Monday, November 29th - Poor gap setups so none were taken.
First hour guides were good but the market's been range-bound all morning, so no trades there either.
I did some SIM trades on some other setups I'm experimenting with but have not yet backtested.
...later...
NT Control Center showed I had a realized gain in one of my ATM strategies, but I thought I traded everything on SIM. I checked my balance at Mirus and sure enough that 5pt ES winner was with live money! It was even a SIM accident because it was a limit order I placed on the hammer I saw an hour earlier but that never got filled. It made it's move up, which would have caused me to normally cancel the order because it hit my intended target without filling me, but I left the computer, got ready for the day and drove into work and saw later that it was filled and hit my target on a later move, but I thought it was on SIM, but it wasn't! I'll take it.
ES: +20 ticks
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Seems to work best when we open with large gaps outside of the previous day's open and close, particularly above highs/below lows. Attached are the tags for CL 12-10. Success depends on stops, targets and general money management principles.
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Tuesday, November 30th - Well that sucked, especially with 3 instruments all hurting me at once! A late-day sell-off wiped away 70% of my monthly profits.
Yesterday's MTG video showed research that if a market gaps down on the last day of November it often fills, but also is prone to end down for the day. So it was likely to make up-moves, but end lower on the day, just like what it did today. I didn't give the study much thought in my trading plan. Just goes to show that seasonality does matter.
ES: -18 ticks
YM: -40 ticks
TF: -19 ticks
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I've added quite a bit more to my tracking spreadsheet lately as you can see.
I was feeling pretty good about the month, but today's 3 losing trades really took a major bite on my overall monthly performance. I traded 3 instruments on the same setup for the first time, but I was just following the statistics so I have to take the good with the bad. Hopefully I can make it back up in December but I can't let my loss deter my confidence to trade my plan.
At least I pulled out a profit for the month. It could have been worse.
Hoping for a happy December...
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Site Administrator Swing Trader Data Scientist & DevOps
Manta, Ecuador
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Custom solution
Trading: Futures & Crypto
Posts: 50,184 since Jun 2009
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Ugh, this came as a shock to me. So it seems your stops are much bigger than your targets? How else do you account for one day costing you 70% of the entire monthly profits?
Traded 3 cars, all turned out to be losers. Most of the time I trade 1 or 2 cars, but going in on 3 instruments is like swinging for the fences and I struck out. Luckily I had improved my risk/reduced to greater than 1.0 in 2 of the trades with better entries so it wasn't as bad as it could have been, but I'm still not happy with it.
The following user says Thank You to shodson for this post:
Site Administrator Swing Trader Data Scientist & DevOps
Manta, Ecuador
Experience: Advanced
Platform: Custom solution
Trading: Futures & Crypto
Posts: 50,184 since Jun 2009
Thanks: 32,683 given,
99,760
received
Well you've no doubt learned something and will improve for next time I think that is 9/10th's of the rule, right -- survival. Then one day you wake up and realize your making money, and everyone else is dead and buried.
Wednesday, December 1st - There were 2 decent looking first-hour setups in TF and ES. I only took one, I guess because I was afraid after yesterday's shelllacking. I took TF and it turned out to be an end-of day small loser on a large woosh down at the close. The ES trade ended up to be a winner. TF had gone as high as 25 ticks, but I was targeting 29, had a B/E+1 at 28.
I think that is 9/10th's of the rule, right -- survival. Then one day you wake up and realize your making money, and everyone else is dead and buried.
