Airelon's Trading and Investing Journal

[Airelon]

I figured I would post a trading journal here at 1 2 3 Learn to Trade.

Here's a few things to know about me.

1) I'm an investor, which runs off of a completely different approach than my trading efforts.

2) I'm also a trader of Commodities and Futures, and of Common Stock.

3) My portfolio management style can be found here (Which also explains why I both trade and invest)

4) When it comes to trading, I'm primarily a swing trader. Or I should say, that I seek out swing trades. But I've been known to have day trades, and known to have position trades. Currently, I'm day trading more for the benefit of my newsletter subscribers.

5) After a long string of losses from 1996 to 1999 (I did say, a long string) Larry Williams taught that I should sit and analyze my personality, and my trading makeup. Something I discovered rather quickly? Is that I like to take my profits much, much too quickly, and I'm more accurate than I give myself credit for.

So I decided to come up with a trading style that could fit that psychology, with the understanding of that weakness, of course, adhering to money management principles. So do not be surprised? If you see that my trades take a small bite out of what becomes a larger move.

[Brendan Egan]

Airelon,
I always loved following along on your videos and projects at other sites, so I am excited to see you posting to a journal here as well

I can't wait to follow along as I have the utmost respect for your trading and in particular your money management lessons. Keep up the good work!

-Brendan

PS> I didn't have a code yet for Blip, however your video should be working now and the blip code is:

[blip]http://blip.tv/play/g51kgdTLYwI[/blip]

[Airelon]

Thanks Brendan,

I was sitting thinking today ... let's journal a trade ... whether I take it or not.

It ended up that I didn't take the trade. And I think some of my thought processes on that route, may be of some assistance to new traders.

Please. Learn patience. Enter an audible alert, before you enter a buy to open, or sell to open order. It can make all the difference.

And as I mentioned at the end of this video? Please ... if your finances are a mess? You don't have to suffer. There are very inexpensive options, to take advantage of movements in the capital markets.

Take control!

[Brendan Egan]

Please. Learn patience. Enter an audible alert, before you enter a buy to open, or sell to open order. It can make all the difference.

And as I mentioned at the end of this video? Please ... if your finances are a mess? You don't have to suffer. There are very inexpensive options, to take advantage of movements in the capital markets.

Take control!

Excellent point and as I am wrapping up production on my first course for 123LearnToTrade I found that this is a topic that comes up quite frequently.

Most traders look at a chart and think they have two options: buy or sell. In my opinion, we always have three options: buy, sell, or do nothing. As traders, I would say 95% of folks think we should be trading our asses off and be in and out of dozens of positions. Like yourself, I also believe patience is key to any successful trader and I have no problem with waiting all day for a position to actually develop before trading it.

Thanks for sharing this vital and overlooked lesson with us all, Airelon, as I know this is one of the reasons most traders end up failing.

[Airelon]

I took a trade recently, for the Challenge Project, and myself personally. As this is a trade that I discussed in AMT, it will count towards the results of the Model Portfolio that benchmarks the results of the newsletter. I figured I would share it in my member journals.

It was a loss. But I think the 'loss' videos are even more important to display, than the wins. I'm not looking to "market myself as the guy who never has a loss"; but rather ... show the reality of trading, and trading for a living.

I took short videos of my thinking process throughout this trade, which can be found here ...

And if you note the Crude Oil market this afternoon? It's a great thing I took my loss, when it was nice and small ...

[Brendan Egan]

It was a loss. But I think the 'loss' videos are even more important to display, than the wins. I'm not looking to "market myself as the guy who never has a loss"; but rather ... show the reality of trading, and trading for a living.

I agree. I used to love watching losing trades because it teaches so much more than winning trades. Anyone can manage a losing trade, but only a true trader knows how to manage a loser. And anyone out there who claims they never have losing trades is full of it--every single trader has losing trades and a good amount of them too. However they know how to manage them which is why they are able to stay profitable.

[Airelon]

Here is the "Friday Review" video, that will review my investing and trading efforts for the last week.

I already had the entry that described my 'delving' into a way to play a long in Oil. Thankfully ... I cut that loss nice and early. As follows, is the next market I was watching ...

Here is the free issue of "Airelon's Market Tactics", where I discuss "reading the tape". Included in that issue, is an accompanying video that illustrates what I'm talking about ...

[Airelon]

I took a trade earlier today, that I mentioned in the Twitter stream.

There were two moments with this trade on Monday. It was in Sugar #11. The first 'moment' was a profitable trade. The second, was a moment where I was going to enter the market, and then decided to pass. And all if it, had to do with what I saw on the tape.

The video skips about just a bit, so forgive me for a couple of audio and video 'skips' in the very beginning ...

[Airelon]

Here is the "Weekly Review" video, that will review my investing and trading efforts from last week ...

[Airelon]

Here is the "Weekly Review" video, that will review my dividend investing, as well as trading efforts for the last week ...