Ticown's Trading Journal

[Ticown]

Hello!

I’ve been wanting to make a journal for a while now, I believe it’s essential to learn from our mistakes and that will be easier by keeping track of what I’ve done/what I’m planning on doing.
This objective of this journal is to learn how to play SPY like a pro

I won’t do any callouts during trading hours unless I see a clear pattern forming; I’ll instead update my journal at the end of the day (hopefully) purely for my own interest.

I’ve already held a private trading journal, but I’ve always ended up dropping it, hopefully I’ll take care of this one a bit better.

[size=4]Introduction[/size]

First of all, I love trading, I love every single aspect of it, I want to do it until the day I retire, so this server for me isn’t about enabling my gambling addiction, it’s about making sure I learn as much as possible in the shortest amount of time to benefit me long-term

[size=3]My trading experience timeline:[/size]

-I started trading in 2016 (16 at the time, 21 now) on a paper account, I only played gold because it moved nicely intraday and my broker didn’t allow stocks, so I was unaware you could even buy that.

-I traded gold for about 2 years on that paper account, regularly doing 1k-50k challenges (1:25 leverage)
After that I switched to a live account and turned 500€ into 5000€ in about 3 months still trading gold (1:10 leverage)

-1 ½ year break

-Started trading stocks in November 2020 with $BNGO, I wanted to start with a bang, so I scoured the internet trying to find THE play, and found this, rode it from 0.5$ to 10$.

-I then re-took a break and the very next stock I played was GME, and I forgot everything I had learned for the last 3,5 years. I bought at ~10$ and sold at ~70$ on the way down. After that my focus for the next 6 months was finding “the next squeeze” (with some success from time to time)

-I then joined a trading community and lost 4k + 140$ in membership fees in 2 months

-Took another break until IRNT and found Valhalla

So, all in all I have about 3 years’ experience
There you go, that was all of it

Now for the fun part: I have my 4k back

The 26th of Jan 2022 was the first ever option contract I played but I had decent entry-level knowledge about options from hearing about it so much

I had a very lucky week and nailed every single earnings plays I made thanks to the forum and the trading floor. FB, UPS, AMD. And that brought my balance to 1.1k just in time for the challenge.

The objective of this journal is to learn how to play SPY the same way I learned to play Gold.

The gains I made on gold might have been luck, but at the time I was looking at the chart 10 hours a day and after a while I could tell where it was headed just by looking at it, no need for lines, indicators or whatever.

So, the objective is to arrive to a same state with SPY

So far, I haven’t had any success trading SPY options at all (-435$) but it’s a fee I’m wiling to pay to learn.

It’s going to be a learning experience, I will lose a lot, I’m 100% ok with it (I might trade with a paper account, not sure yet)

Now, for my first update.

[size=4]March 3rd 2022[/size]

I had spy puts that stop triggered during an unexpected run-up & came out at break-even, I was too distracted with RSX, and couldn’t act on it to take profit.
So first lesson: when you have shit open on spy, keep watching.

See? I’m learning already

See you tomorrow

PS: Pardon any typos or whatever, English isn’t my first language

[Ticown]

[size=4]March 4th 2022[/size]

First (actual) update,

I’ve decided to only use a few indicators on SPY, and I’ve opted for quite popular ones. Indicators don’t actually predict stock movement, it’s the mass reaction from investors to those indicators that create the movement, pretty much a large scale placebo effect.

So by using popular indicators, I have a higher change of predicting where SPY will go outside of unforeseen news.
Indicators will be:

• Fibonacci Retracement
• 280 Exponential Moving Average (EMA)
• 20 Moving Average (MA)
• Parabolic SAR

I only played SPY twice in the morning with success so I’ll break down my plays
I’ll try to justify my reasons for playing as well as figuring out if I made any mistakes and what I could have changed

[color= #0096e7]Blue line = Buy[/color]
[color=#ffd966]Yellow line = Sell[/color]

Plays:

A : I started the day placing a Fibonacci Retracement level based on the first big movement of the day, I usually place those around the 30 minute mark to make sure I get the right direction for the day. Usually you use Fibonacci on a movement per movement basis and move it around during the day, but from what I’ve seen on SPY, Fibonacci levels seem to hold pretty well throughout the day.

B : I confirmed that Fibonacci was placed correctly went it hit the 61.8% level, this might have been pure luck but it doesn’t really matter for now, placebo or not it allowed me to play SPY correctly today. If I find a better alternative I’ll switch to that.

C : I placed a buy order when it It the 78.6% Level as a pure gamble that a reversal would happen off of that support. It then pushed from 430 to 432 in 4 candles and blasted through the 20 MA, which usually acts as a resistance/support line.

D : I sold at this level because we were nearing a resistance from market open

E : I bought at this level because the candle was extremely bullish, Small body with a long bottom wick indicates that the candle had strong selling pressure during it’s span but that buying pressure took the upper hand before the candle close. This, in theory, means that bullish candles will follow.

F : The price hugged 20 MA for a small while. At the time I was looking for a full candle closing above it to justify my purchase.

G : I sold here based on point F and resistance of point B

Mistakes:

H : I probably should have bought a put right when I sold at D or when the price broke 20 MA, as they were cheaper than market open and would have been an easy scalp. IBKR is really clunky though and would have made this very hard.

I : This is a CLEAR double bottom and could have added calls here, I was just too focussed at individual candles to notice it, I need to de-zoom from time to time and look at big picture.

That was all for the morning.

I placed some random Copium lines between yesterday’s market close and today’s market open and traced a wedge

This would have, in theory, created a very bullish movement, but I didn’t play because we had lower lows and not a lot of movement, which made it seem more bearish that it was. I would have preferred it it had stayed over the purple line (29 resistance)

I told myself in the morning that I wouldn’t play puts today because they were too expensive and didn’t want to risk it, so I just left spy alone for the rest of the day and didn’t play puts here either based on my sentiment.

So my theory was right (maybe accidentally so), had I played calls like the wedge indicated, I would have made roughly 80$ per call(23.6% Fib level)

We’ll get em’ next time

Thanks for reading, Enjoy the week-end