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2019 Dow E-Mini YM Trading Journal


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2019 Dow E-Mini YM Trading Journal

  #31 (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

Well, today was another one of those 'hurry up and wait' kind of days. Waiting for the market to decide on a trend, that is. I know.... 'welcome to the club', right?

Today's Results:
  • Exit from my Friday long position, stopped out
  • 1 long entry and exit this morning, stopped out
  • 1 long entry, currently holding (~ 210 profitable at this moment)
  • Today's P&L = -$832
  • Spent some time last night with the Instantaneous Trend indicator. It has some use in following long profitable trends (where moving averages fail), but does not work so well on reversals, at least with YM and ES.
I could bemoan the losses, but the stops are just part of our money management strategy. I averaged about $10 slippage, which is the amount I use in back-testing.

The biggest problem, that I'm working on right now is determining when we are in consolidation/range and when we've entered trend mode. We have had so many false breakouts the past few weeks, that I'm trying to wrap my head around this. This strategy is usually at the wrong end of these breakouts, at least recently.

Here is what the daily chart looks like from when I started trading:


The rectangle shows when I started trading. A nice little channel, as I see it. It almost looks like a sine wave, but I'm sure that won't last for long.

Tomorrow:
  • I hope to have a modified exit strategy from my partner to test. She has been developing and testing it. It looks good for the rangy market we're in. The best part of it is that it helps us capture profits at the same point a lot of other traders are taking profits, i.e. we're giving back fewer profits.
  • Continue reading Rocket Science for Traders and playing with the smoothing tools Ehlers is presenting. I understand that his later works supersede some of the work in this book, but this is the foundational stuff. I would like to have a very good understanding of the tools and how I can used them in my trading.
  • Keep trading the strategy, hopefully see a true break from range and get a profitable trade.

Have a great night everyone and see you tomorrow!

~vmodus

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  #32 (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 almost forgot to record my mistake. So we have to reset our strategy every morning with new criteria (I almost have it automated). So my strategy starts trading at 900 EDT (for entries; exits are 24/7). I setup my long entry strategy just before 900, then went to take a shower. I didn't expect an entry, but the strategy takes care of that anyhow.

When I came back, I was in a long position. That I wasn't supposed to be in.



Then the market started to move against me. Right before the Dow opening bell, you know, amateur hour. Long story short, I set a limit order $5 above my entry and thankfully got out in about 10 minutes and covered my commission.

I looked at my strategy and I set my long entry with my short entry parameters. Oops. Anyhow, lesson learned....always triple check your settings on an automated strategy.

At least I made $2.60 on that trade.

~vmodus ..... out (for real this time)

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  #33 (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 only have a few minutes, so this is going to be quick. If you were trading YM (Dow e-mini), then this might have been Black Tuesday. Or not. I was in a long position from yesterday, and incredibly I am still in as I write this.

Things were trending nicely up, then boom, news of China-US trade deal in jeopardy kind of ruined that run. For my position I ran up to $1000, but that's just funny money.

Today's Results:
  • Still in a long position, -$50
  • Giving thought to other ways to exit. If you look on the chart below, you will see I have a trend line and crossover. That is an exit that would have salvaged at least some profits.
See what a wicked reversal happened today (60 minute chart):



This is the rectangle I showed yesterday, updated with today's bar. This is still a pretty little sinewave....(take it for whatever it's worth..... it's worth about -$50 to me right now)


Tomorrow:
  • Reset and monitor my strategy
  • I'm busy on some other non-trading related things, so not much else
  • If I get time, I am going to think about some contributions I want to make to the community here
  • Continue reading the rocket science for traders book

See you tomorrow!

~vmodus

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  #34 (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

Today, I had to be tricky and violate my own rules. I will explain why and why my instinct served well to override my automation.

Today was the long awaited Fed decision on rates. I do not trade the news, but I am not blind to the fact that the news drives the market. Three examples:
  1. China indicates that they may be walking away from the trade deal with the US (market falls rapidly)
  2. Trump says tariffs may continue for a long time (market falls rapidly again)
  3. Fed Reserve decides to hold the rate steady and will likely not increase this year (market rallies)

To point #3, one of two things were going to happen: the market would reverse or would continue down. I decided not to get caught in the emotion of such things, and set a safety stop limit order, attempting to lock in some of the profits in case the market reversed.

The market reversed, and I got out with $260 profit. I would have had a loss of -$400 (stop) had I let my strategy dictate my exit. The general lesson for me is that it is okay to have an awareness of market moving events and protect my positions against such events, as long as I don't allow myself to trade the event. This is especially important for predictable events, such as a Fed policy meeting. The President's tweets are a different story.

Today's Results:
  • I was long a position late yesterday, but that exited with a stop loss of -$400
  • I took a short position today when my entry criteria was met at 900 EDT
  • I exited that position with a profit of $260
  • Today's net: -$143 (give or take)
  • I filed the rest of my tax returns today (not trading related, but happy days)
  • I am almost done with Rocket Science for Traders... a lot of good stuff that I hope to integrate into my technical analysis and automated systems
  • And this just in..... I noticed my strategy just took another short entry (my strategy did the work), so as of 1615 EDT, I am +$270 short 1 contract

Here is a chart snippet for today:


Notice the trendlines, which is an indicator known as the Instantaneous Trendline (or iTrend), using an alpha of .05 (I won't pretend to know what alpha means). It is supposed to be a zero-lag indicator and I've been playing with it since late Sunday night. This indicator actually had us in a downtrend since yesterday until now, despite the the whipsaw and noise, as seen by the cyan line over the green line. If I had traded just this signal, it would have stayed open through all of the noise from today, and ending the day at over $1,000 profitable (1 contract). This indicator is more of a reality check while a trend is running or reversing. It is not so useful in a range.

Tomorrow:
  • Finish reading my book
  • Monitor my strategies
  • Follow the trade

~vmodus

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  #35 (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

Well, Thursday was one of those funny Dow days. Apple and Nike are boosting the Dow, at least for today. It took me out of my short position that I was holding overnight. When I checked it this morning I was over +$1300. Then I got stopped on the reversal, swing of greater than $1700 in the other direction.

At the $1350 point, I thought about taking a discretionary exit and re-entry on the short side, but my system said hold. So this begs the question: when do I kill this system, before it kills my account. With this system and account I can sustain long runs of losses and ride the extremely good runners and be profitable. In this environment though, I need to consider:
  1. Do I continue with this strategy and await that big move?
  2. Do I implement another strategy that works better with the current market conditions?
  3. Do I wait on the sidelines?

Thursday's Results:
For Friday:
  • Doubtful I will have an entry today, unless some big news breaks. I expect a range.
  • Finish writing a strategy focused on CCI bounce. This is a strategy I had to rewrite from scratch after my big TS crash.
  • Write and test a strategy that leverages Fibonacci retracements to allow for better exits.

Sorry, no graphs or pictures today. I have a lot on my plate today. I will give my end of the week update at the end of the day.

~vmodus

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  #36 (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

So I decided to not trade Friday the 22nd, although we didn't have any entries identified by our strategy. The main reason for this decision is that this strategy is getting killed in this market environment. We are basically working a swing strategy, awaiting a large move, but it just isn't coming.

This is the most interesting thing that I saw:
[img]https://i.postimg.cc/VvBN0d81/SNAG-0114.png[/img]

I have seen a lot of chart formations in my days, but I cannot recall something quite like this 'dome'. Anyhow, that aside, we have learned the hard way that when we stop trading our strategy, that is when we miss the big move. We will have to see what Monday morning brings us.

How I Really Spent My Friday
In the spirit of a true optimist, I dug into writing a new strategy based simply on John Ehlers' Even Better Sinewave, which I found in his book Cycle Analytics for Traders. I finished reading Rocket Science for Traders, but his more recent work is an improvement over his first book. Long story short, I was able whip up something pretty quick and get a moderately usable strategy. (you can see the indicator in the above chart) I tested it on YM and worked very well in our current market, on a 30 minute chart. It worked okay on ES (S&P e-mini), but interestingly it worked best on NQ (Nasdaq). It also worked well on Gold, but on the daily chart.

This week's results:
  • -$1532
This was my worst week trading YM. Since this is my journal, I must be honest here. I am not happy with the results but such is the life of a technical trader. I may be switching to a more robust strategy. I have a couple of candidates for strategies that appear to work well. I just need to be careful that I'm not over-optimizing or curve fitting this.

Best of luck this week in your trading adventures!

~vmodus

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  #37 (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

Today, I decided to shelve the strategy I've used for the past five weeks (essentially a swing strategy based on 3-day pivots). Going out on a limb, I implemented the strategy I wrote yesterday. It performs well in this uncertain market environment.

I implemented the new strategy just before 9am. It took a short position but was stopped out. I also ran the old strategy on another chart. Here is a comparison of the old strategy to the new strategy for today:
[img]https://i.postimg.cc/QxQK06dh/SNAG-0119.png[/img]

So essentially, the new strategy saved me $432. The stops on this strategy can be tighter than the old one.

~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~

Here is what the new strategy looks like on a chart over the last few days:
[img]https://i.postimg.cc/MpDn7vKD/SNAG-0120.png[/img]

On this chart, the oscillator indicated (pun intended) where I have long and short entries. Just in this view, there are three winning trades and two that were stopped out. In at least half the cases, the strategy will exit the trade before a stop is hit, thus saving $$$ on the reversal.

~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~

Today's Results:
  • 1 short trade, $-372 (slippage was $10 overall, $2.40 total round-trip commission)
  • My partner and I tested this strategy on a number of different markets. It doesn't do as well on CL, but she may adapt the this indicator for use in her exits.
  • I tested against some equities and it works exceedingly well regardless of symbol. I manage a couple of equities accounts (college savings), in which I can only do long entries. This did very well, even on stocks that have gotten hammered at various points in the past, such as GE, PBR, and GT. It is not a holy grail, but has a ton of potential (~75% win rates).
  • The new strategy did not do as well on EC

Tomorrow:
  • Keep running the new strategy
  • Test the new strategy against the 'most active' equities for that day, to see what happens when applied to highly volatile stocks

If you want more info on the indicator I'm using, let me know and I'll provide details. I'm trying to find if Ehlers wrote any paper on this, other that what is in his book. In the meantime, here are a couple of webinars Big Mike did a while ago with John Ehlers, discussing some of these topics:
Have a good evening everyone and happy trading tomorrow!

~vmodus

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  #38 (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

So working with my shiny new strategy, I kept it running overnight. This particular strategy trades from 500 to 2100 EDT. I found that the other times just create wasteful trades due to low volume and artificial price movement (sorry overnight traders).

There was one trade that I really, really wanted, but in testing I found this type of trade reverses too often. Here is a screenshot:
[img]https://i.postimg.cc/XYnZxYcs/SNAG-0121.png[/img]

So essentially the indicator for my long entry just bounced off the floor. As noted in the screenshot, my strategy did not see the indicator below -.9 for long enough, thus stay out. I considered getting in after the movement ran, but I didn't. I tweaked my strategy in my development chart to see what would have happened, and I would have only gained about $250, because I would have been kicked out a 400 EDT. It still begs the question: can I still take discretionary trades based on the data? That is to be answered at a later time.

One of the biggest lessons in trading, for me, is that not ever movement or trade is my movement or trade. Just because I miss a $2,000 move, I will have my own $2,000 somewhere else, that someone else misses. But I digress.

My strategy took a couple of entries later in the day after the market reversed.

Today's Results:
  • 1 Short Entry, -$75 (strategy exit)
  • 1 Long Entry, -$245 (strategy exit)
  • Total: -$320
  • Tested a theory on back-testing and parameter optimization; my hypothesis failed (which is fine)
Tomorrow:
  • Continue trading the new strategy
~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~

One final tidbit, regarding where YM is and why our strategies are struggling against it. We have basically been in what I am referring to as a 'death range'. Below are the weekly and daily charts, to show. This is also, sadly, where I started trading.

[img]https://i.postimg.cc/2SXVhf6X/SNAG-0123.png[/img]

Not to be daunted, we have learned that longer the range, the more violent the breakout. Patience is the key, even as you may be getting killed. I will have to look on past daily charts to see if I have a comparable to this. Looking in my chart encyclopedia, they refer to this as an Eve-Eve double top. It breaks to the bear side more often than to the bull side.

~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~

See everyone tomorrow, and happy trading!

~vmodus

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  #39 (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

Hello everyone! The sun is finally shining where we live, literally and figuratively. I have had some revelations about some angst I've had over the Dow (and my e-mini).

Revelation 1: This current market sucks
....and everyone knows it. So any little news will add a little energy to the market, which quickly dissipates. It's like a half shot of espresso: it will get you going for about an hour, then you crash. The fact that it sucks is not the market's fault. It sucks for me because I don't have an adequate strategy for trading it. It sucks because I started trading this right as it entered this trend.

I needed to ask myself: do I just give the market the money until the breakout I am awaiting comes along? Which led me to my next revelation.

Revelation 2: Use the daily chart
This hearkens to what I learned a long time ago, which is what Alexander Elder tried to describe with his 'triple screen' method. Triple screen is, as I remember it, looking at three different timeframe with different indicators on those timeframes, before making a trading decision. Although I had disastrous results with his application of the triple screen (thankfully on paper and nothing more), there is merit at looking at the macro.

[img]https://i.postimg.cc/3JFSPr6y/SNAG-0125.png[/img]

Just look at the above daily chart, with just the Instantaneous Trend indicator up top, and the Even Better Sine Wave indicator below. I must be out of my mind trying to trade this with any strategy not meant for kind of range. What the frack am I thinking? For our old strategy (which we trade successfully on CL), we look at two time-frames (60 minute/240 minute). It just does not work right now for YM, even though it does very well in both weakly and strongly trending market. Ya' know, the trend is your....... {rhymes with bend}

Anyhow, ignoring the daily chart (in my case) is career suicide. I have a strategy that does well in this market at mitigating loss. But should I be trading this at all? Today I had long and short signals from my old, mothballed strategy and 2 long signals from my newfangled strategy. All were crap, but I'll give details a little later.

I know this market will break, because it always does. I did some research and found an almost identical market condition back in January-March 2008. It was a long 2.5 months or so of this sideways motion. Long story short, I will probably integrate the daily chart into my day-to-day analysis. I actually used it to kill my strategy for a short while today.

~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~

Today's Results:
  • 2 long positions, both closed: -$85 net loss
  • I accidentally made a manual long entry. But it was, as the late, great Bob Ross would say, 'a happy little accident'. It helped minimize the loss.
  • I had to re-install Tradestation to get rid of an annoying issue. I forgot to turn on my strategies after that, so I missed a long entry. But that one would have gone flat, so I'm glad I'm not in the market. Strategy is now reactivated.
  • Stumbled across an indicator and strategy for TradeStation from Stocks & Commodities magazine, called Ehlers Ultimate Oscillator. I tested it just to see what it would do, but just for fun. You can find it here: Ehlers Ultimate Oscillator. I believe there is code for other platforms (Ninja, etc.). Enjoy and/or use at your own peril.

Now, if I had run my old strategy (which I am tracking just for reference), I would have had a net loss of $805. So I'll take my -$85 loss any day, over the old way of doing things.

Tomorrow:
  • Continue running the new strategy
  • Look for improvements in the strategy
  • Play around some more with the 'Ultimate Oscillator'. Because automated trading is boring.

See you all tomorrow!

~vmodus

~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~

P.S. I am actually glad I'm experiencing this now. If I had started trading in January, had $10k in profits, then fell into this market miasma, I might not know what to do.

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  #40 (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


Today will be short and sweet. I had an interesting discussion with my partner, regarding last night's journal. Essentially, we came to the conclusion that, just based on this daily indicator alone, we shouldn't trade today:
[img]https://i.postimg.cc/Fs4Zpy10/SNAG-0129.png[/img]

In addition, it is moving sideways with the gentlest of downward slope. Pretty rare occurrence (I'm having trouble finding a comparable 4-day period where this indicator shows up as nearly vertical and tight).

Well, goofball that I can be from time to time, I had left my strategy running.It performed as designed. Well, I should have turned it off, because we are still in consolidation mode. Here are today's results:

Today's Results:
  • 1 short entry, early Wednesday evening; exit with a gain of $38 (fully automated entry/exit)
  • 1 short entry, exit with a loss of -$283
  • 1 long entry, exit with a gain of $18 (manual exit so I could turn off my strategy)
  • Net result: -$182
  • Did a bunch of research to find some comparable time to this market (see the end of this post)
Tomorrow:
  • Evaluate the daily after close today and determine if I will turn on my strategy or stay on the bench. If still holding tight between the two indicators, then I will not turn on strategy. Looks like a bench day for me.

~vmodus >> out

~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~ + ~

Here is a comparable period from the YM daily chart, dating back to August 24th 2011 running to about October 4th. There is a clear exit from this 'hot mess' and then the market just runs, with an exit of a minimum of a $5,000 profit.
[img]https://i.postimg.cc/W3Q7QKj1/SNAG-0130.png[/img]
This period is not totally untradable, but it needs an appropriate strategy, one that we do not possess. Yet.

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Last Updated on April 17, 2019


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