NexusFi: Find Your Edge


Home Menu

 





FM's Trade Log


Discussion in Trading Journals

Updated
      Top Posters
    1. looks_one FlyingMonkey with 298 posts (951 thanks)
    2. looks_two Rrrracer with 18 posts (28 thanks)
    3. looks_3 jackbravo with 17 posts (23 thanks)
    4. looks_4 Blue Eagle with 7 posts (19 thanks)
      Best Posters
    1. looks_one FlyingMonkey with 3.2 thanks per post
    2. looks_two Blue Eagle with 2.7 thanks per post
    3. looks_3 Rrrracer with 1.6 thanks per post
    4. looks_4 jackbravo with 1.4 thanks per post
    1. trending_up 63,639 views
    2. thumb_up 1,115 thanks given
    3. group 39 followers
    1. forum 384 posts
    2. attach_file 762 attachments




 
Search this Thread

FM's Trade Log

  #131 (permalink)
 
FlyingMonkey's Avatar
 FlyingMonkey 
Los Angeles CA
Legendary Market Wizard
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT8 & TOS
Trading: Futures & Stocks
Posts: 654 since Jan 2016
Thanks Given: 2,970
Thanks Received: 2,289

Got to the screen an hour and 45 before the open. Been sitting here trying to come up with an angle for 30 minutes.




Basically the market is a sideways garbage bag full of turds until those last major swing highs / lows get taken out. For now we are sandwhiched between 53.50 and 52.50. I've drawn some hypothetical channels to frame the action should those levels break decisively. The overnight action is holding the Y_Close in the 52.75 neighborhood and so that is the line to watch for this morning's bias.

On a side note, I wake up at the god awful hour of 4am and it takes me nearly until 4:45 to get prepped and figure out my angle. I need to tighten that routine. Watching a tradeable bounce ride off into the sunrise as I type this. I'll never catch it if I'm not prepared.

All I can do here is play the edges of the range back to VWAP. The theme lately has been the RTH session caps-off or counter-acts the previous AH session, and vice-versa. I'll expect that to continue, so since the AH session will likely close up, I'll expect it to round out and move back down as we transition to RTH.

Damn it, I just took a great short entry at 54.16 and then... OH my order was placed on my sim account. Woops. Technical difficulties this morning. Couldn't switch my trade manager back over to live account fast enough. Missed the boat for at least 10 ticks off the bat. Problem Exists Between Chair And Mouse. I'm down-grading my emotional state in my journal from "Confident/Calm" to "Anxious/Irritated."

Given how strong the open was, I should have been looking VWAP-bounce and break long. The thought did cross my mind. I hazarded a trade with my bias for staying range-bound despite the clear strength. It looked squirrely and started squiggling in ways that did not appeal to me, so I scaled out and thanks to a good entry price I managed to escape at -3, essentially break even.

My wife says I should focus on resting up and getting rid of this hacking cough that I have right now. She's probably right. Modifying engrained behaviors is hard enough as it is.


Visit my NexusFi Trade Journal Started this thread Reply With Quote

Can you help answer these questions
from other members on NexusFi?
ZombieSqueeze
Platforms and Indicators
NT7 Indicator Script Troubleshooting - Camarilla Pivots
NinjaTrader
The space time continuum and the dynamics of a financial …
Emini and Emicro Index
NexusFi Journal Challenge - April 2024
Feedback and Announcements
Better Renko Gaps
The Elite Circle
 
Best Threads (Most Thanked)
in the last 7 days on NexusFi
Get funded firms 2023/2024 - Any recommendations or word …
61 thanks
Funded Trader platforms
38 thanks
NexusFi site changelog and issues/problem reporting
26 thanks
GFIs1 1 DAX trade per day journal
19 thanks
The Program
18 thanks
  #132 (permalink)
 
FlyingMonkey's Avatar
 FlyingMonkey 
Los Angeles CA
Legendary Market Wizard
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT8 & TOS
Trading: Futures & Stocks
Posts: 654 since Jan 2016
Thanks Given: 2,970
Thanks Received: 2,289

Sunday 29 Jan 2017
==================

I looked in the mirror on Thursday and this is what I saw:




So I knew I had a pretty rough case of what I call the Nosferatu Flu. I've slept most of it off after several days of blah, but I don't know if I'll be able to switch gears to the 4am shift on Monday, and I can't risk fatigue letting this thing linger longer than needed. I may trade tomorrow, or I may not be back until later in the week.

Just wanted to recap here some of the lessons of the past week.

1. On Monday I took a trade that could have hit target, but instead was a small win. I had moved my stop up and got shaken out. Lesson: The way I'm moving stops can be bad.
2. On Wednesday I took another trade that could have hit target, but instead was a small loss. Lesson: The way I use tight stops can be bad.
3. On Thursday I took a trade that was in line with my bias, but kind of ignored new information that could have allowed me to change my bias and play the opposite side. I bailed on the trade and that was basically the right call. Would have been better to be on the other side of that one.

The bias-shifting lesson is important, but not as important as the stops problem. I want to focus on the stops for now. One thing at a time. @jackbravo dropped a good note about this - there are multiple strategies for deciding when to bail out, and each is good in its place. Basically I need to have some criteria that governs where I place / move my stop based on what kind of trade I'm taking / managing.

For me, I think this comes down to having an internal language that I can use to make decisions. In each aspect of my trading, my vocabulary and fluency with the data the market presents to me has improved over the years. Take for example my morning routine where I try to come up with a plan for the day. If you look at my journal from 6 months ago, vs the past month, I think it's clear i've developed a much more fluid read on the CL market at least. Picking targets - I almost don't think about it. I see the speed bumps between an entry and a target, and I can weigh in my head the benefits of placing a target here or there, how that weighs into the decision to take an entry, and so on. And my targets aren't perfect but they are generally not awful.

For placing stops / deciding when to bail out, I just haven't gotten there yet. But I know what the first step has to be:

Any time I am deciding where to place a stop, if the thought in my head is "I should place this stop here, because it sure would be nice NOT TO LOSE more than X on this trade," that is not the right way to go about it.

Similarly, any time I am deciding where / whether to MOVE a stop, if the thought in my head is "sure would be nice TO TAKE OFF SOME RISK or TO NOT GIVE MUCH BACK on this trade," that is also not the right way.

Now, obviously, yes, the whole reason for the stop is to limit your loss - to make sure you don't lose more than X. But in my case I am risking way less on each trade than I am (or should be) prepared to lose.

And yes, if I am in a trade with 30 ticks MFE and it's 5 ticks from my target, I'll be damned if I'm going to leave my stop at -20 and watch it go all the way back. That is the opposite extreme.

So yes, stops guard yourself from unacceptable losses, and from giving back more than is warranted - BUT I need to think about them differently. And I'm going to start that by just every time I place or move a stop, asking myself why I chose that location. Is it market structure (levels to defend your stop from being hit)? Good. Is it the type of trade (this trade warrants a wider stop vs doesn't)? Good. Or is it because you don't want to lose much on this trade? Umm, why? You aren't even close to your daily loss limit if you take this full stop out, right? Fight it. Second-guessing your entry? OK, then just close the trade now if you don't like it.

The fight continues.

Visit my NexusFi Trade Journal Started this thread Reply With Quote
  #133 (permalink)
 
FlyingMonkey's Avatar
 FlyingMonkey 
Los Angeles CA
Legendary Market Wizard
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT8 & TOS
Trading: Futures & Stocks
Posts: 654 since Jan 2016
Thanks Given: 2,970
Thanks Received: 2,289


A little bit late on the analysis today, but for posterity here is the current look at the 120-min as of noon eastern.




Pre-open we were jammin higher but heading into that 53.50 level.

I knew it was a place more folks would start taking profits and selling out of their longs from overnight. I took a long trade nonetheless.

I didn't move my stop, and it was maybe a little tight but better placed than some of my others, so that's cool. It got hit. Happens. But the idea was bad anyways. There was no good long there beyond a little scalp.

Honestly, after a week of not trading, I simply let my desire to put on a trade over-rule reasonable concerns with that entry. My rationale here was simply: "Well, there's a few good reasons to sit on hands right now ... but hey, it's going up, how about I try hopping on?" Really though, the report coming up, the firm resistance nearby, and the fact that we just finished the opening 5 minutes and this is a common time for the market to pick a new direction. Ignored all of that.

So, a new lesson — that's good! I like seeing a new mistake instead of the same old one. Be patient, don't force it. An old lesson, but new for this year.

-10 for the day. I missed some great swings after the report, but that's life. Gotta pay the bills.


Visit my NexusFi Trade Journal Started this thread Reply With Quote
  #134 (permalink)
 
FlyingMonkey's Avatar
 FlyingMonkey 
Los Angeles CA
Legendary Market Wizard
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT8 & TOS
Trading: Futures & Stocks
Posts: 654 since Jan 2016
Thanks Given: 2,970
Thanks Received: 2,289

Thursday 02 Feb 2017
====================

We're finally starting to get somewhere, maybe. CL is looking for a break above 54.25 and take a peek outside this range.

Seems inevitable at this point. But playing the long side here with most of ATR expended overnight is going to take some dancing. I'm still not factoring in relative volume on these scenarios. Could that help with these scenarios, trying to decide if market has the legs? note: need to study it,

I'm looking at a decent pulback right now (7:38am eastern) into 54, keeping an eye on that for a long. Will also keep an eye on shorts as a retrace back to the 53.50 doldrums is certainly possible. And will look for a strong open and break above 54.25 for an extended run (despite the already large range for the day)



Trying this long. One contract. Stop placed at -19 outside a lot of decent barriers. 54-even, prior resistance now support, vwap, Y_high / Y_close. The target here feels like a reach, but it's inside the ATR. Reserving the right to jump off early if this goes up and sputters at the highs.

Will add only if a reasonable opportunity presents itself. In the past what I've done is add quickly and pull my stop higher. Not going to do that here. Ready to take the loss. This looks like a legitimate trade to me and I'm OK with a loss on it (repeat after me...).




Now should I move my stop up? I have approx equal distance to stop and target now. Looks like ETHVWAP held. I'm tempted to pull it in. Sitting tight for a little longer... give me a HL and an HH.




OK, after moving significantly in favor (if I had 2 lots I'd have taken one off), it's sputtered and come back. I think I have a legitimate reason to bail early if we don't hold this battle at VWAP, and look for a short entry. This little failed run up looks like the kind of topping action precursor to a dump.




As I wait to see whether that was the right call or not (is that even the right question?), my mind wanders back to the very important question: Is actively managing my trades helping or hurting me? In the past, the answer has always been that yes, managing helps--but I need to re-evaluate. Part of the reason managing helped in the past is because I was taking a lot of poor entries, and tightening stops was mitigating losses. But it wasn't profitable.




Now, I maaayy be taking better entries. Year to date, small sample size, if I hadn't touched anything and used roughly 15-20 tick stops for every trade, I'd have some nice returns so far. Continuing to track this. If today I get a nother "moved stop, bad result", that'll be another data point in favor of being more hands off, or using a simple ATM strategy.

I did end up taking another trade. It was a great trade, I did everything I needed to do, but something unexpected occured and I wasn't able to get the target. Still, best trade of the year so far..

Open is shaping up a little weak but undecisive, I want it to break 54 with authority per my thesis. That happens, it pulls back, I pick an entry 53.93 waiting for zero confirmation and set my stop around 54.07. I wait through 12 positive ticks, watch it go against me, then it double humps and starts to turn back down. I think about adding at this point but decide to just let it be. As it heads into the break lower, I manually move my stop and ... ZAP , my custom trade management strategy barfs and NT8 not only closes the position but I end up LONG now. I realize what happened, close out, and watch as it dumps beyond my target without me.






So I learned something important about my NT8 code today, which I will have to deal with somehow. Glad I learned it on a winning trade, although it did cost me a target.

Didn't repeat any mistakes today. And I felt PRETTY UNCOMFORTABLE letting these trades ride, but I did it anyway and both had a reasonable shot. A lot to be happy about, and the -6 result for the day doesn't tell the story.

Is my active management of trades helping or hurting? I will continue running the numbers on this. I'd need multiple lots on the regs in order to take partial profits along the way to my somewhat ambitious targets. But more lots would make me even more comfortable letting the stops ride longer. It's a tough one, but for now it still looks like I just need to let what I'm doing WORK, get a bigger sample size of my current method, and keep hammering away at the problem.

Visit my NexusFi Trade Journal Started this thread Reply With Quote
  #135 (permalink)
 Ddawg 
Phoenix Arizona
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: MotiveWave
Trading: CL
Posts: 125 since May 2013
Thanks Given: 325
Thanks Received: 162

Man FM, I feel your pain!!! Sorry this happened to you, but you nailed the direction!!! Thanks for posting.

Danny

Reply With Quote
Thanked by:
  #136 (permalink)
 
FlyingMonkey's Avatar
 FlyingMonkey 
Los Angeles CA
Legendary Market Wizard
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT8 & TOS
Trading: Futures & Stocks
Posts: 654 since Jan 2016
Thanks Given: 2,970
Thanks Received: 2,289


Ddawg View Post
Man FM, I feel your pain!!! Sorry this happened to you, but you nailed the direction!!! Thanks for posting.

Danny

Thanks for the support Danny! Really appreciate it.

One of the marvelous things about trading .... it's all on you the trader, no matter what happens. The buck always stops with you.

Moving forward, gotta keep on truckin!

Visit my NexusFi Trade Journal Started this thread Reply With Quote
  #137 (permalink)
 
jackbravo's Avatar
 jackbravo 
SF, CA/USA
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: SC
Broker: Stage 5
Trading: NQ...uh..ES actually
Posts: 1,337 since Jun 2014
Thanks Given: 4,362
Thanks Received: 2,400

burn NT8 and move to sierrachart !

"It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop." Confucius
Reply With Quote
Thanked by:
  #138 (permalink)
 
FlyingMonkey's Avatar
 FlyingMonkey 
Los Angeles CA
Legendary Market Wizard
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT8 & TOS
Trading: Futures & Stocks
Posts: 654 since Jan 2016
Thanks Given: 2,970
Thanks Received: 2,289


jackbravo View Post
burn NT8 and move to sierrachart !

Heheheh, well, I don't want to sound too much like an NT8-defender here, but I didn't mean my post to come off as a "throw NT8 under the bus" post, so I'll clarify. NT8 does do some annoying/weird things that I'm sure are legitimate deal-breakers for some individuals, but in this case my initial guess is it's not the platform to blame. NT8 provides the ability for the user to decide what it does when a strategy hits this kind of a problem... should it try to close you out? I have it set to do that, so that's what it tried to do. Furthermore, I think (haven't tested this) that what happened was I fat-fingered the stop-move and accidentally changed it from a 1-contract to a 2-contract and that's what wigged the thing out. My strategy suddenly didn't know how to put the OCOs together and barfed everywhere.

Yes, NT8's chart-trader seems to make it really easy to fat-finger this and I would like that improved, but in the end it's my fingers, my strategy, my platform, my problem.

So.. yea I could change my platform. I've looked at sierra but not trialed it. I've payed close attention and read your posts about Sierra's dopeness. I'm intrigued. But ugh... having to re-do everything I've built up. NT8 makes it REALLY FLEXIBLE for those that want to extend its capabilities without too much trouble (edit: or with insane amounts of trouble, as the case may be. Just depends what part of the swamp you're in). I'm sure Sierra has some of that flexibility too, and maybe less of the trouble, but the time it would take me to figure it out...don't want to think about it.

The tool I use saves me at least 20 minutes of analysis time PER TRADE by auto-tracking statistics. I have dozens of drop-downs and checkboxes I click that say how I'm feeling right before I place a trade (horny or hungry or sleepy, those are the only three options) and populate my post-trade remarks, spit out to a spreadsheet. How far did my trade go in my direction in the 15 minutes AFTER I exited? I'm tracking it automatically. Was price over this or that MA? How far from VWAP was I? All kinds of stuff only I want to know, so no body is gonna put it into a platform for me.

I know people are legitimately complaining about the bugs, and I am too, and it seems every one has a different set of complaints because the power users are all hitting different pieces of the app. No one uses it the same way. I've found my little nook of stability within NT8. It's fragile, but I'm clinging to it. I hope I can continue to find ways to make it work because the thought of abandoning it terrifies me. I really do depend on it.

Visit my NexusFi Trade Journal Started this thread Reply With Quote
Thanked by:
  #139 (permalink)
 
jackbravo's Avatar
 jackbravo 
SF, CA/USA
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: SC
Broker: Stage 5
Trading: NQ...uh..ES actually
Posts: 1,337 since Jun 2014
Thanks Given: 4,362
Thanks Received: 2,400

Holy smokes, that's some pretty extensive data mining. Sounds like a longterm union. I'd hate to think about starting everything over with another platform.

Sent using the NexusFi mobile app

"It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop." Confucius
Reply With Quote
Thanked by:
  #140 (permalink)
 
FlyingMonkey's Avatar
 FlyingMonkey 
Los Angeles CA
Legendary Market Wizard
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: NT8 & TOS
Trading: Futures & Stocks
Posts: 654 since Jan 2016
Thanks Given: 2,970
Thanks Received: 2,289


Friday 03 Feb 2017
==================

Decided to sleep through NFP and wait for the open. Here's a new chart since the 120-min has looked much the same for a while.



It'd be nice to see this break below 53.50 as we have some room to work with down there. If we stay in this 53.75 area I think I'll stand clear. This Friday could quickly turn into a chop fest.



In below image I've circled the area where I thought about exiting early. At that point, you tried shorting into .50, it's been twiddling around without going your way, and the long side is starting to look pretty enticing as VWAP and .50 hold the retest. Get out now. If it comes back down, you can find a place to get back in.



I saw it through to the end, which cost me an extra 12 ticks or so. But in a perverse way (it's weird to talk about achievements when you have a negative PNL but hey, call me mr. positive I guess) I did what I set out to do this week. I went into this week basically telling myself: There's only two outcomes - you either win or lose. And either one, you should do it gloriously. Either win big or lose big, and do it gloriously. No death by a thousand cuts.

Learning the right trade management style is hard. This weekend my plan for homework is to replay all 7 trades I've taken over the past 2 weeks, with the exact same entries, but applying a different management approach and see what I learn. Use stops based on market structure, not a desire to mitigate loss. Regularly re-analyse the trade in-motion and move stop / bail early only with clear rational.

Every man needs a creedo. Every trader needs one too. That's what I'm trying to formulate here.

Visit my NexusFi Trade Journal Started this thread Reply With Quote




Last Updated on March 30, 2020


© 2024 NexusFi™, s.a., All Rights Reserved.
Av Ricardo J. Alfaro, Century Tower, Panama City, Panama, Ph: +507 833-9432 (Panama and Intl), +1 888-312-3001 (USA and Canada)
All information is for educational use only and is not investment advice. There is a substantial risk of loss in trading commodity futures, stocks, options and foreign exchange products. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
About Us - Contact Us - Site Rules, Acceptable Use, and Terms and Conditions - Privacy Policy - Downloads - Top
no new posts