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No more 2-tick wonders on my 3 evals that had reached profit, as they made the funded PA cut last night. I thought it would take until tomorrow, but maybe I didn't count right, or they have less than 10 days required. Not sure. Either way, phase 1 done on those 3 accounts. I didn't trade them today as I am in eval bundle mindest, sort of like pushing it to the max on the freeway. Don't want to be coming off the freeway after hours of driving, maladjusted for the neighborhood, or trying to do both at once.
As far as the 'freeway driving' goes, I'm on day 3 of the 3 bundle accounts I have been trading most consistently. Got another good day done, but not without some bumps along the way. Last night as I went into the usual Kinder Gentler Scalping Period (top of the Asia session), it wasn't so kind or gentle. We are under the gamma vol trigger (now at 4146 --well, under, over, and all around, but under for the period under review last night), and things are therefore very erratic. Plus there was that NVDA earnings after the bell and some conflicted price discovery going on. Long story short, I was positioned way too big for this and took a couple of nasty hits out the gate. Recovered from it and then onto RTH which worked out well early on. Now I have to deal with some other things, so gonna leave it at that. (Drawdown on summary looks worse than it was. Not sure how NT8 arrives at that number as cumulative P&L was not much over half as much).
Hope everyone got some good trading done today!
You can't outsource confidence in trading decisions
Wasn't planning on trading today. I did my trades last night in Globex. I just focused on those 3 Leeloo bundle account evals. Got to within about $400 of the $3K goal (4 days of trading) and decided to take Friday off. I've been trading them super aggressively and it's probably better to slow down for the last mile. My mindset is in the fast lane this week, so better to wait until next week as I still need more trading days to qualify anyway.
My plan not to trade at all today was thwarted by Leeloo after I inquired about their minimum trading day policy for "one-time" PA fees. They have a special on right now for (supposed) one-time fees, at $119 vs the normal $250 so I went for it when they qualified the day before yesterday. However, when I looked at their website today, I noticed that they have a carve-out allowing them to switch you back to monthly billing if you trade insufficiently, but with no specification as to the minimum amount of trading required. So I emailed support and got the answer below, which I posted to their FB page for clarification.
In the meantime, I went ahead and traded those PAs just enough to avoid having a two day gap out of the gate. I went short 1 MES at 4172, right at the open, thinking we might have a move down initially. I had locked all of my systems out for the day, so had nothing open. Just took it in Rithmic, looking at my Tradingview charts. It went up and I scaled in 1 more MES short at 4188, where I thought it might dip to get me out on a retest of 4177, with an average position price of 4180. When it kept going over that level I just closed it and went long 1 ES for 5pts and called it a day. This should satisfy the Leeloo requirement, which also stipulates that a single micro trade doesn't count. Seems to me like they really want to charge monthly. Why even bother with the supposed "one-time fee"? One wonders. (Later: I got an answer from them and posted it below the images)
So, I have these PAs now, and one of the ideas that ran through my mind, as I frequently trade the ES Globex and RTH sessions for different reasons, in different ways, would be to reduce portfolio risk over the multiple PAs by spreading the trading sessions across Globex and RTH, not trading them all simultaneously all the time (I usually trade the first 2 - 3 hours of each session, not entire sessions!). In so doing, I also want to bear in mind that Leeloo, for example, requires frequent trading to maintain the One Time PA fee (and steer you towards more risk exposure!), versus monthly billing (see yesterday's post), and more importantly, to factor in the fact that historically, across all my trades, Wednesday and Thursday are my best days, while Sunday and Friday are my worst. Accordingly, there must be some overlap to get 5 sessions for each set every week, but that should be on my best days.
While I could probably have applied some thought and sweated this scheduling out, I typed in all the parameters for ChatGPT to come up with the optimal scheduling for one week, then flip it all around for the following week to alternate Sunday/ Friday account set exposure, and it came up with the following ideal schedule a few seconds. Accounts are all effectively traded every day as the funding companies all view Globex/RTH as one session, with the most exposure on my best days, the least on my worst days, and global exposure kept at a minimum to trade them all every day. Assuming I can get the PAs to meaningful sets (at least 2 x 2, better, right now would be 3 x 3 if I can get there with the current evals), this is what it will look like.
You can't outsource confidence in trading decisions
After the end of the Friday RTH session, I was kidding around with someone with whom I often exchange ideas during RTH. However, looking at the put/call ratios on equities and 0DTE options and comparing to a similar run-up in April with similar same put/call ratios and open interest trajectory over the period compared, maybe there was something to it. It sure doesn't look like there is very much short-term speculation going on, but I am just like a tourist pointing out things that must be all too obvious, not an expert with a nuanced grasp of these things. Either that or the ES actually breaks out. I really have no idea and no definitive bias (although I clearly don't trust the breakout until I see it, but always ready to accept it if it holds). In any case, it's always good to look at these things closely in case patterns do emerge over time, and to always get to know what drives the ES better.
You can't outsource confidence in trading decisions
I don't try to trade RTH during holiday half days anymore. It took some serious pain to eventually make that determination and stick to it.
I did, however, trade Globex yesterday. I don't think there is that much difference on the eve of a holiday. It's probably the same players and overseas currents in play. Sometimes, if it's really dead, I'll avoid it too. But last night was fine.
I took 3 trades and got the 3x $2.5K account ("$50K") Leeloo bundles I recently purchased at a 96% discount for $11 each over the required $3K profit targets. I think this was the 5th or 6th day of active trading. But while I traded the prior bundles (blew 2 accts per bundle, still have 2 intact per that I won't need as bundles cancel when 1 per bundle gets to PA) I had these on hold with my daily 2-tick win or lose out to log days. So I think I have a total of 9 days if I am not mistaken. Either way, very close and with enough buffer to run these with a couple of 2-tick win/lose and get them to funded PAs. It was VERY slow, so I had lots of time to do screenshots, lol.
Happy Memorial Day!
Three trades last night are shown below:
1. Globex opened with a 22-pt gap over the prior close and immediately sold off half of that (11pts). It continued sideways and down and after it made its way down a bit, I figured there wouldn't be that much buying interest until it tested HOY to see if it would find acceptance above or go down and fully fill the gap. I saw this, and went short, but it wasn't until I saw the 30 min footprint bar form a price rejector just above where I got in that I actually extended my profit target to just over HOY. I stayed mindful of the fact that price almost never tracks the obvious path down to that target. It often starts to do get tricky just above, as some exit early, others get the FOMO bounce entry for the target level, or just start positioning gradually, etc. So when I saw the semblance of a price rejector at the bottom (not enough tapering on the bid to be a true price rejector, but strong imbalance nonetheless and a first and no more UB), I got out. This was a bit disheartening as only one of my accounts reached the $3K required PT and it would have been really nice to get all three across the finish line in one trade. But it was time to get out.
2. I waited for a pullback and got it and took the trade but it was so slow that I had to scratch when it was time for dinner. I normally don't mind leaving a trade working unattended, but with a full contract out and so close to the $3K goal (over in one case), I just didn't want to leave it unattended. After dinner, I got another shot at that pullback, but it was the 4th pullback to this area and I figured this time it might just go up to VWAP and so I didn't take it. I don't like it when it's the 4th time back up or so, and I gave it a miss. Then, after 3.5 hrs price finally got to 1 tick over HOY and a lot of buyers came in but it was just hovering there for a long time and I didn't feel great about taking it long. Anytime, and in Globex especially, you can get a situation with everyone getting someone jams it through the critical level to do a stop run before going back up. It was about 60/40 long and I just didn't want to chance it, so I gave that a miss too.
3. The third trade was composed of two 4-lot micro entries (I trade on the ES chart in Sim and copy using Replikanto with MES conversion at the copier level). It was my bedtime and I had two sets of levels above, three really, but I didn't think it would make it to the third one, it was there just in case, and so I set three 4-MES entries. I also set the copier to the ratio setting with 1x for the two that were not yet over $3K and 0.5 for the one that was just over $3K, so I could build a bit of a buffer on that one (it was only $12 over the required $3K), but not subject it to much risk with a max of 3x 2 MES entries. On Tradingview I have a call hook to my cell phone for my alerts, so I put an alert at the first entry and went to bed. When it woke me up I went to check on it, put in a profit target 4 points below my first 4 MES short, added an alert at the second set of 4 MES above in case those filled too, and went to bed. When the second set filled I went over, checked on it, added more profit targets, moved it all up to a 3pts PT at 4227 under my blended short at 4230. I still had an entry short above at 4234, where I didn't think it would go, then went back to bed. The highest it went was 4232.50, then went back down to my PT and woke me up. I went over, checked everything, flattened all orders and back to bed. The good thing about these is that I'm not sitting there in front of the screen finding reasons to talk myself out of it before it goes to my PT. There were a few, as it went down and back up once before going all the way.
This was the price rejector that got me looking for HOY
This was the first trade
This was the partial price rejector that got me out
A mixed day today. Ended up hitting my -($90) DLL per account on my 3 live PAs (trading really small here in comparison to my recent bundle trading, where I took as much as -$1,000+ drawdowns).
It started off well in Globex, then at the open and a little way into the session, with a 100% batting average and about $66 profit (trading 1 micro mostly and then 2 for a couple of trades). Based on probability calculations I did a while ago using ChatGPT4 and posted here, $66 trading micros is on the upper end of the range I can expect for the day if I am trading 1 to 2 micros, which is what I had been trading up to that point, so it would have been good to pause at least. However, I am also trying out the 1-3-2-6 betting system (which I changed to 1-3-2-5 for my purposes), and I had barely gotten to 3 when my day started turning (and did go back to 1 but it didn't help. At least I didn't start sizing up).
My day turned for the worse when we got the first move back up, which I thought might be it for the downside, as there was a pretty decent price rejector at the bottom of the order flow and unfinished business at the top of the first 30 min bar. I actually didn't jump on that move up, either, I waited for a pullback, but it wasn't coming down initially and so I moved to the next pullback level up, then it started coming down and then pulled back much lower and kept going. I got caught flat-footed and made the mistake of going long 3 consecutive times at lower levels as it came down. It was also trading around 8 ATR on the 5 min chart, which is too much for my 3pt stop configurations. Taking it over and over on a strong move is an age-old mistake of mine for which I have other risk management things in place, as I am still prone to it from time to time. I took a break and then did the same thing in reverse below when it got to 4210. I was expecting it to go to 4205 and test that. It probably will. I just got caught out in the same spot I shied away from Sunday night in Globex (outlined in my previous post): the last few points to a big level. Thus, I basically had a -$100 swing in my accounts and that set off my -($90) DLL, so I am done for today in these accounts. That's a -2.7% loss against my $2.5K drawdown. It's fine. And better to quit the RTH chop for now as it was definitely moving in the wrong direction.
Today I also got the 3 new PAs approved, so that will be 6 altogether. So now I will just focus on these PAs and switch gears from the eval bundle trading approach. One of the things I decided to do is to track the bundle summary P&L altogether. I used to track just one of them, but I think it makes more sense to look at what they are all doing as a group and/or each set of 3, which I plan to trade per the schedule I posted over the weekend. The idea is to see what I am doing each day overall as the same trades are copied across accounts. I think this will help me be okay with small profits on each account, as they add up across accounts, and also keep perspective on losses (and how good it is to keep it to small losses, which also add up across accounts).
Later on it hit 4205, as expected...
You can't outsource confidence in trading decisions
Leeloo and one $2.5K ("50K") Apex account I started today to do some freestyle scalping with ES instead of MES and no risk management settings. Just to have one where I am not tied down, but also a single eval where there isn't that much pressure. If it works out I think I will add some more Apex accounts one at a time. Leeloo bundles at 96% discount are great and really cheap, but I'm not sure it works out cheaper in the long term. It's just easier to pass with 5 for the price of 1/2 on Apex (80% discounted), but if you get the one-time payment for the PA, it's double the price on Leeloo as Apex, so it actually works out for the worse. I guess they both have advantages and disadvantages. It might be better to have evals from both providers. Not so long ago I said I wouldn't do it, as it does leave a hole in my risk management system if I trade them simultaneously. Maybe I won't or try to find a way to do that. I didn't have to deal with it today. This is just an eval, not a PA.
Have a good weekend.
You can't outsource confidence in trading decisions
On my Leeloo PAs I had some technical issues last night, of my own making. I forgot I had set these to a -($90) max loss in Rithmic (thought I had only done it to my other set) and was trading ES in Globex, as I do, and when it promptly stopped me out and kept closing my orders I checked in the NT8 control center notifications and it said something about the data not coming through then I obsessed about it and was testing it with micros and it kept closing my orders (duh) and then submitted a ticket to support and found out what the problem was. So that halted the Globex session (with a silly win rate). I picked up this morning before the open, and put on 2 trades, one before NFP as it was coming down from the ONH (4 ES lots for 4 ticks per acct that reset my P&L), and then a level to level 1 ES short for 5pts after the news at a major inflection point where I thought it would turn. It did and it came down before going back up after the RTH open (put the order in at 4256 and it went to 4257 and then back down to 4244.75 before the open (NFP SOC)).
The Apex account doesn't have any risk management restrictions on it, so the trading stats aren't prone to enforced stop-outs (for better or worse, it's just a single Apex $2.5K eval ["50K"]). I traded that one a bit after the open and then had to leave and did a couple more just now.
Hope everyone did well or learned something. Have a great weekend!
You can't outsource confidence in trading decisions
Slow Monday. Was treading water in the PAs. Only traded lightly in the Apex account, that worked out better (also in ES on that one vs MES on the PAs).
You can't outsource confidence in trading decisions
