NOTE: As of September 21, 2021, I am going to be refining my plan a bit more clearly. I think it will be interesting to see how it has evolved over time. The journal entry where this begins is at
About the Adventure Guide
"Crossing the Abyss" will journal my quest to get from where I stand now and grow into a profitable professional futures trader. I am trading 100% live now, thanks mostly to the arrival of the E-Micro contracts as well as all the help I've received from the futures.io community. My goal for the near-term is to develop consistency in the micros before beginning to sprinkle in trades with the bigger contracts for my most favorable setups. Mid-term goal is to fully move into the E-Minis, as well as integrate other products like CL, GC, and the fixed-income futures to name a few. Long-term goal possibilities include integrating higher-timeframes such as swing-trading and maybe a portfolio of assets where I utilize spreading, some hedging, and scalp around the positions. I would eventually like to do all of this full-time.
Background
I started out in sim September 2018 trading naked charts for ES, NQ, CL, and GC. I only watched price-movement and felt comfortable trading the little price-oscillations and what I came to understand later as Harmonic-Rotation. I started developing my own "price-action" style and didn't really feel the need to copy anything else or read too much of what other people did because it just seemed to work most of the time. I wasn't using the tight stops I do now.
I attempted live trading these instruments for the first time January 2019. It was a very poor month. I wasn't sure why exactly but I tried to fight through and kept failing to the point that every trade was expected to lose. I had to use tighter stops since I couldn't bear to lose more than $100.00 on any single trade and because I needed time to learn.
I discovered FIO in February and haven't looked back. My strategy has adapted and I have slowly blocked off much of the adverse behavior that cost me earlier in the year. I like the direction I'm heading in, but I know I'm not yet near where I want to be. Here is my previous trading journal. (
Strategy and Process
Here is a rough outline. I use what I think of as being a top-down approach to my strategy. It currently looks like:
Evening
- Preparation in the evening for understanding market context. I use a lot of ideas that can be found in "Mind over Markets" by Dalton for my homework. At some point after the market closes for the day, I sketch out the market-profile for that day's activity and do a high-level analysis. I'm trying to pay attention to where the market was trying to go, where "value" was perceived to be, and how things ended up, as well as any interesting features of the profile to take note of. I identify the "day-type" (in market-profile terms), features of the opening, and I see how the market behaved in relation to the previous day's profile. I have started to link days together with the "shorthand" high-level structure that the market-profile provides to create an unfolding "story", and I'm (slowly) starting to successfully anticipate the type of day we're developing into. This I believe gives me a high-level overview as well as general market awareness.
- The next part is pretty important and often goes neglected due to fatigue, but I try to gather statistics on a variety of trackable variables and behavioral characteristics of the market. I am making it a point to work way harder at this.
- Finally I read a lot after the previous work is done. I also try to enjoy what's left of the evening.
Morning
- Early in the morning I prepare by reviewing where the market has been and try to keep that image in the back of my mind as I begin to focus more on a plan of attack for some of the different possibilities of how the market will react at different regions of the chart. This is where I'll trace out lines …
