Interesting journal, I used to trade in a very similar way but have since deviated slightly from it. Will be following this thread from now on! Thanks.

I rewatched this month's trades and I've got a few conclusions to offer.

1) I need to trade more. Many of my calls are spot on--in the moment I'll say "This is going to do XYZ" and it does precisely that--but I just don't pull the trigger. I need to completely give myself in to having the read, making the trade, and having confidence that over 10 or 20 trades that I will make money.

2) Execute on profile areas better. The consistent mistake of executing in terrible spots probably cost me 10+ ticks this month. On NFP I picked a terrible spot and blew out for -2. Had I been more patient and executed at a better price, I would have been staring at a 4+ tick winner. This might be a leftover from when I would trade ES and would have to chase at times. ZN is much slower and large players work it back and forth to get positions on. There were countless examples mid-month where I'd just hop into a strong move, sweat 2 ticks, and then get paid for +2 or so. That's TONS of money I'm leaving on the table.

3) FOCUS! I have a few buddies that I trade with and I spend too much time just bullshitting in the morning. I know I'm partly missing trades just because I'm talking about nothing instead of staring at the DOM.

I'm feeling good for June! Time to make some money!

Figured I'd toss up my tick performance YTD today. These are ZN ticks, which are $15.625 per.

Things are looking up!

lax99 

I sort of look at correlated markets, if you mean UB & ZB & ZF. Otherwise, nah. I have an ES DOM up in the off chance that they get tied, but I don't really care about anything else. What is 6E doing? Where is crude versus its trendline? Is gold doing inflationary things? I have no idea. That information doesn't help me watch ZN's order flow.

To be honest you're probably better at trading order flow then me, but sometimes I find watching correlated markets helps with conviction on entering/holding positions. For eg. if I trade ZN outright, I like to look at the japanese yen, gold, equities (S&P500 and nasdaq). If the european session is active then I focus on the german bund (this tends to drive price action in ZN) and the euro/usd. I tend not to look at commodities (except gold) because they are just a different market with different influences.

Sometimes you might notice something like the traditional safe haven assets rally hard, but the ZN has only gone up a tick or two. One thing thats worked quite well recently is waiting for the german bund to open and just following the direction that they go (someone seems to like pushing the bund in one direction in the first 30-60 mins of trading). But this suits my timezone, i think this would be like super early morning in the U.S.

BUT your style of trading is more scalping for small ticks. Plus these things usually show up in the order flow anyway so correlations probably doesnt improve things too much (and correlations can break down too). But I thought I might add this anyway in case you find a use for it in future.

Edit - also keeping up with market fundamentals can sometimes help with determining where the big players are going to push the price. Although I'm pretty sure that as an order flow scalper this is also not going to matter too much, but sometimes its nice to know why a price is rallying/selling hard

How did this go lax? It's been 6 months! Did you achieve the consistency you were looking for

John47 

Awesome man. That is a great feeling, to be making progress. Keep building on it. I remember very distinctly one day leaving the office around 2005....I was maybe a 5 or 10 lot trader at the time, I think I made 10 ticks that day. This is probably exactly comparable to you being a ZN scalper w/ 1 & 2 lots, clocking 2 or 3 ticks in a day. I felt F&$7ing great. It was only 10 ticks but I remember so clearly thinking "I'm doing it!!!"... Really feeling like I was on the right path and I just had to continue with it and soon enough I would be trading 100 lots making 100 or 200 ticks in a day. And I continued working, focusing, and progressing, and sure enough I got there. And I have no doubt if you are willing to continue your work and focus, continue to build mental toughness and grit, you will get there too. You'll be swinging 100 lots in the ZN and looking to net out 5 figures in a good week. Its right there. You already have the knowledge and ability, at this point I think it's 1.) refining your strengths and weaknesses 2.) Always focusing on improvement and 3.) Grit and mental toughness to keep you centered. That day I made 10 ticks, I was a junior trader and clerk, paid $400 a week (before taxes). I think I had probably had a couple weeks making about $1000 a week trading and then I was offered a deal by my backer. No more $400 a week, I would split my trading profits(or losses) 50-50 with my backer. Wow, I was nervous. That wasn't "The Turn" for me though...I don't think so. I think "The Turn" happened a month or so later....I remember this moment distinctly as well. It was probably about 1:30 AM and I was just getting to my car to head to the office to trade the Euro session...and all of a sudden I realized....I'm not afraid. Every single day prior to that, and there were many, before heading into whatever office I was trading at...there was fear. Fear of risk, fear of losers, fear of failure, fear of getting fired. Fear because I had experienced all those things before and knew I could fail again. As we all can. But that day, the fear just left. I had confidence in my edge, confidence in my ability to execute that edge, and confidence that on that day I was going to walk in and take every good setup, manage every trade well, and in doing so over time I would be successful. That was "The Turn" for me. And I think it's at least a very important part of "The Turn" for everyone....that detachment of really any importance of an individual trade or day, and a confidence in your edge and your ability to apply that edge over time. After that...losers didn't really mean shit. They were just something you dealt with, accepted, learned from if possible, on your way to the next setup. You just get it out of the way and move on to the next one. Period.

This might be the most insightful post on trading "mindset" I've ever read, thanks for taking the time to detail this experience.

Sent using the NexusFi mobile app

lax99 

Figured I'd toss up my tick performance YTD today. These are ZN ticks, which are $15.625 per. Things are looking up!

I am new here but I also moved to ZN for all the liquidity it offers, primary strategy is neutral trades 90 days out with a lot of breathing room, I just subscribed to this and was wondering if it is still going to get updated

This might seem random, but if youre still having trouble trading the 10 year treasury note futures, try trading the spread between this and the emini S&P 500. I trade it during the asian session so my trading is going to be different to yours, but I feel there's a general predictability to it with a little more inefficiency due to it being a non-exchange traded spread.

ZN looks like it needs a pullback:

I feel we might see some slight pullback this week due to Trump striking a deal with Mexico to avoid tariffs? We'll see