Hello all, Thank you for viewing my Journal. This is my journal that will layout my decisions from front end software picking through my attempts at automated trading.
My first major hurdle was User Interface: It could just be me, but this has been a major source of contention for me.
Software and my lack of being able to pick one!: I have been actively switching software from 2012 to this year! I have opened and closed accounts at most major brokerage firms. The reason I’ve been doing this is because I have not found a user interface that I like. I’ve done Swab, Trade Station, IB, TOS, MT, Sierra Charts, fidelity, etc.
I believe this has hindered my trading significantly, as I could never get comfortable with what I was viewing and I did not take the time to really get into the details of what I was viewing, as 90% of them look like crap to me.
For instance: Each software package/ firm offers a DOM, but each DOM is not created equal! More over, I didn’t take the time to learn Order flow, as many of the brokerages above do not offer Order Flow as an option - or if they didn’t I didn’t know that! Again, totally my fault. Thus, I focused more on Candle sticks.
The one interface that I found that I liked in 2019 was ninja trader, but I didn’t know enough about there clearing houses to go with them and the lack of ACH was a complete turn off to me. Moreover, having to wire, or do checks is absolutely Stone Age thinking in 2020! Last year I in discussion with a NT rep, they said that ACH was coming in the future. In my research of both Phillips and Doran, I found that Phillips does ACH. Additionally, their assets under management are higher than Doran, thus my expectation is their Risk Governance is better than Doran.
When I decided to open my NT account, I thought it would be an easy process, which for the most part it is, however, I ran into some issues due to my employer. The NT staff worked closely with me to ensure Phillips had the documents they require to open my account. All good now!
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Now that I have NT8, I’ve been actively loading my strategies from other systems into it. Thus, I have been learning C#.
What I have been doing is downloading various indicators and creating my own.
The indicators that I have downloaded and like thus far are:Price action Swing, zScore, ATR Trailing, McClellan oscillator. I really like these indicators, but it’s to much for me on the chart. More over, these are lagging indicators and I need something that is leading.
For a leading indicator, I’ve turned to reading the DOM and understanding Order Flow. I will admit this a significant area where I lack knowledge, so once again I turned to google to help me. I’ve discovered two sites that offer free trading exercises, pricesquack.com and jigsawtrading.com, (I hope I can link the websites here). I do not use there products and know very little about them, except that I have been using their free trading drills. Normally, I would use my real account for this, but this time I’ve decided to use a sim account (this is a first for me, normally I just trade my account and not worry about it.) But, I’m tired of giving the market money and I’m dedicated to learning how to trade.
Open ended Software issue: I’m going to upgrade my life time license to a multi-broker because I really like NT8 and I want to link my TD Ameritrade to it.
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After creating my journal yesterday, I decided to take my training wheels off and trade real money!
I plan on continuing to sim trading, utilizing the lessons that I high lighted in my previous post, as I feel I still have a metric crap ton to learn about the DOM and Order flow.
For Order Flow, I’m using the more expensive data package from NT, that allows for volumetric charts. While I don’t think these charts are the holy grail of trading, I do find that I really like them and they complement price action trading.
I did two trades today, but then my real life called :-).
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Thank you both for your feed back. I tend to agree with you both, but I will say that I'm super surprised at how order flow has supplement Price action. I've been using Volumetric charts along side my DOM and that helps tremendously. The ability to see the volume at each interval is awesome...
Also, I have integrated Delta into the fold.... I'm learning a ton, that's for sure.
I will post a picture of my chart in a bit, work and trying to trade are up.
Today's trading started off all SIM, but then I ended up trading real money on MES. On the Sim, I switched over to ES to see how that would go. I also started thinking through my position size.
My observations: And please experienced traders, comment the heck out of my approach!!!! As I want to learn this!
My trading goal is to build a 5 - 10 contract position and either bulk exiting or bulk exit with runners.
1) Timing is significantly different than building a 10K + share count stock position, or maybe I just suck at building stock positions :-)
2) Buying into a pullback can be an expensive drawdown on the account, at one point I was down $1800, but I ended up finalizing the day up $1500.
a) The reason for the drawdown was because of stops or being early on the Longs/Shorts, please see my decision point below.
b) Timing is key, and I will have to refine my entry points,
3) Stops Decision: I have one of 3 decisions to make here:
a) Remove them
b) loosen them up
c) wait for less volatility
Switching over to MES provided much better results as the market slowed down, and I was able to add to my P&L.
When you are typing a post into the "Reply to Thread" editor, if you look over just to the left, you will see a big icon that says "Drag and Drop Attachments, Paste Images." Try that -- it will take your image. It will put your image wherever you have the cursor, and you can move the link it creates to any other spot you like.... It works like this:
I just did a copy/paste using the Windows snipping tool. It will take image files too. Play with it, you'll like it.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
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Let me be sure to make clear that the method is to use that big icon as the receiver for the image. You drop it on that big square, and it takes care of it.
In case I didn't explain it, I wanted to be sure I made it more clear....
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
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Yesterday, I solidified my Ninja Trader setup, for how I want it displayed. I also SIM Traded for the hours that I can watch the market. I had 15 trades, 1 - 12 were pretty good, but 12 -15 where absolute crap, as the market went sideways and I gave back most of my profits.
Key takeaways: I decided that I like NT setup as per the photo.
1) Right side, is the DOM, with my accounts above.
2) Middle is my Volumetric 3 min chart, with POC and imbalances being shown.
a) I have the POC and imbalances turned on, as well as the Delta Analysis Bar
b) For the Delta Bar, I have selected Trades / Volume, Delta (Bar), Delta % Change, and Cum Delta
I like the Trades and volume, as it shows me how many players are in the market and the volume they are trading
I like the Delta bar, as I like to see the change, but I'm not sure how useful this is, yet. Other than showing how the Cum Delta is going to change.
I like Delta % because I believe that shows how aggressive the buyers are....
I like Cum Delta as it shows whose in control and the overall divergences
3) On the left side I have a 15 min chart, where I will draw out patterns that I see, and I have the Order Flow Market Depth that shows me where the Limit Order are.
So in my brain I see:
1) Support and resistance by the Order Flow Market Depth, I can also see when orders get pulled faster than I can on the DOM.
2) A rapid change in imbalances, or a market sweep on the 3 min chart, to show signs of reversals and aggressiveness of the traders
3) the overall market DOM, where I see areas of liquidity.
As you can see from the accounts, I started off on the SIM trading this morning around 7:45, I saw the long setup, or what I thought was a long setup, and my profits confirmed my hypothesis.
So I switched to live trading
1 did 4 trades, 2 scratch, as I second guess myself around the lower support area.
1 I pulled to early, as it was on the first bar down, and made a tiny profit, like .60 - I find that I'm getting into the market a little early on both my SIM account and my real account. I really need to work this out.
Last trade was bought to high, IMO and my stop was hit.
Any tips, recommendations, etc... I'm all ears....
NT Setup
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It looks like you are using a discretionary intraday approach, with guidelines for entering and exiting trades but not the hard rules of a mechanical trading system... if that's right, my suggestion would be to spend as much time as you can going over charts from the past few weeks or months, focusing on the daily time period that you like to trade in, and practicing and refining those guidelines for entries and exits.
My own preference has been to scroll a chart showing past data forward one bar at a time manually and make decisions as if I were trading live. I'm a big fan of Brett Steenbarger's books on improving trader performance... his recommendations and those of others regarding the usefulness of "deliberate practice" have been very helpful to me.
Best of luck to you.
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It is easy in Ninjatrader to set your account to show commission. It can add up so I would include it.
Also be realistic. It looks like you are trading a $1000 account as your real funded account. Even $22 profit would be a 2% return in a day.
Don't try to make good money at this stage, just focus on trading well and following your rules and learning from what you are doing. Consistency will grow an account and allow for scaling up but rushing to make money risks blowing out a small account.
Good luck.
Trading, ideally structured, is a vehicle for expanding consciousness, not damaging it. - Brett Steenbarger
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I absolutely concur with what your saying. I’m focused more on the trade execution and getting that down than worrying about the account balance. Playing with $1,000 keeps me from making dumb decisions, I think... No proof in that, yet, but I don’t think I need to add more money to the account, YET. Another thing, it’s easy to build a position of 10 contracts in SIM, I find that I’m not that keen on doing it in live. And have kept my largest position to 4 contracts.
@Sloptrader That’s a good idea and I might start doing that, but I have found in the past, I would just go wild with a position since I knew the outcome.
It’s my lack of self discipline that I’m finding to be an issue. So honing in on my psychology is key for me.
From one underfunded trader to another, its best to trade with what you are comfortable losing. Even if it means trading for less profits. Its a very common stumbling block, I think most of us have been there, so no need for proof.
Also, might want to consider dropping SIM at this point, I find it creates more problems than helps. But this is just my opinion and experience with it.
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The one thing I really like SIM trading for is to validate my ideas, without spending real money to do so, with my trading setup, I'm expecting to see certain events, and I want to validate them. Utilizing my SIM account here, lets me focus on the process not worrying about the P&L.
So I'm not ready to remove my SIM practicing just yet. Another aspect that I like SIM Trading for is running the drills that I mentioned earlier. The one drill, staying in the market, I do not want to do with real money. As I would have a heart attack :-)
The one thing that I've found with the SIM is that I like validating my ideas. The one thing I hate about the sim, is it cannot replicate having real money on the line.
Well, I can only chime in with story of my own struggle with it as an example. I had similar thought for whole 2019, I even had a sim journal here, and I've been a millionaire in SIM during those periods. Guess how much money I made trading those exact same ideas validated through SIM? I lost more than I made
Trading is funny little business, and money is even more funny business, it changes everything. Its just far better to test ideas on smallest tradable contracts than on virtual money. Especially if you are doing it discretionary. Again, its just personal experience, there have been many smart people here who have made good use of SIM in their own journey. I wish you similar fortune.
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You're correct! So today I decided to do both SIM, then read your post and put on my big boy pants and went live. Here are the results, now mind you, I just hit close on the SIM account, versus playing the zones....
I had a short bias coming out the gate. Please note I only had 1 trade, for a positive $10. I'm done for the day, unless I see a full correction down on the 15 min chart. I saw a large order sitting around the 46 mark and went short into it. My original price target was 43, but I hit close and with slippage got the $10 gain. I have to be willing to hold just a little longer.
ON the bright side, I didn't lead the market I waited until my price point hit to enter. Normally I would have done those shorts going into the bigger more. STupid trades!
Oh and my analysis is that the large volume + positive delta is showing a mini top for now now we either build a base, or pull back a little. This is based on the extended 15 min chart, and the Volumetric chart.
Now I get to see if I'm correct!!! Time Stamp: 8:44
1_25_21_Trading
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Time Stamp 10:31! WOW... what a move to the downside into some serious volume around the 38 area!!!! To bad I missed it, as I had to work. I'm still happy with my $10 move :-) and being able to read the information presented by my setup.
On another note: I do think being happy with your UI (NT8) is very important. I say this with my 5 days of NT experience
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On that note, I think this whole platforms and indicator suit thingy is way too overrated. You just need to find what you need and move on. For some people it maybe just some charting platform, for some it maybe order book and for some it maybe just keyboard with dedicated keys.
As you say it, sometimes its just better to be happy with whatever you have
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Today's bias was initially bullish starting around 7:39, due to work I could not follow the market more. I got my 1 trade in for a positive $10 scalp. 2 contracts, on first pullback.
I can now pay for my trading data with money made from the Market!!!
Trade 1, on the 8:12 bar I saw the temp bottom coming with volume on the 8:09 bar, with a solid order @ around 3796.5 that was never pulled on the 15 min chart. I was a little ahead of the trade and was stopped out. This was not a good trade, I'm front running the setups.
Trade 2, was not the best trade either, I did get a better fill, but not the best.
The trade should have been on the 8:18 bar, with a mini-sweep being shown and solid buying.
Improvements: That I think I need to make:
1) Wait for the buyers, and join them, versus front run them.
2) I could have averaged up my position, aka leaned into it.
My Target for a long position is/was to exit around the 3810 - 3815 area, this is based off the 15 min chart, the blue squares.
Overall profitable on the day, and will most likely not trade again today.
Today's trades: I went short 4 contracts , as I missed the long entry due to life. On the 15 min I'm seeing the double bottom bullish setup, but I saw the extension, so I went short, waiting for the pullback to the double blue lines.
Either way, maybe I was a little early, but built a little position and then hit my target.
Today's trade was nothing special, but it did have some teaching points.
1) I knew we were at the top of the Range, so I wanted a quick scalp
2) Never answer the phone when looking for a trade setup. I got in way later than I wanted!!!!
3) The real job is more important than trading, as it pays the bills
4) First real week of trading has returned a little over 8.5% after trade costs, I'm pretty happy about that.
5) I still have to focus on my execution, but, it is getting a lot better.
In today's trade, I knew we were setting up for a down trend on the 15 min, but I also knew that I had a conference call, so I wanted to do a quick scalp.
What I saw: Positive Delta leading up to trapped bulls on the 7:51 bar. then a pull back with less traders, the 7:54 bar. Then no sellers, and buyers on the 7:57 bar, to include a small sweep. so I went in for a small scalp and hit sell as I work got in the way for the positive gain. My scalp would have worked for a point, but it is what is is. Then much, much weakness setting up... as rejections at the top blue line sets in.
I've been looking at Ninja Trader's analytics and I would like to learn how to best utilize it. I've attached my January stats to review and any help the community could provide, I would greatly appreciated.
If you read my journal you'll see that I really didn't go straight live trading versus Sim / Live trading until it was recommended by a community member (LastDino) on 1/25/2021.
When looking at my summary page, it seems my entries are not the best, because the Avg MAE is $11.92, so does this mean the average trade goes against me by the $11.92 amount. If this is true, I understand that, as I stated I need to work on my entries.
How else should I utilize this information, how can I improve my trading with it?
Also, is there a way to have NT calculate my Commissions?
Looks like you were trading futures, so it's probably best to also view that analysis using the 'ticks' setting also. Once you do that, your MAE will be displayed in ticks...or whatever the micros display, I guess. Anyway,
One way to use the MAE stat is to say, in effect, "Since my MAE is 10 ticks, I'll enter positions by setting a limit order 10 ticks away from the market ... where I previously would have used a market order, once my strategy gives a signal."
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Tonight's Trade was 4 contracts for 1 point. I went to move the profit target up a bit, but it was hit before I could move it.
The 15 minute down channel hit the bottom on decent volume, so I was looking for the retest and exhausted sellers. The velocity up was pretty quick and I got my profits out of it.
almost looks like a short setting up, but I don't like to trade Sunday's, but the setup was to nice to ignore when I went to test out some analysis functions that I'm learning about.
This is still technically January :-) So do I call it that I made 10% this month? I'm down with that, if I can continue this path and double my money this year.
At one point, not sure when that is, I will start putting more money into this account. But, I want a few months of trading under my belt first. Maybe I will dump my stock money in here. Time will tell.
Today I was able to make a few more trades than normal, 4 trades including what I did Sunday Night.
Today's trades:
1) I went short, thinking that we would break down to the 3728 area, but quickly covered when I saw us put in a temp bottom.
2) I went long on the rapid up swing, but was behind on my buy in... I knew where I should have bought at, but didn't. I got my point and a half here.
3) I saw us come back to a POC and went long off the bounce off of it. I sold quickly, because I was in the green and thought to myself, man I have traded a lot today.
Time Stamp, at 0930 CST, I think a short top is in, but I'm not trading anymore for the day, as this is the most trades I've done in a day.
Thank you userque for telling me about the commissions. I was able to get it activated. Now I want to verify that it's correct versus my statements.
Today was only 1 trade with me really wanting to observe the market, due to somethings that were new to me.
The Trade:
1) I saw the initial spike at the open, and waited for a pullback to get in. I took the 3807 entry based on the POC, and went for a 1.5 point run, which hit.
My observations: To learn about
1) each time the market ran up, it had volume behind the move, each break out had a some form of sweep initially. What threw me off was that these sweeps would then go back and be filled.
2) Another thing that threw me off, I was expecting pullbacks on the 15 min chart, and each transition had almost zero pullback.
3) As soon as we started printing new highs, I was looking to go short (this is what would blow up my accounts in the past), but the Volumetric data, and the Delta stats on the bottom showed to not touch the train....
I'm sure there are more things to learn, but for now that was my big take away.
After moving my contract size to 5, I'm going to hold it steady here and focus on the trades and not worry about size. Once I can get to $1500, so making 50% of my account, I might move to 1 or 2 contracts on the ES.
But, this is all based on how my trades go.
What made you increase contract size, or move to the majors from the minors?
I like the rules quoted by Trailer Guy: I've done the sim game, now I need to work on 3 points consistently for several weeks.
Is it 3 points for the whole day, regardless of contracts or is it 3 points worth of 1 contract??
I have heard that it's not good to put a quota on yourself. Is that true or false?
I made another topic on the subject and really appreciate the responses I got here:
$25 is two stinking ticks on the ES. The average noise channel has got to be around 12.
Bob West is very polite. I am more of a Dutch Uncle. I do not mean this to be rude so do not take it that way. You said you are new to this game so I ask where …
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2) I didn't follow my rules, I was trying to get 3 points per swing, and with larger stops. Well that didn't go the way way I wanted it to be. At one point I was down over $800 on the $1100 account.
I definitely got to big for my britches and got eaten alive in the initial chop of 5.
Emotions, were in check, I believe. I didn't get back in the market to try revenge trade.
My stops were bigger than my positive takes. So I was already behind in that regard to risk reward.
I had to move out to the 5 and 15 min chart, as I don't think my brain is fast enough to process the quicker time frames and make money on it. This seems easier to read for me.
The other change that I made was adjust both my profits and stops targets. Since I'm trading 1 lot, I've made my stops more of a daily loss and daily profit targets versus a per trade loss. This has opened me up to be able to read the chart a little better, I think. I'm testing it now.
The one thing that I've notices is that I'm not letting the position run much at all. If you look at my trades even today, I cut both my short position and my long positions early.
I need to work on a lot of things to get this dialed in to where I'm happy with my trading. Until then, I will keep trading my 1 lot live account. Regardless of how much money I put into the account.
I learned my lesson (the hard way) going to 5 lots per trade. I would rather 1 lot it and scale in!
I'm still a little mad at NT and Phillips, this was my first 1/2 month with them and they have messed up my account now twice. I will be calling there 24/7 trade desk, as they keep screwing my positions up. I have not positions, yet the past two days have shown that I have open positions. I'm not sure what's going on...
frustrating.. I came to NT and Phillips for stability and speed of data, execution, etc.. and this is happening...
well after a few days of screwups by Phillips, I'm back in the saddle. I was on the phone with 24/7 service last night and sent my trade logs to them. One nice thing about having a trade journal on this site, is record keeping.
Today I traded 2 trades:
1) The market looked range bound off of key volumes that I look for. The blue lines are drawn by me when a I see a certain volume hit. I went short initially thinking it would drop, which it did. A mistake that I did was hit close and the price action jumped up 1 full point on me. So that was a very small trade.
I saw the market selling off with decent size volumes, so I was leaning short. But, then my real job needed my attention. I was able to watch the sell off but not participate. But I was able to land trade 2.
2) Trade 2 is my favorite setup of all setups in the market. I was able to get take a decent trade when I saw the POC hold.
Hind site, of course I should have held longer, would have could have, etc... But I walked away with over 2 points today.
I’m having some issues trading futures. Mainly, I find that I’m always looking at them and avoiding other things in my life. I’ve been placing way to many trades and I’m no longer enjoying it. With that, I decided to go back to stocks, where I’m more willing to hold for longer for a swing trade.
With futures, I was always wanting to get in and out, rapidly thinking that it would work, but I quickly found out it does not workout the way I thought it would.
So I’m now using NT8 with TD Ameritrust for stocks.
-- it will take your image. It will put your image wherever you have the cursor, and you can move the link it creates to any other spot you like.... It works like this:
