Ok, I see. I for myself have always a bit of a problem when determining that because eg pullbacks are also not unimportant......
BUT at the end of the day I don't have to tell anyone how to calculate it...I just jump in one step later and provide tools to analyse that data.........until it's roasted....
Next version will include target analysis (see screenshot) currently still in beta....
vvhg,
As you know this is an art. I must add that I measure the MFE until I get a signal to trade in the opposite direction. Then I am in another trade and measuring starts again. I tend to trade rotationally. If you go for the big swings then you will stay with the first trade and yes, the pullbacks are something that need consideration.
On the Journal tab, is there anything still missing we might need in the future (second MFE is in there now)?
Background to this question is that once we don't make any changes to the Journal tab anymore it would (theoretically, don't let me promise too much yet) be possible to copy the complete sheet for easy migration....
Happy to oblige, but it'll take some days because I'm currently 'on the road'. I should also say mine is probably fairly klutzy, as I really know nothing about Excel....
I'm new to this forum and just found it as I was looking for a journal versus reinventing the wheel. I just downloaded it and haven't yet looked at it but I will post any comments/suggestions that I might have in the next little while. I just wanted to say thanks to all for this spreadsheet as I'm sure it is the result off many hours of diligent work.
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Looks like a really good tool to get a quick impression on position sizing.
It made me realise that the Monte Carlo simulation in the journal is essentially flawed as it refers to absolute values instead of relative ones. That doesn't make much sense with a constant percentage risked andchanging account sizes....I think it might be better to change that to % of account!?
Perhaps we should also have a graph displaying account balance in there?
I think position sizing is base on one's comfortable zone.
The book Trader Vic, the author has a chapter on "maximum profit". One of the thing he mentions was risking 25% of your profit for an end of the year trade to maximum your profit for the year. This is something I have never consider until I read the book.
Risk 25% on 1 trade? Are you freaking crazy? Absolutely!!! But it does make sense to me. Maybe I will try it when I am more comfortable with the idea.
sorry guys, I dont like to re-invent the wheel much... I leave coding to those that excel at it ()... and I use this product instead.. I've been using it since v5...
I had posted the stuff from IW because I thought it would be of interest... didnt really play much with it..
as to position sizing, I always risk a % of the account, but the number of contracts is determined by how much principal is on the account to accomodate 150% overnight margin... also, only 50% is ever VaR on the account... so for example.. on an account that is $30K, only $15K is VaR of which 1% per trade is risked ($150) with two contracts ($7500/car = 2).. so on ES that would mean a 6 tick stop (assuming that was your stop) for 2 contracts... if your stop was bigger, then only 1 contract could be traded..
again, those are my rules, am in it for survival... so I do what makes sense for me as thoes are the rules i am comfortable with...
Changed the Monte Carlo to % of account and added 5 iterations on account balance simulation. Thanks again @sysot1t for pointing me at it. (see attached screenshot, next update inckuding this in a few days...)
@sysot1t :
As you use TJS Elite I would be really interested to hear what you think of the 'futures.io (formerly BMT) Journal' and whether you have any suggestions for future improvements.
I don't want to copy TJS Elite or any parts of it as I wouldn't see the point of reinventing the wheel as you put it and I am also not particularly keen on breaching any copyrights.
But I'm always open to constructive criticism.
vvhg
P.S. Would it be a good idea to add a simple position size calculator?
Changed quite a bit this time...I will edit this post ASAP and add a little changelog and description...
vvhg
P.S. My head hurts!
Edit:
Overview tab:
added a profit/ av trade/ hour chart,see screenshot 4
Added a field where all/long/short can be selected, this has an influence on the then coloured cells, see screenshots 5 and 3
Monte Carlo tab:
Changed everything to % of current account size in order to take money management into account
Added a graph displaying 5 iterations of account balance, start value is user chosen, see screenshot 2
Target analysis:
all new tab
values going into the calculation can be filtered
added scatter chart of the selected trades to show efficiency
Hic Rhodos, hic salta.
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Go to 'Instrument List' and add them there (instead of adding them below the existing ones you can also change the ones in there to what you need) the only important thing is not to change the structure, meaning you should stick to the columns provided (tick size is not user entered but calculated automatically).
So for 6E you would enter the following:
6E 5,23 (or whatever your commission would be) 125000 12,5
Perhaps it's time to add a readme to get people started and explain the various functions!?
Would be nice if we could do that together....everyone adds a bit?
1. Start fresh
Before you start, make sure any sheet you make changes to is protected (if not it's very likely you will break sth). If it is you can't delete any formulas which is quite important.
Then delete the trade records in the journal tab (they are just there to show the functions so you can play around with them).
If you get error messages you probably try to delete protected cells.
Next go to the instrument list tab and change the data in there to the instruments you trade.
Next go to the method list tab and change the methods to what you want.
next go to Overview tab and type in your starting account balance.
2. Migrating
As I changed things on the journal tab you must copy paste your data from the old to the new journal. The same as starting fresh applies here if you get error messages.
next copy paste the user input data from method list and instrument list tab.
In the future it should be possible to copy paste the entire journal tab, come the time I will provide a step by step guide for that.
vvhg
Hic Rhodos, hic salta.
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ok cool thanks! is everything protected in the 'Journal 2.0r.rar' you just released, or how do i check that? also i tried to change the instruments and i got this:
also can i add on instruments to the list, like how many can i add going down the list?
from above:
i think everything is protected as i checked this page, am i correct?
dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see
The ###### doesn't matter, the value is still in there but the column with is too small to display it, if you want to change that you would have to unprotect the sheet and then adjust the column width.
BTW: you can delete the instruments you don't need, same with methods
Yep, all protected.
vvhg
Hic Rhodos, hic salta.
The following user says Thank You to vvhg for this post:
ok thanks. i dont think this is setup for instruments with 2 decimal places or more than 2 decimal places like the currencies like for example under the entry and exit entries.. there may but other places where this is an issue but im still poking around..
dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see
what all should i be selecting when re-protecting the sheet? also on the instrument list can i add as many rows of instruments as i like? i dont think the drop down for long or short in the journals tab is working.
dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see
1. just click ok it remembers what was protected, so no need to make anny changes.
2. yes.
3. there is no dropdown, takes longer to get there with the mouse than to simply enter l or s and get the auto complete do the rest once you have typed it in once although I could add a dropdown....
vvhg
Hic Rhodos, hic salta.
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man im slow.. when i removed everything from the journal and started fresh, nothing seems to populate at the end giving the totals, then tosses and error when i go back to the overview tab.. i must not be removing the sample data correctly.. i do notice tho that its not protected by default in the most recent version you have provided, is that the issue?
dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see
Did you remove the sample data while the sheet was protected?
If not you might have accidentally deleted some formulas.
If yes, how many trades are in your journal now? If there is not enough data yet you get Div/0 errors on the overview tab as there is insufficient data to calculate the stats from.
Because you have also selected the protected cells..
Green heading indicates (in most cases) unprotected cells underneath.
Easiest is to delete the data column by column (except heading).
If you get an error message then, just move on to the next column....
vvhg
Hic Rhodos, hic salta.
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ya thats really odd, i cant delete the selection as a whole(as shown in the picture), but i can delete all the columns selected in the picture one by one..
for some reason the screen grab didnt get the highlighted areas in the pic... i had all of the green columns in the picture highlighted..
also after clearing out the journal one by one, i went to the overview tab to put in my starting balance and this is what i got:
not sure if expected or not.. i know the 'Div/0' errors are supposed to be there but not the VB error..
dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see
1.Yepp that is expected as there are hidden columns performing calcs....
2.Well I'm not exactly a VB guru, so that could be due to my buggy code, just click end (or debug if you happen to be a guru), I'll look into that in about 12 hours...
vvhg
Hic Rhodos, hic salta.
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ok cool, and thanks for you help today vvhg! im not using like half of whats in this journal so i dont know if thats whats causing this error as well, but im getting this every so often(like not while im doing things in the journal, just randomly)..
here are the only utilities that i am interested in for my records:
dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see
At this point the whole excel crashes due to some illegal operation (I suspect the recalc of the axis in the VB code).
Could be excel bug, but I had the chance to try it only on my Mac. I will try it on Win7 as well.
@madLyfe
Yes, the errors are likely to be caused by that, I will improve on that....
@petrmac
Sorry for crashing your excel. On my end it doesn't, but I'll try to improve the VB code. Would be interesting to see what happens on Win7. Runtime errors mostly occur with the y axis maximum, perhaps there is a way to only set the min and let excel do the max.
From older versionsto latest version:
See HERE and next posts.
From version 2.0 onwards to latest version:
1. in the new version, unprotect the journal tab.
2. in the old version copy ALL cells of the journal tab (Ctrl+a then Ctrl+c)
3. in the new version click the cell A1 on the journal tab once
4. paste (Ctrl+v)
5. click yes on all dialog boxes
6. protect journal tab
7.if you edited the values on the method list and comment list tabs you want to copy these as well (only the user entered values though)
8. set starting account balance on overview tab
vvhg
Hic Rhodos, hic salta.
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thanks for the update, no errors as of yet! is there a way you can make this currency futures friendly and also the long/short option a drop down? thanks again!
here are some issues, i dont think the cells are big enough or something:
i also think the equity curve is kinda jacked..?
dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
The following user says Thank You to madLyfe for this post:
1. have a look here you might also want to adjust column width (unprotect, drag column width, protect)
2. yep changed that, will upload later
3. the equity curve has a minimum y value of 1000, really a bit complicated to change that (I thought that most people using this journal would have a few k starting balance, no offiense)
vvhg
Hic Rhodos, hic salta.
The following user says Thank You to vvhg for this post:
well i was wondering if on your end you could make things a tad bigger to compensate for the occasional odd value. i know i, and the rest of us can make the change, but every new release we are going to have to change it back.. lmk your thoughts.
dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see
ya i was just tinkering but wasnt getting very far.. cuz the 6E and 6S have 4 places and the 6J has 6.. so the only way i was seeing it working was to make everything have 6 places..
i think the time section is tossing dates?
actually everything is tossing dates for me now.. lol
dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see
something keeps messing up when either i change the instrument and method lists, or when im clearing the journal content because the time keeps getting all jacked up..
is this what that column should be formatted to?
also is there a way to get it to calculate exactly to the penny instead of rounding in the prices? i think it might be happening with the commissions or something, but cant track it down..
as an entry: 7 ticks x 12.5 tick value = 87.5 - 5.07commission = 82.43 total.. the sheet says 82
dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see
Time seems right (It's MIL time so 6:30am is 0600 and 5:20pm is1720) just enter the string of hours and minutes.
Prices are not rounded, they are only displayed that way to make it a bit easier on the eyes....you can change the format if you want to... (have a look at net profit on overview tab)
for getting the prices to not show whole numbers, what setting should i use for that under the format cells.. i might just change them in the overview tab, but i might get OCD about it and change them in the journal as well..
dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see
just started playing with the new build.. so far going through my normal changes and i havnt seen a single error pop up.. so far so good vvhg, and thanks!
dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
(╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
The following user says Thank You to madLyfe for this post:
Ok, I see, my guess would be (as I am not at MY computer and can't have a look at the formula as of now) that commission has been substracted (thus net gain).
vvhg
Hic Rhodos, hic salta.
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Added a simple position size calculator (see screenshot).
Added a tab for your trading plan, so you always have it handy (see screenshot).
Improved a little on the vba code, is now a bit easier on the processor.
On monte carlo tab added a recalc button (has to do with improved vba).
Various minor changes.
I think the journal would really profit from a little readme or user guide (as it somehow got quite massive, don't know how that happened), so it would be phantastic if anyone would be willing to help with that.
Whether it is in the form of suggestions, questions, bullet points or whole paragraphs, every bit helps!
As I know the journal inside out, it's really hard for me and I might not see what would have to go in there. Basically I feel a bit blind on that eye.....
It already is, the only thing that might need adjustment is the width of a few columns, that's 30 seconds.....
Maybe, maybe I could do that via vba, but I'm really no expert in that field.....
@madLyfe, the only other thing you would need to change is displaying the $ cents in the result columns, again 30 seconds....(btw. they are not rounded in the default format, they only don't show, but they are still there)
1. Pimped the optics a bit, hope you like it (let me know if not).
2. Width is automatically adjusted on entry, exit and result columns.
3. Target analysis has now option for BE stop.
4. Some little things I can't remember
where did the comment list go to? also can we get the auto width adjustments to the instruments tab?
another thing, i changed the balance tab to 3 up from your selection so i could get 2 decimal places and i dont think its working with the auto width of columns fix you put in. the point value didnt seem to auto width itself either.
i think the risk % needs the treatment as well:
dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see
@madLyfe
The autofit only kicks in every time you activate the journal tab, so just go to an other tab and back to journal tab, should do the trick.
The comment tab is hidden (as I thought that everyone could leave them as they are as you can either follow your rules or not). You can always unhide it though by right clicking a tab and selecting unhide.
Auto width on Instruments tab is not necessary I think as you could easily do that manually if you want to but actually it doesn't matter that much at all as you enter the values there once and you never have to look at them again...... it's not a tab you would work with every day......
vvhg
Hic Rhodos, hic salta.
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dont believe anything you hear and only half of what you see 
