Welcome to NexusFi: the best trading community on the planet, with over 150,000 members Sign Up Now for Free
Genuine reviews from real traders, not fake reviews from stealth vendors
Quality education from leading professional traders
We are a friendly, helpful, and positive community
We do not tolerate rude behavior, trolling, or vendors advertising in posts
We are here to help, just let us know what you need
You'll need to register in order to view the content of the threads and start contributing to our community. It's free for basic access, or support us by becoming an Elite Member -- see if you qualify for a discount below.
-- Big Mike, Site Administrator
(If you already have an account, login at the top of the page)
Tuglife's trading journal. Focused on profitability.
The struggle is real. I have been trading by just turning the screen on and firing trades off. No prep, no review or journaling.
In a way it is fortunate that I have had an atrocious couple of weeks. It is obvious that my process is flawed, and my work ethic is lacking.
I have been doing a good job of not trading until I can get my process turned around. I will soon have a few weeks vacation and will endeavor to make it a "working vacation".
Edit: None of this is surprising. The right way to do things is plastered all over the internet. Test, trade, journal. This journal is the only one I keep, and it is more of an "accountability journal" than an actual trade journal. At this point, because I have not approached this the right way, I don't even know what my best and worst trades are.
I continue to lack the motivation to make this work. I'm still not exercising, and not waking up for the market open. 0630 wake up is an adjustment for me and it's been a hard one. It's not good. The one thing I have working is the weight loss. I wouldn't think this is the cause of my lack of energy but I don't know.
Regarding the nuts and bolts of my chart setup, it seems good. I have VWAP's up in multiple timeframes. I moved the ^TICK chart to a panel below the main panel, and I'm running a SMA on it to gauge whether money is moving in or out of the indexes. I've just started using the ATR. I plan on using it to define trailing stop values but haven't figured that out yet. The one thing I think I need to add is some kind of volume indicator. The last one I used was a "relative volume" indicator.
I have started watching the RTY. There was a decent "VWAP test long" this morning. This is the second day that, had I bothered to show up, the setups were there and would have worked.
Even though this is a slightly negative post, it's an honest assessment. I can also honestly say that my knowledge and skill as a trader is light years ahead of where I was 6 months ago.
I have been studying charts every day. Yesterday I took my first trade in several months. A couple things are obvious.
I need more time practice trading. Setups always look really obvious in retrospect. Doing it in real time is tough. Yesterday I missed a couple of very good setups just because I was being too "careful." This is code for fearful. I hope more sim trading will help with this.
I am still struggling with setting the right stop loss.
I am re-reading the book I started last year "The Disciplined Trader". Mark Douglas. I really hope to finish it this time.
I can tell from the outset I need more experience and testing of my trading rules to be the kind of trader he is trying to teach his readers to be. Confidence in outcomes is what will allow me to be confident in entering these trades. And just as important, *managing* these trades. And waiting for these trades.
Still watching the charts. A CL monthly VWAP with 60 minute bars would have yielded a very good outcome this month. I am still developing trading rules, and having fun doing it. They provide lots of opportunities.
I have quite an assortment of VWAP SD lines on the chart. This is kind of what I envisioned when I first started learning about VWAP, and it really suits a deep dive to how price finds it's support and resistance relative to the standard deviations (and fractions thereof.)
I have had a breakthrough. My trading rules have yielded a system which generates high probability entries. As always, this system needs testing before it can be used. I'm certain the trade (risk) management will be the key to making it profitable.
I will probably start a thread asking for advice about this, but I wanted to do it here, too.
I have largely figured out my trading rules and now want to backtest them. My plan is to use "automated trade management" on Ninjatrader, running their market replay. They have a cool ATM feature that lets you run "shadow strategies" simultaneously. I might run 3 or 4 at the same time.
I plan on entering my results into an Excel spreadsheet with different columns. Time and day of week, price position relative to VWAP are a few of the columns I am considering. My goal is to establish probabilities and also prepare for the times when my rules aren't working. I am hoping to use Excel to establish market conditions that are the most favorable so I can adjust position size and perhaps learn to understand market conditions that I should avoid.
Although I don't have the hard data regarding probability, I felt comfortable to take a live trade last night. It was just a small short scalp on the ES. I entered the trade according to my ruleset, but my chimp brain tried to get me to abandon these rules once in the trade. Total time in was 45 minutes and price wiggled around long enough for me to come to my senses and close the trade at it's target. Still a lot of work to be done on this front.
The market is making a lot more sense than when I started trading one year ago. I have been putting in a lot of time studying charts and I think my current setup allows me to gauge market intent. In the words of one poster here, I am having more success "seeing what the market is trying to do and how well it is doing it."
I have been living like a monk the last 6 months, getting my financial house in order in order to comfortably fund a trading account. I will be live trading regularly again, soon. First order of business is *still* to read a book about Excel, as I believe proficiency with that is key to my success.
I don't have much to add but just wanted to say keep going. You will need to trade without emotional attachment. data driven strategy You're on the right track with excel. I use google docs (same) to show my backtested metrics vs current live trading metrics. Keep your strategies fairly simple. A lot of it is risk management. Most importantly do they make sense to you? Does it align with your beliefs on how the market works? How price and volume work together? When market is trending, consolidating. If you're not sure or you don't feel good about your trade, then be prepared to exit. Don't hold losers. And if you keep losing then stop what you are doing and reassess. It took me a long time to be consistent. This is a business and has to be treated like one. You have to be super strict or you will go bust! What you do needs to make sense and you need the data to prove it.
I have adjusted my rules to create a strategy that is more conservative. Less trades, and a lot less losers.
A very big development is that I will soon start to use the "Alerts" system in Ninjatrader in conjunction with ATM, to automate my rules based system. The system is comically simple, but appears to work well. I will soon have the data to know if I am on the right path, or maybe how to find the right path.
Long story short, my strategy was too complicated to set up by alerts. The strategy has also proven erratic. A part of me feels like I should just throw up long term charts and trade longer term (bigger) moves and abandon short term trading.
This is an interesting look at the CL chart. I anchored the VWAP at the start of the big run on February 1. These high time frame VWAP tests always look so clean in the rearview.
