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Watching Paint Dry (Bonds and Ninjascript video journal)
Much improved today. Trading was still difficult similar to yesterday, but we had slightly better moves. I was able to pull 8 ticks off 3 trades. Some very hard trades to be patient on as well. I felt very anxious and uncertain at times, but I think I was also less tense. I think part of my bad days have been just stressing out too much.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Pretty range bound day. I actually had some good trades that I should have let go longer. I also had a good 6 tick winner that I let come too far back trying to get filled. I ended the day down 5 ticks.
I think I'm going to start a best of in the first post of the thread. This would be a good example for a range bound day.
The win streak in ZB has finally ended, and we had a good down day. A few good trend trades, but not much extension. Some epic battles in this one with market makers pressuring big 3k orders. Overall took 3 ticks out of today.
I wanted to stay for another leg short, but I've had this happen many times where the move doesn't materialize until I need to leave to work. Sure enough it took another new low during that 10:45-11:15 time frame.
A lot of me just getting tricked into bad trades, but we eventually saw a good opportunity. ZN was stuck in a two tick range for quite some time. When it started to break out we saw it rejected aggressively. Basically a false breakout. After a quick breakdown it snapped right back. After I had to leave it took another leg lower. So very much a back and forth day without a clear trend until after my session was over. Only 3 ticks damage done though.
Very frustrating day for me. Took a lot of heat after shorting on the good PPI news. The trade eventually went my way only to slowly bubble up. After I closed the trade at a loss we had a massive rush up. The signals were there, but I didn't understand the context of them, and mostly watched. Lots of opportunity missed. Ended the day down 5 ticks.
Yesterday was crazy in bonds. I was having a few technical issues, but finally gained my composure to get a 10 tick winner. However, that winner came right back on me in seconds and I essentially scratched it. Don't forget to move your stop folks :'(.
However, it appears that as I rushed to get out some orders got hit and I actually took a small loss. I should have used the flat option in Jigsaw to exit. This small loss caused me to hit the drawdown limit in my combine. I didn't realize I was that close to the limit as they don't show that number on your profile stats, but I hit my drawdown limit.
Now I've broken combines before, but it's a little different with OneUp. Once you've broken a combine rule the system rejects orders from you. So I can't use it to practice for the rest of the month through Jigsaw like I could with Top Step.
So I'm not quite sure where I want to go from here. I certainly won't use OneUp again, but I'm souring on the combines in general. I still really want to prove that I can pass the combine. I don't want people to say "well you just gave up because you couldn't hit the target". I also still believe I am capable of passing the combine. I've had periods of profitability where I made 4k, but they were either split between combines or were preceded by drawdowns. At this point I feel that passing the combine for me is almost just luck of the draw. It's all about having a good period of profitability that lines up with when I started the combine correctly.
At the same time I've gained a decent number of subscribers on YouTube, as well as a great community on the Discord server. I feel like me using the combine kind of becomes an endorsement of sorts, and I really don't want to give these companies my support anymore. I do not believe that the profit targets are an effective way of evaluating a trader. Evaluation should be based on periods of consistency, like the consistency number Jigsaw's stats show. If I could put together two months of good consistency in a row, then maybe I would feel confident enough to trade someone else's money. I feel like continuing to use the combine just encourages these companies to not change.
So I'm not sure what I should do. Last time I tried creating Rithmic or CQG demo accounts they rejected connections from me. Apparently I've created demo accounts so many times that they banned me. I don't think I'm ready for live trading, but I might try to scrounge up enough to open an account. Hopefully I can then demo trade with that account. I've been looking at amp. Suggestions are appreciated.
Since I am still unable to trade my OneUp account I made a video with my thoughts on the combines in general. I'll be programming later in the week. I'm going to put the minimum down for an amp account, and trade sim on that for a while. So we'll be back to the regular order flow videos in a week or two.
Some wild moves today. I spent the session investigating some programming ideas, and just watched the action on the side. I think my strategy would have done ok today, but that was a wild reversal.
I spent the session working on my vertical panel indicators, but I still recorded the action. First really good trend in a while. Probably due to positioning in front of the FOMC notes.
