Retracement Levels

Finished my first week on RL (RetracementLevels) trading system and wow! I am impressed. I can honestly say that I have traded for the first time with no fear or emotion using the system, particularly with currencies. After 1 week my currency acct is up 7%! 7 trades, no losses and I am flat for the weekend.

In my last post I noted how my "trading personality" seemed to fit with this system and I have to say after this week I am convinced that this is indeed the case. A really relaxing and profitable week.

I did use the system with other accts trading spy and QQQQ options. Trading very small size (1% of acct to open the position) as I adapt the system for options trading. I will keep these trades small in size as I determine the best options strikes and months to work with using delta as a reference point. In 5 accts I traded a total of 23 call option contracts for a net profit of $1300.00 in just 2 days. Not sure if I can repeat this or not but I believe the opportunity here is very very good.

More next time

Ernie

Fear of losing

I have been thinking a lot over this long weekend about losing and a fear I have in that regard. This is something I have been working to overcome but it still plays a role in my trading. Friday's end of day action started my down this path. It was a very slow day trading and though the trend was down on the day and I could see we were trading at some significant resistance levels around 2pm I could not pull the trigger on a short position. Obviously this would have been a great trade as the market soon plummeted nearly 10 points from where I would have entered. The question I struggle with is whether or not it was fear of the trade going against me or more so that the market was so slow, and it was the last trading day of the year and I just simply did not want the risk on this particular day. So was it fear of a loss or was it more of an educated decision to simply stay out of this market on this day. I took a phone call about the same time I was looking at this trade so that played a role to.

I will be conscious of this fear as we go into this first week of 2010 trading, working to eliminate it from my trading.

Happy New Year!

ps. added a RUT IC last week at 680/690 and 540/530. More concerned about the downside than the upside at this point. If the mkt continues to move up I believe my opportunities to protect the upside will be greater than the downside, hince the lower put strikes and some protection already in place at 580.

Emini's
The more I trade the emini's the more I like it. Getting to "know" this product intimately is rewarding and becoming very productive. (profit) I can see myself trading the S&P emini exclusively in the near future. What I find most comforting about this style of trading is that I don't have to be concerned about what happens overnight or what might happen tomorrow or next week or earnings announcements or anything like that. My trades are all strictly day trades as I carry no positions overnight and am able to profit from what the market is doing now, as I watch it, and not what it might do tomorrow. The Adv/Dec trade strategy continues to be absolutely phenomenal. Now up to 68 trades on this system and not one loser, yet. I am however continuing to work on the larger reward type trades using the Infinity AT system while in simulator mode. My few losses in the last two weeks have come from these larger potential reward trades so until I can get the kinks worked out of these trades I will stay on the simulator with them and let the Adv/Dec trades pay the bills.I still have a number of other positions in my larger accounts but as I progress with my emini trading these positions may dwindle in number.

Emini's

The more I trade the emini's the more I like it. Getting to "know" this product intimately is rewarding and becoming very productive. (profit) I can see myself trading the S&P emini exclusively in the near future. What I find most comforting about this style of trading is that I don't have to be concerned about what happens overnight or what might happen tomorrow or next week or earnings announcements or anything like that. My trades are all strictly day trades as I carry no positions overnight and am able to profit from what the market is doing now, as I watch it, and not what it might do tomorrow. The Adv/Dec trade strategy continues to be absolutely phenomenal. Now up to 68 trades on this system and not one loser, yet. I am however continuing to work on the larger reward type trades using the Infinity AT system while in simulator mode. My few losses in the last two weeks have come from these larger potential reward trades so until I can get the kinks worked out of these trades I will stay on the simulator with them and let the Adv/Dec trades pay the bills.

I still have a number of other positions in my larger accounts but as I progress with my emini trading these positions may dwindle in number

going full time

Well, the day is near that I will announce my retirement from CVS/Caremark, maybe as early as today. My hope is that I will announce my retirement and be gone by the end of August 2009

Tuesday, May 6

Today started out well as I was expecting a pull back in the markets and I got it. This pull back was short lived and the mkt moved higher by noon and my short positions were hurting. The charts still look the same, at resistance and due for a drop. Will we get it, I don't know. I opened a position in KOL today with a limit order and all is well so far. This new ETF chart looks good but there is very little data to really make a good and solid assesment. I still think we will see a down turn in the next few days to a week or so.

markets today

The markets today are telling me we are at some significant resistance points and due for a pull back. SPX, NDX, Dow all at top up current channel. RUT has been a little weaker and is in the middle of it's current channel. I will trade cautiously here.

Coal is breaking out as of yesterday and I am looking to buy KOL an ETF that tracks coal.

I am currently about 30% cash and my positions consist mostly of various spread trades with only a few pure directional. RUT IC's are working well and have been all year though with volatility as low as it is the premiums are getting small. VIX is another sign that a pull back is due. I have small bearish positions in IWM, QID, APOL and BA.