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Watch me fly like an eagle or drop like a t..rd

  #31 (permalink)
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568

Here is my stats for last two days of trading with a style described above. I can see I need some improvements:
1. When trade does not perform within 30 seconds or so I need to cut it if in the red by gradually moving a limit order to work more favorable exit price
2. I need to add runners and leave the stop at break even to get these bigger gains 10-15 ticks and improve my average holding time and average winner size
3. I need to trade only during most volatile periods, MFE during slower time indicates not much profits were available




An example of trade from yesterday.


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  #32 (permalink)
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568

My CL trading off 800 tick chart resembled throwing darts while blindfolded. Initially I was using 15 tick stop loss but after been stopped out 3 times calling right direction I used 30 ticks stop and then after two 15 tick winners I got 30 tick loser. I could avoid this one, but I left PC to its own devices and went to do something else to come and see it failed miserably. I think I could get out at 20 ticks damage most be I present. Then I reversed and repaired that damage with 29 tick gain and this time called a bottom right and captured another 25 ticks. Messy to say the least. Need to work much more on that one.


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  #33 (permalink)
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568


I went onto a business trip so this week has to be passed. My demo account on MC has expired so I don't have a sim to trade on (I have withdrawn my live account not to be tempted to dive in or just touch it with this little finger) so I will keep reading and absorbing knowledge this week.
My plan for the next week is to subscribe as a member to TST and spend a month on their T4 sim, get used to it before doing a Combine. Also I could not be selective on stats what to use in my spreadsheets and what to not, all trading will have to be done by rules. I will suppress my urges to do an impulsive trade by doing an imaginable trade marking places on the chart where I would place it so I can think later about it.

The trade plan will be the following:
1. I will trade as I started, small patterns on 6E and CL, using Bob Volman's setups, not all of them just the most tiny ones: blocks, double dojis, second breaks and inside/advanced range brakes. Normal range breaks generate way too much false breaks and teases, what I want to see before I take a trade is a lot of tension and a very compressed price aciton, possible spring traps.
2. I will look for trade locations around key daily levels, so setups will be driven by stop hunt action or sentiment overwhelming level defendants.
3. I will be studying DOM to see a confirming order flow, I am reviewing corresponding materials conserning order flow, and tape reading. I want my trades to be confirmed by the tape.
4. I plan on many setups per day with target of 5-10 ticks and stop loss of 4-5 ticks. I plan to have around 50% win rate but hopefully more. Ideally I would target something like 50-100 trades a day with 5 ticks target and 3-4 ticks stop and 70+% win rate but not sure if it can be done on Euro (however with news coming all the time lately it shows many many setups), this is why I will also trade CL with same rules. 6E will only be traded from 9AM to 12 PM CET time (London before lunch) and Crude only from 9 AM to 12 PM EST time (NY before lunch). I won't touch anything else or try any other strategy, I want to get something done finally.

I give myself 1 month to work this strategy to a level I can have some confidence in and then I will take a small 30k 10 day combine.


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  #34 (permalink)
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568

I gave it some though and posted my consideration about Combine and capital here at friendly blog on indextrader.


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  #35 (permalink)
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568

Here I am back again. I have applied for 2 week trial run with TST and CTS T4, that should both get me accustomed to T4 and same time give me 2 weeks to iron my strategy and see if it works on calmer markets and on CL market. I will also see if I can get a sense of the orderflow from T4's DOM and T&S. I am a huge proponent on order flow and tried for a long time to apply it in Forex but there you could only work with some guesswork and mainly operate out of stop run areas and touted barrier options where a burst of order flow was to be expected. I am checking out Jigsaw and NoBS to see if they can help me with something but I don't want to dive now into more complication and acquire NT with Jigsaw's tools and figure out how to use all of it, especially if I want to do a Combine with T4. My plan is to polish my strategies for 2 weeks during the trial and then apply for 150k 20 day Combine. I just see no point to trade 30-50k ones, since I can provide more risk capital myself than what they give me with it and I can trade any platform I like with much smaller commissions than they charge. I will keep posted my trades and TST's reports daily.

I plan to run 150k simulation and I will make sure I won't dip below daily DD and max DD. I will start with 1 contract and build up to possibly 5-7 or max 10 if I have a really high win percentage.

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  #36 (permalink)
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568

Today wasn't a good day to test, due to low volumes because of Easter Monday, but still I can feel CL is no good instument for this strategy even though I was able to keep it around break even, unlike 6E but I started testing with 6E on T4 and took many random trades at the beginning. I am also testing ES again, not so much for this strategy exactly, but rather for order flow/tape reading principles.

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  #37 (permalink)
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568

This was my third day into the TST trial run. I managed to get more less accustomed with T4, last two days I made losses due to trying different things, styles and instruments, although yesterday I had profits with CL. Today I made 2000 usd gain, 770 on CL and over 1000 on GC. GC had very clear pattern, very nice to see, with CL it was like yesterday, I managed to go into a floating drawdown before I came into profit and it would be the end of Combine today if I was doing 150k Combine instead of practice. I like the strategy with scaling in with a very large initial SL tightening it up as I load more contracts, the issue was I did not anticipate how far it will run against me (around 50 ticks since the first entry) so I should be more careful with scaling in. I will start with just 1 contract next time and will go in max 3 contracts while scaling in being negative and will add more while going into profit, pyramiding it.

I also will try to use same strategy on CL as I used on GC. Pretty much similar what I wanted to run on 6E but with fiber it only works on rare days now, a year ago you could have used it every days for many months in a row. The variation is I don't just wait for a small congestion with higher volume small bars (spring) but actually enter after such congestion is broken on a good volume and a large bar and just enter with a stop order on completion. I tried different scales, but apparently for GC and it's dual character of being either very passive and low volatility or very active and very volatile, I prefer to use 1 minute bars with a volume indicator instead of tick or contract bars. It helps me to filter out unimportant small bars and get ready when some directional grind appears and as soon as large bar prints breaking congestion, it will enter on competition with a stop order 1-3 ticks outside of bar high or low. With Crude, same 800 ticks chart I use for intra-day position trading seems to be also good to enter on large bar completion.

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  #38 (permalink)
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568

I posted this in the other thread but I want to keep it in my journal as well to remind me to focus on these ideas as I re-read it.


Quoting 
I argued in the Combine passing thread that this is why I feel the smallest Combine is also the toughest in my opinion. Yes it has the lowest target percentage but it has so tight losses it makes many successful trade and size management strategies go to the toilet. Unlike in spot Forex (I traded FX for over 3 years now) you can't size your position precisely to your risk, unless you can do micro contracts but they are illiquid and not allowed in Combine anyway. So you have options like 6B with its 6.25 usd per tick and NQ with 5 usd per tick, and they could be good options for trading small Combine.

I feel that what TST wants to see is a successful position management, it means adding to winners, not reducing them by taking partial profits. I know many people find taking portions out helps to ease psychological pressure, but it reduces gains and adds to losers, so I am yet to see a statement from anyone who was able to pass Combine and live preparation doing that: cutting winners and taking full losses.

I think despite harder targets, large Combines allow a lot more position sizing flexibility when it comes to trading like winners trade: adding to winners when all stars are aligned. Like it was yesterday or day before, you could have loaded and loaded when market went through the floor.

With a large Combine you can start with a "feeler", like many pros do, throw in one car and it will get you to follow the market with attention and load up until your original daily premise is valid. With a small Combine you in effect must either scalp or get many stop outs using very tight stops even when the market maybe moving the way you predicted but is taking out stops on the way.


Quoting 
I tried the other strategy Martin mentioned (building a cushion for the day and increase lots) myself many times but it has two huge failures:
1. It forces you to overtrade and take miserable trades as you first need to build cushion and then exploit it
2. It makes you lose big once position increased and then you stop because of the DLL, when to work this strategy right you need to keep trading.
I did some automatic trading and applied very creative trade size management resembling this idea and it worked, but only if you let it to its own devices. As a human you hardly can do that. And what most important it works only for a system based on cyclical markets, my automatic strategy was exploiting rapid volatility expansions in FX market and traded mean reversals. So it was not that any next trade has no connection to the previous one, like we are taught and which is true to many manual systems, but opposite to it there was connection and it was beneficial to pile up size once winners are coming and cut size severely after few losers.

In methods we normally trade manually we can't do that because we hardly exploit any cycles and we are subject to psychological pressure. So I would argue it would be better to trade either with the same size all the time OR look to take less trades but work them from a minimal size to maximum size as it works in your direction strongly.

Just wanted to add: this is what I am working on right now myself and I can see good results already. With day trading futures, unlike in FX, you are working inside one trading session that has very characteristic boundaries and price action attributed to this session (while in FX all sessions are imaginary and smoothed out so you hardly can trade inside a session, maybe except Asian). So my current premise is to select my market direction for a session after it played out for an hour or two after the opening and start working myself in little by little. It will help me:
1. Reduce number of stop outs even when your thinking was right, to exactly one
2. Reduce number of trades, winners or losers, to just one trade with multiple entries (and maybe exits) but still holding just one original premise
3. Don't be a victim of stop runs and high volatility psycho happening due to news and things, you either right or wrong this day, just one time.
4. Stop generating huge commissions


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  #39 (permalink)
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568

As of trading I did not plan to trade today due to NFP, but decided to do few scalps on Gold. Did two trades before the NFP and few about 5-10 minutes after. 10 ticks SL and 30 ticks TP but mostly cut early. +540 usd into the purse on T4 demo.

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  #40 (permalink)
 
xelaar's Avatar
 xelaar 
prague, czech republic
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT7, MT4
Broker: LMAX
Trading: DAX, Gold, Euro
Posts: 1,505 since Feb 2013
Thanks Given: 1,740
Thanks Received: 2,568


Here is my stats for the week from taking a trial from TST with T4:




I did tests with other instruments too and it reflects in a balance, but these were all on the first days to test out T4 execution, strategies, etc. I am only looking forward to trade gold and crude for now.

This report is strange as it says it's a 50k simulation with 5 cars max size while in reality it is 150k and 15 cars, as it says in T4.

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Last Updated on June 15, 2013


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