More Readers than I Knew

Okay, I get the message.

A number of you have emailed me and asked why there have been no posts recently. I honestly thought no one was reading, so I figured I could do my journaling in a format that was not public since no one else was reading.

So, if you actually care to read it, I'll certainly write it.
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I quit trading the Monday before Christmas and didn't trade again till Monday January 7. I had a lousy trading day on the Thursday before Xmas and also on the week of Thanksgiving, so I decided I would actually take a lesson and stay out of the market during the holidays. It was also a good time for me to examine my work and think through my mistakes. I needed to do that because I sucked from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

I never did figure out whether I was just being exceptionally stupid or was just hitting one of those losing streaks that traders run into. As best as I could see, I was mostly following my own rules, but Lord knows I am such a newbie I may have my rules all screwed up.

I decided last fall that I ultimately wanted to trade the Futures market as well as, (or even instead of), the stock markets, so I spent the Christmas break getting myself ready to trade the S&P e-minis. Although I cannot report any financial success in my first couple of weeks, I can report that this particular type of trading feels a little better. Why? Well, to start with, I am not limited to the hours of 9:30-4:00ET Monday through Friday. The futures market is open from 3:30pm-3:15pm Sunday through Friday, so I am not forced to be ready to trade first thing in the morning. Secondly, I have far fewer markets to track - two to be specific, I'm trading the ES and the NQ right now - rather than hundreds. I can really focus on those markets and know that I will pretty much always get a signal or two during the day to trade. In the equities markets, I have found that I need to look at scores of stocks every day in order to get signals. (I average 4-5 trades a day - probably too many but remember, I'm a newbie.)

So, for the next several weeks, I suspect I will be reporting on my experiences trading the ES and the NQ. I may add the ER2 as well.

Thanks for reading.