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2019 Dow E-Mini YM Trading Journal


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2019 Dow E-Mini YM Trading Journal

  #21 (permalink)
 
vmodus's Avatar
 vmodus 
Somewhere, Delaware, USA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: MultiCharts
Broker: Barchart.com
Trading: Everything, it all tastes like chicken
Posts: 1,271 since Feb 2017
Thanks Given: 2,958
Thanks Received: 2,853

Tonight's journal entry has to be short, and I will explain why at the end of this update.

Today's Results:
  • No trades, thus $0 for the day
According to our strategy, we spent the day in a range and had no entry that satisfied our rules. Which is good because of what happened mid-afternoon.

Tradestation application crashed this afternoon, which is really not an unusual occurrence, sadly (we run TS on four machines.... trust me....it's not our machines). The bad part....I couldn't get it working again. I called tech support.... well it went from bad to worst. The problem didn't get solved after 3 hours of troubleshooting by myself and with the Tradestation tech.

Needless to say, I am currently locked out of my machine and cannot run any strategies right now. Dead in the water, as the sailors say. And no pretty screenshots.

And needless to say, Tradestation's days are officially numbered in our shop.

I have to go recover my machine so I'm ready for tomorrow's trading day.

Tomorrow:
  • Trade, one way or another

Now I must work then I can sleep. {will dream of Sierra Chart sugarplum fairies }


~vmodus

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  #22 (permalink)
 
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 snax 
Chicago, IL
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vmodus View Post
Tonight's journal entry has to be short, and I will explain why at the end of this update.

Today's Results:
  • No trades, thus $0 for the day
According to our strategy, we spent the day in a range and had no entry that satisfied our rules. Which is good because of what happened mid-afternoon.

Tradestation application crashed this afternoon, which is really not an unusual occurrence, sadly (we run TS on four machines.... trust me....it's not our machines). The bad part....I couldn't get it working again. I called tech support.... well it went from bad to worst. The problem didn't get solved after 3 hours of troubleshooting by myself and with the Tradestation tech.

Needless to say, I am currently locked out of my machine and cannot run any strategies right now. Dead in the water, as the sailors say. And no pretty screenshots.

And needless to say, Tradestation's days are officially numbered in our shop.

I have to go recover my machine so I'm ready for tomorrow's trading day.

Tomorrow:
  • Trade, one way or another

Now I must work then I can sleep. {will dream of Sierra Chart sugarplum fairies }


~vmodus

Very sorry to hear this, hope things work out better for you tomorrow, stay positive!

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  #23 (permalink)
 
vmodus's Avatar
 vmodus 
Somewhere, Delaware, USA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: MultiCharts
Broker: Barchart.com
Trading: Everything, it all tastes like chicken
Posts: 1,271 since Feb 2017
Thanks Given: 2,958
Thanks Received: 2,853


Ahhhhh....that new contract smell. Yep, we're on YMM19 now, baby.

After yesterday's technological fiasco with Tradestation, I was pretty much on full-auto today. I was finally able to get Tradestation up and running again, but not without a lot work and angst. I lost a bunch of work, as it appears as if my 'workspace' in the development environment got corrupted. I will recount my trials and tribulations in a separate post over in the Tradestation sub-forum (I almost wrote sub-reddit....haha). Ultimately the error I was receiving was completely related to EasyLanguage development application. Thankfully I did not miss any trades, but I was monitoring the market from another machine. Redundancy is critical when working with TradeStation.

I set my strategies to run this morning and that was it. We entered at 1600, during a minor retracement and while I was getting my eyes examined (for real). I expect this trade to ripple/range during the night, so I'm just going to ignore it until tomorrow morning. This is what we're seeing right now:
[img]https://i.postimg.cc/g2rhnDVZ/SNAG-0106.png[/img]

I think today's support and resistance (as we are defining it here) has been tested for the past week or so. We could see a true breakout, or come back to range. Perhaps some optimistic news from the east will help support this breakout. I am observing the behavior of an oscillator (bottom of the screenshot) to see how well it reacts to turns in market. Allegedly, the blue line crossing the red indicates a trigger to change direction. I have no idea, but I will probably write a strategy to see what it does.

Today's Results:
  • Got Tradestation up and running just in time for our trading day
  • Rescued a couple of strategies and plugged them in the chart
  • One trade long, open position, about $300 profitable as of this writing
As with any trade, I would really like for this to run. If you can't tell by now, I am a swing trader as is my partner. I'm not sure I'll be a swing trader in 6 months, but for now that is what we are today.

Tomorrow:
  • My partner has a new strategy that she thinks will crush this market environment in YM (we are struggling with system performance this calendar year). I'll probably code what she hasn't already and test it to Kingdom Come. Stay tuned for updates on that.
  • Continuing to let this strategy run.
  • Continue reading Rocket Science for Traders, by John Ehlers. It is very interesting reading, though not for the faint of heart.
  • Watch Big Mike's webinars with John Ehlers
As the great Joe Tait used to say: "Have a goodnight, eeeevvvvvrrryyyyybody!"

~vmodus

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  #24 (permalink)
 
vmodus's Avatar
 vmodus 
Somewhere, Delaware, USA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: MultiCharts
Broker: Barchart.com
Trading: Everything, it all tastes like chicken
Posts: 1,271 since Feb 2017
Thanks Given: 2,958
Thanks Received: 2,853

I'm not going to even bother to wait for the end of the trading day, as I already know how this day ends. Today was one of those days that I caught the market bottom. Again. In the wrong direction.

So the long position I was in overnight hung in there until after the market opened. I was stopped out shortly after 1000 EDT, when there was a ton of sell-off. The sad part is that I was stopped out a mere 3 points away from the bottom for the day (note: I took this screenshot earlier today, but nothing really changed):
[img]https://i.postimg.cc/6QX8MQbr/SNAG-0111.png[/img]

So if my stop had been 4 points lower, then this trade would have survived the day. We had a false breakout in the wee hours of the morning, then dropped right back into range before (NYSE) market open.

Today's results:
  • -$396
  • No new entries
I didn't get to do much, as I has some other things going on today. I'm still trying to recover some of my lost work from Tradestation and I'm dreading the call to support that I will have to make.

Tomorrow:
  • The same range is setup for tomorrow. With my luck, I will get a late day entry and be stuck in the position over the weekend. But then again, that worked out for me last weekend....just sayin'
  • Make a dreaded call to Tradestation support to see if they can help me rescue my lost files.
  • Trying to get another strategy running to replace this one. It has just been range-minor breakout-range-minor breakout, which is not the best for what we're trading.
  • Hopefully test what my partner has developed.

~vmodus >>> out

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  #25 (permalink)
 
vmodus's Avatar
 vmodus 
Somewhere, Delaware, USA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: MultiCharts
Broker: Barchart.com
Trading: Everything, it all tastes like chicken
Posts: 1,271 since Feb 2017
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First things first:



Having automated strategies is great. Seriously. Like the great Ron Popiel would say, "Set it and..... forget it!" Okay, not really forget it, but having a strategy just run while I work on other things is pretty nice. And speaking of other things, this is what I really worked on today.

As mentioned yesterday, I made the dreaded call to Tradestation technical support. I spent 40 minutes on hold, then maybe about 2.5-3 hours while we tried to resolve my issue of the lost files. The main thing I was trying to accomplish was to recover my lost work from Monday. I won't go into the details, but needless to say we did not rescue the files, but I may be able to get a few of them back. We shall see.

The main issue I have with TS is that the development environment does not save files like normal files. They compile things into binaries, and if you're working on something and you have code-ageddon happen, you may not see your work. So I lost a good 5 hours of work, at least. Simply saving working files as plain-text files would prevent what happened during this crash. They don't even have SVN or Git integration, so you can't version or fork anything. Fork that, I say.

I spent some time testing a little strategy related to a Stochastic that is smoothed. Nothing terribly exciting to report with that. The main goal there was to get used to the working with a Stochastic that is more filtered. I have a long way to go on that front.

Today's results:
  • 1 long position, still in, down $15 at the close, but I'm guessing it is just profit taking for the day
  • We missed the big move in the 1200 EDT hour, but that is just a strategy thing
Next week:
  • See where this current position lands. Barring some earth shattering news, I expect the Dow to open higher, possibly even gap up, when Globex opens Sunday evening. It will be interesting either way.
  • Rebuild and recover/salvage whatever EasyLanguage code I can from Black Tuesday
  • Test some new strategies on YM, to see if I have something that is a little more responsive that what I'm using
Sorry no screenshots today. I'm a little lazy, but honestly I am behind on work.

Have a great weekend all and I'll see you on the other side!

~vmodus

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  #26 (permalink)
 
snax's Avatar
 snax 
Chicago, IL
Legendary Price Action Student
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: Sierra Chart
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Hey @vmodus, quick question.

I'm unfamiliar with Tradestation, but you mentioned they don't have git integration.

EDIT: didn't see this part first read through:


Quoting 
The main issue I have with TS is that the development environment does not save files like normal files

.

They have to have the source files somewhere, otherwise they wouldn't have anything to compile.

Where are the other files typically stored? I assume they're doing something with the source files. Github has free private repos, you could just copy those source files over (assuming they can be found) to a separate directory in your local filesystem, git init that stuff and push it to a private repo. You could even automate all that so you don't have to manually keep doing it but its not much work.

Just a thought, again, I don't know anything about TS, let me know if that helps!


cheers,
snax

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  #27 (permalink)
 
vmodus's Avatar
 vmodus 
Somewhere, Delaware, USA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: MultiCharts
Broker: Barchart.com
Trading: Everything, it all tastes like chicken
Posts: 1,271 since Feb 2017
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snax View Post
They have to have the source files somewhere, otherwise they wouldn't have anything to compile.

Where are the other files typically stored? I assume they're doing something with the source files.

Oh snax, if TS were only so simple. Source files aren't sitting out there for you to just grab.

They store all of the working files in a single, proprietary binary file (actually several files). If it gets corrupted, you are SOL. Like I am. To protect your file you must:
  • Export the files (pain in the butt)
  • Backup (takes you offline, which means no strategies can be running and no trading)
And the other strategies or studies/indicators you have compiled, are tucked away somewhere where we can't get to them.

Which is why I'm switching to another platform and broker sometime in the next 6-9 months, if all goes well. This is only the latest in a series of problems we have had with them.

cheers,
~vmodus

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  #28 (permalink)
 
vmodus's Avatar
 vmodus 
Somewhere, Delaware, USA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: MultiCharts
Broker: Barchart.com
Trading: Everything, it all tastes like chicken
Posts: 1,271 since Feb 2017
Thanks Given: 2,958
Thanks Received: 2,853

I forgot to post my weekly results:
  • -$427 for the week, including slippage, commission and fees

Not the worst, but looking to improve.

See ya!

~vmodus

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  #29 (permalink)
 
snax's Avatar
 snax 
Chicago, IL
Legendary Price Action Student
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: Sierra Chart
Broker: Edge Clear
Trading: MES
Posts: 2,170 since Feb 2019
Thanks Given: 9,612
Thanks Received: 9,622


vmodus View Post
Oh snax, if TS were only so simple. Source files aren't sitting out there for you to just grab.

They store all of the working files in a single, proprietary binary file (actually several files). If it gets corrupted, you are SOL. Like I am. To protect your file you must:
  • Export the files (pain in the butt)
  • Backup (takes you offline, which means no strategies can be running and no trading)
And the other strategies or studies/indicators you have compiled, are tucked away somewhere where we can't get to them.

Which is why I'm switching to another platform and broker sometime in the next 6-9 months, if all goes well. This is only the latest in a series of problems we have had with them.

cheers,
~vmodus

I almost didn't post my "help" because I knew you probably already would have done something like this already if possible, but the nerd in me just couldn't let it go. My blood is ready to boil, and I don't even use Tradestation!

Sorry I couldn't help, sounds good that you are moving to something different, that sounds excruciating.

Cheers!

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  #30 (permalink)
 
vmodus's Avatar
 vmodus 
Somewhere, Delaware, USA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: MultiCharts
Broker: Barchart.com
Trading: Everything, it all tastes like chicken
Posts: 1,271 since Feb 2017
Thanks Given: 2,958
Thanks Received: 2,853


snax,

I gave it a little thought last night and maybe the reason they do it is to protect/hide the code for those who either buy or subscribe to EasyLanguage code. Of course we can protect our code through the application, but who knows. There has to be an better way to store individual strategies and studies, especially for a platform that has been around for more than 2 decades.

Either way, for now I am exporting many times per day as my 'backup strategy'. No pun intended.

~vmodus

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Last Updated on April 17, 2019


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