Welcome to my trading journal, where I document every step of my trades, including my thought process, entry and exit points, and the outcome. Join me as I learn from my wins and losses and strive to become a better trader.
After a couple of corrective days — including one that lost me 2 trades, equities appeared to be recovering back to the up-side. I wasn’t having the best day the morning I took this trade, so I didn’t do a full analysis of equities — I glanced, then started looking for entries; and I didn’t do a pre-trade write-up of this, just a blurb once I was in the trade. Here’s that blurb:
I just put an order out in CSCO. I didn’t do a full write-up here about it.. I guess I’m feeling lazy this morning. Looking at the daily chart, price has been pushing up since Mid-October of last year, moved sideways for a lot of Q4-Q1, but has been pushing up again over the last couple of weeks. Price made a new high on the 1st, and has pulled back from there, and this morning gapped down to a strong support area (the highs of the sideways movement from before). With my bullish sentiment, and the gap that looks like it could be filled, I liked this trade. The R:R was there, too.
Entry – $51.25
Exit – $51.24
Price did push up, starting to fill the gap, but didn’t fully. It made it to 1R, so I was able to move my stop to break even, but from there, price dropped, eventually stopping me out for a technical (1¢ per share) loss.
I can’t see any glaring mistakes that I made with this trade, other than my half-assed analysis the morning of. Which, is a mistake. That said, just because I can’t see any real mistakes, doesn’t mean I’m patting myself on the back for this trade — it wasn’t a full loss, which is good, but I’m looking for winners.
I should probably not trade at all if I’m not feeling great the morning of, but that’s a conversation for another time and place. Largely, I need to make sure I’m going through all of my paces on every trade, so that I’m making the best, most-informed decision I can make. That’s ultimately my goal: making the best, most informed decision I can possibly make, and this wasn’t that. Here’s to being better going forward.