This is a journal with live trading posts since 2012!
Hi everybody
Thanks BigMike for the invitation to your journal competition - I am taking the rope :-)
For my trading three main points were essential and important
1) Plan your trade and trade your plan
2) Think out of the box: do not test all the indicators (others did that already)
3) Journal your trades and accept losers like winners
Other simple truth: Discipline and Focus
So I was looking at only one market to focus on and with the help of thinking out of the box I filtered out some rules that describe a high probability to take one daily trade on the DAX future. The main goal was to find a way to make only ONE trade per day with a good probable winner with minimal risk and to get out the same day.
Starting the day with a clear path in advance when to enter the trade (exact time to the 30 minute candle), the direction and the exact exit time (30 minute as well).
For my journaling I use twitter to give the signal - for the balance there is a simple worksheet.
There is only ONE DAX trade per day with some exceptions like long weekends and extreme volatility.
Easy - isn't it?
My goal is to be relaxed to take that daily trade as I know WHEN to enter and to exit. No hassling around with DOM or cristal ball. No fear and no worrying about direction as my stops are wide enough to let develop the trade and to minimize the overall risk. After having had lot of screen time over several years - today there are only short moments at the computer to make the trade and to see the results.
Technically I am using the great charting by Investor/RT with some good statistics to get the big picture.
Let's start the journey - hmm the journal :-)
UPDATE 2019:
stopped the posting of daily trades here by end of 2018.
NEW: for educational purpose I will give some insights on how to use Ichimoku Kinko Hyo with its cloud (KUMO) - showing it on the DAX as it moves. Some larger moves may also be reviewed. Stay tuned!
GFIs1
PS I: for those who want to see past results - check the name on twitter (Twitter announcements no longer active though)
PS II: Trading posts are normally developing over time: Before the trade - during the trade and after closing the trade.
Looking back to the trades commented on futures.io (formerly BMT) since February and twittered from January
I am underlining some points where time and investment optimized are making sense.
Last day of the year - time to look back on the two years:
Both years show nearly the same final result although the fact that markets developped differently.
In 2012 every week had mostly 5 trades. In 2013 the trades went down to 3 per week. The …
Instead of testing every new indicator back and forth on any or many market(s) it is more useful to find the few markets that move with certain patterns. If we can see some patterns we can form some rules for repeating movements. Getting the big picture of a market first and examine the details within can be very lucrative.
Forex markets are highly influenced from various forces and are therefore the most difficult markets to above experiments. Many new traders have to deal with the most difficult animal. The "profits" then are only flowing to the brokers and the marketing people. What is marketed as the simplest trading-market proofs to be the most unpredictable thus the one with the highest risk and loss.
Finally let us find the market first that fits our needs and personality and then find the right tools to do the trades - not vice versa.
(to be continued)
Agent provocateur
GFIs1
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Scenario: As a discretionary trader I start the day trading with a small gain: Bingo! Second try is a medium loss.
Hmmm.. Third trade the stop loss is set tighter now- of course it was hit! Fourth trade I leverage up and there is a big loss.
We have to stop for the day - overtrading. Well known - isn't it?
Not possible for the GFIs1 rule - there is only ONE trade per day. I said one trade (sic!). If the trade is stopped out or ends negative we have to wait for the next day. This is very important for every trader to let the market play it out: Patience and calm down! So we stay in the game.
Point!
Next day - new market - new possibilities. Plus a relaxed beginning to take THE trade as we had in maxima only ONE loss the previous day with a calculated maximum overall risk.
Easy - isn't it? Plan your trade and trade your plan.
(to be continued)
Agent provocateur
GFIs1
PS: with this system even the commissions are easy to summarize
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Yep - PROFIT! All traders hope and pray for profit on every trade! Profit is trader's air to survive.
But wait. Before you invest please invest:
Into hours of training before going for the olympic traders gold medal (aka BigMike's competition or similar).
Investing into a lot of broken accounts is a pity. Nobody cares about your battle in the market. Not even your broker ;-)
If we are prepared on a simulator like a pilot before his first flight we are calm enough to enter the markets and to exit with at least holding our account ready for the next shot.
Profit comes only if we can find the reap fruit to collect so to speak.
We prepare to find those gems every day and fill our basket. Day by day. This is an ongoing process. Optimizing our trading plan exactly for this goal. Training starts today.
We enter the market only when we feel to be enough positive to get a nice filled basket. Easy as that!
To smell the fruit on distance we need to refine our senses and stay ahead of our competitors.
Happy points!
(to be continued)
Agent provocateur
GFIs1
hey GFI - hold on a second: you are posting here more posts per day than your trading plan admits
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As usual there is a GFIs1 trade signal in the morning (CET) when to enter and when to exit before the trade starts.
Tomorrow is US presidents day. The system does not allow a trade on low volume days - so there will be no GFIs1 trade. Then "Rosenmontag" in Germany will be celebrated - a holiday - though the exchange is open there will be a low volume day.
Have a nice long weekend
GFIs1
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Basically there is a statistical counting of movements of the Dax within every WEEKDAY.
The outcome gives a high probability of going in one direction for x bars before the
price reverses. Think of a second wave after we throw a stone in the water. The system
will surf this second wave.
1) Trade execution is exactly on the 30 min bar
2) Trading only within the normal trading hours (09:00 to 17:30)
3) Entry and exit always the same day - no holding overnight / weekend
4) Very first entry not before the first bar ended (09:30, ALL time here is CET)
5) Exit normally before the US intraday starts
6) Special treatment for Roll-over days, holidays, long weekends, Gaps, US numbers, high volatilty
7) Stop is set wide enough but in range with a calculated personal maximum loss
In the morning we can get the trade after the start (initial balance) with a exact
starting time, exit time and direction. It is not meant to find the best trade or the most points during a day but to have a high probable winner day per day.
Result: easy starting the trade, set the stop and exit on foreseen time. Fill out the journal.
Done for the day.
Agent provocateur
GFIs1
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Quick update after this NO trade day:
Volume of Dax futures today was around 78K contracts which is half of the volume of a normal trading day.
GFIs1' rule is NO trade when US is on holiday - the result is correct - without this rule the system would have given a Monday signal leading to a loss.
Looking forward to our first proper trading day in this journal tomorrow.
GFIs1
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First, congratulation for your first announced winner here. I was following the trade during the market hours.
My question is: where has your stop been placed? The trade went more than 30 points against you in the first 15 minutes (at very fast speed).
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The stops are for normal trades set 30 points away (750 EUR max loss).
For extreme days - after a rally the day before - a roll over day or after
a "long weekend" as we had for this trade - the stop is set to 40 points.
Today the stop was 5 points away from the highest price :-)
So we stay still out of noise.
Happy trades
GFIs1
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To update the trade from today with a chart I am sending here the setup I am using to follow my rules.
In the upper pane there is the DAX future in 30 minutes - in the lower pane the statistics mentioned.
On the right you can see the blue composite profile with the prices to the appropriate volume paid.
Thanks for your attention.
GFIs1
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First of all thanks for sharing, your "journey" seems very interesting...and quite relaxing which is priceless nowadays.
Nevertheless, the price hit 6975 at 10h17; so you should have been stopped. Am I wrong ?
Rotating back to the most accepted price (or point of control POC) for the last two weeks would be 6760. It is though not not sure if we reach this goal in this session.
Waiting patiently for a good result today.
GFIs1
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Bravo pour l'entrée à 93; règle respectée 9h30.
J'ai shorté sur 83 un peu après vous (mon seuil était à 90 mais j'ai été très lent).
Vous trailez vos stops ?
No panic here - we are in the midst of 60min red Kumo (for Ichimoku friends). So some turbulant movements are quite normal.
Still waiting for 15:30h to see the result.
Today's signal was strong but was leading definitely to the false direction. The stop for the normal trade (here 30 points away) protected us to slip into a larger loss. This stop is set "far enough" to be outside of noise but tight enough to prevent us from a big loss. We have to accept if market is moving against us that previous gains may melt. As we are prepared to this the overall account can survive and we stay vivid in the game.
Good trades!
What matters is consistency and on the period you mention on twitter you are a winner and you can suffer many stop losses. A 100% winner would be even suspect.
The following 2 users say Thank You to pg7893 for this post:
A week with a lot of US data & Bernanke speach is ahead. Not to forget
month ends on 29th.
Looks like the DAX is likely to rotate down to second support @ 6750 area
- watching for 6650 too.
The GFIs1 DAX trade today will be SHORT from 10:00 to 13:00 CET.
Dax low with 6744 had reached the mentioned second support. The bounce rallying now does not indicate that the next down level of 6650 has no chance to be reached - we do have quite a hard resistance above actual prices before the next up trend can be established.
Some consolidation on this level before reaching higher prices seams to be necessary.
We will see the developement the next days.
**edit for the closing bell**
The "good news" out of Berlin pushed the DAX north - closing is 6861.
Exactly VWAP from Friday - but NOT more.
This underlines that hopes had driven the price this afternoon.
Though this months GFIs1 results were positive for the month - march will show where to go ;-)
Watching especially the movements of tomorrow as it is the last day in february
and quite a lot US numbers are ahead.
is there any reason for taking a short trade 6970 seams to be
the next resistance level, on the other hand S&P is at the high of the
day so that could lead to an reversal...
at 9:55 we have important job numbers from germany
lets see how the market will go...
Thanks for your input!
After the rally from the last days the battle for DAX 7000 seems to be a little early.
My short was because:
Following my Rules. :
My SL is 30 points for this day - means 6968.
As the previous high was 6975 - a SL @ 6978 might be appropriate.
Though I think the SL is not the theme today. Precision for this statement: Price will not build a double top
here because the the next higher levels are in the view... 7K+
Much more looking
for a nice exit.
I agree with you, a good correction down to VWAP level would be perfect for us daytraders :-)
at the end of the day for the dax index it will still be a positive day if we close above 6890 on,
i am now also short (now that VWAP line on 1 min chart clearly points south I used the rally to enter
short at 6933)
congratulation to your 30 points :-) but as said entering after news releases might give you a better risk reward factor ...
To be honest - I have a rule for the last day in the month which does not include german numbers in any case.
As I am here only doing 1 trade for the day it is not allowed to invert a trade intraday. This is why my entry is in the morning with a high probability for a triggered direction and to follow that trade to close it before US trading is starting.
Congrats for your day high long which worked fine.
GFIs1
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DAX long closed 13:30 @ 6903
Result plus 25 points
Goal was to trade the most probable winning trade for a Thursday morning
and to collect those points. Today we have left some points on the table - yes.
In the long run this only shows that the rules were ok for this day.
This was the rule for Thursday - which is a extract out of statistics for movements of the Dax on a Thursday.
More background to this you can find on linnsoft.com page under the theme "homeworks" (Thanks to FT71
and Chad).
As I pointed out - the trade is not taking a full legs length - but takes the most probable positive points
to succeed. So the risk is minimized by not letting a trade to be shaken by big numbers or by the overlapping
time when the US exchange starts.
This way we may increase our exposure (by percentage) and instead having a lower risk profile during the day.
The second positive argument is that you can let the trade develop itself without to be online to watch "signals"
as we know the exit point at entry time. The exit can thus be easily automated and has not to be under
the permanent control by the trader. To minimize risk our stops are evident too.
GFIs1
PS: To minimize the postings here on this forum I tend to place one post to preview the daily trade and one post
with result plus eventual answers to questions. The entry level and the exit level you may get real time on my
twitter account with the same name.
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Plus 18 points
Total since January 2012: plus 404 points. (see @ twitter) which means ROI
has more than doubled.
Comment: Not very exciting - but still positive in this sideways momentum.
Looking forward to the next moves. Without substantial company numbers there
will be no big pressure in either direction.
Happy to be still on track.
A very good reason to write a journal is to optimize your stop loss settings (if you use any).
The best SL settings are there where in fact a SL is not used. But this could be a expenlsive
journey. Where is this place and can we optimize it?
Using the journal which states when your SL was hit or the max. points the trade would
go OVER your SL can give you some very good insight.
If you make some statistics over time to see how much you should have "moved" your SL
can make your overall result looking amazingly better. This can be THE factor to
going to be a consistent winner!
For my trading system I have found a fix stop for normal days is useful to prevent a huge
loss if the trade goes really against me. A wider stop is set for special days like Roll-over
day or if the day before was a very trending day. This is to take out the noise and waiting
patiently to see the trade going to the TP or in my case the previewed exit time.
Easy - isn't it?
So lets find the optimal settings for our SL in our trading plan.
GFIs1
to be continued
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The down movement was supported in the 6820 region.
Result: system was too late to take the down move with positive effect.
For those who are still in the trade - I think the down move has not
ended yet.
The trend is you friend..
Today's entry on second wave was already a bit late
as the bigger moves were on session start.
But in any case this high probable trade in that time frame
was positive.
Today we had a downmove in the DAX which exceeded 150 total points.
Several supports were melted down.
GFIs1 system normally takes on Wednesday a short.
A special rule says to avoid any trade the following day by the system AFTER
a rally of more than 150 points (up or down).
So with todays move we omit a system trade tomorrow (with this
rule set) and we expect the DAX bouncing back a bit.
Next official trade will be on Thursday then.
GFIs1
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Unfortunately the trade has hit the stop (minus 30 points).
Looking closer to my rules I extend now the pause
after a rally day of more than 250 points to 2 days :-)
For a rally of > 150 points it is one day pause.
Hope the normal movements may reestablish from
tomorrow on.
After several weeks of indecision and sideways movements we have to get a bigger picture of the DAX right now.
Taking the daily Ichimoku chart we are arriving at a decision point here.
My personal outlook for the next few weeks is a very bullish movement over 7'000 points to see the DAX going
into the 7296 area. This up movement might take place in very few days.
A pullback to 6666 area does not make sense right now.
In any case as faster we get some breakout from the level now our system will work better again to get some substantial gains. Staying tuned to see a bigger move into any direction.
Looks like the mentioned up move has started.
The jump might take place after FED announcement tonight.
In this place we have to be aware that US exchanges start 1 hour earlier.
DAX back to push through the 7000 level.
The volume today was quite higher than normal - a normal day
is seeing around 130'000 contracts - today we see more than
220'000 traded contracts - and the day has not finished yet.
The way up seems to be free so that we will see some
nice upmoves into the 7300 region soon.
No chance for a retrace today.
Trade was stopped out with 30 minus points.
Stops are always adjusted from a wide stop of 40
to a narrower 30 points stop (like for normal trades).
In this triple witch week with a very high volume
the normal "waves" are not to be seen.
Could adjust my rules for these rough times
but still following my rules for this month here.
Good trades - be careful anyway (with shorts)
as we see a strong bullish move into higher levels as
noted in previous posts.
GFIs1
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We have seen this week good volumes, many bullish moves and
very different signals depending on the march future or the june
future.
Will make a review on this rare situation by taking a look on
the two futures side by side.
The result is a good hint by when to roll over a contract when
using a time based system like we are using here.
Gives amazing insights.
This week in the DAX was very bullish - the week of triple witch was with high volumes and some
interesting differences between two futures: DAXH2 for the March future which ended yesterday
and DAXM2 for the June future.
Attached I have a chart of the same days for each future. On the 30 min chart I only show the
intraday official hours.
The march future had TWO gaps this week - one on Tuesday opening (lower blue circle)
and on Wednesday (upper blue circle).
The june future had only ONE gap - that was on Tuesday only.
So my trading system took a different rule what resulted in a 30 points stop loss. Taking the
proper rule that would have given a 6 points plus the overall difference was 36 points for that
day. The week ended with that trade in a negative total.
One remark to the volumes - the march future was heavy traded from Monday to Thursday.
The june future took over on Friday only. So my decision to rollover on Thursday was ok.
GFIs1
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I trade the EUREX Index Frontmonth Futures until the day before Expiration.On the Expiration day I trade the next period future.
You will have better Spread and Volume in the old contract until the day before expiry.
While the US index futures are tradeable together 1 week before EX ,in Europe you have a different behavior.
I like your idea of trading the Index with statistical results.
Check your Statistic for the results in Expiration-weeks.
I think you cannot compare the normal statistic with the special days of future-expiration,central bank announcement and similar.
Perhaps you will find additional rules for these special days as you have your rule for large range days.
aiti
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Looking over a year back on my weekly results I recognize that about every fifth week these results are low or negative. This is obviously the case during the week of triple witch.
Knowing this fact it might be the best to trade with less cars during such periods to minimize the risks.
Expecting some going back to normal for the next weeks.
Another thing to consider for fine tuning a time based system is when the US are changing daylight savings time (DST) two weeks earlier than Europe as we had past week and the coming...
Normalizing expected too within 10 days.
Good start in a new trading week.
GFIs1
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1) DAX 7100 held today
2) The down movement was enough to climb to 7250 - expecting by tomorrow
3) a little down movement on Wednesday
4) up to Friday expecting 7350 area
Just my 2 cents on the DAX
The system will tell about the details every day.
GFIs1
Plan your trade and trade your plan
PS: and 5) goal for this year: 8096
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Some points to agree with...
Looking to see some nice up moves tomorrow and
Friday.
Anyway the system has brought the right decisions
to gain some points this week.
Attached a part of my daily Ichimoku Charts to
underline above statements.
If you are not an Ichimoku fan - don't worry -
wait for the weekend and see some results ;-)
GFIs1
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