JPM

All posts tagged JPM

Reflections

I’m deciding to make a little change in how I write these daily trade reports. The nuts and bolts of what happened will still be reported, but I’m moving those down to the bottom of the post. The journey to becoming a better trade is not a reflection of the trades I take, but what I notice and how I think about the trades I do (or do not) take. If the reflections are the important part, then they should come first.

As you’ll see below, perhaps because I framed no trades this week, the portfolio is down to only two open positions, and one of those barely survived its stop loss on Friday. For that reason, I feel like I will be starting fresh on Monday morning.

The systems I presently trade buy pullbacks in markets trending upwards. Looking at the daily or weekly charts for my favorite targets, very few show strong upward trends at the moment. For the past several weeks, perhaps even 2-3 months, they have been trading in the same range. If there isn’t a 2:1 reward:risk ration available for the trade, I’ll pass on it. Since I started using 2ATR as my position size, that means I need 4ATR of possible movement to the upside before I will enter the trade. In this quieter more sideways movement of the market, that is leaving me with fewer trades to take. My reflections for this weekend leave me wondering if I should go back to a smaller risk amount to frame my trades, or if I just sit on my hands until the market provides me with the opportunities I know.

Swing Trades

No trades were framed for Friday, 8 June 2018. Six positions were closed: KR, XME, AXP, DWDP, JPM, EWW. Total return for the 6 trades: +3.85R.

Only 2 positionsin the portfolio showing +1.09R.
Long: GILD.
Short: AA.

Swing Trades

I framed no trades for today, and one trade hit its stop loss: JPM.

I consider this the price of distraction. The stop should have been moved up to break even after the hammer on 5/3. Having missed that during my time away from the screen last week, I could have had the stop at the Bollinger band mean, or even the PSAR dot. There was no reason to wait all the way to the original stop loss to exit this trade aside from lack of attention.

That leaves 14 open positions showing +7R.
Long: AEM, BMY, CAT, GLD, INTC, IR, KR, OXY, PFE, PYPL, RIO, TPR, TWTR.
Short: none.

Day Trades

As noted yesterday, I had no time to watch the market today, so took no day trades.

Reflections

In my non-trading life, today was a very hectic day. It is really easy to see how I am not putting the necessary time into my trading at the moment. I have framed no trades for the past two days, even though I am sure there were candidates available. The rest of this week will be a challenge to find the time to trade, so I have to be willing to give back more than I would like on some other positions if the market changes direction. The other option is to close all positions, but I don’t believe current market conditions warrant stepping completely aside.