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FM's Trade Log

  #41 (permalink)
 
rintin2x's Avatar
 rintin2x 
salt lake utah
 
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Yes, I agree if you look at it that way (increasing # of opportunities at certain point of time). Just wondering if you have collected enough data between trading 1 or 2 instruments vs bunch of them? Based on the winning % and things like that on live account? I'm really interested to know that.

Keep up the good work...looking forward to read your updates & future posts!

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  #42 (permalink)
 
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 FlyingMonkey 
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Here's the morning watch list.

CL kicking off the morning with an impulsive move lower out of yesterday's AH/overnight range. It looks likely that 49.40 will not be breached during today's session so I would be interested to take a short at a better price and lean on that level as a stop area.



6E has been in a pretty orderly up channel for a couple days. I'd entertain a long entry near the lower channel line and lean on the 1.11 level for a stop.




YM is showing significant resistance at 17700. Two attempts, each failed. I'm not crazy about going against the buyers' momentum here but am entertaining the thought of a short around 17650, leaning on 17700+ for a stop.


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  #43 (permalink)
 
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 FlyingMonkey 
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Today a little better than yesterday, but another Sim loss. Maybe still getting my sea legs back after not consistently hitting the charts every day.

My gut telling me not to short the YM was right. 17700 was just a minor nuisance to the power of this raging 3 day bounce. I'm sort of re-learning a few basic lessons about what action I need to avoid and what to look for, hence why I am staying in Sim. There wasn't any real weakness here, so why short? But I'm happy to be a little too loose here and re-learn these lessons quickly while in Sim.



Had a Breakeven long in 6E. No idea what the news was around 12pm eastern... maybe the s&p rating change on UK debt? Didn't have anything in econoday around this time. Haven't dug up what the deal was.



CL came super frigging close to my entry spot but I missed it by about 5 cents before it dumped for a good 50 ticks. No trade. Downside of sticking to your price. By the time it got to my spot later in the day my entry was off the table. Again, here another mystery news event on the chart? 14:20 eastern? Only thing I have around there is James Bullard speaking.


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  #44 (permalink)
 
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 FlyingMonkey 
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Trying something different today. Trying to come back in from my little walkabout over the past couple months. @rintin2x 's comment brought me back to a notion I'd already been pondering for a while... and I looked at the charts and I thought why not? If I focus on one good market, bring my timeframe down and focus on the first hour or so, there's no reason I couldn't get a trade or two in on most days. Maybe I can take some of the discipline / feel I've gained from looking at many markets on longer timeframes, combined with a hands-off approach to open trade management, and come out of this with some improvement.

I've got a little bundle of joy (terror) arriving in the near future so I'll probably be dropping off for a bit due to total life disruption. I want to at least get another week or two spurt of journaling in here before disappearing again, so I'm not going to wait for perfection. I intend to focus on CL entries between the hours of 5:00AM and 7:00AM pacific. I'm going to let the computer mostly manage the open trades for me. There's still a lot of logic I have to work out on the management strategy, but I'll keep iterating. I want to (have to) stop flopping around and instead focus once more on doing the same thing repeatedly, and I think narrowing to one instrument is a good step right now.

Today's trades below. -10 +15 = +5 for the day. First entry short — was reluctant to fade the trend but saw an ending pattern into resistance and went for it. Was early and shaken out, smarter money was Entering at my Exit. Second entry was a bit better after momentum changed to the sell side.


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  #45 (permalink)
 
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 rintin2x 
salt lake utah
 
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I haven't followed CL that long, but so far it gives you a lot of action even with that time period (we're not talking about ZN here lol). It moves a lot for a scalper. Good luck man.

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  #46 (permalink)
 
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 muttoez 
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Hey FM, nice to see you back on the charts trading again.


FlyingMonkey View Post
If I focus on one good market, bring my timeframe down and focus on the first hour or so, there's no reason I couldn't get a trade or two in on most days. Maybe I can take some of the discipline / feel I've gained from looking at many markets on longer timeframes, combined with a hands-off approach to open trade management, and come out of this with some improvement.

With limited time available, have you considered applying your method to longer term charts and playing for longer swings?

I am in a similar position to you time wise (work long hours & recent baby) with the addition of being on the other side of the world making the hours terrible. I find that trading multiple markets on longer time frames is more suitable to these conditions.

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  #47 (permalink)
 
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rintin2x View Post
I haven't followed CL that long, but so far it gives you a lot of action even with that time period (we're not talking about ZN here lol). It moves a lot for a scalper. Good luck man.

Thanks very much for the encouragement rintin2x!

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  #48 (permalink)
 
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 FlyingMonkey 
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muttoez View Post
Hey FM, nice to see you back on the charts trading again.



With limited time available, have you considered applying your method to longer term charts and playing for longer swings?

I am in a similar position to you time wise (work long hours & recent baby) with the addition of being on the other side of the world making the hours terrible. I find that trading multiple markets on longer time frames is more suitable to these conditions.

Hi muttoez,

Yes, absolutely. It's one of the reasons I follow your journal pretty closely. The almost robotic rhythm and consistency of your daily / weekly analysis is awesome.

There are a few things that have kept me out of swing trading futures, but I definitely want to get past those blocks and go for it. Maybe you have some input on these:

1. Weekend gaps and news jumps. After seeing some nasty gaps it makes me nervous to be exposed, even with a stop in the market, when the market is closed. Also when the liquidity dries up into a news release. The Swiss Franc 30% pop when they removed the 1.20 euro cap comes to mind.

2. Not being able to use higher trade frequency to smooth out returns. With swing trading obviously lower number of trades means longer draw downs are possible. A sequence of negative months is not necessarily a sign of bad trading when you only take a handful of trades per month and can still turn a great year with just a few very good months. A different mindset.

3. Figuring out how much capitalization is really necessary and a style that doesn't get cut to pieces. Let's say for sake of argument that I can muster up a 100k USD account for swing trading futures. With that capital, a swing trade on CL or GC and any other volatile futures instrument is still pretty dicey. Probably need to step down to the minis there. Take May, you were stalking that $50 top in CL. That was actually the right call, other than the quick shakeout up to $52, but getting the timing down, the stop right, and turning the right idea into a winning trade, it's challenging. There were 400 tick swings all the way down from there. I think you're really talking about needing 300k to properly trade those kinds of moves with only 1 - 2% risk per trade. Having said that, I manage to cut myself up on shorter time frames too. So I'm not sure how different that is.


I might start doing a weekend analysis and see what comes out of it. Can just track with paper for a bit and see what I learn. My secret wish has always been to use day-trading to smooth out returns in parallel with swing trading to tap into the meaty trends.

Thanks for the food for thought!

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  #49 (permalink)
 
muttoez's Avatar
 muttoez 
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FlyingMonkey View Post
Hi muttoez,

Yes, absolutely. It's one of the reasons I follow your journal pretty closely. The almost robotic rhythm and consistency of your daily / weekly analysis is awesome.

There are a few things that have kept me out of swing trading futures, but I definitely want to get past those blocks and go for it. Maybe you have some input on these:

1. Weekend gaps and news jumps. After seeing some nasty gaps it makes me nervous to be exposed, even with a stop in the market, when the market is closed. Also when the liquidity dries up into a news release. The Swiss Franc 30% pop when they removed the 1.20 euro cap comes to mind.

2. Not being able to use higher trade frequency to smooth out returns. With swing trading obviously lower number of trades means longer draw downs are possible. A sequence of negative months is not necessarily a sign of bad trading when you only take a handful of trades per month and can still turn a great year with just a few very good months. A different mindset.

3. Figuring out how much capitalization is really necessary and a style that doesn't get cut to pieces. Let's say for sake of argument that I can muster up a 100k USD account for swing trading futures. With that capital, a swing trade on CL or GC and any other volatile futures instrument is still pretty dicey. Probably need to step down to the minis there. Take May, you were stalking that $50 top in CL. That was actually the right call, other than the quick shakeout up to $52, but getting the timing down, the stop right, and turning the right idea into a winning trade, it's challenging. There were 400 tick swings all the way down from there. I think you're really talking about needing 300k to properly trade those kinds of moves with only 1 - 2% risk per trade. Having said that, I manage to cut myself up on shorter time frames too. So I'm not sure how different that is.


I might start doing a weekend analysis and see what comes out of it. Can just track with paper for a bit and see what I learn. My secret wish has always been to use day-trading to smooth out returns in parallel with swing trading to tap into the meaty trends.

Thanks for the food for thought!

Responses to your queries.

1. Gap risk and news events can always be an issue and there will be times when a trade loses more than planned because of a gap or unexpected news, but these occasions are few and far between. The Swiss Franc move is a very extreme example but highlights the risk.

2. It will definitely be a different mindset to get used to. Swing trading generally seems like you are losing much more often than you are winning and that you are always in a draw down phase. But, as you said you only need a few very good months to have a good year and you will find that monthly returns can be quite volatile with returns tightly concentrated.

3. Adequate capitalisation is very important and also ties in with the points above. If your adequately capitalised a trade that gaps and loses more than expected doesn't hurt as much and longer draw down periods are easier to deal with psychologically as they will not involve large capital losses. With accounts of 100k or less you can definitely rule out the big contracts like GC and CL but the mini contracts are fine. The balance between timing the entry, stop placement and trade management is delicate and sometimes you will get shaken out on a trade that ends up being right like my recent CL trade. It's frustrating when it happens but you just have to move onto the next trade. That's not to say that you can't swing trade with smaller accounts but you will have to risk more than 1 - 2% per trade and ride the roller coaster of extremely volatile returns.

Good luck with it and let me know if you have anymore questions.

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  #50 (permalink)
 
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 FlyingMonkey 
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Been dealing with technical difficulty the past couple days on the nt8 beta. Mostly resolved now. I did take 1 trade today, similar to my first trade on Monday. A short near a top just before the open, but not near enough as it was stopped out. Apologies no picture today.

Definitely need to wrap my head around the entering-early problem. I don't expect it to resolve itself magically. I actually expect it to continue to be an issue until I can form an understanding of exactly what is this error I'm making. It is like if I took the majority of my losing trades and simply entered where I exited, they would be winners. So, I am clearly acting as one of the dumb-money retail masses, and need to get to the other side of that. I believe this goes back to doing what isn't comfortable. Possible wider stops, possibly buying when others are selling, and vis-versa. Something I am already trying to do, but can definitely do a better job of.

I expect to continue to fail until I figure it out. To aid with figuring it out, I am tracking metrics to hopefully quantify the error. So even as I continue to lose, the idea is to adapt and start acting rightly instead of wrongly.

Here are some of the stats I'll be tracking beyond what NT tracks automatically:

Max Heat in Trade: what was the max draw down from peak to trough
Unrealized MFE: From exit, how far did price turn in my favor
Unrealized MAE: From exit, how far did price continue against
Hypothetical MFE (session): From entry, if there had been no stop and no target, how far could the trade have gone in favor
Hypothetical MAE (session): From entry, if there had been no stop and no target, how far could the trade have gone against
Hypothetical Max Heat (session): From entry, if there had been no stop and no target, what would the max draw down have been from peak to trough.

The unrealized / hypothetical metrics are all calculated within the time range I could typically have a trade open, currently up to around 8am pacific.

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