May performance review

Boy, May was a very though month. It was a good time to short if you had the stomach for wide stops. I traded very little in May which is an improvement over previous months.

I only made 6 trades on the long side this month where 4 lost money. The Winner / Loser ratios where less than 1 which is dismal and the Expectancy was negative. Looking at both April and May cumulatively  since I initiated a couple of positions in April that closed in May) I continue to see the negative pattern. I only attempted three shorts, but managed to lose on 2 of them.

The only positive I see in my trading analysis is that I traded only a fraction of what I usually do and was able to step aside for the most part. Since I didn’t see many good setups I was able to spend more time fine tuning a new feature I plan to release in a couple of weeks. I am now adding the ability to track performance by “Setups” to the Journal. The Idea is to create a custom list of setups like “Breakout”, or “Cup and Handle” that will let traders associate with a trade. In the screen captures below you can see the best and worst setup items in the stats window. The best setup I traded in May was the “Dead cat Bounce” where I spotted a quick bounce off very oversold conditions for a short term profit. The worst setup was a play on “Oversold” stocks that where showing signs of what I perceived as good bases.

There are more stats I am adding to the setup analysis like average profit, total profit, and expectancy among others. The idea is to gather enough information about how I play each setup and initially concentrate on trading the ones I find easier. But then I plan to train myself to play my weakest well.

I also included a screen capture of the cumulative performance since Dec. 09 when I began to twitter all my trades. It clearly shows that the largest draw down I’ve had took place in the last two months. That tells me that I really have to change they way I’ve been trading to adapt to market changes. I have been doing that this month and hopefully will be able to come up with strategies that work for the current market. Tracking how well different setups perform is already giving me eye openning insight.