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Earlier this year started trading index futures full time. Started with trading YM moved to ES and currently trading TF. Before trading futures I have been part time swing trading stocks and stock options for many years. I have some great years trading stock options and as a result of trading gains have been able to buy few real estate properties out right.
Personally while swing trading is good and could be great there are weeks and possibly months of draw downs and will be difficult to do it full time. So few years back started researching on trading the indexes intraday and started the journey of finding the best indicator ( probably tested every standard indicator out there with different settings and even few custom indicators and more I was looking into indicator I was moving away from the price action and was getting less and less profitable ). While I have not traded intraday before, finally was confident enough to trust my system and quit my IT job.
While I was expecting a learning curve in day trading futures to be consistently profitable and since I never traded and liked Sim started with trading single contract and found money leaving my account faster than I expected and liked so started trading spot forex for few months. Later moved to trading ETF's DIA, SPY and IWM. Currently trading single TF contract and I am yet to be consistently profitable. In this journal I will be posting my daily trades of futures EOD and will do it as long as I find it useful.
First want to say Thanks to Big Mike for this excellent forum and site.
Made two major blunders
1. Having a open position before news release and no stop cost me 37 tick in seconds. Rookie mistake should have known better.
2. Around 9:20 did not exits my long position, had major draw down. Should have closed and opened short. Cost me lot in mental capital and 17 ticks. Suffered from near time bias during the time.
Also been aware of going to post in futures.io (formerly BMT) made me observer while trading cost me some because of this earlier in the day.
Ended with +12 tick profit before commission and exchange fees. My broker and exchange are the winners today. Could have been be a good day if I traded properly and reached my goal of 30+ ticks easily.
Note: Blue lines are profitable and Red lines are the loss trades. I trade using 400 tick charts, but is lot easier to see my trade with 200 Tick, so is using it. Also use 20 moving average on 400 ticks and on this chart made it to 40 moiving average.
Tuesday -70 Ticks
Wednesday +20
Thursday -15 ( Went from +50 to -15 in the last couple of hours)
Friday +50 ( 20 TF and 30 CL - traded for around 2 hours)
Tuesday there is more reversal's (tails) in TF that any other day this year that I can see. All of my trades went 10 to 15 ticks profits and closed with losses. I trade based on 400 ticks charts, while my system is solid, I have problem with jumping into the trades earlier and getting out too soon or staying too long. My problem is I do not have the patience for the trade to develop and execute properly.
Main problem is timing my entries - while my system gives crisp signals I just could not execute in proper way. I trade stocks and options and could holds for days and weeks without issue, but when I trade the futures based on Tick charts I get impatience and jump in and out too soon most of the time.
Then I realised since Tick chart does not have time component and can paint ten bars in one minute or 1 bar in 30 minutes my mind is not able to comprehend how much time I have to give for the trade to develop so I could get into position and once have 10 tick profit could close immediately or any number of trading related issue was related to not having time in my charts. While I have time based charts in one of the monitor, but since I was executing based on Ticks chart I was not giving TIME its due weight in trading. While on Tick charts my signals are crisp and clean going forward will be trading based on time based chart and moving the tick charts to secondary monitors. While trading on time based chart I feel more relaxed and my stop placements are better and was giving enough time for signals to develop and execute and stay in the trade for the optimum amount time and I am looking to better as time goes on.
Take away: If you do not have the TIME in your charts and still struggling with discipline issue try the old fashioned time based chart a try.
To do for the coming weeks:
1. Trade for less hours maybe 3 to 4 hours a day. ( As I worked for 40 to 50 hours in my regular job plus 20 hours in the stock market for the past 10+ years - I have hard time walking away even after reaching my daily goal. Sometime I turn form + 70 Ticks in -20 ticks. Stop doing that)
2. Improve my stop placements.
3. Change from learning mindset to earning mindset and focus on closing positive everyday ( Walk away if preset loss limit is reached)
I did get rid of the time.
You are talking about bringing it back.
Whatever worx for you.
I mostly daytrade TF and there is no time on my charts.
I use tick(100 to 400 depending on activity) and Range(10 ticks will work most of the time I will stretch to 15 ticks on extreme trading activity) but usuallly:
255 ticks and 1 point range bar(10 tick).
I am not right you are not wrong. You came up with that conclusion and results will dictate if you keep or modify your new setup.