I think it's jumping the gun to blame it all on the jump between sim and live. The question when the performance of your strategy changes is whether it's you, the strategy, or the market.

Now you can look at your own decisions and determine if you're really trading it the way you should, but what I'm hearing is "I don't think I'm doing anything different and it just isn't working".

Well we were up 2/3 of the days in April and saw one of the most unreal bull runs I've ever seen. Meanwhile the past two days have turned down with today in particular having insane action.

That sounds to me like a bad sample. You did well in an environment where a lot of money was coming into the market and all you really had to do was buy more often than sell and you'd make money. Meanwhile the past two days are very violent markets where the noise is going to really screw up such a short term scalping strategy. Remember, when money is coming into the market it seems like everyone is making money, and when it's coming out it seems even the best have a hard time breaking even. Your performance is much more likely to be a function of the market. But you don't really have enough data to be sure. I would not recommend risking much until you know more about how your strategy behaves in different markets. Frankly I'm not really a huge fan of scalping in this volatility in general. There's a reason the liquidity decreases.

When evaluating a trading strategy you need to consider sample size, both in the number of trades taken and the amount of time (weeks, months, years) evaluated. I believe that before moving to live trading you should test your strategy for at least 1,000 trades over different market conditions.

April market conditions were much different than the were last October, November and December. I would advise going back through and finding in sample and out of sample periods and test your strategy and see what happens. You'll want to know your performance in a variety of market conditions if you plan on trading your strategy live.

I disagree a little bit with the comments on sim trading. I think that you have no real chance of making real money in a live account if you can't make pretend money in a sim account. If you are sim trading and constantly going in the red then you're not going to move to live trading and suddenly be profitable. Sim trading is important for you to find, test and define your trading edge. This is the part that is nearly impossible. But if you find that you can trade with a positive expectancy then live trading is the next logical step. I do agree that the psychological difference between sim and live is extreme and that a successful sim trader will not always translate into a successful live trader because there's extreme psychological roadblocks to overcome. This is where staying on sim too long is detrimental. But most people don't have a defined trading edge and they are better off not trading live and not losing money. Most people are afraid to enter live trades using their strategy and in most cases this fear is well founded because they will consistently lose money over each set of 100 (or whatever reasonable number) trades.

snowman4839 

I've recently started getting my stuff together and I found a volume/price action strategy that I was having great results with in sim trading the ES. I traded nearly every day in April and was making great trades in the mornings for 1-2 points with 2 (sometimes 3) contracts totaling almost 80% return on my sim with a 67% win rate. I was ecstatic that after 6 years, I finally had a strategy and put it use in a sim account that I stuck with, had a plan, executed it, and was getting rewarded for it. So I continued trading sim until this week where I can't seem to catch a break. Every single day in sim, I was either breakeven or up to +200-$300 each day. Now that I moved to live, I can't seem to find the same trades I was having such great success with. I know it's only been two days of live trading and I'm going to keep at it but my first day was -$100 and today was basically breakeven minus commissions. Trades in April for me were plentiful but now recently in May, particularly since last Friday, I can't find the same type of trades as I did in April. For the more experienced traders, was April an odd month? Does my strategy only work in odd market conditions? Are off days/weeks just going to happen? I plan to stick with it but its just disheartening after being diligent with live sim and market replay proving my strategy to come to starting off with bad days.

Wide stops?

This is is very difficult and very usual market to trade, even for very experience and profitable traders. This is not the norm or the pace I am used to.
prices are moving incredibly fast. Scalping is also a very easy way to loose money quickly. I am always surprised how many people do it, there is little money to be made. Longer trades-hours to a few days- is where the big money is. Scalping to me is like gambling, at the end the house always wins.

snowman4839 

I've recently started getting my stuff together and I found a volume/price action strategy that I was having great results with in sim trading the ES. I traded nearly every day in April and was making great trades in the mornings for 1-2 points with 2 (sometimes 3) contracts totaling almost 80% return on my sim with a 67% win rate. I was ecstatic that after 6 years, I finally had a strategy and put it use in a sim account that I stuck with, had a plan, executed it, and was getting rewarded for it. So I continued trading sim until this week where I can't seem to catch a break. Every single day in sim, I was either breakeven or up to +200-$300 each day. Now that I moved to live, I can't seem to find the same trades I was having such great success with. I know it's only been two days of live trading and I'm going to keep at it but my first day was -$100 and today was basically breakeven minus commissions. Trades in April for me were plentiful but now recently in May, particularly since last Friday, I can't find the same type of trades as I did in April. For the more experienced traders, was April an odd month? Does my strategy only work in odd market conditions? Are off days/weeks just going to happen? I plan to stick with it but its just disheartening after being diligent with live sim and market replay proving my strategy to come to starting off with bad days.

If you don’t mind me asking, did you journal your daily trades writing down what you did right and what you did wrong? Did you write down what your bias was and why? Did you write down your thoughts as to why you took the trade?

Go back to sim for a couple of weeks and journal your success and failure and explore why your are making money or losing money. It is the only way to find out what is going on.


Monitor your thoughts when you switch to real currency to see if there’s a psychological change in your thinking. If you fears are kicking in or what. Maybe you are worried about losing money so you keep jumping out. Or you’ve lost some level of confidence since you are now trading currency.

Know when to get in- support
Know when it to get in - not enough room to control pivot or resistance.
Know when to get out - resistance or pivot.

These are not hard facts but a starting place.

I hope this helps.

Emmanuel

For me the most important step I took to becoming consistently profitable was trade analysis.
I analyze EVERY trade I make and over time have built a strong set of data that I can query against
for different markets, my mental state, day of the week, hour of the day. I know exactly how I
normally perform in almost all situations. If my results start getting away from a mean level of performance I stop and figure out why. It may just be a draw down or something may have to be tweaked with what I am doing. I easily spend 10x more time analyzing what I have done then doing it.

I also have worked to build up size, I trade 2 instruments only. I almost never take more then 2, sometimes 3 trades in a day. Some days I will take none. I view each and every entry as a serious event, that I know is random with an edge.
I believe that to really earn a good living in this industry you have to be selective in your trades and trade good size. Of course when you are starting out you cannot do this but if this trading style makes sense to you it should be your thought from the onset.

I know there are many that make many trades in a day, I think an earlier post showed almost 1200 (~2500 contracts) trades in one month for a $4000 profit. For some I am sure this methodology works for me it would never be compatible with my mindset.

You only need to make ONE good trade a day with size and you can make a substantial living.

In the end though I think any good system or approach can be profitable it if matches who you are and you do a few no so simple things.

Follow your rules
Be in control of your psychology
Love what you do each day

Mark

snowman4839 

I've recently started getting my stuff together and I found a volume/price action strategy that I was having great results with in sim trading the ES. I traded nearly every day in April and was making great trades in the mornings for 1-2 points with 2 (sometimes 3) contracts totaling almost 80% return on my sim with a 67% win rate. I was ecstatic that after 6 years, I finally had a strategy and put it use in a sim account that I stuck with, had a plan, executed it, and was getting rewarded for it. So I continued trading sim until this week where I can't seem to catch a break. Every single day in sim, I was either breakeven or up to +200-$300 each day. Now that I moved to live, I can't seem to find the same trades I was having such great success with. I know it's only been two days of live trading and I'm going to keep at it but my first day was -$100 and today was basically breakeven minus commissions. Trades in April for me were plentiful but now recently in May, particularly since last Friday, I can't find the same type of trades as I did in April. For the more experienced traders, was April an odd month? Does my strategy only work in odd market conditions? Are off days/weeks just going to happen? I plan to stick with it but its just disheartening after being diligent with live sim and market replay proving my strategy to come to starting off with bad days.

if you are a daytrader...trading changed about 2-3 weeks ago and depending on your trading process... the last 2-3 weeks are similar to what happens in the summer and you have to be extra vigilant to stay profitable. often it is extremely difficult to be profitable during the summer.

daytrading for 6 weeks (mid march to end of april) starting with the virus hiccup to the markets was extremely good for some daytrading processes... there were more trends and the trends were smoother with fewer pullbacks that take you out of trades. after that 6 weeks, daytrading got more difficult.


hope this helps
toucan

@Big Mike

That thread you posted is such a wealth of knowledge, but the information is almost overwhelming at first since it was started years ago. Is there any suggestions as to where to jump in and begin reading from? Or should I use this quarantime to read the whole thing? I guess this could be a question for anyone who participates in that thread. Thank you.

Hi Snowman,
Everyday is a new day in the markets. So the challenges are new. If you have the right framework and a proper system that works then you don’t need to worry too much. We as traders cannot expect a winner everyday and most importantly after being successful for a bit a losing streak comes as a non acceptance. But as they say trading is a business. Since you have recently moved to a live account give it few more weeks or a even months before you decide what works and what does not. April was a decent month for me as a trader but may not have been for you or someone else that does not mean anything since the market presents opportunities everyday. So keep trading and follow your system and your rules. Most important that we procrastinate to do is maintaining a trade journal so always keep a trade journal handy and log all your trades on a daily basis. Good luck

You didn't say if your 'slippage' was set to 0, 1, or 2. My testing has shown that letting slippage in sim remain at zero is a sure way to believe that you'll be moving to Beverly Hills in a matter of weeks. Keeping it set to 2 will bring you back to reality. Keep on plugging away- it's the only way, or find a mentor that's a really good trader and learn from him.