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Breakout Journal - a journey to full time trading


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Breakout Journal - a journey to full time trading

  #51 (permalink)
 
PandaWarrior's Avatar
 PandaWarrior 
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Silver Dragon View Post
Weekend update :

I spent about 4 hours between last night and today practicing market replay for the Yen. My best trades were breakouts where I put a sell stop or buy stop on the other side of the line and waited for the breakout. My worst trades was where I tried to time the reversal or continuation of a trend. I should stick to breakouts!!

I am testing / using 2 types of breakouts
  • First is a breakout which will move 5 to 10 ticks. This is what I am using now
  • Second is the quick hit breakout which will be a 2 to 3 tick gain with a tight stop.

The Yen tends to move at least 5 to 10 ticks on a break. This fits well into my trading style. In addition it trends very well. Sometimes 50 to 80 ticks in a day.I found a lot of stops and reversals around 50 SMA.

Last week:
First week with Top Step Trader was good. I like the accountability it brings to my trading. This without a doubt make me a better trader. I will probably sign up for the combine in the next few weeks. Waiting for NT to be supported by TST. Below is last weeks results for the Euro.




The T4 software has definite learning curve. It also eats up a lot of memory. The one thing I like about it is the ability to place to stop orders, one above, one below, where I think the price will breakout. I tried this in NT but it will not allow me to do it. I can do one or the other but not both.

This week:
I have been playing around with calculations on what I need to make profit target for TST. Based on my trading style I will need 10 ticks a day @ 3 contracts. I took 1.5 the amount needed (5000) to calculate the ticks needed. This should help cover my losing days and get me used to trading size.


-
I plan on trading the Yen this week as well as the Euro. We will see what shakes out.

Robert

You need to figure 2X the amount needed in order to arrive at a certain average number of dollars per day......

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  #52 (permalink)
 
Silver Dragon's Avatar
 Silver Dragon 
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PandaWarrior View Post
You need to figure 2X the amount needed in order to arrive at a certain average number of dollars per day......

Updated to 2X. Thanks!

Robert


nosce te ipsum

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  #53 (permalink)
 
Silver Dragon's Avatar
 Silver Dragon 
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Euro - Yen Night

First trade of the night was the euro. I made two mistakes; I got into too early and I moved my stop up too far. As a result I was stopped out -5 ticks. The price continued down another 50 ticks after exit. I missed the big move.

The 2 trades in the yen were better.
First Trade I placed my sell stop below the support level and waited for it to break. I ended up exiting the trade early. The price went down to my target 2750. +2 ticks

In both cases of the euro and yen I think the 3 contracts size physiologically did me in. This will get better after I get a few trades under my belt.

The final trade I tried something new. One of the things I am good at is placement of the support / resistance and trend lines. Normally I only play one side of the trade. Tonight I played both sides of the line. I placed the first sell stop 3 ticks below the trend line and when the price touched the trend line I placed a buy stop above the line. This way whichever way the price goes I can get in on the trade. The price bounced and I exited the trade right below the downward trend line. +2 ticks

Overall for the night I am down 1 tick.



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  #54 (permalink)
 
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 mokodo 
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Silver Dragon View Post
The one thing I like about it is the ability to place to stop orders, one above, one below, where I think the price will breakout. I tried this in NT but it will not allow me to do it. I can do one or the other but not both.

I believe you can use the OCO flag for this in NT. Right click the chart trader panel, and select OCO order to turn on (confirms with oco highlighted in green) and then set the two orders.

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  #55 (permalink)
 
Silver Dragon's Avatar
 Silver Dragon 
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mokodo View Post
I believe you can use the OCO flag for this in NT. Right click the chart trader panel, and select OCO order to turn on (confirms with oco highlighted in green) and then set the two orders.

You are correct. Thanks!

Robert

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  #56 (permalink)
 
Silver Dragon's Avatar
 Silver Dragon 
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No trading today. Did some mental trading this morning on the Yen. Simply watching the bars move to get a feel for the movement.

I spent the afternoon trying to get NT setup with Topstep Trader but I am having issues. Managed to get logged in once Then logged out and have not been able to get back in. Will try again tomorrow.

Robert

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  #57 (permalink)
 Futures Operator 
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Hi Robert,

Nice journal. I noticed you decided to move to scalping, have you changed some of the rules you outlined in the plan you originally posted, ie win rate of 45% and risk per trade of 20 ticks? I'm curious to know the average stop, target you are taking now on each trade, and also the win rate and actual realized RR you have been getting?

Also, how is the Overall Average line on the TST stats calculated? It doesn't seem to be add up to the sum of all the previous days, which is what I thought it meant.

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  #58 (permalink)
 
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 Silver Dragon 
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Futures Operator View Post
Hi Robert,

Nice journal. I noticed you decided to move to scalping, have you changed some of the rules you outlined in the plan you originally posted, ie win rate of 45% and risk per trade of 20 ticks? I'm curious to know the average stop, target you are taking now on each trade, and also the win rate and actual realized RR you have been getting?

Also, how is the Overall Average line on the TST stats calculated? It doesn't seem to be add up to the sum of all the previous days, which is what I thought it meant.

@Futures Operator

Thanks for the feedback! Those are all excellent questions.... and I don't have solid answer for any of them at the moment. I am in transition state of moving from FX over to futures and moving from my broker over to TST. Plus I am exploring trading the Yen because it I will be able to trade it at night which will allow me to have uninterrupted trading.

I have only been using TST for about a week so any trades prior to that will not be reflected in the totals. Not that matters now because when I moved over to NT today it wiped my account clean. Also found out when my trial is up and I move to a member it will wipe my account clean. I have an excel spreadsheet but its a mix of FX and futures. Not sure any reliable trading stats can be squeezed out of it. I am in no mans land when it comes to totals and stats.

The plan right now is to get NT setup with TST and define my options for choosing a platform. I like the T4 entry system better than I do NT's. But I like the charting better on NT than I do T4. Some decisions have to be made before I go to the Combine because you can not use both platforms.

In summary: I am going to take this opportunity to keep practicing my setups and try some new ones until I sign up for the combine. When that time rolls around I will have a revised set of rules laid out and some real stats to make decisions.

It should be noted even though I am in transition state I still read the rules which still apply every morning before I trade. This has been extremely helpful to keep my head in the game.

Robert

AP: (after proofreading)
I rambled a bit!! I know the above may sound like a cluster but for me I am creating a sustainable process by which to trade. All of the pieces I need are there and end product is in sight. Now I have to put the pieces together and weed out the garbage to get to the goal.

Ironically creating processes out of clusters is what I get paid to do at my day job. Its about time I applied it to trading.

nosce te ipsum

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  #59 (permalink)
iankotze
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I would suggest you take your time, do another week or two with the TST practice account before you go for your shot at the combine. As for your scalping style. I am not sure if it is the best route to take with TST. I tried that approach a few times and just could not make it happen because of the performance goals that are needed to be met as well as the profit target. If you manage to just stay above zero dollars but meet two objectives you can roll over. With scalping you have a hard time getting those performance goals in line and even if you make the profit objective you will not get funded if your performance goals are not in line unless you are doing a custom combine.

That being said I am a very big fan of small set stop losses and only trade 1 contract. I risk a max of 5 ticks on the Ultra Bond but cut sooner if the thing is not doing what I thought it would. If I have a loss I trade to get the loss back plus 1 tick. So that I am on even ground the whole time. When I do manage to get into a nice swing I hold for a long time and ride it out as far as I can. Thus the statistics come in line in the end even if I only have a nice trend once in 3 days. My performance goals are always very good just because of a few trades in a week that make the money. 80 % of my trades are just flopping around the 3 to 5 tick zone. A good winner is 10 to 30 ticks.

Ultra bond is $32 per tick. So an average of 12 ticks is needed per day.

My game plan is to get the 12 ticks on a day if it is just a normal day. This I do by 3 or 4 small trades taking 3 to 5 ticks if we are ranging. Once a week I try to catch a trend and get myself 20 or 30 ticks on the day. This I do so that I have a bit more profit in the bank for the dreaded down day which I cap at 20 ticks loss.

Hope that helps a bit
Ian

  #60 (permalink)
 
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 tderrick 
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I started late, but I'm on board now... looking forward to catching up on the read...

Best of luck to you, sir


AJ
Nashville, Tennessee


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