Trading Journal Apr 2019

Its been 3 months since I have updated my trade journal, and a lot have happened during this period. Overall my account have not been doing well, and my trading strategy has changed quite a bit too.

Let's have a quick summary of what I have done for the past 3 months:

• Attempt to day trade earnings report, but did not set a trading plan and let my 2.5R profit eroded to 0.2R. Subsequent attempts were terrible with max losses. And I made a mistake of letting my emotions took over and lost another 5R on a position (WB). 
• Broke the rule and held over earnings and led to a loss of 2R (instead of 1R; CROX).
• Trying to take advantage of my 3 day trades/week to enter a larger position when swing trading (and then let my broker liquidate excess shares at the end of the day till it falls within my margin limit). I notice that when i do this, most of my account margin will be used up and I would not be able to take anymore positions. The additional profit is little, with losses kept the same, and opportunity cost of not being able to take more positions. 
• Move on from swing trading stock purely based on technicals to swing trading/trend following stocks that I am more familiar with (BA, BIDU). I admit that my trading plan from here are not as clear anymore, as I am no longer setting profit targets and will take profit when I see my profits declining (which is rather subjective/emotional). However, I still keep to my stop loss of 1R although I did not set a stop loss anymore as well. Not much progress from here, but I realised that again I could not take more positions than I wanted (max of 2-4). And because I have using up most of my margin, interests rates were rather high each month (~0.25R). This led me want to have the same exposure to the market but not using up as much of my margin.
• The above point let me to options. As of now, I am still swing trading (but more of stock that I am familiar with) but using options instead. I would buy simple call/put options with expiry more than 30 days, with IV <40%. 
• Attempted futures options trading (/NG, /GC, /6B). My thoughts on futures is that the trend is much clearer at times than stocks, and it is 24/5 (something which I prefer). So far I have rather good profits with it, but still trying to improve my trading plan better.
• Attempting "wheel" strategy with AMD, a stock that I thought would have potential and would'nt mind holding as well (more on that next time).

Overall, I have learnt lots during the past 3 months: not to be emotional... better manage your loss... hope I could apply these successfully to my options trading. I am also not happy with my performance thus far. For now, I am aiming to get 5% a month, and I am left with 7 months this year to recover my 20+% of losses.

From now on, I will try to post reflections of my trades for the month. Let us learn together, and if you have any advice, tips or suggestions, please feel free to leave it in the comments below!