Helenqu's Blog

Well the introduction of the Eurostoxx50 to D4Fs offerings has made my life a lot easier this week. It's enable me to keep trading the STOXX a bit despite the kids being at home for the holidays. (I won't trade futures unless I can really concentrate on them).

I end the week +43 on 6 trades.

+10, +9, +5, -10 (held overnight trade by accident) +20, +9. I find these trades fine now, no emotions at all. I'm using mainly a 10 min chart T/S/R and the basic stochs setting on Sierra.

Well Done Helen, seems like you may well have cracked it. Were all trades done on D4F ? and in my view the balance of winning to losing points is better as well compared to your last journal.

Cheers


Paul

Yes all D4F trades Thanks.

Well had a fair week I would say, markets flat for the 4 hours I got to trade futures, so managed just two trades for +1 each.

The spreadbets were more doable, even with the handicap of the kids at home and I made 8 trades:

+3, -14, +6, +5, -10, +3, +11.5, +8.25 (Mix of equities and ESTX)

-14 loss was a basic chart reading error, rushed into house after getting the kids from playscheme and "saw" a triple top. After I had placed the trade I saw what it really was, an ascending triangle. It's the first time in ages that I have made that sort of basic error which I guess is a sort of consolation. The inability to place sensible stops with SBs still annoys me even though I know by now that you need wider stop than you would like, I got stopped out for the -10 only for it to reverse and drop as I had expected. I suspect I may have to go for a standard15 stop loss on ESTX SBs, huge though that seems.

Looking forward to the return of normality next week with the kids in school

Feels like that at the moment. Very few futures opportunities coming up in my two hour slots and my losing futures trade of the week made out of boredom/frustration.

Four futures trades, +1, +2, +3, -4.

ESTX SBs -11, -14, +3, -7. I'm still making the mistake of trying to be too short term with SB trades, I do find it hard to switch between timeframes.

Equity SBs, -0.25, +10.25 +8 and -2. OK with these, I think I'm better suited to EOD set up with stocks on SBs than trying to intra day trade indices. I know it should work, I just haven't got the hang of it yet

I just wonder if I'm trying to do too much with my limited time at the moment.

Just got my IB statement for the month. Up 1.5%, quite amazing really but good to know

What chart time frames are you studying for your intraday SB trades/gambles?

When you say 'trying to be too short term', what sort of timescale are you holding positions on? How much do you vary that between futures and SBs (or rather, how much do you think you should vary it ;-))

-svengali

Helen,

Do you get a chance to look at trades you may have taken outside of your 2 hour window and if so would you have been more profitable ? Also, and this is obvious but is good to remind yourself of occasionally, whenever you place a SB trade you start with an immediate loss position and so will always be trying to recover which intra-day is tricky.

Cheers


Paul