Starting a trading journal as I liked keeping one following my gold play and I’m looking to play some other things.
Wow so treasury bonds really fell off a cliff 1k gains (800 realized) before market open not including my 7 Lqd puts! Took profits on my largest percent gain call 93% and rolled my 70% gainer down to a further out strike plan to put away 500 out of 800 after I got blown up on gold going to avoid being greedy this time.
Lqd puts opened up 100% return took profits by selling 3 and rolling two to a closer to expiration strike expecting a little bit more dip on these going into fomc.
Gold still geeting railed still not sure whether to cut or to hold I honestly can’t go much lower at this point might be better to hold and try to be just less red. Still kinda delaying the inevitable.
Opened up a put on es1 during pre market sits up over 100% watching for a great exit.
Port up 9.5% at market open.
And closed those Es puts just in time for over 100% gain. Probably going to sit on my hands most of the day because I don’t want to loose these gains.
Trying to maintain a 7% weekly port gains if possible and already up 12% and the markets has only been open an hour! Great day for me, going to sit on my hands and watch es1 for a great entry if it comes if not I’m chill making no trade today. Also added 2.7k to my savings/long term investments this morning!
Took a 25% scalp on es1 puts
Sold another t bond put because it crossed 100% returns won’t roll it
1 Like
Can you talk about your strategy for playing ES1/LQD? What do you look for, entries, etc?
Lqd was part of the gld and hedging with junk bonds dd as I was taking profits on gold I was taking lqd puts to hedge against hawkish rates hikes that were bearish for gold, I took further out strikes and waited patently for the market to turn and if I didn’t my gold would be up anyways. Also my bonds r screwed dd and lqd dd all have bear cases.
For es1 futures it’s the same thing as trading spy just you can do it 24/7 and no day trade restrictions.
I played the bounce off of vwap on the hour chart based on calling bull on russia Ukraine peace talks. Also this covid outbreak in china I don’t think will be ignored it’ll just get pushed until latter. For exit I usually exit right about the point I think “damn this is a lot of money this will go down forever” usually about right when it reverses.
2 Likes
Thanks! Appreciate the additional detail.
2 Likes
Took a es1 put and lost 50$ decided to take that as a sign and take the rest of the day off. 14% gain for the day I could take 2 weeks off and still be inline with my 7% weekly goal! Big gains on treasury shorts and es1 puts couldn’t ask for a better start to a week. Most important thing is I put away around 4k I’ll have to add it up tomorrow into savings and long term investments so i won’t blow up my gains doing something stupid like last time.
Overnight took 1 es1 put for 52.5% profit and sold off the last of my t bond puts after seeing some strength today, kicking myself for not selling all yesterday after looking back at the day chart that was a huge red candle. Likely going to sell of lqd puts at open tomorrow and take a break from trading as I’ve been shattering my progression goals.
Wednesday and Thurs update as I was to busy to post one yesterday.
One large loss and one larger win. I had a feeling (correct feeling) that gold would bounce around 1910 area and come back and sure enough it did. But unfortunately I played it so emotionally, still chasing that period of gold trading where every time I bought that shit would double no matter what time I bought, that I ended up loosing 1000$ in a period where gold rallied 40 base points. Kinda embarrassing honestly but that’s why I keep a journal to mark down these thoughts.
1.) I do a good job at reigning in my emotions and taking a good play after a loss, that’s part of who I am as a person and my life experience, but I have a long way to go on controlling my emotions after a string of wins in a row.
2.) even if I win 15 trades in a row I can’t be complacent trading is still hard and most traders still loss money me winning doesn’t change that.
But on the bright side Thursday after a loss (still got to work on doing this after a win) I was able to reign in the emotions and do some analysis and came to the conclusion I think the s&p will rally up to 4400 By eow I took a position and averaged downed that position into maybe a bit over leveraged (got to be more careful on averaging down) Sat back and watched. To my surprise the s&p hit 4400 only hours later (was playing more for tomorrow but I’ll take it) overall profit was 2875$ I then took a small gamble that the s&p would continue into close which was wrong and I gave back 275$. I’m still okay with the last loss as it was a small position size and I stuck to my stop loss so just a bad play not really something emotional.
After that I secured some gains into index funds and savings having a really great week and added lots to my savings and long term investments one more day to go and see what I can do. Remember what I wrote above trading is still hard and I need to reign in my emotions and only take good trades.
Week 1 close out
Overall a monster week for my portfolio lots of big returns few losses and added a ton to my dividend growth portfolio.
My target is to grow by 7% weekly using 25% of my port as tradable cash would need to get an roi of 27% weekly or about 5% per day. A bit lofty but not impossible.
Started the week with 21,700
Closed out with 26,473
Weekly gain of 4773
A 21.9954% return for the week puts me at 3X my target
After a huge week I’ve elected to scale back the position sizes for trades to avoid blowing up my account. I will use around 15% instead of 25% and most of that will be in my bond put swing trade.
Holding a es1 put which is down bad right now wish I would’ve cut it for a small loss when I had the chance was not expecting the market to just retard strength rally today. Will close it out Monday and whatever I’m left with that plus the cash I have on hand will be used to trade with next week.
Mostly just going to watch the news movements and options flow with my t bond puts I’m ok holding a little red but if it starts looking like a reversal I will have to pull out for an L I’m down 2% on mt 5 year down 8% on my 10 year and 13% on cooperate bonds (definitely jumped the gun on buying these should’ve waited until intraday or eod)
As for my dividend growth portfolio I added 4 new stocks and grew some of my already existing positions. I also started adding in hedges to growth as I’ve learned a lot about how the market and economy work I see that the inflation and interest rates are enemy’s of growth and they tend to come after growth does well. To hedge my dividend growth portfolio I’ve added in stocks that do well during periods of low growth so my port doesn’t suffer during interest rates and inflation periods.
New buys
WFC 32 shares (hedge against interest rates)
NEM 7 shares (hedge against inflation)
SSRM 29 shares (hedge against inflation)
Abev 159 shares (dividend growth stock)
Added to existing positions
Schd 13 shares (dividend growth etf)
Xyld 36 shares (covered call etf)
Nobl 8 shares (dividend aristocrat etf)
Week 2 trading journal
Sunday evening t bond futures already red off to a good start 10 years back to break even and 5 years up 10% still early but like to see it.
This week
Starting with 26,557$
Goal 28,415$ (7% gains)
Trading with 15% of total portfolio 3k in bond puts and 1k for day trading.
Goal is if I reach my profit target to put 1k into a good well researched 2 year leap as a long term investment.
Moves this week
Treasury shorts likely just going to sit on them the whole week and monitor the news for any changes. Will sell if a crazy downward move happens but if it’s more steady I’ll hold green as I have until may. If I see some green in the bond market I’ll reassess the play.
Going to actively trade spy/es1 all week. Will take positions in individual stocks if anything interesting from the community pops up but I’m just going to focus on bonds and the s&p
Monday update amazing morning scalping spy
Spy/es1 408$ profit scalping 39% profit on tradable cash 1.5% total port gains. In-line with 7% target without t bond puts which are doing amazing.
Sitting on bonds for now. Decided to take some profit on these but selling itm and buying atm strikes gains were 80% on 10 year and 90% on 5 years.
Already hit weekly goal of 7% and have enough money to buy a good 1 year leap going to work on finding this. Have 900$ Left over to day trade the s&p probably will take tomorrow off and let my bonds chill.
Took a small gamble and lost gave back 200$ like an idiot oops. Now only have 700$ to trade tomorrow still above 7% profits which means I have 20 days worth of goals accomplished in 6 so there’s no need to really gamble like I did I should just chill out and only take good trades. Took a good scalp for 100$ profit around ah close make back some losses good stuff now have 800$ to trade tomorrow. Bonds also moving in my favor again see how long that lasts.
End of week update
Final balance 29,485 (and that’s with removing 1.2k for personal stuff)
Total money earned this week was 4,128$
Grew port 11% beating my goal by 4%
Update. Fml I am incredibly frustrated over what just happened. I bought some t bond puts around 10 hours ago I had a take profit idea in mind. Fast forward just now t bonds come down I set my limit sell for my take profit goal at 1”04 and sure enough the ask comes right down to 1”04 and the bid at 1”03 but because it’s not market hours it’s hard to sell the ask and before I can change my fill from 1”04 to 1”03 it recovers like 150$ in seconds and I watch treasury bonds recover 0.40% in minutes and watch all my gains go to 0$ Why treasury bonds are recovering while the s&p is up 1% and Russia Ukraine have good peace talks I have no clue but this one hurts bad. Got to try and clear my head going into cash markets still time to make some money but it sucks knowing whatever I do make could’ve been more if I had just set my sell 1 tick lower or if the price came down 1 tick lower or if I had just cut my losses still profitable. I think the reason I watched all my gains evaporate is I was to set on a profit goal going into the trade I didn’t want to settle for less, when less would’ve been fine, I normally take profit when I’m happy but I deviated and got burned.
Update. Lost some money playing amc like a jackass, then lost a little more playing a little bit better but then it didn’t really workout so I cut bags and just going to move on. Lost like 1k I started with a good position size but then averaged down then averaged down again I’m not a big fan of averaging down for this reason that if it keeps dipping now you have an over leveraged loosing position, but I got caught up in the “squeeze” feels like I usually get burned on these plays because of the emotion behind the “squeeze” and looking back at the old gme rkt amc charts I wasn’t even in the game for.
Also lost a bit on spy calls and made back some losses scalping on Wednesday.
Thursday I scalped one spy put for 140$ gains and don’t have the heart to try again so I’ll probably just buy a schd share and take a break I’ve had to big losses now and im starting to feel it I had a big run around 6k from treasury puts and I stoped playing at a great time now I just need to find the next good swing play and keep working on scalping spy.
I’m poking around the bio tech space to see it I can find anything worth playing right now, I have a couple tickers worth a small gamble on but still looking for something more decisive. Big risk reward on some of these playing with small positions I think can really add up if you can catch some of these large movements that occur on a daily basis.
Feeling I need to take a break from the day trading/scalping scene I feel I do better on longer “swing” trades I’m able to just buy and go on with my life and check back later. I feel my initial analysis is correct more often then not but I let the day to day price action shake me out of strong positions. Still trying to figure out what type of trader I want to be and what will get me the most profitable results over time, looking back my biggest wins have been gold calls during Ukraine conflict and treasury bond puts following, essc buying near nav and holding for a month and my biggest losses have been day trading indices. The pattern is becoming much more clear that maybe day trading isn’t my thing and should expand my time frame a little further out and let my trades make proper moves and not get to caught up in the intraday movements.
Haven’t updated in a minute life stuff.
Took some trades at futures open. Went long 10 year bonds short s&p and short gold based on opening price action and the thesis that real bond yields would bate some people out of stock and commodities into bonds.
All three played out exactly as predicted netting me just over 800$ in gains throughout my work day.
I am extremely passionate about working out and taking care of my body as well as my mental health but because of where I’m at the market moves from 10:30 pm to 5:00 am my time I have to decide between working out and getting enough sleep to recover or staying up to trade both things I love to do and am passionate about. I am trying to find a balance between the two in my life as I’ve let trading take over and don’t like the way it affects my physical health. I’ve decided to find some balance I want to workout and get enough sleep 5 days a week and stay up to trade just 2 days a week. I’m happy that I’ve been able to find some success trading futures this allows me to better balance the two.
I’ve set a couple of rules for my self to help balance my time spent trading while still making profits and progress to a great long term retirement portfolio which is my ultimate goal.
1.) only stay up to day trade 2 times a week.
2.) on day trading days I’m looking to take 1 futures trade for a day trade and 3 spy scalps maximum throughout the day. As well as enter swing trades if any pop out.
3.) on days I’m not trading I’m going to scalp the futures market the goal is to just make a couple hundred bucks nothing huge that’s what the 2 day trading days are for
That’s why I’m happy with how today went I mad 4X the profit goal I was hoping for today now I can get a workout in and sleep through the market with no risk on the table.
I am feeling that I will be missing out on a lot of great opportunities today based on how volatile the futures have been. I’m trying to tell myself that there will be another great day of opportunity’s tomorrow and that I should just take my Green Day. It’s hard to remember the market isn’t going anywhere when your so caught up in following all this news you want to make your trades now and make money now when in reality tomorrow has its own gains.
I’m going to challenge myself to not take any more trades and take my Green Day and sleep through the market. I feel if I can do this I will make a huge step forward in being able to balance my trading goals and my physical health goals.
1 Like
Took an l on es puts. My thought process is after the bounce from 3850 to 4100 then a day of selling we’d see a continuation back to the down side since macro economically nothings changed in the last 2 days.
Speculation time is that what we saw yesterday was funds pulling out of consumer staples after seeing they aren’t going to be immune to this sell of, now today they are putting some of this money back into tech since they likely pulled tech out for consumer staples a while ago. Once this happened traders are seeing growth do well and are calling for a reversal.
Also doesn’t help dealers are amplifying moves towards 4000 not away from I was thinking below 3900 might be a little to far away for that to come into play.
About to be forced break time for me about 3 months, honestly I’m looking forward to it.
Expecting the s&p to come back to 4000 by eow or early next week at that point I’m going to sell two micro es futures for September expiration to hedge in case there’s a crash while I’m gone.
After that I can just sit back and collect dividend and not think about stocks for a while should be nice.
I return for 2 whole days.
Going to try and scalp a few hundred bucks and average down some of my positions.
Also going to try and re balance my portfolio to allow more short exposure for the next quarter coming up.
Definitely feel 30% drop or more is a reality. But not until it’s clear that fed policy has really affected the market.
Did get a nice 900$ realized profit also added to my longer term short position at that 3800 level so I know have 3 micro es shorts for September that are already up so that’s nice.
Going to wait and see if I get a chance to sell above 3800 I’ll take it if not I’ll let my 3 ride.