Are you reviewing your trading solely based on your P&L? Is your focus on what you learn from the market or how much cash you are taking out? Do you do a weekly review? Below is a weekly review by a new mentee that the developing trader might implement with their trading.

Hi Bella,

The following is my weekly review from September 19, 2011 to September 23, 2011:

Sept 19: -22.80
Sept 20: -62.49
Sept 21: +53.58
Sept 22: +64.00
Sept 23: +78.30

Total: +110.59
Ticket Avg: 1.97

Review:
Still not happy with my ticket average. My goal for September was to stay above 2, and aim for above 5. The more problematic area was on Tuesday, in which I traded less selectively than 4 other days. Looking at my time frame analysis, my strongest time frame is still 15:10-16:00pm, and next strongest is 09:30-09:50pm. This is an improvement I made this week, as usually I was slightly positive 09:30-09:50am. Several things I picked up this week:

1. If you wanna make spreads to cover risks, do it when you have 2 lots, not 1 lot. You’ve missed lots of moves by making 5c spreads.
2. The more a price is touched, the more likely it’ll be breached. WHen you miss the first entry and it pulls back to the same price, be extra careful about the trade.
3. Stock selection!
4. SPY momo trade only works the best if market is very volatile and has fresh news. And it works better when traded off from levels.
5. SPY momo trade on mid-day new low isn’t volatile enough without a breaking news. Know the bigger picture and where has the market just come from. Also, mid day can be much messier than open/close. I also must notice the likelihood of mid-day reversal
6. When a stock is relatively weak, you have to be slow to cover, especially on stock with uptick rules. Think SLV and KMS from last week. I took off after 30c, and they moved 2pts.
7. Learn to offer through EDGA if a stock is really hard to get short, and you really want to be in, especially uptick rule.
8. Don’t be stingy to take profits when you have multiple lots, especially at where a lot of volume was done, and from there it moves against you.
9. When buying breakout pullback off bigger level, you can buy on the held bid, or buy into the slowness close to the breakout price.

What did you learn from the market last week?

Bella
One Good Trade