Each day, after the trading day, I spend hours reviewing the charts of stocks I traded, as well as the charts of those stocks I missed, but worked out well. I also try and review my mindset and my actions during the day to find things that don’t lend themselves to becoming a successful trader. Because of my ADD, I have unique red flags to look for. For example, I recently realized that being in trading chat rooms during the day was hampering my trading. It was too distracting, and really added very little to my trading. I have to walk a fine line, in that I want to be focused on my trading, but I want to stay removed enough to make intelligent and non-emotional decisions.
In my review today, I realized that my software (CyberTrader) was not set up in the most optimal way. I have four monitors, and they are set up like so……
First Monitor-all my positions, watch lists, order entry window, account details, etc…..
Second Monitor-whole screen is a 15-min chart
Third Monitor-whole screen is a 30-min chart
Fourth Screen-spilt into quarters with the DOW, NASDAQ, QQQ’s, and a daily chart of whatever stock is in the 15 and 30 min charts.
This is how I have been set up for over a year. But I set it this way when I was looking at 5-7 stocks, of which I selected the night before, and was trading momentum breakouts. Now I am clicking through 50-70 stocks to try and find trade set ups, which is much more labor intensive, and requires quicker analysis. Even after the list is slimmed down, by only having one chart up at a time, I am missing set-ups. Worse, is when I click a stock in the watch list (which loads the chart), and it starts to move out. My gut reaction is to jump on it, without taking the time to analyze the set-up. Heck, I don’t want to “miss it”.
My set up is changed now. The first monitor is the same, but I have the three other ones, each divided into quarters, with 15-min charts, going back 10 hours on each. Now as I find an interesting chart, I am putting into one of the 12 charts that are in full view at any one time. My goal is to get 7-12 potential stocks up into the charts, and then visually monitor them. I thinks this will be much easier, and allow me a better overview to see set-ups forming, allowing me to know if they are good to enter when the time comes. I have taken the Indexes and 30-min charts, and put them on tabs that I can access if I want, because I really don’t use them much during the day.
[...] The difference that is, between my old trading layout and my new one. In last night’s post, I spoke about the change that was needed in my layout, and it worked out so great today. [...]