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While I have been looking at futures.io for a while now and learned a lot along the way, I would like to contribute myself.
Furthermore, I am looking for accountability, something I have always been lacking in my trading. I watched some of FT71 webinars where he says how important it is, and as I have no one I can really talk about trading with, this is where I'll hopefuly get it.
I will also be using Edgewonk 2.0 to journal all my trades which I started doing this week. It's been some time now that I realized how important journalling is, however I always made excuses to restart my journal or postpone it. Each time I would say to myself that today's the day, I will follow my plan and start journalling from now on. But each time I made mistakes and convinced myself that I will start my "real" journal on a great day where I don't make stupid mistakes. Unfortunately, those days are pretty rare. The last time this happened was Wednesday, which was a pretty good day according to my PnL but I was still not satisfied as I let one of my demons creep in, over/revenge trading. However, the next day I still journalled all my trades. I also did for the rest of the week. I always restarted my journals because I wanted them to reflect my trading when I followed my plan without doing obvious mistakes, but it has to account for all the other trades no matter how bad they are. The three days were positive, which probably helped me to continue, but now that I have started journalling I am not planning on stoping anytime soon, even if I have bad days. Just using Edgewonk over 3 days has given me accountability, having to review each trade when I have been overtrading makes it more real. Journalling on futures.io should just make me even more accountable.
Platform & Broker
I will be using Sierra Chart only with EdgeClear as my broker. I am grateful to have found Sierra Chart this early in my journey. I have spent so many hours exploring the software and love it, almost anything is possible and it is relatively cheap compared to others.
Process & Approach
I mostly use volume profiling and basic support/resistance for context and levels of interest and then confirm my entries with orderflow. I have tweaked the tools I use so many times but I now know I will be sticking with these. I fell in the same pitfall as most traders do as I kept changing my chart setups but now realise that I have to stick with one approach to gain confidence and experience.
I only trade MES and MNQ on ES and NQ charts. I am using a 29" screen and a laptop. On the 29" screen I am looking at 3 charts for either ES or NQ. My main chart is 2000 ticks on ES and 1000 ticks on NQ. The other charts are a heatmap also displaying large orders (like bookmap) and a footprint chart. I also look at longer timeframes for context. On the laptop I will be looking at the other symbol's main chart to always keep an eye on both ES and NQ.
Risk Management
Size is limited to 2 MES contracts and 1 MNQ contract as of now, it will be increased as the account grows (if this ever happens). I am using a small account of about $2200.
I will risk no more than 2% of the account on a single trade. My daily loss limit is 5%.
I will not scale In but will sometimes scale out, I always have a fixed stop and target. I will never move my stop however I will sometimes move my target to let the trade run if I feel it has potential, especially when I have a second contract. I used to micro manage my trades a lot because I lacked confidence and was scared of losing, so I often moved my stops to BE or to trail the trade too closely, not leaving it room. This has to be one of the worse mistakes I was doing, as often what would be winning trades ended up as breakevens whereas my losers were full stops.
One of the things I will track carefully on Edgewonk is how my trade management impacts my results.
That's it for now, thank you if you read this post and feel free to ask questions or give advice if you are willing to, I am also looking for your input with this journal.
You can see a screen of my setup and the charts I look at on the attached image. I took 2 trades on MES friday which was a pretty good day. nexusfi.com
The second image is a recap of the previous week. Edgewonk
As I started the journal on Sunday I will not write a detailed review of each day but will try to do so next week.
I had a great week that I mostly attribute to a better mindset, and probably some luck. I recently finished a 6 months internship so I had to finish a dissertation and prepare the presentation which made me anxious. When I am this anxious, I find it much harder to trade well as the anxiety already eats a lot of my mental capital leaving more room for my trading demons. I felt much more relaxed knowing this was behind me so I made less mistakes and was much more patient. I micro-managed trades less, left room for my stops while letting winners run.
I am not very satisfied of today, but still managed to end the day green.
I took 3 trades on MES and 2 on MNQ.
I was thinking ES would continue more to the downside to at least fill the gap and was planning to long from there if there was confirmation. ES was not able to break the onvernight low and rallied from there. In hindsight it looks like a relatively easy long trade from there, but at the time I did not like what I was seeing with the orderflow. I think missing that trade got me a bit tilted so I was impatient. I tried a short with a lack of confirmation that I should not have taken. From there it seemed to me that it was shaping up to be a trend day so I shifted my bias to long. As I was still impatient I entered long on a pullback so small that we can barely see it, definitiley not a good entry. I usually wait for a more important pullback to enter a trend as I did later, it's even better if the pullback happens to be on a level of interest. The second try worked well and got me back in positive territory, up about $10 for the day. I stopped trading there as I think there is strong resistance above and as I also don't want to be shorting a trend.
NQ trades were both pretty bad, as I was kind of tilted I switched between the 2 instruments looking for a trade, I probably should have just kept looking at ES.
Overall an average day, some mistakes but managed to end the day green. ES 18.10
Thanks for the post! What’s your normal criteria for entering on a pullback during a trending move? (Eg: 50% back + buy imbalances coming in on the footprint)
It's not something I have a predefined set of rules for, but ther are some confirmations I like to see.
First, I'd like the pullback to at least reach the 21ema (white on my chart). It should be significant enough to be visible on my main 2000 heikin ashi chart, so at least a few red candles in this case.
It is also better if the pullback reacts to a level, it can be a support/resistance that I've drawn, a LVN on the profile or a previous high in an uptrend for example.
Then, to confirm the trade I like to see big sell orders occuring near the low of the pullback and/or a negative delta at the lows showing absorbtion and potentially trapped sellers.
Finally, I want to see a rising delta as the price moves away from the lows.
Got it. That's a good reminder for me that I mean to watch for delta-in, delta-out on the footprint when I'm looking for a bounce but I often forget that piece.
I'm not very proud of the last 2 days, even if I managed to end both about breakeven.
Tuesay I could as easily have hit my daily loss limit, I started the day very poorly overtrading MES. While I've learned how to take a loss on a single trade and made peace with it, that's not the case with ending the day down. Each time I start the day with 1 or 2 bad trades I get tilted and overtrade, I really struggle to take a loss on the day.
Trading both MES and MNQ might not help in this circumstances, as once I overtraded on one I'll be looking for setups on the other therefore overtrading even more. I wonder if I should focus on just MES and stop trading MNQ...
Mostly stupid mistakes both days and overtrading, taking bad setups or even no setups at all. At least I stick to my stop loss so I can take a few losses in a row and still cover them with a winner.
My mindset was not in the right place, I was tired and I did not prepare before the open as well as I did last week which probably made me less patient. I'll try to trade less at the open as it is often the time where I will take bad trades that can tilt me for the whole day.
I did not trade last week as I hit my daily loss limit 2 days in a row the week before (21/10 and 22/10). That week started poorly with breakeven days and I was trading very poorly, not being patient and overtrading. I think this was also a consequence of poor planning. I took a week to review my process, define rules to try to get back on track. I also removed some stuff from my charts as it was overwhelming and some of it I did not even use to take trades.
I only traded Tuesday this week, I could not yesterday which pobably was a good thing as it was FOMC. Below is Tuesday's recap.
Tuesday 02/11:
I took 4 trades, 3 on MES and 1 on NQ for a daily PNL of $112.64. I used an All in All out management today as I think it is easier on the mind, I am less anxious that way and therefore am less likely to be tilted and overtrade.
[B]MES trades/B]
I took the first trade on MES on a pullback to the ONH, I was bullish and NQ was rallying at the same time. My target was below the resting liquidity at 4620. Average trade, I don't think the setup was great and it relied on intuition. I now look at my trades in 2 aspects, location and confirmation. The superior trade here would have been at the pullback to 4612, confluence of RTH VWAP, RTH mid and previous day high, I took this trade on MNQ.
Second MES trade was on a retest of the IB high, while the location is decent, I went in too early with a lack of confirmation, I was not confident and my stop was probably too tight. I reentered this trade just after being stopped out as it showed much better confirmation.
NQ1
The trade I took on MNQ would have also been a great trade on MES as stated earlier. I entered as MNQ was bouncing from a level with great confluence: ON high, Previous day high and vwap.
As the day was developing, I thought it looked like a trend at first. The first trade makes sense considering I tried to enter on a pullback on what I thought was a trend, even though the entry was not good. Then, I failed to realise that we might not get a trend day after the first loss. As The price held below the IB high and was not able to break it, I should have realised that we might get a balanced day and been more patient. I failed to see that and tried to long the MES 2 other times, getting stopped out each time, essentially was long during the whole leg down. I decided to change my bias after that and tried a short with not much reasoning behind, and of course got stopped out again.
I entered trades too soon after being stopped out each time and was almost always in a trade which probably did not help to be objective and really see what the market was doing. I should have been much more patient.
Here again I am questionning my process, contrary to other bad days I've had, I was not totally careless. The trades were made at decent locations (RTH VWAP and FS VWAP), but it was probably due to the fact I could not read the market and the context.
