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Thank you, @Zachary Standley, it means a lot. My mantra for next cycle will be "stick to the program". I want to start with a certain drawdown amount and a small profit goal and just prove I can achieve a small goal without hitting a generous drawdown. I'm thinking 1.5:1.0 goal-to-drawdown ratio. Something that should be obtainable even when I'm nervous and full of doubt!
17 trades left in cycle-000002. This will be the last "sim" cycle that i know of. I need to take in as much information from these last 17 trades as possible.
Goal of cycle-000003 will consist of forcing some kind of catalyst/insight/crisis/inflection-point/turning-point. It will consist of one of the following (TBD):
1) live-trading my account with /ES with novice-level P/L goal and generous drawdown.
2) live-trading e-micros, but learning a new platform which may cost me substantial fees compared to my current platform.
3) Trading Combine (OneUp or TopStep). I will choose an account size outside of my comfort-zone, the fees will be less than my allowed drawdown from "1)" above.
I believe I can still gain some value from sim, but I do not know how to simulate "fear/greed/grit/will-to-overcome". There aren't any books or gurus for this I don't think.
In tech we have a phenomenon called "impostor syndrome". Essentially one feels like they've somehow fooled everyone into thinking they are smart and that there is an impending doom on the horizon, some problem will arise which inevitably they will not be able to solve, which exposes the person as some kind of fraud, that everyone will realize the truth that they were just getting by on smoke and mirrors and that they just aren't that good at their job. I've known a lot of developers who suffer from this, including myself, and I have yet to meet one where I was like "yep, they were an impostor!".
One great thing about trading is that there really isn't an "impostor-syndrome" that I am aware of. You either are making money or you are losing money. If you are fooling the market into thinking you are smarter than you feel you are, and making money somehow, then godspeed, continue doing this thing.
My goal here is to expose any flaws, gather statistics on it, and if I need to retreat, retreat into a "live" environment that can't be fooled, but in which I can take a small enough position so as to keep on trading, whether it be e-micros or combines.
Posting here for accountability and posterity. Cheers to turning points in life.
p.s. i know this is very melodramatic stuff but bear with me.
Ha! I love it! Now to state the obvious...once you have created an edge in SIM, you've taken the simulator as far as it can go. Next it's time to learn to execute! Cheers to turning points!
All Fears Are the Same Fear so lets tie your sim performance to live launch date. Each bad sim trade will cost you a week of launch date for example. Thus now you can experience FOMO when you see live launch date getting away from you.
This is very good insight, I hadn't thought of this, but I should have! Thank you for sharing, @cory!
I feel pretty silly for thinking only in terms of "real-money" mentality, when there are rich areas of improvement right under my nose in sim. To be honest I feel like an idiot in some ways. I will add this into my trading immediately, I really like this challenge. The idea of my crisis, inflection-point, turning-point getting away from me by each trade is just perfect right now. Its like a way to breathe sanity into a someone when they are at the breaking point, "you want to explode, but...can you? you keep failing at this trivial thing you thought was so easy, its so sad to see the apocalypse delayed because you can't trade sim properly."
I don't want shortcuts. This eliminates shortcuts, it is easy for me to think I'm ready, but have I really eliminated all the shortcuts and proven myself?
So, with 17 trades left in this cycle, this would put me at an "epoch' of weeks if I screw around with these 17 trades. I have to both maximize my P/L while not exposing myself to silly risk, but also really focus on each sim-trade, I potentially have a maximum of 17 weeks that could theoretically pile up against me. I like this challenge, this will give me an extra level of confidence moving forward. +1000 Cory for the quote "All Fears Are the Same Fear" I research this and it all boils down to the same fear, the fear of death. This is very valid. I do not want to move forward as a coward, but I think we idealize the way we pursue "the act of becoming". I won't look pretty in the process of being a trader, I'm sure of that. But I am embracing the potential breakdown of certain aspects of my personal psyche in this pursuit, which may or may not get ugly.
I can only speak for me but I think its just a sense of urgency to get to the point where I see my expectancy hold up under live trading. It did for 5 trades last cycle and I jumped back to sim, I felt my psyche was the weak link and that I was sensing the 5 live trades were enough at that point. I think I would like to get to say 10 trades next live cycle and see expectancy hold up, then decide what to do from there. I'm finding that cutting up trades into different-sized partitions to focus on certain things seems to be helping me "divide and conquer" some of my trading challenges.
@7:22AM CST - Price is centered around the midpoint between pHOD/pLOD, also OL. E-mini S&Ps currently down -9.25, VIX at 13.29. Lots of European banks are closed today, so it may be quiet action.
@8:10AM - Its been a very quiet Opening-Call, Looking at "Open Auction in Range"-type opening this morning.
Thursday was kind of a "Neutral" Day that ended up favoring the upside. We tested 2915.75 overnight and got rejected.
@8:30AM - Very choppy OB.
@8:50AM - Price has driven all the way up to almost the midpoint of OH/OL. Price seems to be stalling out, I enter a working-order to go short 1 contract @2907.50. Price doesn't seem to have the energy to move any higher so I adjust to enter @2906.50 and I am filled. Stop is set @2908.50. EDIT: ***This little move is going to turn a winning trade into a loser thanks to my own impatience.***
@9:05AM - Price was moving favorably in the beginning but then a reversal shot up to test 2909.00 and I get stopped-out. I think I was 2-points too early, or I should have stayed at my original entry of 2907.50, I expect price to drop from here, but I'm done. Going to get out and enjoy this beautiful weather.
As I leave, the market did in fact make the move I wanted, too bad.
What i liked:
- Almost had the right read, just jumped in too soon.
- Did some trading homework over the weekend.
What I didn't like:
- Had a winning entry at 2907.50 but was too anxious and adjusted down to 2906.50 because of my own impatience.
- No way to to tell when I'm close-enough on my entries, unless I widened my stops, but the 8-tick stops have been working from an expectancy standpoint. I need to go through and track how many times 10-, 12-, or 16-tick stop would have helped, I meant to do this but I never did. In this case a 12-tick stop would have worked.
Goals for Tomorrow:
- Probability Theory Homework
- Price-Action/Market-Profile Homework (I'm STILL way behind)
- Add error trade to stats - impatience
progress towards challenge goal
$3000.00 profit goal.
$1375.00 achieved.
-$300.00 current drawdown
14 trades of 30 entered.
I need (1625.00/16) = $101.56 per trade to hit my target.
current expectancy for cycle is 6.8574 ticks
My theoretical average is currently $85.72 per trade. I am behind, and I also have a -$300.00 drawdown I need to repair.
