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I am the 10%


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I am the 10%

  #11 (permalink)
MisterGopher
Alexandria, VA
 
Posts: 17 since Jun 2012
Thanks Given: 33
Thanks Received: 18

Trade #1
After 5 touches of 2906, I went long at the break to 2907. Target reached without taking any heat. +20 (total for two contracts).

Trade #2
Entered short after possible H&S formation. Bears could not generate any follow through selling and price keep breaking strongly above 20EMA. I didn't like the price action and after small double top at moving average, I put my stop one tick above. Stopped out at +4 (total for two contracts).

Trade #3
I should have quit after #2! My two year old daughter woke up and I brought the laptop up and watched price while I gave her oatmeal. Really?? Come on now, I know better than this. Trading requires my absolute focus!!!

This trade was a break out play but was way too aggressive. At least I reduced to one contract (-5).

Trade #4
Along with #3, this trade never should have happened. I literally was telling myself that I 'had some ticks to play with' so even if it doesn't work, I am still up $xxx on the day. Anyway, shocker I am stopped out quickly on an impulse play. Again, at least I only went with one contract and a tight stop! (-3)

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  #12 (permalink)
MisterGopher
Alexandria, VA
 
Posts: 17 since Jun 2012
Thanks Given: 33
Thanks Received: 18

Quick update for yesterday and today. I didn’t save and mark up charts, but will return to that tomorrow. I’ve been trading a little lazy and have been lazy on my journal as well.

Monday was a grind, but came out positive. Tuesday I took the day off because we didn’t have power at the house. Wednesday was another grind but came out a little positive. Started out with a trade that reached target (+20) then had a couple small losers and ended up +10 on the day.

Today, though, was just really poor trading on my part. I never felt focused – I was distracted by things going on in my day job. But, there I was sitting watching price chop on the chart. Occasionally opening up my browser to kill time by checking email or whatever. I was just not into it. Towards the end of the morning, I took a bad trade then another bad trade. No discernable set up – I just had a notion of where price would go next and fired the order. So, a couple losers today for a total of -26 ticks. Brings me to -$110 for the week.

Focus and patience. Focus and patience. Tomorrow I will do better.

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  #13 (permalink)
MisterGopher
Alexandria, VA
 
Posts: 17 since Jun 2012
Thanks Given: 33
Thanks Received: 18


October started with three negative weeks, but the last five trading sessions were all profitable. That was enough to more than make up for all the previous losses.

win % 45.9%
lose % 54.1%
average winner (net) 113.8
average loser (net) -80.145
R-Multiple (net) 1.420
Expectency (net) $8.96
Best trade (net) $305.55
Worst trade (net) $(156.95)
Best day (net) $472.20
Worst day (net) $(234.75)
Total Trades 37
Total ticks 51
Ticks per trade 1.378
Gross Income $637.5
Fees $305.8
Net Income $331.7

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  #14 (permalink)
MisterGopher
Alexandria, VA
 
Posts: 17 since Jun 2012
Thanks Given: 33
Thanks Received: 18

Four trades this morning, -12 ticks overall.

Did a lot of things wrong....missed all the good set ups..took all the wrong ones. Tried too many long breakouts when the bears were obviously more agressive.

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  #15 (permalink)
mwtzzz
Sunnyvale, CA
 
Posts: 171 since Dec 2012
Thanks Given: 8
Thanks Received: 107

If I'm not mistaken, the title of this thread is the OP's claim that he/she is part of the "10%" of successful traders?

Not to burst the OPs enthusiasm, but no trader can make any claim that they are successful until they have traded the last trade of their life and are sitting on a positive net P/L at that time.

Not to dampen at all the OP's ebullience and desire to become a successful trader. I totally support you in that endeavor. Just a gentle hint that you are way jumping the gun making such a claim.

Now that said, let's not dwell on killjoys. If you continue with your journal, I'll keep an eye on the thread and offer some suggestions for improvement.

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  #16 (permalink)
mwtzzz
Sunnyvale, CA
 
Posts: 171 since Dec 2012
Thanks Given: 8
Thanks Received: 107

Ok, I read through your thread. I have a few general observations to make:

- As you mentioned if you do your own thinking and come up with your own methods, this is probably best. Although if you take a book like Volman's and implement one or two of its methods verbatim, you'll probably end up with more or less the same results long term.

- There's no point in trying to figure out the "problem" with every losing trade. The fact is you cannot get around the necessity of taking losing trades. It's better to accept this and look at it for what it is: a higher-probability that ended up not panning out

- Emotions. In your case, I think your emotions will subside with time once you realize how the markets work, tighten up your trading method a bit, and begin to see the results over increasing number of trades. At that point, if you have a decent method you'll see your account balance grow and be able to realize the process will be sustained.

- another reviewer mentioned something about "too much introspection." I agree. You're probably focussing too much on explaining why trades did or didn't work .... It's not necessary and it doesn't matter. Look instead at the bigger picture.

-

Generally speaking, when a trader's results are consistently hovering around a "0" net P/L, it's because of either the influence of emotions in their trading (basically not seeing their strategy through to completion, bailing out early or trying to second guess it) or their method needs slight tweaking in order to pop it over into the + column. Both cases are easy to fix.

so, the OP hasn't posted in a couple months. If you're still trading, please start posting updates again. If you quit trading because of being discouraged or blowing up your account, I would urge you to reconsider. You're basically on the right path towards successful trading, just need a couple minor modifications to make it work. Probably a simple matter of identifying a few situations where you can let the profit run a little longer and/or work with somewhat more lenient stop losses. Also pulling the reins on the over-trading.. Etc. . So if you put together another stake, come back on here and let's see what we can do.

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  #17 (permalink)
SteveH
Orlando, Florida, USA
 
Posts: 37 since Oct 2010
Thanks Given: 3
Thanks Received: 104

mtwzzz,

Good advice. The only thing I would add is to trade the CL instead of the 6E. Lots more 12-30 tick scalping moves while keeping the average stop loss to 7 ticks (varying from 5-10 ticks per trade, given the setup). The avg 45% winning pct is fine and a REALISTIC long-term expectation. Let the odds play out with the superior risk/reward ratios you can get. [I'm like a broken record in these forums: winning pct and RR ratio have an INVERSE relationship in trading systems. You should be getting higher RR ratios at the 45% winning pct level than shown here. Agree...minor tweaking involved.]

The volatility has been lower (in general) on the CL over the past few months, but I'm confident that it will "come out and play"...like it always does. It's a good time for a beginner to get used to trading it.

If you ever start freaking out on the CL, look at a 20 ema on a 72 tick chart. When you get out of the flats, you'll see lots of bounces in the 20-50 tick (total) moves where a 7 tick stop loss on the opposite side had no worries. You can see that the ones which went to 10+ ticks tended to spell trouble for more strong trending. LOTS of 3-5 ticks pullbacks to the other side of the line and an advance of 12 to 20 ticks before the next pullback to the 20 ema again. 45% winning pct is right in the ballpark. This is SO important: get good reading that context right first (up / down / sideways determination with a good read on degree of choppiness of trend). That's how you get the casino effect...taking your setups when the context is in your favor.

Bob Volman's book is so on the mark. It's the complete picture of what you need to do. It's written in plain English. It's thoughtful, realistic and just a pleasure to read.

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  #18 (permalink)
mwtzzz
Sunnyvale, CA
 
Posts: 171 since Dec 2012
Thanks Given: 8
Thanks Received: 107

SteveH:

Good post.

A lot of people mistakenly believe they should not be making losing trades. They strive for the unattainable perfection of nothing but winning trades. But it doesn't really matter your percentage of losing trades, as long as the wins make them up + some. Who cares if you have 70% losers, as long as the other 30% makes up the losses and provides a profit on top of it?

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  #19 (permalink)
MisterGopher
Alexandria, VA
 
Posts: 17 since Jun 2012
Thanks Given: 33
Thanks Received: 18

Mwtzz and SteveH

It's crazy to me that you started chiming in on this little random journal thread of mine. That there are these faceless folks across the web that want to help and guide me even when I have not active in my own thread. You've provided me the opportunity to update my journal with the last couple months activity which is something that I have wanted to do anyway. But first, Mwtzz, to address my journal title. I think you figured this out after you posted your first comment, but it is purely an aspiration and not a statement of my current abilities. None of us would be here on futures.io (formerly BMT) if we didn't think that we had to potential to be successful.

When somebody recommended Volman in my thread I was appreciative but also worried because I knew that I was going to change what I was doing AGAIN. I had just resolved to stop taking advice, but I couldn't resist. Volman seemed to be teaching what I had always felt but could never express to people about trading.

I bought and started reading Volman and at the same time kept trading and was more and more influenced by him in the trades I took. It hasn't gone well and I am on the biggest skid of my accounts history - about a 25% drawdown from my high of $10,700 which I had posted after my first week of journaling on futures.io (formerly BMT) in November A lot of that was taking bad trades due to impatience and wanting to trade. But even the good trades have been stalling a tick from my target or hitting my target and not getting filled and turning into losses.

I'm at the point now where I feel that my time is better spent reading Volman again than trading. But I really want to trade and get my account back in the right direction. I've also had a lot of change in my life the last couple months unrelated to trading. I took a new job out of state and my family hasn't moved down yet. My surroundings are different, my schedule is different, and I think it has caused me to lose focus in my trading. Not to mention the fact that I have had to learn a lot of new things for work and that has taken time away from my trading work.

Thanks to you both for reaching out and checking in on me. I haven't blown up my account, but it has been a straight line down from 10,700 to 8,000 and I have lost a lot of confidence. The winners have been very far and few between. Honestly, right now I'm scared to take another trade because I don't want to see a number that starts with 7 on my statement.

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  #20 (permalink)
 
plethora's Avatar
 plethora 
Los Angeles, CA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NinjaTrader
Broker: Rithmic
Trading: GC
Posts: 629 since Dec 2010
Thanks Given: 1,174
Thanks Received: 425



MisterGopher View Post
When somebody recommended Volman in my thread I was appreciative but also worried because I knew that I was going to change what I was doing AGAIN. I had just resolved to stop taking advice, but I couldn't resist.

It may turn out that you will "change" your trading ways more times than you ever imagined -- and then possibly return to where you started. Don't be alarmed. Think of it as a painting in process, or a science experiment, whichever metaphor resonates best. But allow yourself to evolve and don't act like a stern parent to yourself limiting your experiences when so many possibilities are open to you. If something you are exploring doesn't work out presently, just let it go. It will still be part of your toolbox to grab when you have your epiphany about works best for you.

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Last Updated on January 24, 2013


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