Please refresh and re-read due to earlier posting errors.

One of the advantages of my order entry platform (X Trader from Trading Technologies) is the ability to have all of the trade data input to Excel live throughout the trading day without my having to do any downloads.

In addition, I worked closely with one of the Jellies (many thanks to John) recently to create a comprehensive statistical and trade sequence tracking package that met my (NOT the non-trading programmer’s) specifications.

One of the elements we programmed was an automatic time of day profit analyzer that calculates the profit or loss by 30 minute interval in bar chart fashion.

And like a picture, the resulting chart (today’s is attached … click to expand) often tells 1,000 words.

Note the times reflect the beginning time of each 30 minute period.

In my case, I’ve even gone so far as to highlight those intervals in beige where I’m traditionally not that strong, or that have caused problems in the past – which in my case includes the opening 30 minutes of the Europe session, the 9:00AM-9:30AM ET transition phase between the overnight and normal sessions, and the post-2pm period where I rarely trade due to a combination of fatigue and often (but not always) far lower probability trades compared to the earlier sessions.

In today’s case, the chart reveals that I chose to sleep in a bit and pass on most of the Europe session, traded the early U.S. session, and then pretty much shut down for the rest of the day except for a few very small sequences late in the day after I’d napped a bit.

Generally speaking, today’s chart is pretty typical to that of most days in terms of activity levels during the various times of day, although as I’ve said recently, I’m sometimes much more active in pre-9:30AM session if the prior day U.S. session or current day Europe session sets up accordingly.  And of course, all intervals traded are not always profitable … duh.

In terms of the post-2pm period, I know many traders who trade the afternoons well.

Yet of the millions I’ve made in this business, I firmly believe that I’m net negative after 2pm for the reasons I mentioned above.

And in this business, knowing and avoiding your personal landmines is sometimes all it takes to avoid undoing that which you tend to “do” well.

For anyone can make good trades.

Yet few can retain and grow the accumulated capital.