Firstly I can not express enough how much value I have gained from futures.io since I have decided to pursue the trading career. I think it's a good time for me to start my own journal here, to share my journey and learn through self-reflecting. I do want to use this journal more on the mental side where I document how I view trading differently as time goes by. I do keep my own trading log (on excel) and will only post trades worth referencing here.
I am still a very young trader and this is only the 3rd years since I started trading. All comments are welcomed and appreciated to help me grow.
My Prop Journey
After graduating with a double degree with Commerce and Economics degree I found myself working unhappily with a financial services firm for two years. It took me an hour to drive to work and I developed a good habit to kill time: audio books. I then stumbled into a book called One Good Trade by Mike Bellafiore and was immediately intrigued by the Prop Trading industry despite having no actual idea what trading really meant. I applied to a Prop Trading firm and went through a training camp where 5 people survived out of 30 and made it to the trading desk after 6 weeks. That 6 weeks of experience was extremely intense and competitive (and fun), I remember waving people goodbye and promised to keep in touch but never did. Interestingly, this continued to happen on the trading floor whenever people leave for whatever reasons.
I started off trading some "arbitrage" strategies in flys, boxes and some other synthetic structures in Crude Oil (buy certain calendars and sell other calendars with specific spreading ratios). We were taught and trained to believe the only edge in the market comes from spreading with structures and any outright trading is punting/gambling. Not that surprisingly, that edge in the well hedged structure fall apart massively since 2015 where we witnessed Crude tanked in a rather drastic manner. I was banking pretty consistent money for a few months before it all went south and I dug myself a big hole in the account.
At that point the company decided to stop trading the Oil synthetic strategies and our little team were transitioned to the outright markets joining the punters' club. Quite a few traders left because of this as they were so convinced the edge lies in spreading only. Me on the other hand, quickly found trading outright markets surprisingly comfortable. Suddenly all the trading books and all the posts i read on this forum made a lot of sense.
It was another extremely deep learning curve but I was confident I will make it through. I am still Prop trading now but not with the same Prop firm Since then I have had some good runs and took some hit just like most other traders. I have experienced individual massive down days but never massive down periods. I am currently on a positive equity curve and I believe I am on a right process in developing myself into a consistent profitable trader.