I'm sure you'll succeed, the way you're trading is exactly what TST want to have.

My only question is do you only take one trade per day because your system gives you only one signal or is it because you don't need more to pass the test ?

Well deserved success Sir
Cheers

Okina

Nice log, thank you for sharing.
Reading your log, I understand to a point what you are doing and how you arrived at some of your conclusions. Going break even as soon as reasonably able. Scratching trades. 123. Thrusts.
I like your image of the scientific theory.

I've actually stopped scratching trades now that I've passed the combine. I started scratching to ensure I could hit the 45% profitable days criteria of the combine, but this was removed in January. I wasn't comfortable stopping scratching without backtesting, but during my combine every one of the 20 or so trades that I scratched would have hit my target so I feel okay just having my stop loss and target set. It always felt dirty having an arbitrary scratch point of 8 ticks anyway.

Though I do have contention with a few of your comments.
1. roughly a billion dollar hedge fund can't use eminis. ES is a highly liquid market, if I understand your trading correctly your stops are approximately 8ticks, 1:1. With that 8 tick stop in a reversal you've can enter multiple blocks of 25-50lots. I'm guessing 300 lots. Without swaying the market during rth. This is all non scientific observation based. So even if your max size is 100lots. That adds up quick.

My stops aren't a set amount, and I have a minimum of 15 ticks as part of my criteria. I put my stop in a worst case scenario position, usually somewhere around the 2 point of the 123 thrust that I entered on. My profit target in the combine has been around the same or a bit less than my stop as I am entering at the end of trends.

2. "I came to the conclusion that I'd probably need to be looking for entry points where price was likely to immediately reverse to allow tiny stops, but would also move with enough momentum to allow me to cut my risk to break even asap without the issue of chop, and still catching large moves. (I ruled out trading breakouts due to likely slippage and difficulty of back testing accurately over a huge sample size, whereas reversal/retracement points in back testing and practice are more likely to be accurate and not affected by volatility induced slippage)

Now I know what I'm looking for is what most other traders don't see, easy right...."
re- I think most traders ARE looking for this.

3."being profitable isn't what drives me, being right drives me, "
re- It may be semantics but for myself selecting trades with high odds of being favorable to my entry, exit and management is my goal. As in it can be a perfect set up but you can still lose money. Isn't poker the same as trading, play the high probability hands and wager accordingly? I've met a lot of perfectionist who get trapped in being right, without some of the other characteristics you have they'd get killed in trading due to wanting to be right and often they are highly educated valuing being smart. After entry isn't it better to be robotic in your management? imo it is some what related to your post on quantifying.

I agree with you here and after my entry order is hit I don't touch the trade. I'm trying to enter after a strong 123 with a slow pullback. I find that these entry points have a high probability of moving a small amount, but don't often progress beyond the 3 point of the entry 123. This allows me to have entry and exit points that are determined by the market, but don't require any further input after entry.


I'm looking forward to your further postings and progress. Please share more.

Hey,

Been a bit busy to post much.

Just hit the FTP target or $500 after 7 days so need to scratch 3 more days to finish it off.

Managed to not have a losing trade or have a trade go more than a few dollars against me so very happy.

Hopefully i'll post more when live but don't really want to post pictures of my entries.

If you PM me a picture of your entry with reasoning then i'd be happy to give my thoughts though. Or anyone can post a chart here and get some discussion going.

FTP stats below. I've had a profit factor of 99 and a sharpe ratio of 1 since Valentine's day - is that decent??