08/21/2014 Live Update

[Cobra]

members only update at 11:45 am
http://www.cobrasmarketview.com/2014/08 ... ay-update/

[BullBear52x]

yeap break down now.

[MrMiyagi]

yeap break down now.

In what, gold?

[Al_Dente]

/ES 1988 is key number to watch.

Boss: hypothetical:
Let’s say you shorted IWM/TNA yesterday
Did you close it this morning for a quick kill, or do you hang on while it swings all over the place?
It’s so damm jumpy
Hypothetical only

[gappy]

/ES 1988 is key number to watch.

It is mirroring itself.

a.PNG

When the bipolarity is removed:

Capture.PNG

A dip to buy!

[BullBear52x]

/ES 1988 is key number to watch.

Boss: hypothetical:
Let’s say you shorted IWM/TNA yesterday
Did you close it this morning for a quick kill, or do you hang on while it swings all over the place?
It’s so damm jumpy
Hypothetical only

What time frame? intraday setup never triggered a sell yesterday on my setup.

More on IWM RSI weakness is clear but 114.5 is the key line.

[Cobra]

my guess for fun. really don't know what to say.

[fehro]

watch your biotechs... will be interesting close on the weekly tomorrow... time for BIS?

[Royal Flush]

/ES 1988 is key number to watch.

Boss: hypothetical:
Let’s say you shorted IWM/TNA yesterday
Did you close it this morning for a quick kill, or do you hang on while it swings all over the place?
It’s so damm jumpy
Hypothetical only

The setup was a bear daily close, but the trend is still up.
That was a counter trend trade so why would you go for more than 3% from yesterday's RTH high?
That was a pretty impressive pin bar hold'n'bounce into the -161% of yest's TF range, @ 1144 right at VWAP support.

[Al_Dente]

thanks PAPA B
thanks ROYAL

[tsf]

Thank you, taggard and MrBachnut.
I really appreciate your insights as well as Cobra's honest sharing of his trading experience last time.
The information from many other boardies is also invaluable.

Either the models flopped (setups will fail a certain % of the time) or I goofed. It turns out that I goofed. Part of the issue was me being out last Friday and part was a miss on my execution. So, I have to score this an error.

again newbies mostly--key idea is when stuff doesn't work why not. as example today i was long into the first move up and got thrown off by the bounce in vol. i was late leaving. so loss of 9%ish. then i got long again a bit late--and was out too soon for 5%ish minor gain.

i don't have any model just the price action. so my sense of my mistakes is this--i am off a bit just a bit "slow". my working sense near open was "not yet" (on a decline) that is what i mean by "sense". so that was "get long". on the reversal (if it was flash) and a gaping maw bid ask on options my sense was "hold it dude this is not it either". because i was off i bailed it. on the 2 entry the feel was "gotta try that first high". this turned out to be right. but i left slightly early. (these expressions of senses are not exact--but are as close as i can write and convey any meaning)

this approach may seem messy to someone who trades rules--but the feel/sense etc was correct each part of the way. my divergence from trading that feel was the problem. that in turn is just being a bit off or "tired". the correct move is likely to just take a nap for 15min and reset. so my concern tends to center around 2 issues. one is the "feel" right. that just comes from how price is acting--a few volume spikes and the bid/ask spread on various options. second assuming i am seeing what is actually going on--then how am i reacting to it. a key idea is that 85% of the time any problem winds up being me not "listening to what i see" so not just acting blindly on the sense of it. 10% of the time i am off by a mile and am "sensing" the wrong thing. 5% of the time i am not very sure either way. these % are the results of 1000s of trades tracked in excel and a journal over many years.

the tout here (newbies) is not the trading style which is not important. it's the idea that Mr. Bachnut did a valuable thing considering his mistakes. And you should too.

the key idea with mistakes is to get over the emotional tangle--and man it's usually there one way or another. if you have it you are concerned about losing it--and if you don't have it--it seems like you will never get it. if you are going to succumb to this try to fall in the direction of hemmingways idea of "if you are good enough it's all your fault". that is a mistake--but it's a better one than blaming the market or cobra or your dog etc.

so once the emotion is at least somewhat understood--you want to know what happened. and keeping records of this will act like a map. you will come to understand what weakens you--and where you are strong. i don't just mean the market action (i cannot really find much of an edge here--if it's slow and i get it great. if it's fast and i get it great.) situations are all sorts of things aside from the charts--are you on it mentally? how is your blood sugar? what else is going on in your life that is impacting trading? (huge stuff rarely noted) being on it mentally is when stuff comes together and is not just a pattern. the clue here is the size of your trade--1% of capital trades all the time show little--sometimes being in 30% shows a lot. on records it's key to do it in real time--your memory of the event is totally different and you will drop information if you do everything later. so just a sentence here or there or a screen shot will often be far more useful than trying belated forensics.

it's too complex here to note every factor--but the idea is Mr Bachnut checking why things didn't work optimally is the point. if you are new at this--my advice is to gather more information than you need both in math and in text. then as you get more experienced stream line it but don't stop doing it. Try to relax and not get lost in emotion--but let the results act like a map. We tend to make mistakes from our habits and blind spots--by definition we often don't see these even when we are "looking right at them". But records will send you in the right direction--without you knowing exactly why--if you simply let them. in this way mistakes are often far more valuable than killer trades. Bonus idea--often when you think you get it--you don't and often when you think you don't get it you do. our moment to moment understanding of what we are doing is "uneven" to say the least--to me it doesn't exactly exist except as being in the flow of action or out of it--and that is not me it's the interface between me and "it".

good luck to all and now that nap[/quote]

[grandeG]

SPX 60m.. nearing all time highs... pennies away

Looks like 3 trend lines converging at 2000. Breadth is horrible and if IWM still refuses to participate in this up move tomorrow I feel obligated to short.... again.

[Mr. BachNut]

Thnx Taggard.

I make mistakes all the time, usually mental errors of attention or confidence. It is hard as a one man show in a complex arena to get it right all the time.
Last week's booboo was attentional.
Details matter on my setups, and between life on travel and focus on other trades, I missed the pitch on equities. So it goes.
My goal is fewer and smaller. I have let go of perfection.

For what it is worth...

I journal every trade (about 120-150 per year) as well as missed trades.
I measure actual entry price, size and exit price against what is prescribed by my setup.
I note any important context that mattered to execution.
Quarterly, I sum the variances to determine performance leakage and review. (It is an eye opener the first time .)
It is really really helpful to see the value of right (or perhaps better the cost of wrong) trigger pulling, sizing and exit management.
It has allowed me to take steps on specific identifiable issues, which have made a measurable improvement in my performance.
So, I highly recommend journaling and performance monitoring.

[gappy]

Silver 4 hour.

Capture.PNG

[Cobra]

goes as expected. we might be here.

[MrMiyagi]

gdx

[BullBear52x]

The attachment 3517.png is no longer available

GLD is already failed. so next rip will be sold.

[BullBear52x]

/NQ or QQQ is the weakest link.

[gappy]

Capture.PNG

[taggard]

My goal is fewer and smaller. I have let go of perfection.
I journal every trade (about 120-150 per year) as well as missed trades.
I measure actual entry price, size and exit price against what is prescribed by my setup.
I note any important context that mattered to execution.
Quarterly, I sum the variances to determine performance leakage and review. (It is an eye opener the first time .)
It is really really helpful to see the value of right (or perhaps better the cost of wrong) trigger pulling, sizing and exit management.
It has allowed me to take steps on specific identifiable issues, which have made a measurable improvement in my performance.
So, I highly recommend journaling and performance monitoring.[/quote]

thank you Mr Bachnut

i would toss in a couple more ideas for others to toy with. One is the balance between perfection and optimal trades. it seems damaging to hold perfection as an abstract ideal--yet we want to get our trades right. Second on any trade one really great idea is to note the actual entry and exit of the trade--and then go back and find optimal entry and exit and compare. this does not mean you have to focus on perfection. What it does is allow you to start to see the nature of "what stimulus" is required to enter and exit. by nature i mean "how much" "what kind" and sort of "how do i react" to various sorts of stimulus.

so point here is perfection is not the idea--yet looking at the distance and nature of the difference between the idea and the reality (there lies the shadow).

Second on trade selection you have all sorts of options. first with really new ideas you can paper trade (i don't place any value on back-testing so that is my bias) do it in real time and subtract costs. second you can trade different ideas in different time frames. the wonderful thing about 5 min stuff is (1) you can always find a trade. (2) since most trading ideas are sort of fractal (so the same image/action in different time frames) you can have more cycles of learning in shorter frames over a shorter period of time (and then carry the idea or feeling out in time to trade whatever). Certainly you can try different methods futures options etc. in fact if you have an approach which works this can be a good thing.

So you have different approaches to track and you can do more than 1 in the same general time frame. Learning is a matter of (1) frequency of exposure. (2) the type of attention paid to the event (3) what you do with the results. one of the really hard parts starting out is you have no 100-1000 examples of your efforts to look at. Backtesting is flawed as it is not like real trading (neither is paper but it's closer since it's in real time). also trading is not model construction or chart reading so keeping close to the end event is key. I spent a lot of time learning the wrong things fairly well at one point.

finally i look at my results daily and weekly and then usually once a year. the most useful thing for me is one a week as i have not completely forgotten the feel at that point--yet i have more examples and data around any individual experience. also i force myself do all calculations and entry by hand into excel--i know really odd--but i learned some stuff from Helene Meisler and the act of being granular with charts and results--eg the kinesthetic input from entering--helps bond the information and forces close attention.

bottom line is the exact method of examining your current and past actions is not so much the issue as that you consider doing it in some form. the only caution i would add is that the information i don't think is important is the stuff i am scared of missing--similar to the idea that "risk is not something you measure it's what you are not aware of" so calculating known risk is good but learning how to deal with the unknown event itself far better. so when you collect records--consider what you think you should be collecting and what you think is "not important" clearly. Likewise consider that which you are trying to learn as what we think at the start or in the middle is often not what we think in the end of our learning.

good luck with your trades