http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/blogs/forrestang/ Traders Laboratory (TL) is the leading online trading forum for day traders, swing traders, and active traders covering forex, stocks, futures, and options. en Thu, 09 Feb 2012 17:45:09 GMT vBulletin 30 http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/images/styles/Traders/misc/rss.jpg http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/blogs/forrestang/ http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/blogs/forrestang/614-my-way-keeping-track-trades-ideas.html Sat, 15 Aug 2009 01:07:09 GMT So it would seem the best way to track your progress trading would be your bottom line. Well this may be so, after all, you don't trade to be right, or to have an interesting topic of conversation..... you trade to make money! Well, if your bottom line is the purest way to track performance, what comes a close second? I would suggest that maybe it would be your methods of recording your trades, ideas and observations you make while trading. To that end, I've started another journal this go round.

In the past, I've used a notebook to record trades and ideas, I've also created a nifty little excel sheet to monitor P&L performance, commissions, trade frequency, time of day and all types of other things. Well this time I am going to use a combination of all of that. Maybe some might like this idea and spark creativity in their record keeping, maybe some will say it's just too involved? If you like it, use the idea for yourself.

So, this journal will consist of several elements. It will contain pictures of trades, these are just thumbnails of the picture that are all hyperlinks to the actual large picture within my journal folder. It will contain my P&L and various comments and observations I might have through out the day. I also write in my paper journal for quick access throughout the day. Later I transpose some or all of those thoughts into my electronic document. The finished product is actually rather involved IMO.

Some might ask "why not just record your day on Camstasia, or pay for a journaling program?" Maybe some might think it's just too much work? Well I've decided to do it this way for now for various reasons:

• It's definetely an organized way to keep track of things
• Unlikely to get lost and easy to back up
• It's easy to post pictures to it, with comments
• Easy to go back and edit later on
• Easily adaptable to add various statistics
• Even if I don't look at it again after posting to it, just creating the entry is a refresher on my thoughts on the day

Now the specifics on the journal. The table of contents consists of a hyperlink to each day. Each day is an entry. Each entry consists of four main sections:

1. General Comments on the Day
2. Trades that I ACTUALLY Took that Day
3. Trades That I Saw Occuring Real Time but Didn't Take and WHY
4. Trading in Hindsight, which consists of trades I didn't notice until after the entry was over

This Word Document is still in it's infantile stages as you will see. I have yet to add any Excell tables for statistics, or gotten the format exactly the way I want and I have yet to name it..... so for now it's just called, "Journal." :shrug:

I don't plan on posting this journal online regularly or anything, I'm just sharing the initial project with you guys. Hopefully someone else likes it and gets some use out of something similiar.

I've converted the word document to a .pdf file for easier viewing just for this post. Below is the link for the .zip file containing the folder "journal." Just download from the link, then extract the entire folder somewhere. View the pdf, the hyperlinks should work as long as you leave the extracted folder as you found it.

TL! File Share - Traders 1-Click Webhoster ]]> forrestang http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/blogs/forrestang/614-my-way-keeping-track-trades-ideas.html http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/blogs/forrestang/582-caught-up-rapture-chaos-market.html Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:46:22 GMT And so it was....... Right after graduating, I did some of the normal things humans do, I got a job, moved to another town and just lived life. ... And so it was.......

Right after graduating, I did some of the normal things humans do, I got a job, moved to another town and just lived life. If that's what you want to call it. Champaign IL, was a relatively small college town, a bit different than Chicago, but a nice place, low crime, clean streets and pretty women....... BTW a friend of mine tells me there is a cyphalis outbreak there now....WTF?

There I lay on a Saturday morning in my bed, half awake relishing in the time that was mine. It was time away from work, it was time away from friends and family, it was MY time. The time I used to relax, and do things I enjoyed doing, which could include things like laying on my ass, reading a book, playing video games, hitting the gym, or getting up and going for a blast on the motorcycle. It didn't matter, the point was that it was MY time.

As I lay on my bed, in the pool of slober that had formed on my pillow (by this point at 10:00 am, I pretty much decided to sit on my ass), I hear this annoying info-mercial on the tv. It seemed to be running in a loop, and eventually I decided to get up and see what the hell these people are talking about.

Some jibberish about the market, and how to make money from it. But in this day and age, someone is always claiming to be capable of teaching you to make money..... "Ok, so you're going to teach me how to make money, legally, and all I have to do is pay you first?" That entire dynamic always confused me, is that even possible?

Well I see these cool things on the tv, what are they? The look weird, like there is something to it? There are all these lines, all this randomness, what is this? We now know these mystical gadgets as "CHARTS!" OK....That's cool, "I can make money from that, yeah right?"

Naturally, the presenters made the concept sound so easy. Claiming they can teach you how to buy, when to sell and how to profit from these, 'charts.' "Yeah right Mr. Info-mercial dude," I think to myself. I didn't know much but I did know if price moved up after buying, it was money in the bank. It seemed simple enough, and they seeemed to have colors of green to buy, and red to sell, and these other mystical widgets within the mystical gadget that we now know is a chart!

What is it you ask? Well before I tell you.....I will tell you that they were somehow attached to the chart, and there was all this movement. Movement that magically seemed to predict the direction of this stock. And since I know making money in the market is as simple as buying when price goes up, and cashing in before it goes down, this should be easy, right? These magical widgets, they must be something revolutionary? Someone must have spent thousands of man hours, and millions of dollars developing these things?

If you hadn't guessed it, these magical widgets on the chart where MACD, Stochastics and something else I don't even remember? Holy Shit!!! Well with a name like "Moving Average Convergence/Divergence," that just has to be a money maker, right? And I'll be damned, I have this Stochastic-thingy telling me when something is overbought and oversold, I mean if it's oversold, then it must be time to buy.... Jeez, like healthcare that is somehow going to be free, "Gimme summa dat!"

But..... if these people think I am going to phone in my credit card to take advantage of this great opportunity, which is obviously another bullshit scam...... "Well you've got another thing coming Mr. Info-mercial man!"

Instead of that, they offer a 2 hour free seminar. Well, that's all well and good I thought, but I'm not going to travel anywhere for this thing that most certainly is going to be a waste of time, hell I have to be at work on Monday. ;)

So wouldn't ya know, there is one in my town. Not only is it in my town, but it is in a convention center that is literally right down the street, and it starts in an hour!! "What are the odds," I thought to myself? "What is the probability that I would just so happen to be half asleep, with the television on the exact channel of this info-mercial, me catch it, and the thing is in my little town only a few blocks away?

It must be fate, "Get your ass up right now Mr. Forrest and get to that seminar," I thought to myself!

So into the shower I go, and make a mad dash for the seminar. I arrive, and upon stepping through the threshold where the meeting is being held, I am greeted with big banners proudly shouting, "INVESTOOLS!"

There are tons of people there, mostly older than me.... I must be on the right track? I'm getting a head start! :newbie:

I sat there with my coffee provided by the nice honest people at Investools and was completely taken in. I coudln't believe it, "could I make money this way?" This is it, I could soon quit my job, live life the way I want, never worry about financial problems again! :cheers:

So after forking over the initial fee of the 'beginners' course, I was sent home with a shiny booklet with a password and the keys to my newfound success. I thought I learned a lot about how to use these packaged indicators..... only to eventually find out I was getting nowhere :confused:

The next seminar I went to was great, I had more Investools provided coffee, along with some tasty danishes. But as I sit there, I was left thinking, "where's the beef?"

At least 3/4 of the two day seminar was spent telling me about things they had no intention of teaching me....unless I spent the money on the next level of education. WTF? "Now, you can follow the signals to enter your position here and buy the stock, but..... if I were looking at this chart, I would buy XYZ option, and sell ABC option, and as long as price stays in between this huge range here I will make x% on my investment, with only a% risk," said the instructor!

Well holy shit!!! What's it going to cost me to learn how to do that? "Well for only another $5,000 dollars, you too can have the basic options course, and for another $18,000, you can enroll in our p.HD program!"

And that was the slap in the face! I cancelled my subscription and figured I'd have to go at it alone.:crap:

The above summary is how I spent the first year of what has been my short two year career. Never once thinking there could be something behind the indicators, that there was some type of order to the market, and that price would tell me what it was. The indicators and the canned searches on the website prevented me from seeing anything else. Unfortunately I hadn't spoken to many other traders outside of the Investools chat, nor did I know anybody personally that invested in anything other than a 401K. I was pretty isolated.:roll eyes:

Although I wished I'd have started a different way, it doesn't matter now. I hope the above story was at least entertaining, I had fun sharing it.

Forrest ]]> forrestang http://www.traderslaboratory.com/forums/blogs/forrestang/582-caught-up-rapture-chaos-market.html