mokodo 

...you have already identified the issue 'I will be reinforcing bad habits'. Next step is - what is your plan to stop this pattern of behaviour?

Good point - last night I stopped trading when I had the urge to be reckless and chimed in after a breather - and scalped my way into profits for the day with a 6 tick winner. That must be positive reinforcement of a good habit (stopping) - so I will repeat it.

Its important not to try and make money all the time, and to make it OK not to take a trade if I am not seeing it. This is simple enough but that urge to have to earn a living (by making trades) seems to creep up on me sometimes overwhelming the will to only take good trades and thus I take 'boredom'trades.. Trading intraday now though makes it a lot easier because I trading way more actively then my swing trading days. Each day I finish up feeling like I've done my bit Just got to make sure I'm actually banking coin now.

Enjoyment: 8/10
Trading: 7/10

Bund


Bobl

I have been bitten in the ass by the real world this week so won't be trading. I have the No BS webinars following US Bonds from midnight to 3am which I will try to catch, if any market action this week. In the mean time its me verse the coal mines Can't wait to get back to the Bund!

grahamg 

I have been bitten in the ass by the real world this week so won't be trading. I have the No BS webinars following US Bonds from midnight to 3am which I will try to catch, if any market action this week. In the mean time its me verse the coal mines Can't wait to get back to the Bund!

Yes it was/is very wet.
I drove down from Mooloolaba on Sunday and back to Newcastle, only just made it through.

Regards,
Neil.

Was off to a great start today, with it being a good day trading session - even though the session is technically still going.

I was considering calling it quits about an hour in 10 ticks up - figured the market was getting harder to read and I would potentially give back my profits playing the game for the sake of it. And this did occur - but because of one trade. I held onto a loser, I watched it go against me, more, then more, then some more, but it was sure to come back.. This is the problem with simulation trading because the pain would have got me out much earlier at worst - and I probably would have taken just the two tick loss which I hesitated on just long enough for the market to cascade against me. I then justified it as just a Simulation trade - BIG problem. Next week I really should start to trade one lots as I just aren't taking SIM seriously enough anymore it seems.

I am starting to get a feel for the type of action and times I am most comfortable in. The most definitive is I am not comfortable trading into 9AM. The UK market opens and lots of crazy stuff goes on. Trading into the turn of the hour in general is causing me to give back some profits. Generally news IS coming out - but it also occurs without news - probably the one hour timeframe players adjusting their positions. FIVE past the hour is when things get into a better groove.

Regardless am really enjoying the game and would have had a good session if it wasn't for that blow up.

I like the idea of walking away if I have X amount of profit early on - seems it could be an advantageous strategy.. what you think?


Trading: 8/10 (+ negative 10 for holding onto the loss)
Enjoyment: 8/10

grahamg 

I like the idea of walking away if I have X amount of profit early on - seems it could be an advantageous strategy.. what you think?

I think safeguarding profits is a must. Have you thought about a stop loss on your day/week/month? Once you hit a certain profit objective only risk your profits down to a certain level, if you hit your profit stop loss then shut it down. This may give you freedom to exploit days when you are in a sweet spot, but protect from the (possible high) chances you are not at all in a sweet spot, just got a good winner earlier and believe you control the universe and subsequent hand back all your gains.

Just a thought to add to the mix.

Happy trading.

NW27 

Yes it was/is very wet. I drove down from Mooloolaba on Sunday and back to Newcastle, only just made it through. Regards, Neil.

Ha missed this - my last Monday consisted of 1.5 hour trying to drive inland, moving some road closed barriers, retreating back to the prior road closed barriers and an hour back to the coast, then up to Brisbane to catch my original flight which had been delayed by 6 hours and NOT cancelled as I had bet on .. haha. Flew into Newie then 6 hours to drive to Mudgee cause it was flooding on Golden Highway. Fun stuff.

I set the task of making 10 ticks then walking away. This allowed me to zone in completely like I haven't done before. It wasn't the greatest flowing morning, but there were spots where tension built and it seems I managed to take advantage of them.

I started with a scratch trade, then a 1 tick loss. Then +4, +4, +4. Going to replay some market action today and see if I can establish some sort of consistency with this 10 tick goal. I'm sure traditionally you aren't supposed to focus on making X amount in a given sitting - but it seems the more I watch the ladder, the more opportunities are just sitting there waiting to be taken advantage of early on - and the longer I play the game the more I give back.

The most obvious is during the opening 30 minutes - Half of the days I have been watching, there is a move above or below the open on light volume. Then still on a light volume a step in the profile will build up and hold and is good for a few ticks or more back to the open, or in its direction at least. Some sort of play on this usually seems to occur and for the first two weeks I would kick myself for not having played because the volume was too light in fear of a sweep occurring - but its almost as if the players that would sweep on a couple hundred are letting us have that first half hour while waiting for bigger players to enter the game.

Secondly market action usually gets way more interesting around 8.45AM leading into the stock market open. A good breakout I find generally occurs between 8.45AM and 9AM. Though I don't like to play between 8.55 and 9.05 as its a bit too erratic. After 9.05 it seems way more readable than later in the day - or it could be that I am way more in tune during this early period. If market action is still slow, the times to watch after then are the 15 minute intervals of the hour, where it seems to me that larger timeframe players are managing their positions, and the profile ranges seem to be as good as any to scalp a few ticks out of, or within.

I don't trade during countdowns on Talking-forex when numbers are coming out and a few minutes either side generally.

The other correlation worth noting is the FESX. If Bund is at its lows and FESX its highs - they seem to play off each other quite well and vice versa.

So within those ingredients I want to be able to make my 10 ticks each day... most days.

I haven't been updating every day due to distractions but definitely have been trading on sim the first few hour of the Bunds. Probably about time I play the REAL game.

Got video of my trading last night if anyone wants me to screencast it.

Enjoyment: 9/10
Trading: 9/10

Can you actually make money off 4 tick trades, when you factor in slippage and brokerages?

Regards,
Neil.

For Eurobund my overhead is:

Commission - 1.86 R/T per contract
Data - Free CQG with AMP Futures / Ninjatrader
Software - Free - Bought and Payed for Ninjatrader

Slippage - ZERO unless I am sweeping market orders which is not the case. I trade directly from the Jigsaw DOM, and I am either working limit orders or lifting offers / hitting bids at limit also. The worst case scenario with my order routing is that I don't get filled before the move takes off. I have the simulator set at 500ms delay as its about ~300ms round trip I estimate for order routing. My data is coming from the CQG server in Sydney at ~30ms delay + CQG Global data delay ?

One tick in Eurobund is 10 Euros. So 4 ticks would profit me 40 Euro per contract minus roughly 2 euros commission. This is with flat rate commission and not tiered which I could get less than 1 euro with tiered commissions trading size.

Of course got overhead of Internet and other utilities but the way I see it - if I can consistently make say 10 ticks a day on average.. or even 40 ticks a week. The nature of the Bunds I reckon I could trade 10 contracts with same tactics as one (assuming one contract works out).. that's ~4000 euro a week - commissions..?

My goal with this Bund trading, as unrealistic even to me at this stage that it seems, is just that. Make 40 ticks a week trading with upto 10 contracts. To add over optimism to it - I wanna do that in the first 3 hours of trading only which is ideal for my lifestyle - 5 to 8pm trading. Not too much to ask?

Let me know if I am missing something obvious here but I hope I have covered it all - one could easily live off consistent 4 tick profits My background of chasing multi-day week swings with pyramiding to turn X into 1000 X seemed a lot less realistic than 4 ticks. I was using the moon at some stage in there though so that comparison might not mean too much

EDIT: The obvious factor is how many trades it takes me to make the 10 ticks per day - then commissions can add up I guess. Gotta be selective.

Today I bought a live NT license in order to trade live this evening. With a trembling hand I took my first real EuroBund Futures trade with a one lot where I probably shouldn't have, as it immediately resulted in the biggest snap back I have experienced yet even in simulator mode. Well realistically I probably would have held the trade in SIM mode and exited when 30 seconds later it snapped back 6 ticks. So some very obvious change in trading behavior has been self-observed already between Live and Sim trading.

a) I knew the trading volume and bid and asks were way to light for my (supposed) skillset. I took a trade based off my simulator experience that i could see a sweep to new highs based because of the lack of interest - but obviously just as likely a sweep back on me which hurt the wallet this time. Only 6 ticks but that is double what I would accept as normal. I also would definitely have taken this exit again because 6 ticks could just as easily turn into 12 in todays market action (and would have 5 minutes later)

b) I would have held onto the trade longer on simulator mode cause the sweep back was too shocking and hoped for recovery which in this case I got. In reality pain of 6 ticks against with real $$ was enough to cut losses.

Fortunately a complete software failure had me out of the market long enough to realise today is a NO PLAY day unless volume significantly picks up for a sustained period - maybe US market open.

The large software failure after great live support from the Jigsaw team and Ninjatrader team but NOT the Amp Futures team (call back later as usual) - was self inflicted. For chart data purposes I had my date set to yesterdays to line up with the US Friday session when it was Saturday here. This caused my historical data to not load - NT to crash when refreshing all historical data, and my market depth to not display correctly. So for anyone with these symptoms in the future - CHECK YOUR COMPUTER DATE.

Still looking forward to some more market action to get experience with real $$. Bunds seem to have been pretty quiet the last few days. This is occurring during a supposed rally on the daily chart - my old swing trading ways would suggest a rally on light volume means its not mean to last - but what do I know

Til next time.