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My name is Stanislav aka Stan, I'm from Russia.
In this journal I will share my experience in my new 20-day combine in TST-project.
I'm currently live trader of this project (I've gone through one combine in 2012 and was funded with 50K account) temporarily moved back to combine - this year I'm gonna to move back to funded team.
Basicly I'm pretty consistently winning trader in short-term trading style (1-3 days), but experienced some difficulties in transitioning to full-time futures daytrading. Daytrading requires more accurate trade location, perfect timing, always evaluating and reevaluting the odds - in other words, trading is more complex for daytrader than for short-term trader.
Yet, I've done a lot of preparation, I was doing a lot of simulation trades, analyzing my journals e t.c. Now I feel more ready for the challenge. In this thread I will share my experience with current 20-day combine that will start January 8th.
My trading style:
Basically I'm a momentum trader, so I work with rapidly moving instruments like CL and GC. Also I'm doing some trades on 6E (as I have more experience in currency trading) and occasionally ES
I use Market profile in Ninjatrader to identify market structure. Though I don't try to anticipate overall shape of the day, I rather try to see 3-5 days combinations of profiles to understand market conditions.
If I want to go with the breakoutat the edge of the price action, I want to see clues of hidden accumulation from institutional buyer/seller - later on I will try to cover this concept in this thread. I never go with the primary breakout from the accumulation area, I rather try to be in early majority and participate the market during second (additional) accumulation.
If market trades on its own (without institutional money participation) - we can see just cascading moves in both directions. In this case I will use rotational centers and work from inside of the range (not at the edge of the action) in the direction of the extremes (I cover there), I also have some clues on the chart that help me to identify them.
I dedicate much time to watching Jiggsaw DOM (thanks Peter Davies), it helps me to evalute tempo, aggressiveness, attemted direction and over features of price action.
Nice to see you here. It would be quite interesting for me to track your journal.
I expect you to share with us every trade you would take in the combine.
Unfortunatelly, yesterday I had a disappointing techical mistake with T4 platform - I was trading E-mini S&P500, then I forgot that buy stop orders in this platform need to be marked with "S" button, so I've placed some big order above the market to test the system, they were executed and market went against my position, so I've hit the loss limit - I was able to close this position for too late.
However, I believe there really is no way to set buy orders in advance above the market in T4.
Perhaps @kevinkdog or someone from T4 can confirm this (he would have to enter manually when his automated strategy gave a signal) - I enter at market so do not have an issue.
Been using T4 since April last year and just yesterday I did the same thing that you did on ES. And in CL I missed a trade because I had it set to execute stop orders and before I could switch to limit, the market had already moved 5-6 ticks.
Even if you save your settings for the month you are trading and you switch to a prompt+ month and back, it will wipe out your settings. It takes a lot of getting used to T4 especially if you are used to a platform that automatically figures out whether your order should be a limit or stop order based on where you click on the DOM vs where the market is.
I'm curious, Santiago: If you're good enough to hit the combine requirements (which, in my opinion, makes you quite elite), you have what it takes. Why not self-fund and work at your own pace while keeping all the profit?
I'm not sure of your financial situation, but you may find the option appealing, given the very tight losslimits which, as you found out, equate to your actual live account size.
