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I try to be a "real" person, what you see is what you get; what i say is what i mean. The weakness of text (lack of emotion and inflection) is a barrier Im going to try to breach in my posts so you get a small taste of what I feel about and when trading.
I'm a middle 40's age Computer Programmer, database guy. Most of my programming has been in web development the past decade however my recent journey into trading has gotten me hooked on C# in NinjaTrader.
Back in 1990 my dad and I opened our first account (we'll, HIS account) and I was supposed to do all the study and make the trades. For reasons I dont want to get into, this was just an unworkable situation that ended with us just closing the account and giving it up. Thankfully no hard losses suffered.
The second try was back in 2000. I had received my inheritance and it was a time in my life that I thought I should give it my own try, without anyone standing over my shoulder second guessing me. I purchased an early version of Ninja back then, so long ago I cant even remember what the version number was. It was certainly slick back then, not the buggy thing we have now. Opened up my account via an IB that offered great margins. I spent time relearning all the stuff I had learned back in '90 and I was on my way... tested the waters, but the largest problem I had was the personal daily effort to get up at 5am, study, prep, and then sit there and trade (sim or live). I had the desire, the learning to get started, but not the personal motivation.
This third try is my final try. Its a cut and dry, I'm either going to be successful, or walk away.
One of the nearly easy things for me this time is that I wake up at 3am, I guess this just happens when you get older.. This morning I woke up at 2am and was sitting at my desk by 3am. When the market opened at 6:30am, I was bright eye'd and bushy, had all my pre-market study complete.
I have spent the better part of the year preparing for this, study, reading, browsing the net, which led me to Big Mikes in June. I feel like this is my core group of people, many of you think like I do, or if you differ, at least I understand why you differ. Picked up the new Ninja in June as well and traded Sim, with a couple of "testing the waters" trades in live in July and August. In September i Joined a trade room, and while I largely ignore the trades the moderator makes, its nice to have an open room where we can talk about what we're doing, the social aspect is really why I participate, and at least when I make a bad trade I have someone to talk to, it helps keep my spirits up and positive.
There's a couple other minor ones like toggles and price-lines, but those above are the ones that help with trading. They are a mash up of several trading styles (Alpha, Swing/Volume & Price Action)
The first part of my trading strategy has been to go over every interesting indicator, and ferrit out which ones are just fancy fluf that tell you a whole lot of information but dont actually help you, vs those that clearly do help. I have judged every new one against live sim trading. I'll spit out conclusions about each one as I progress in my trade journal.
The second part is that intend to use every bit of information without pre-judgement. ie, just because something didn't work for someone else doesnt mean I don't need to do due dilligence and test it for myself and learn for myself the wisdom behind the advice. Some ideas or advice I obviously cant test or wont test in a live trade situation, but I still intend to find the pearl of wisdom behind it.
Ok, down to my trade rules (wich is also Economics)
1. I will never risk more then 10% of my risk capital TOTAL, this means for me $10k max. If it goes, I'm done with trading.
2. I will never risk more then 5% of my risk capital on any single trade. (This is a maximum, not a plan)
3. I will always set a stop that never risks more then $200 per contract, which is 20 ticks on TF & CL, 40 Ticks in YM/NQ, and 16 ticks in ES.
Since I'm still learning what makes for good trading, and my trading plan naturally follows making those determinations, I'll spout off about those as the days go on.
I want to let you and all your readers know that in October nexusfi.com (formerly BMT) has a Trading Journal contest w/prizes. The contest runs October 1 to October 31, and the three best journals (as decided by nexusfi.com (formerly BMT) members) will receive a 150K combine from TopstepTrader.
Continuing in the tradition of encouraging journals on futures.io (formerly BMT), I am announcing a new Journal contest for October 2014.
The rules are extremely simple:
a) The contest begins October 1 and ends October 31. All decisions made …
That thread will be open for posting starting Wednesday, October 1. As the author of your journal, you need to make a post in that thread linking to your journal, and then ask users to press the "Thanks" button on that post if they want to vote for your journal to win the contest.
Members can vote for as many different journals as they want. Votes are cast in the Contest thread only, and only on the first post made by the author of the journal that contains a link to their journal. This is done so I can easily count the "Thanks Received" by author/journal, and award the three prizes.
Today started off on the same foot I was on yesterday, taking my first trade of the day at the perfectly wrong time. I was still using the UniRenko T2R6 O2 chart from the Alpha method posts and getting my sad butt handed back to me.
During the trade room I was listening to, someone chimed up with the settings they were using, T3R10 O1 and that made all the difference for the rest of my trade day. I had 100% profitable trades after that tip so I was giddy! Here are the settings in my notes:
--- Chart 1 ---
My first chart shows the open, I got a buy signal before the open, I usually ignore these but I can see in hindsight it was a good trade missed.
Then of course by waiting and feeling like I had missed the first wave and that the second was going to be larger, still toying around with settings and not taking the trade signal, I finally just said screw it and jumped in (blindly!), this was a total emotion based trade, felt like I was missing out... and paid the price for it, -13 ticks.
btw, all trades marked with a textbox, red for losses and green for wins.
Second trade was good but paranoid. I managed to keep myself from panic when the heat came on, and keep in mind at this point was still using a "choppier" chart setting, I exited the trade as soon as I had 5 ticks
On my third trade, I waited for the pullback and then 2 sell signals (Black arrow = MacdBBLinesV4 - Change in trend, Orange Triangle = MacDbbLines BBand violation "extreem down" type dot).
By this point I had already decided last night I was going to use a 21 point stop loss, which I didnt use at the start of the day. Blaming myself for being overly emotional earlier, I set the 21, made my trade, and then waited and watched a painful 12 points of heat (which would have stopped me out under my old rules). I said screw it, I either do this by my rules or don't trade at all!
Trade 3 was a 19 point winner that I NAILED almost to the tip right before the trend change. woohoo!!
-- Chart 2 --
Next trade came up around 8:53, got my MacdBB zero line cross (and some other signals for indicators I removed from the chart for cleanness) and off I went, going good, My auto-breakeven kicked in to +2 above my purchase... Turns out that if I had left that dang setting off I could have easily survived the heat that followed.
I guess a winning trade is never a bad thing, but no more auto-breakeven for me unless I see a clear target point.
Watched the yellow bars in the pullback and laughed, I had my fingers/mouse hovering over the buy button the whole time, as soon as I got the signals, bam, in!
Nice 30 tick run, very little heat, nice-nice!
My confidence was bulding back up!
I missed the continuation of this trend because of distractions at home, arrg, oh well, life happens...
My next trade on this chart was me sitting back at my desk, seeing the run going on, and jumping in blindly (again! arrrg!)
I was watching the ^TICK and ^DJIA charts like a hawk, but what made me exit the trade was the blue professional bars that appeared, clearly they were taking profits! I closed out for a 1 point safety, I knew it was about to change trend, no reason to give up $$ for a stop rule!
As an added followup, I should have taken the 3 sell signals and went short, but I was too busy patting myself on the back for not loosing a trade that I just let them go by. Clearly I need to learn how to shift gears faster!
-- Chart 3 --
No trades on the 2 perfect signals at 11:04-06 and 11:55ish because I had gone to lunch early so I could catch the close.
After coming back after noon, I caught the down-trend already in progress.... Watching that nice trend go on, I felt like I had already learned my lession well enough on jumping into a trend late and on emotion so I just let it go, so my next chance was at about 12:47 and jumped on it for a perfectly timed 10 tick trade.
The best thing of all today was not that I was in the green, but that I learned from my myself, changed and won from the changes.
I expect that emotion will keep beating on me for awhile, but I'm going to remember this day, when I traded emotionally I lost or almost lost, but when I played it cool, followed what I know and stuck to my rules, I did well.