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Eclipsemf's ES Journey


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Eclipsemf's ES Journey

  #1 (permalink)
 eclipsemf 
Manchester NH
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Thinkorswim
Broker: TD Ameritrade
Trading: Small Caps
Posts: 90 since Feb 2014
Thanks Given: 31
Thanks Received: 55

I'm starting this journal on a public forum so I can keep my self accountable for my mistakes instead of making some BS excuse on why I'm not trading well. This is my second round of live trading the first round had me sitting down around 450$. Here is a brief intro from my first user intro.

Hey everybody! I am fairly new to trading and this site in general. I just want to share my experience so far and see if any one has any suggestions or points. I am however not they type of person that wants to be spoon fed everything! I have taught myself everything I know about the market up to this point, with a lot of research and videos to help.

Ill start with my current money situation in the market.I am 21 and I have my own account with $6000 in it with enough money to trade 1 contract of the S&P with a little wiggle room, with my max loss before a restructure is 500$. I have more money to throw at the market but I want to start off very slow and not get over my head trying to trade 4 or 5 contracts with out good results with one.


6 Months ago was when I really started getting serious with stocks, futures and currencies and had stumbled over a S&P Emini 500 video and instantly knew this is where I wanted to start. 2 months in I had still no idea where I was going with it besides playing around with some paper money accounts and loosing money with in them.

I then started to look at videos of other people trading the ES and quickly developed a method and set of charts that looked like a plate of pasta! I had so many indicators that I didnt know which one to believe when many of them told me different things.

3 Months in I completely got rid of that method and came up with a much simpler method and paper traded it with moderate success. I went to the real market with 1 contract and traded pretty constantly for 2 months with out making or loosing a bunch of money. I finally hit my 500$ restructure point.

Now in the last month I had signed up on futures.io (formerly BMT) and thats where it has changed a good bit in a positive direction! My slightly tweaked method from my last one consists of 2 indicators based off of the MACD and Momentum indicators that most people are familiar with. I have re programmed them to be what I want them to be but still have the meat and potatoes of the originals. But most of my trades are market structure based trades with the indicators as tools to back up my thoughts.

I traded this method with paper money and was up 18% in 1 month at my maximum point so I felt comfortable enough to go back to real money. 4/14 is my starting day and will be posting an update every day that I trade, most days ill try to include my entry and exit points but I will defiantly have my one thing I am looking to improve on for the next day.

My next move if I cant put this strategy to practice will be to get an elite membership so I can browse the consultants, so I can get some one to talk one on one and discuss what I have and where I might wanna go from here.

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  #3 (permalink)
 eclipsemf 
Manchester NH
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Thinkorswim
Broker: TD Ameritrade
Trading: Small Caps
Posts: 90 since Feb 2014
Thanks Given: 31
Thanks Received: 55


My trading hours right now are from 9 to 12 EST and will probably stay around that for a while, I have another job that I am trying to maintain in case this does not work out, but I am very optimistic as long as I can keep my emotions in check and continue to make fewer mistakes. My Current Stop is set at 6 tics and Limit is set at 9 tics with potential to be much larger depending on some condition I have set up, but I will never be risking more than 75$ per trade at this time. During Testing I was over 60% win percentage with this in paper so I will see how it transforms once I get more live time. 500$ loss is my 2nd restructure point and 150$ is max loss for a day at this point.

Today I had 2 trades filled, shown in the attached pictures. Both were short positions and turned out to be loses.

Trade number 1 was a non indicated trade not based off of my ROE system and not how I should be starting out discipline wise. I was up 87.50 on the trade but it did not make it to my target of 112.50. In hind sight I should have moved my stops to at least break even when the trade came that close to my limit.

Trade number 2 was an indicated trade but I completely over looked that 1 of the S&R lines had the trade pretty much bound to it and could not get a closed bar below it. This trade I was only up 37.50 so my stop was not moving and exit strategy worked as the market moved higher after I got out of the position.

Things to do for next trade day: Be slightly more protective of profit when market is less than 3 tics of hitting my limit order and keep a better eye on the S&R lines I have set up (they are there for a reason!) lastly to remember to read my ROE and have it right in the open for the full trading day to make sure I don't slip up again.


Overall I am happy with the progress I made despite the loss. Tomorrow I will be back at it and I will show you guys my spread sheet (based off of a few members on here)


PS: the chart graph arrows... Yellow is entry point, Red is exit point as a loss, Green is exit point as a profit.

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  #4 (permalink)
 eclipsemf 
Manchester NH
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Thinkorswim
Broker: TD Ameritrade
Trading: Small Caps
Posts: 90 since Feb 2014
Thanks Given: 31
Thanks Received: 55

I didnt get a chance to really trade yesterday I had a free class with Jason Stapleton who is an excellent teacher and I am always learning from him. I placed one Trade today at 9:45 and got out for a 75$ loss almost instantly. I'm not going to trade for the rest of the day because the market is gaping too much in my 3 minute time interval to get a good entry point with such shallow stops set up.

Not much to learn from today beside knowing when and when not to try to run with the big boys. One good thing is I am doing very well at not letting my emotions blow up. I have been staying very calm when in trades even though they have been going against me so far.

I have attached 2 pictures of my spread sheet along with the downloadable attachment , its pretty basic and is best to be used for futures but feel free to tweak it as you feel or if you have any questions or pick up on any errors feel free to let me know, I havent done much testing on it so there could be things off. There are also totals down at 271 along with the ones to the right. I would like to thank @PandaWarrior for sharing his spread sheet with everyone. This is based off of his I just changed a few things to make it fit what I needed out of it.

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Attached Files
Elite Membership required to download: Real Trading Tracking.xls
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  #5 (permalink)
 eclipsemf 
Manchester NH
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Thinkorswim
Broker: TD Ameritrade
Trading: Small Caps
Posts: 90 since Feb 2014
Thanks Given: 31
Thanks Received: 55

Today was yet another bad day the market is still gaping to much for me to successfully trade my method. I took a 75$ loss today and will have to wait till tomorrow to give another stab at it. I attached a picture where I took the trade, I was expecting it to take to the upside around 1858 but it turned over as soon as I got in. Both my indicators were in the positive when I took the trade but by the time the bar closed they had both moved back in to the red. The market would end up moving up the where I expected just an hour or so after I had anticipated.

Things to take from today: Again like yesterday I need to realize when the market is very volatile and is moving too much for me to trade it. I am debating not trading till 10 to let the first 30 minute rush go so I can see where the market is going from there and how fast. 3 loosing days in a row has me a little down but I'm not ready to give up I just think the market movement this week is n tot in my favor.

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  #6 (permalink)
 eclipsemf 
Manchester NH
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Thinkorswim
Broker: TD Ameritrade
Trading: Small Caps
Posts: 90 since Feb 2014
Thanks Given: 31
Thanks Received: 55

Just to keep this up to date, I got a good raise at my job so right now this will be on the back burner, I continue to back test everyday after work and look for potential areas to improve on in hindsight. I realize this is no good substitute for live trading or even paper trading for that matter but I am just rolling with what my life gives me right now. I will be upgrading my account to an elite member in the coming weeks so I can further advance my knowledge!

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  #7 (permalink)
 eclipsemf 
Manchester NH
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Thinkorswim
Broker: TD Ameritrade
Trading: Small Caps
Posts: 90 since Feb 2014
Thanks Given: 31
Thanks Received: 55

Today I have my fully revised plan in place. I am now going to start my final back testing session from the start of this year to see my results. If they are promising I am going to use TD ameritrades On demand to practice discipline with semi live data ( the past days data, where I have to work during the days. I will post an update again once I get my back testing done!

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  #8 (permalink)
 eclipsemf 
Manchester NH
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Thinkorswim
Broker: TD Ameritrade
Trading: Small Caps
Posts: 90 since Feb 2014
Thanks Given: 31
Thanks Received: 55

Things at work are slowing up again for the rest if the year until spring time so I will have a lot more time to put towards this. I have all this week off besides Friday and I will be live trading all day week. Today I did a final revision of the trading plan and made sure all of my charts and spreadsheets were up to par still. I took the first trade of the morning right at 9:30 and quickly got out at 9:37 at my R1 level for a solid 150$ profit and a 1.19% ROI on that trade! A very promising start to my third trip around the block. I will post another update from tomorrows trading session.

Things to take from today: Follow the exit strategy a little more firmly, I left 2 points in the market on my first trade if I had stuck 100% to the plan. I let a little emotion come out which made me exit early, but the profit was nice still. At 10:06 the second trade opportunity came up and I passed on it because I did not like the setup. This would have been a small 2 to 3 tic profit based off of my exit strategy. I will continue to work on these small things so I can make the most of this trading strategy.

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  #9 (permalink)
 eclipsemf 
Manchester NH
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Thinkorswim
Broker: TD Ameritrade
Trading: Small Caps
Posts: 90 since Feb 2014
Thanks Given: 31
Thanks Received: 55

Another successful day! I have to stop a bit early to head off to work but I am still happy with the results. 2 trades today with a 75$ profit. Trade one I got stopped out 12.50 Profit only for it to shoot up but this week I am only trading 1 contract to make sure I have my execution down pat. With 2 contracts the runner would have caught a lot more profit on that trade. Trade number 2 was a nail bitter! This trade was over 20 minutes long and stuck in consolidation, it finally pulled in my direction just enough to pull 1.25 points out of the market and exit for the day. That puts me at 1.70% increase in my account in just 2 days! Very happy with all my execution and discipline. I was much more calm today and the only thing else I feel like I need to really work on is getting everything set up to go to trading 2 contracts after I start full time October 6th!

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  #10 (permalink)
 eclipsemf 
Manchester NH
 
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Thinkorswim
Broker: TD Ameritrade
Trading: Small Caps
Posts: 90 since Feb 2014
Thanks Given: 31
Thanks Received: 55


Well we have hit day 3 in a row with profits! Today was just a small day because there was very low volume with in the market due to all the news being expected. Just a 62.50$ but that puts me at 2.17% up in 3 days which is still not bad working towards my overall goal. Coming in to the beginning of this round I set my monthly goals to loose no more than 10% of my account during the first 3 months so this is a very good start to give me a little leeway in making a few rookie mistakes and ironing out my flaws while I work on consistency with 1 contract before I move on to working with 2. The only thing I would have changed from today is be a little more patient. My entry point was perfect but I may have trailed my profit a little close. I would have banked another 50$ or so but with the low volume I was trying to be real conservative and not take a loss in these market conditions.

Tomorrow is my last day of trading for the week and then I will have to go back to working during the morning 3-4 days a week until I get to October 6th when I plan on starting 5 days a week and only working after noon.

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Last Updated on April 27, 2016


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