Monthly Review - January 2020 - (Also small rant on Tradingview)
Overall, I had a break even but productive month in terms of education and trading development. Some notable trades were CGC long, INTC long, NIO long, CRSP short, and FTNT long. Although two of those trades had stopped out early, overall execution and lessons learned from those trades were valuable. I noticed I started off this month pretty sloppy, however I gathered my focus and closed the month strong with good discipline.
The overall markets have been pretty tricky towards the end on the month. The beginning of January started as a repeat of the previous 3 months - strong momentum and directional market. In these market conditions, breakouts worked well and it was a time to get aggressive on long trades. The last 7 trading days of January was marked by choppiness and my overall bias right now is neutral. "Bull trends are innocent until proven guilty" and although the short term momentum looks bearish, the upward bull trend is still valid and we are still above the 50MA on SPY. Now is the time to slow down, sit tight, and start to look for possible short setups if markets do start to reverse.
This is my first month since deciding to produce trade journals on Tradingview. I've tried trade journals in the past, however I did not feel like I was gaining any value from them. I like Tradingview since you can update your journal as the trade develops, which I find really smart and intuitive. One negative thing about Tradingview, which I find kinda annoying, is all the "Advertisers". There are a lot of Forex and Crypto traders who seem to be "Agreeing" with every single idea posted on Tradingview (Including my US Stock post which they seem to not even trade). I believe their goal is to get people to see their profile and to promote their website/paid subscriptions. Their analysis is very "Flashy" AKA lots of colors and indicators, which typically is not a good thing for long term success. I can see how this can be profitable, but I believe it's doing a big disservice to the development of the actual Tradingview community which seems non-existent IMHO.
In the future, as well as developing as a trader, I plan to continue using Tradingview as my journal and maybe some ideas once in awhile to help me organize and vocalize the trades I might want to put on.
The overall markets have been pretty tricky towards the end on the month. The beginning of January started as a repeat of the previous 3 months - strong momentum and directional market. In these market conditions, breakouts worked well and it was a time to get aggressive on long trades. The last 7 trading days of January was marked by choppiness and my overall bias right now is neutral. "Bull trends are innocent until proven guilty" and although the short term momentum looks bearish, the upward bull trend is still valid and we are still above the 50MA on SPY. Now is the time to slow down, sit tight, and start to look for possible short setups if markets do start to reverse.
This is my first month since deciding to produce trade journals on Tradingview. I've tried trade journals in the past, however I did not feel like I was gaining any value from them. I like Tradingview since you can update your journal as the trade develops, which I find really smart and intuitive. One negative thing about Tradingview, which I find kinda annoying, is all the "Advertisers". There are a lot of Forex and Crypto traders who seem to be "Agreeing" with every single idea posted on Tradingview (Including my US Stock post which they seem to not even trade). I believe their goal is to get people to see their profile and to promote their website/paid subscriptions. Their analysis is very "Flashy" AKA lots of colors and indicators, which typically is not a good thing for long term success. I can see how this can be profitable, but I believe it's doing a big disservice to the development of the actual Tradingview community which seems non-existent IMHO.
In the future, as well as developing as a trader, I plan to continue using Tradingview as my journal and maybe some ideas once in awhile to help me organize and vocalize the trades I might want to put on.