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Catching Big Waves - a trader's journal of surfing the the markets
Thanks. At my $500 promise to my wife, I guess I could consider myself on vacation now?
I enjoyed the trading this week, but leave again for Denver on Sunday night, probably out most of next week. I just got the job offer yesterday afternoon, and decided to go with it. I know the team of guys there and it should be relatively easy, 6 weeks max and possibly only one week out of town.
For trading a single contract, I am not sure I have had a better week net. The win % a little low, but not a big priorirty of mine anyway. I continuously wonder if I would be better at 40% wins, but am also kind of learning to not mess with it. Not an important factor overall, and too close to the concept of trying to engineer a profit.
Since I don't have any true "system", and because every time I change my mind at -1 thru -5, I get a "loss", win % is not really telling me anything. I would prefer NT to have another category that I could define. Either a specific button to close a trade as just change of heart, or a loss value that could be defined as noise, say 5 ticks or less, that counts as neurotic indecision, but not a loss.
Now comes the analytical part. What happened this week was basically on a single contract. I did take a 3 contract trade one day, lost on it, went down to 2 contracts, made it back plus a little, but then one contract from there out.
@greenr does 1 contract per $5k. I maybe should not say how much, but if I traded at that leverage this week, I could be done for the year in this week alone. I sat here tonight with a spreadsheet, as I guess many traders have at one time or another, seeing what happens if I made 20 ticks per day at a leverage of 1 contract per $20k. The end result, assuming that was the average after accounting for losing days, was more than enough. The potential in trading is unlimited. Truly, any number is possible.
The sizing issue is something I push on myself off and on, but pushing it does not work for me. When I stop relaxing, when I start caring about an outcome, I trade like I know nothing. The good news is I am starting to accept that the amount made is not really that important. Feeling zero pressure, and just doing what feels good, that is where my $500 a week comes from. Do not try, do, becomes the norm when the outcome is not relevant. If can be replaced by now when there are no expectations.
If it is true that the money comes when we do not want it, and avoids us when we do want it, it would appear there is no point. I know that it is not a case of absolutes, but there is truth and irony to that suggestion.
It seems to be that a trader just enjoys what they do, has fun with it even, and money is just the by-product. Like great athletes or musicians or artists.
Something I have talked about for awhile, figuring out how to travel with a real trading setup. I checked for the exact dimensions today.
and I have a garment bag that I am seeing if I can convert into a carry-on dual-monitor bag. Going to JoAnns Fabrics to see what padding and velcro I can find. It is worth at least looking into.
Try this instead if you are serious about taking a trading machine with you. I think you will need to send an email. I read somewhere they were way behind on orders and it looks like the shopping cart doesn't function.
That seems incredibly cool. Some day when I replace my laptop I may go that route. Two of them...
Pricey, though.
But for today, I got a dual head adapter for $49 and for another $37 got some foam board, high density foam, nylon straps, parachute connectors, fabric glue, and velcro, and am in craft mode the rest of the day, planning to be wielding dual 22"s from a mile high this week.
I have one big grin going one right now...just hooked up a Sabrent USB to HDMI, went to the "Identify Monitors" part of the Control panel, and saw numbers 1, 2, and 3 across my desk, all running at 1080p
A benefit I did not realize until I was done, when I do chart analysis on the road, I switch it all over to desktop machine running two full-size displays when I get home. Now I will make the laptop the main machine and run those same two displays off of it, and switch the laptop's one monitor to the desktop (for redundancy) in Orlando.
I am packed, carry-on legal, with a 17 inch laptop, two 22" monitors, and enough clothes for a week. I had to give up a secondary bag that I used for extra shoes, extra clothes, and have to cram my GPS and chargers in my already stuffed bag. I'll have to do laundry more often, function all week on jeans and sneakers, and pack tediously as I go to not run out of room, but I am going to try it at least once. I'll be in Denver Monday through Friday and have the flexibility to arrange my work in the afternoon for the most part.
The breakdown and packing of the monitors (after I spent several hours figuring out what I was doing) only takes about 5 minutes, so the hard part is over. Never knew there was such a line at Joann Fabrics on a Sunday...
I bled out at a rate of roughly $500k a year from the time the real estate market first signaled a problem until the time I filed bankruptcy. Have a negative $638k tax return from one of those years, that may get framed in my office some day, when it is futher in the past. A reminder of sorts. I was "all in", only in ral estate developing, an illiquid situation that I never saw coming.
When something is removed quickly, in physics, it creates a vacuum effect, drawing into it whatever is in it's path with no mercy. The mind tries to mimic that, and in my case decided the thing to do was learn to trade intensely, and quickly. The results are in this journal somewhere.
When I see myself trading any "size" that is great enough that the possibility of a loss seems reckless, a responsibility factor kicks in. Maybe what I struggle with is not "fear", but a sense of responsibility. Something that occured to me as I was walking through the grocery store parking lot this morning...
I posted recently, it was not money, but a feeling I was looking for. I was previously very responsible, ridiculously dependable, and to trade within that realm is a difficult concept at first. Whilte I often tease myself with the "potential" of trading greater size, deep inside I question the practicality of that. Trading 1-3 contracts against the equity backing I use, it would really be hard to get hurt. Sure, sometimes the results are slower than I would like, and of course I can't help but imagine what things would be like if I really pushed my limits of leverage... I bled out at that rate...
Accumulating trading profits a few hundred dolars at a time can feel like nothing is really happening. But something is happening. I am feeling good about my trading, better than at any time in the past. It may be slow, and tedious, but the feeling has shifted from being a hopeless student, to being a clumsy competitor, to being hesitantly proficient, to becoming qualified to be responsible for the growth of our account. I can see where being responsible may at some point mean taking a larger position, I am just not to a point where I can determine the difference between that and something else yet.
Meanwhile, I know that 1-2 contracts cannot hurt me, that percentage wise, even that small can have a considerable effect, over time... and that I am the process of trading for completely different reasons than what motivated me to get started in the first place. I guess I enjoy being responsible. Not that it is exciting, but it feels like the right thing to do.
While I did get in over my head eventually in real estate, I did not get to where I was by doing so. I just chunked out profits a few thousand at a time, over and over and over. Until one day I had enough to do big deals. And when I started doing them, the same system kept working. Until one day it didn't. I was doing something very similar to leveraging up, taking the equity I had and using it to borrow larger sums. Had I stayed smaller, the value collapse could not have really hurt me that much.
I may fantasize about trading for big money on a daily basis, but the loss that might be realized is not worth it to me. And when I do take a loss at anything greater than my comfort level, it is not the money I feel is lost, it is the responsibility I feel I betrayed.
Patience, wisdom, responsibility. And having fun with it.
