 100 shares and you get $50 gross.

By the way, the same thing happened to me the day before, that time it was 30 cents.

What I learned from this story is that I need someone to watch my stocks and alert me while I'm gone.

Luckily, I know how to program a little bit.

So this trading program I use is called GT Laser and the broker is Genesis.

This software can connect to Excel and export market data.


I wrote a macro in VBA that will record every change in the worksheet to a file.


I'm going to build in C# .NET an application which will read from the file and monitor my stocks.

The program will alert whevever a certain rule that I will set is matched.

Let's see how this goes. This should be interesting. This could go far beyond that.

This program can let me know whenever the SPY goes down or up hard or anything else I tell it to.

Hope I make it till this day's trading otherwise I will test it on Monday.

Best of luck to me.

Today I entered one position when I saw a resistance on the 5 minutes chart.
Once I entered the position, long, the market went down and the stock went down with it.

Maybe resistance on small cap stocks is not so great? I would like to hear your opinions about it.

Finally I've made some money.

The first position I entered was HUM. On the 1 min chart I saw a support and decided to wait for the right moment to enter the position, when I saw there weren't too many buyers I entered. Hum went almost 10 cents down so I decided to buy half. Then it went down further and I made almost 10 cents more.





















The second position was Zion, this time I saw a resistance and at the right moment I entered and made almost 10 cents. Not a huge profit but a nice one.

The third and last position was trying to go for Zion again which didnt work so well but I was smart enough to close the position at a very small loss.

Overall this was a good day for me.
I hope your day was good as well.

Do you want to become a millionaire day trading?

That's easy, just do the opposite of what I'm doing!!!

Today was the worst day trading ever. I lost $40 gross I didn't even bother to calculate the commissions. 3 momentum trades got me there. all of them failed. 2 of the trades were on the same stock : SYA.

Here is a screen shot:

Today I proved the say: "Patients pays off".
Look at the trade I've made today:

Apparently someone has made a research on the error and success rate of technical analysis patterns.

It seems like the best patterns are:

Rectangle Bottom Upside breakout
Rectangle Top Downside Breakout
  
They both have 0% error.

For the complete list please visit this website: http://www.trending123.com/scantimeframes/index.html

An explanation on each pattern you can find here: http://www.trending123.com/patterns/index.html

Another website that goes into details about the error and success rate is this website: http://www.coveredcallswins.com/chartpatterns/BestBullish&BearishPatterns.html#Rectangle-Tops



Good luck

Seems like going by the 1 minute chart does not work, at least not for me.

Maybe I should get back to the 5 minute chart.

Let's go over our trading rules for trade entry:

1. Volume in the last candles must be above 100,000 stocks
2. Enter when there's a flag either bull or bear.

I finished this day with a profit of $10 gross but I can't really say I nailed it, because only 2 out of 5 trades succeeded. I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

I'm waiting for half an hour before market close, maybe there will be some action which will lead to trading opportunities.

Bye for now

Today we had the chance to trade at market opening.

We noticed RIMM developing a bear flag, there was also no support at all looking at level II.

We also noted the big spreads between each price level in the level II screen, for example:

18 - 150 stocks
17.95 - 10 stocks
17.90 - 8 stocks
17.82 - 4 stocks

That means,at least I think, that if 18 level breaks down then the stock will go down all the way.

This worked great but the 2 other trades we made sucked big time. We lost half of what we made on RIMM.

Getting back to trading. Keep you posted.

Found a stock CSIQ that was going down hard and waited for something that looked like a bear flag.

Noticed on level II that there is a huge buyer and I  was planning to sell short right after that buyer would have disappeared.

It did disappear but so fast that I missed it. Stock went down 30 cent in a few seconds.

Second time the same thing happened.

The third time I managed to sell short but right after that the stock went up a little ( 8 cents ) and I closed the position.


Well, I didn't find anything else so I think I'll call it a day.

Yesterday I forgot to post the results.

3 trades and a total of 0.6 dollar.

The first trade was great, ended up with 12 dollar profit. Let me remind you that I trade 100 stocks only, so that's 12 cent profit per stock.

The other trade was awful, lost 17.5 dollars. The market crushed  and the stock went down 20 cents. I should have closed the position while i was down 5 dollars but I just kept on waiting which was wrong. Do not do that - if the stock does not break out then just close the position.

Third trade was great, 15 minutes before market close, I noticed the stock on the stock scanner, volume was great - 100,000, 200,000 stocks and there was a bull flag. I entered at the top of the flag and made a few dollars.

Better luck today