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FM's Trade Log

  #351 (permalink)
 
FlyingMonkey's Avatar
 FlyingMonkey 
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Sunday 12 Aug 2018
==================


Blue Eagle View Post
Dude... not sure if you are doing your weekly thing but wanted to see if you had any thoughts on the situation with Cl. I always enjoy your take and am kinda 50/50 myself on which way to lean. See anything interesting?
Craig

I've started checking the markets in the evenings several days per week. Aiming for Sunday through Thursday, but I have been skipping a day or two. So I no longer do "bold predictions" on a weekly basis. Instead I am scanning my markets daily, setting and adjusting orders as needed. Still looking for the same kinds of things, but managing the activity more fluidly.

I don't have the capacity to post analysis of all my charts every night, but I will try to put up some of the more interesting bits from time to time. Since you asked, here is CL. We've been pressing downward toward major support just below 65. 66.25 was pinnochioed last week and rocketed higher from there. I'd anticipate we get continued weakness and/or chop around a day or two in the 67s before pushing higher. I don't think the 65 level gives up very easily, but I do think 66.25 will fail if it gets challenged another time. IF somehow 64.75 does fail this week, the move lower may be swift and brutal.

Practically speaking, I think I'd be selling 68.35 if we get there tomorrow ... and I think I'd buy 64.93. It's possible we just chop around the high 66s / low 67s, which I'd think would presage a leg down to 65 eventually, but who knows.



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  #352 (permalink)
 
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 Blue Eagle 
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FlyingMonkey View Post
Sunday 12 Aug 2018
==================




I don't have the capacity to post analysis of all my charts every night, but I will try to put up some of the more interesting bits from time to time. Since you asked, here is CL. We've been pressing downward toward major support just below 65. 66.25 was pinnochioed last week and rocketed higher from there. I'd anticipate we get continued weakness and/or chop around a day or two in the 67s before pushing higher. I don't think the 65 level gives up very easily, but I do think 66.25 will fail if it gets challenged another time. IF somehow 64.75 does fail this week, the move lower may be swift and brutal.

Practically speaking, I think I'd be selling 68.35 if we get there tomorrow ... and I think I'd buy 64.93. It's possible we just chop around the high 66s / low 67s, which I'd think would presage a leg down to 65 eventually, but who knows.

Right on... I had the same feeling about 66.25 bottom not being all that strong despite the bounce. And yes, below 65 ish with mojo could get interesting.
Thanks, Craig

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  #353 (permalink)
 
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 FlyingMonkey 
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Wednesday 15 Aug 2018
=====================

My trades from the first half of the week are closed with a simulated profit. Looking at a new round of entries in hopes of simulating even more profits.

I had a nice call in ES this week, getting short on Monday around 2835 and closing around 2810 today. Here is a random analysis of ES as it stands.

I would call this chart the "Nervous Bull", if it required a name.



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  #354 (permalink)
 
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 FlyingMonkey 
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Monday 03 Sep 2018
==================

Sim-swing-trading continues to be kind to me. I am not aimlessly swing trading, mind you. I've been at this too long for that. No, no, I am on a mission. Keep going this way and I will have to actually put some money where my mouth is.

But, alas, my FIO journal activity has waned significantly. I'll be honest with y'all - it's for the best. I am enjoying the summer. Wife, kids, weather, water, wine, beer, whiskey, tequila, gin, books, music, exercise, healthy, happy, balanced. No, it ain't paradise, it ain't perfection--Ups and downs as always. But there is more balance in my life than there has been in recent memory. Perhaps I grow wiser in my years. But taking time to enjoy the fruits of one's labor does seem to rejuvenate the soul.

Not waking up at 5am every day to scalp is definitely a piece of it. I'm not done with intraday trading ... but for the foreseeable future my prime focus is on the dailies, and growing my sim account to a threshold at which point I will plunge back into live trading.

So, that's that. I am following six or seven markets still. Here's a couple charts for those interested.

ES



I don't know what to tell you, if you look at this chart and you are itching to get short, I need to ask you some real serious questions. Sure, yes, it could drop. It maybe even looks "poised" to drop some here. But let's get real people. Unless we break back below 2875, bulls are picking all the music. Even as low as 2820 is still strong. I'll be looking for the mid/high 2880s for a long entry this week.


CL



Most of the time, CL doesn't make it easy. I usually have to stare at it for a good 20 minutes before it starts turning into a galloping horse like one of those cross-your-eyes-a-little magic-3d pictures. Obviously we have this upward funnel thing happening on the weekly which seems slightly foreboding, and a recent sort-of-breakout from a long slog in the mid-60s. Last week 70 got sold, clearly some profit taking there. But whether it's summer-doldrums or what have you, CL still didn't drop much, and 69.50 has been steadily bought. For me, that's the tell at the moment. Of course it can drop like a rock down to 64 from here but with CL, more often than not, you just gotta shrug and pick an angle. My angle at the moment, is that CL probably will try for 69.25 early in the week and when it does, I think it's worth a buy and see what shakes out.

Have fun out there.

EDIT: No idea why my CL chart was on November contract. October contract is a little higher. Looking at 69.40ish.

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  #355 (permalink)
 
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I have a few basic objectives heading into 2019. One of them is returning to post in this journal semi regularly.

As far as my approach to the business of trading, there is one thing I've been thinking about recently that I want to try to keep in mind all year long, so I'll put it here as a signpost to look back at:

Your first step on the chart is always to determine whether there is an edge for you at this moment, not to assess the potential future direction of price.

In other words, stop wasting your time in markets that don't fit your edge and suck your profits away. In 2019, efficiency is the name of the game.

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  #356 (permalink)
 
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 FlyingMonkey 
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Saturday 05 Jan 2019
====================

Last year I turned a modest profit from swing trading, about 5% in my IRA. My intraday trading went for a small loss. I was also mostly dark for the last 3 - 4 months of the year, for various reasons.

It's important to me to put the right foot forward in 2019. I intend to take a variety of types of trades this year - intraday, swing, long term - but am still getting myself in order after a couple months of very minimal trading activity, and the holiday season (lack of) schedule / routine takes a bit of time for me to shake off.

Happened to have the laptop open on the kitchen counter on friday morning and saw this one developing in GC. Full disclosure - I intended to continue trading MGC / M6E to start the year and ease myself in, but accidentally had the chart on the regular mini gold contract, and didn't realize it. Got lucky that it was a winner. Woops - still warming up.

This is a nice example of a trend-break-pull-back entry, or "anti". The pattern can fail and revert to a range or a resumed trend, but combined with the fact that the daily was in an uptrend, and this reversal was occuring at a level I was watching, combined with exhaustion volume, the long was too tasty to pass up.



That was it for me.

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  #357 (permalink)
 
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Sunday 13 Jan 2019
==================

Just a few trades for me the past week. I took 2 intraday trades for losses, -9 ticks in MGC and -4 ticks in M6E. I was reminded of one thing in taking these losses - namely, with intraday trades I always do better when I heavily premeditate the entries, rather than react quickly. FOMO is a great enemy, and when you have small timeframe charts FOMO is enhanced ... the feeling of a setup slipping away will encourage you to act without fully thinking through every option. I've thought about this many times and journaled about it also - it's high time to put it to rest. I'm going to experiment with some different tactics, leaning more heavily on the M30 chart to pick spots for intraday, and bypass opportunities that beckon in the first minutes of firing up the charts. Still small losses against one bigger winner from last week, so not doing too badly yet.

There were a few swing ideas I was tracking this week but only managed to enter on one. Which reminds me of another important thing I've been reminded of in the first couple weeks of trading. Which is, being a relatively conservative manager of my account, I have always tended toward setups that include a good measure of confirmation baked in - example being the "Anti", the first pullback in a new trend. In this entry not only do you have to wait for the former trend to break, but you have to wait for the first pullback in the new trend, before you get in. Now, I still love the Anti, one of my favorite patterns, but I am reminded (especially in swing trading for some reason) of the great benefit that early action gives you. If there is a low risk spot to get in, and there is enough sense in it from HTF levels, getting in earlier gives you positional advantage that just gives you more options. I'm building back confidence to trust those instincts and keep recording the data to back it up. I've seen a number of "hunches" I had in the past couple weeks materialize, only to miss the second-chance confirmation-entry (if any) to get in.

I did limp into a long swing position with 1 contract on M6E. Always impressed at the initial reaction to these levels - Here was a picture perfect Breakout-Pullback entry. Initial reaction looked promising, but it turned back under water. I could add to this if it holds its ground. I've always been interested in the fluid scaling approach, just never made it work as I was doing it with full sized contracts intraday, a little over my head and something I need to build up to. I am however thinking about giving it a shot with the micros on swings. Don't need a big account to take a few hundred ticks loss on the micros, and will let me try an almost "always in" approach. Just a thought - still mulling it over.


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  #358 (permalink)
 
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 FlyingMonkey 
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Sunday 27 Jan 2019
==================

Had a nice day at the beach today with the family. Time to jog the wheel on this here journal. Not much new to report. Ended up taking a 1/2R loss on the M6E swing trade, and also a 1/2R loss on a somewhat poorly timed SPY fade. I am having trouble getting into a rhythm but that's fine because I know why that is. In order to trade the way I want to trade, I need to pre-meditate my actions. I love the idea of clock-work journal keeping, air-tight record keeping, but ... I despise tedium.

I've been unusually sick with sinus crap since November, and am just now starting to almost (knock on wood) get close to normal energy levels. The reality is, with trading, yes work is work, but to me there's no point if it ain't fun too. The funny thing is, when I get frustrating results or have trouble with motivation, it's usually pretty clear the reason is because I don't like what I'm doing. So I take a few days away, do some fun things, and come back with better ideas. I run over the same ground as before ... dig up old ideas and resurrect them. At first it seems futile, questionable, unreasonable. But then I notice something. That old idea came back and now it's a little different. It's mutated. It may have some life again in it. And it's fun again. Hey, I am not making enough money at this thing to pour hours after hours into it and not have it be a little fun too.

Apologies to anyone who craves charts and trade results - I'm just not sure there's much use to me logging that here right now. Most of what's going on for me is in these musings. At the moment, I've dug up some old momentum focused ideas and re-tuned them. Doing a bit of ninjascripting to help it out. I figure, since I have the skills to test this stuff, I might as well put it through the paces before I run out onto the field swinging.

So, January comes near to a close. No big things to fist pump over, but no damage done either. Still panning for gold in the river.

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  #359 (permalink)
 
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 FlyingMonkey 
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Friday 13 Sep 2019
==================


I happen to know a research scientist, trained and practiced in the scientific method of inquiry and experimentation. Everything he does is oriented toward the successful process of discovery. Inherent in this process is careful note keeping and the try / fail / tweak / repeat cycle. The art of profiting from failure, of forward motion, of repeatability, is engrained into his process.

Although I have an analytical mind, I am not similarly trained. This is apparent to me. My approach is often what I would call "experimental" but what he would call "unstructured."

I intend to change that.

I am reviving this journal. It never really died - it just took a break. It serves as one branch of a larger note-keeping record of my trading process development. Maybe call it the "peer review" portion of my R&D.

Notes from this week:

1. When re-booting my trading, I have learned to start with Sim for at least a week or two. Even with micro money and negligible risk. There are always, always a few stupid repeat-lessons and technical errors. I want to demonstrate an ability to go a full week with a minimum of unforced errors in adhering to process before switching to live. Live account is the carrot.

2. The recent addition of the Micro ES now gives me 3 diversified micros to trade that satisfy my needs for liquidity, volatility, timezone activity, and risk. MES, MGC, M6E. This is great. I can focus all of my analysis into 3 instruments and have ample opportunity to swing and daytrade within minimal $ risk and prove a method that will directly translate over to the papa mini futures whenever I am ready to do so.

3. The approach I choose should represent a junction of my strengths as a trader and my limits as a human being. I work and have a family and other interests, and my method must coexist with this reality.

4. A major aspect of my current experiment is intent on limiting whip-saw losses that could have been winners with wider stops. This is based on numerous analyses over my past trading that show how much potential gain I give up with stop-outs. So I intend to get stopped out very rarely, which means using very wide stops. I want to see how I perform when my trades are given enough time and breadth to go to the place I thought they might. I would like to take my losses, not have them take me.

5. My day trades are triggered on the hourly chart at the moment, and should expect to be multi-hour trades. My swing trades are triggered on the 4-hour and should expect to last multiple days. They are in different accounts and activity in one account should not inform decisions on the other account.

6. Another aspect of my current experiment is to continue down the squirrely path to defining what is a correct trade, and what is an error. I do not want to immediately analyze losers as errors, as tempting as it often is. This is a broad topic and I will continue to explore it in fragments over time. Suffice it to say, I would like to define the correctness of a trade before I enter it, and be able to defend it all the way to the supreme court of trading, regardless of whether it results in profit or loss. If I employ the method of scientific inquiry toward refining a taxonomy, the only thing left will be the subjectivity and calibration of the tools with which I measure the object of study. There is a significant rub in there, but fortunately, trading of the method I suggest does not require nano precision. This can be done.

There will be charts at some point. Just words at the moment.

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  #360 (permalink)
 
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Dude! Welcome back.

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