August review

The first half of August was decent, but the second half was like molasseses. It was one of those periods where I kept thinking my quotes were frozen up since nothing was moving. It's also the first time I actually felt bored because I knew it wasn't a good trading environment and that I was better off not trading. But it was still my most profitable month yet. I set new records for expectancy and win ratio as well. I credit this to recognizing the change in conditions and the drop off in volume and being more hesitant to trade. In the past I would just charge ahead or get frustrated. But if the market is giving you lemons, don't try to make lemonade. Just sit back and wait for the market to start giving you -insert favorite fruit here-. Another good motto is "when the going gets tough, stop trading". The bulk of my profits in August came from the first two weeks, and instead of giving back those profits in the last two weeks, I made very few trades and preserved my capital. I switched in to observer mode and started thinking about how I could adapt to the changing conditions. Half of the stocks on my normal watchlist weren't trading with enough volume to avoid major slippage, so that reduced the number of opportunities. I noticed that Trader Jamie started trading more gappers, so this will be my focus in the future when we hit a low volume period. Gappers normally have an unusual amount of volume and ignore market direction for the most part.

I'm looking forward to September when traders come back from their vacations.