According to my charts I've got bonds at likely support and the ES at resistance. Vol is down 50% the last two weeks, that can't continue so the combination of risk/reward on the board right now leaves me in the neutral wait-and-see camp. Of course if these patterns break they should break hard, but I'm playing the odds and taking down my short ZB here at 143'08 in after hours for a loss of around -$335 or so. The Friday before Xmas is historically slow and we're closed Monday, so I'd just assume clock out and turn off my mental radio until Tuesday. I will however set my alert and if I get lucky and stocks fall and bonds bounce then I will gladly reenter my short ZB. See you next week.
Update: Ouch, couldn't have been more wrong. Stocks didn't break through resistance but bonds fell out of bed and cost myself a point. Lack of patience and wanting to take a four day weekend off mentally cost me. I find that when I check the charts every few minutes my time frame for patience gets smaller. If I can stick to checking 2-3 times a day its easier for me to relax. I would like to say lesson learned but this experience has been a cyclical one for me.
Update: Ouch, couldn't have been more wrong. Stocks didn't break through resistance but bonds fell out of bed and cost myself a point. Lack of patience and wanting to take a four day weekend off mentally cost me. I find that when I check the charts every few minutes my time frame for patience gets smaller. If I can stick to checking 2-3 times a day its easier for me to relax. I would like to say lesson learned but this experience has been a cyclical one for me.
ReplyDeleteLack patience is one of my trading faults also... I'm working on it.
ReplyDeleteDidn't do that well myself. Got in to a short ES position at the close yesterday that kept getting worse all last night. Reversed my position from short to long right before opening bell with a $250 loss. If I would have just left the new long position alone it would have erased the $250 loss and been up around $400. Instead I spent the whole day scalping the ES, eventually erased the $250 loss and showed a $55 profit before commissions. However after adding commissions it turns into a loss of about $100.
ReplyDeleteI noticed a common them today. I would make my entry and immediately see the price tick down a bit. aI would then try to get out of my trade for a 1 tick gain with the intention of getting back in at a lower price. So I had numerous trades showing minimal profit, and generally the price would just keep going higher and the process would repeat.
I think I need to just expect that after I fill, the price will probably head down and I need to be patient and let the trade play out - which is difficult to do when I am sitting in front of my monitors watching every tick. Today was probably made more difficult by lack of volume and very tight ranges of the ES for much of the day which didn't help very much.
The more I think about this the more ticked off I am with the way I have traded the ES. If I had just held 2 contracts from about 1220 to 1260 that would be about $8000 for the week, instead of probably less than $200 that I have gotten by trading in and out over the past week. I plan to not make this mistake again - I'm going to continue with my assumption that the market is headed toward 1300 over the next few weeks, so will take a 1-2 contract position next week in anticipation of this and just hold them until we get there or until my thesis changes.
ReplyDeleteHow much are you paying for commission on futures trades? I also have a hard time sticking to a trade while watching the screen. But I also have a hard time not watching, so I tend to get out of balance sometimes and yesterday was just that day for me.
ReplyDelete$3.50 per contract on Ameritrade, so a roundtrip of a 1 lot is $7. Traded 41 contracts today and paid commission of $143.50. Let me know if you think that rate can be negotiated down. Merry Xmas.
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