Trader Mike

After reading some of John Carter’s articles in Stocks, Futures and Options Magazine I was looking forward to reading his then upcoming book “Mastering the Trade: Proven Techniques for Profiting from Intraday and Swing Trading Setups“. It was obvious from his articles that John had some good insights into how the markets work and that comes across even more so in the book. “Mastering the Trade” covers a lot of ground including writing a business plan (something that too few books cover), how to choose the proper hardware and software, an introduction to futures and currency trading (Forex) , an overview of trader psychology, a premarket checklist, a variety of trading setups and seven key internals to monitor in order to gauge intraday market strength & direction.

I’ve had a few requests for a copy of the spreadsheet I use for my trading journal. I just uploaded it to the server so feel free to snag a copy if you’re interested. It’s not the most elegant spreadsheet but it does what I need. I’ve never been a big Excel guy, (unlike some people who have nice, fancy trading journals) so I had to use brute force to get some things done.

Here’s some detail about the columns:

Last week the following question was asked of me about trading journals:

This expectancy stuff is very intriguing. I plan to take advantage of that concept immediately. I have been keeping a log of every trade I have done, but I have not kept track of what I now wish I had (overall market sentiment, etc…). Do you have a specific list of recommended things to keep in a trading log, or better yet, do you know of any trading log software?

I’ll answer the last part of that question first. I couldn’t find any (reasonably priced) software after doing some searches on Google and in the EliteTrader forums. …

(Edit: You may also be interested in my article detailing how I trade as well as my hardware and software setup.)

I’ve been exclusively day trading for almost three months now. The switch from swing trading has been quite an experience and I’ve had a few ‘light bulb’ moments along the way as you’ll see below.

For a while now I’ve been meaning to explain who I am and how I trade. After reading Dr. Steenbarger’s blog today, I’ve been inspired to do it, so here goes. It appears that my trading philosophy is very similar to that of Dr. Steenbarger. I’ll attempt to use similar headings so you can compare & contrast.