Retire Rich

When you are monitoring your watch list for a potential entry signal regardless of which setup you used, there's a possibility that you will enter at a price other than the end-of-day price or EOD price, even if the trading setup or the system or the strategy's rule is to enter at EOD. If you use the MAMA strategy, why the heck you entered before EOD?

This happens most of the time when you are opening your broker account before 2:45 PM. You click the enter button when you are so afraid that the price might go up without you on board, especially if the buy signals already showed up on the chart. You are just waiting for the closing price, but why can't resist you entering before EOD which is a violation of your strategy rule.

Then after entering, you are so happy because the price started going up and moments thereafter you start celebrating and starting believing how brilliant you are for entering early. But at the end of the day, the price went down a few points below your entry point. Then you start banging your head because you are setting on a 3 percent loss already while waiting for the next trading day.

During the night you are already restless, thinking about your position and bias started to cloud your mind. You are telling yourself to wake up early and I should monitor this trade because once it goes down another few points then it will hit my 5% risk tolerance so, I need to get out of the trade.

This feeling of restlessness could have been avoided if you waited for the EOD for your entry. You could have peace of mind thinking that a full 5% drop will get you out of the trade whereas entering early a 2 percent drop will hit your stop loss.

Even if we flip the scenario, let's say you entered early and the EOD price was 3% above your entry point. Then you sleep that night thinking very positively about your position. This is also dangerous because you are already biased even before the market opens for the next trading day. What a trader must attain is to have a neutral mind while monitoring your open position during market hours.

That's one of the advantages of entering or buying at EOD.

That answers the question as to why you should enter or buy at EOD.

But the next interesting question would be how you enter at EOD?

Most newbies find it difficult to enter EOD. They end up entering their bids but were not filled because they don't understand how the closing price works.

Well, I will try to show you also how to do that, but before that, if find this video helpful give it a thumbs up, by hitting the like button, share this video with your friends, and if you are new here, consider subscribing if you haven't already, for more videos like this.

How to enter EOD? Please click the video below:

Last night I updated my PL Trades journal. I entered around 50 closed trades or so. If you want to know more about PL Trades, I will discuss more of them later on.

Keeping a journal of all my trades was one of the first things I learned when I decided to try to learn and study stock trading back in 2019. Back then, I still didn't realize the importance of keeping a trade journal. But I keep journaling my trades because it is one of the most highlighted and advised things to do in any stock trading book I've read. The only inconsistency I had in terms of keeping a stocks journal, is that I used so many types of stocks trading journal formats. First, I used the trading journal format of Dr. Alexander Elder, the author of the book "The New Trading for A Living". Later on, I used the trading journal format of Mark Minervini, which is a very very good format.

Later on, I came across a trading journal format shared by one of the Traders Den's members. It was a very very nice format in excel that I'm in love with it and I'm using this format until now. I'm using it specifically in journaling my trades as a TDS student.

I'm also using a Personal Finance software called Quicken. It has a feature that allows me to record my stock's position, and open and close trades apart from its capability to record all other aspects of the personal finance spectrum that needs to be recorded like income expense, assets, net worth etcetera. You can also generate lots of reports from this software.

Quicken is my main journal as I recorded most if not all of my personal finance stuff, such as tracking my assets and liabilities and net worth. Quicken is also my go-to software to record Marge's long-term investments in stocks. I also recorded my PERA or the Personal Equity and Retirement Account contributions on Quicken.

 

Let me know in the comments section if you are interested to know more about quicken.

If I get a lot of comments about it, I might create a full video about it as well.

Back to the main topic of this video.

If you notice, I talked about lots of journal formats already. So what's the whole point of this? What's the importance of having or keeping a stock journal?

Well, like any other business you really need to record all transactions, because:

1. It is better to write the palest ink than to keep it in your most retentive memory or the palest ink is better than the best memory. It's from a Chinese proverb if I'm not mistaken, don't quote me on that, that I cannot forget until now, which was thought when I was in high school.

2. A good trading journal that records the details of your trade, will provide you lots of different matrices to guide you on how you are going to proceed forward with your trading. A journal can generate reports such as your overall batting average, batting average per trading strategy if you used more than one strategy, your profit factor, edge ratio, trade expectancy, and risk management among many others.

3. A good trading journal will provide you with hints and insights as to which direction your trading journey is headed. Is it heading to disaster or accumulation of wealth?

4. Keeping a journal is done by professional traders, how much more the retail traders, like you and me. So we should keep it we want to be on that pro level.

What I've mentioned right now were just a few of the many good reasons why you should keep a record of all your trades.

Let's take a look at PL Trades, PL trades is a free social stocks trading journal platform created for those who traded stocks in the Philippine Stock Market. All you have to do is sign up for an account and you can start recording your trades right away, you can also write what you feel or your emotional state during the trade because there's a place for that too. You can also record your withdrawal and deposits and you can interact also with other users also.

In the beginning, I mentioned that I entered like 50 closed trades last night. Actually, I was like abandoning my journal here as I already maintained two separate journals already. But I realized that it's better also to maintain PL Trades also as this is also a very good place to keep a journal to show transparency on what I am doing here in this channel because you can view it any time.

At the end of the day, I wanted to prove if I can succeed in stocks trading if really I can make a living out of stocks trading and be a full-time stocks trader soon. I believe PL Trades is a good place to share.

If you do not have a trading journal yet, or you are still undecided as to which trading journal format to use, well, PL Trades is a good place to start.

If you are interested in all or any one of the trading journals I've mentioned in this video, just click the corresponding link below. Most of them are free to use. But if you choose to use Quicken, the link I provided, included an affiliate link, which means when you click my link and buy Quicken, I will get a small commission without any added cost from your end.

Thank you so much for watching, if you found this video helpful, give it a thumbs up, share the video and subscribe to my channel if you haven't already. Thank you and I will see you at the next one.

When I started learning how to trade stocks in April 2019, I tried to read as much books as possible. From second hand books that I purchased from a fantastic bookstore called "Better Books" here in Kuwait that buys and sells old books and then all the way to new books that I bought from a local bookstore also here in Kuwait. 

I've got one good second hand book from Better Books titled "Greed and Glory on Wall Street" written by Ken Auletta. It's the story of the fall of the Lehman Brothers, I got it for two and a half Kuwaiti Dinars or around 7 dollars US. This book cost around 18 dollars US from Amazon brand new. 

I also buy books from Amazon and I used to buy the kindle version as it is relatively cheaper than the actual books and of course doesn't require shipping, thus saving shipping cost that sometimes gets too expensive. Even more expensive than the book itself defending on its size and weight. Let's say for example the book of Mark Minervini, "Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard" the hard cover cost 26 dollars US plus the shipping cost, whereas the kindle version cost only around 16 dollars US without the shipping cost.

I already read all my books mostly all of them in 2019. So why I'd like to read all these books once again. And why I recommend that you read all your trading books once again too. 

Well, when I read these books in 2019, there are tons of words and terminologies that I can't really understand. Although, I used to google every word that I do not understand while reading, but still, there were words that I can't completely understand. Now, having three years of hands on experience trading stocks in the Philippine market, reading these books again, the terms and the ideas presented became more clear and vivid to me. 

Let's take as an example the book of Mark Minervini titled "Think and Trade Like a Champion," there's a section of this book titled "How and when to buy stocks. The topic talks about the non-negotiable criteria of buying stocks. This section also introduced Mark Minervini's SEPA methodology or the Specific Entry Point Analysis wherein he talks about terms like the 4 market stages, the significance of 200 moving average. These terms were alien to me when I read this book back in 2019. 

Think & Trade Like a Champion and Trade like a Stocks Market Wizard were the books I read early on. I consider these books as an advance books intended for traders who had at least maybe 2 to 3 years experience as a trader in my opinion or someone who understands already the basics like the indicators, someone who already knows how to read chart, knows how to plot support and resistance etcetera. Because these books no longer discuss those basics as it discusses mainly on strategy and mindset. 

Nauna ko kasing tapusin ang mga libro na ito kaysa doon sa mga basic. Kaya minsan pag nabasa ko ang paliwanag ng isang terminology na hind ko naintindihan sa libro ni Minirvini ay napa aha ako. I will go back to the book again and read that particular section.

Dahil dito na realize ko na kailangan kong basahin ulit ang mga libro na ito mula umpisa ulti. Dahil segurado ano na mas maintindihan ko pang maigi ang mga nilalaman into. 

I believe that I will be able to understand the content in these books more after I read the books from Traders Den. I already finished reading young PAMANA books set composed of 5 books. Yong paano yumaman sa stock market, tabula Rasa Trading Course book, the boss, I dare you to trade, at maduming Merkado. 

If you don't have any of the books I mentioned in this video, I posted a link in the description. Disclosure lang, some of the links are affiliate links, ibig sabihin if you click and decided to buy the book or kindle version I will receive a little commission at no added cost from your end. 

Let me know in the comments if you completely understand the trading books the first time you read them, and let me know if it is worth while to read them once again.