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Hello to anyone who reads this journal. I've been lurking for a few months now and decided to finally create my trading journal. I've read a ton of useful info here and hopefully someday this journal will be useful to look back on, especially to see what works best for me.
My background: Graduated back in 2009 from a state university, traveled the world for a few years working random jobs (Housekeeper in Germany, taught English in Thailand), worked at a few hotels in Chicago (front desk/housekeeping), and later got my CPA and went into accounting. Currently married to a wonderful woman and have two little dogs. I feel like I've already been dealt a good hand in life and am grateful for that. If I figure out how to trade that will be the icing on the cake, but if not, life goes on. Regardless, I'm going to give it my best shot.
My (current) trading views:
I believe macro indicators/fundamental analysis are more valuable for longer time frames (years) and price action is more valuable for shorter time frames (less than two months). I currently have a risk on/risk off approach for my retirement accounts and use macro indicators similar to what are used here: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RECPROUSM156N
I believe it is possible to make money as a retail trader and find that the most valuable webinars and journals so far have been Big Mike's, Scalper's Journey, and Linda Raschke. I read a few great books which got me interested in trading (Reminiscences of a Stock Operator and the entire Market Wizards series) and try to follow a lot of the lessons taught in those.
There is a lot of advice out there so I try to be a filter, not a sponge, and just take it one day at a time. Like many people say, it's a journey.
My current trading style:
I currently use Ninjatrader8 and trade MYM for the first 30 minutes of the open, go to work, then trade 30 min - an hour of MNQ at night. MNQ moves too fast for me during the day but slows down enough at night for me to trade my style. I limit myself to 3 trades in the morning and 3 in the evening.
I only place 6 trades a day because overtrading is a problem for me. I was doing pretty well over the course of two weeks (relatively speaking in that I wasn't losing money) until one night I was trading the MNQ on sim, won about 10 trades in a row (all 8 SL 8 PT). Switched to live, then submitted roughly 50 trades. Won some, lost some, but the commissions were killer and I wasn't sticking to any sort of trading plan, just trading on impulse. I have relegated myself to Sim for the next two weeks at least.
I currently am trading two micro contracts at a time. I do not manually intervene in these trades, however it is something I would consider in the future. Currently, I'm just testing to see how they work on their own.
I use unirenko bars like every other person who read Michaelleemoore's journal. I decided to give them a try because he seems to be successful and also a genuinely nice guy who's not trying to sell me on anything. He also just wants everyone to be successful. I know this style might not be for me but you never know if you don't try.
My indicators:
Handful of Simple Moving Averages - 17, 21, 30, 60, 120, 240
These are only used to show trends in different time frames. I do not use a MA cross at all
They also are really good at highlighting how choppy it is. When they are going haywire, it's a good sign to not trade.
Unirenko bars: MNQ settings 2-6-2 MYM 2-5-2
My entry triggers:
Limit order about 4 ticks above below significant S/R lines. I only draw a few horizontal lines at the moment. Hopefully there's a pullback at S/R but if not will place order at a point where I think momentum would carry price higher.
I will also trade continuation on a 1-2 bar pullback on a strong break from support.
I will only enter if price breaks through S/R even on a 1-2 bar pullback.
My orders:
SL 8 PT 8 Trailing Stop of 8 triggered at PT of 4
SL 10 PT 24 Trailing Stop of 12 triggered at PT of 4
Guiding Principles:
Look to the left - If there's nothing there or a big opening, that's a good sign.
Don't let price crawl in my trade, set it up so that if price moves into my trade, it explodes into it.
I'm going to use Big Mike's advice to not change anything for two weeks, record everything, and then only change a few things.
Like I mentioned in previous post, I have relegated myself to sim for next two weeks but I trade like it's real.
3 trades in morning and 3 in evening. 1st trade of morning (MYM) and 1st trade of evening (MNQ) were poor decisions. 1st trade on MYM, did not let it consolidate. Was caught in the middle. 1st trade at night (MNQ) way too choppy. Don't even know what I possibly could have been thinking. 1st trade of evening broke a cardinal rule that price should not crawl into my order. Should have cancelled. Oh well. Caught a larger move in morning and evening which saved the day. Certainly some luck involved there. Just barely stopped out on final trade of evening (MNQ) but it was a poorly timed entry. Too far from S/R so should have just waited for Pullback before entering.
Ended the day making one tick but was certainly a losing day factoring in commission. I had a pretty bad morning trading session. Evening session got my mojo back. I had a feeling it would be choppy in morning after glancing at the futures to see the change from overnight (Image from 1 hour before open). I'm currently not very good at trading in chop so I should not have traded at all. I don't need to trade three times in morning. I could've just traded zero times. I also have a problem of trying to trade in first two minutes of open. Those are typically my worst trades. I might wait 5 minutes before placing first trade tomorrow.
This has only been my second post but journaling has been an eye opener. I am finding that I don't abide by my own rules very well. I wasn't really reviewing my trades before. I would just go through market replay about 50 times. Sometimes I'd win a lot. Sometimes I'd lose a lot. Resetting just made me forget why I lost and why I won. I had somewhat of a strategy crisis after the morning trades since it seems like I'm just taking random trades.
I re-centered for the evening and remembered what worked for me in the past. I'm still a beginner but I spent about two weeks just documenting unirenko bar pullback types on the ES to see how successful each was. For example 4 advancing green bars and one red pullback. I wasn't even trading. Just manually logging in Excel (I'm sure any programmers are cringing). I don't even trade the ES but I was learning. That exercise showed me that pullbacks can work. I'm certain that I missed a few but I found that certain pullbacks in the direction of the trend had a higher probability of getting at least 4 ticks and the average was around 8. I typically trade 1:1 risk/reward or slightly less but I'm just testing out this 3:1 risk/reward because I will have to try it sooner or later. I can see already that I need to adjust my trailing stop on the 10 SL 24 PT but won't mess with that until my two weeks is up.
Well, I listened to TropicalTrader's webinar and also listened to the first 30 minutes of this:
They were very enlightening. Big takeaways were that I'm learning. It will likely take me time, maybe years, before I figure out what works. Right now I'm OK with that. Also, I need to have confidence in my edge so my first major goal is to turn $2000 on Sim into $2500 using my same style with no cheating, no extra trades, no resetting. If I can do that, I'm going back to real cash, but as many trading journals point out in their "I wish I would've known this when I started", I shouldn't be in a hurry to trade live. If I can't be profitable in Sim, I don't see the point of burning my real cash.
Overall review of my morning trades: Poor
Review of each trade set in chronological order:
MYM
1 Price crawling - Too far from S/R, Did not wait for pullback - choppy
2 Late entry but good buy zone - Manually intervened on trailing stop which was an error (would have been positive
3 Choppy entry - waited too long
Overall review for evening trades: Not too shabby - Definitely a little lucky but way better than morning
MNQ - Evening trades
1 Perfect Entry for 8-8.
2 Late entry but good buy zone. For 10-24, With stop of 12 instead of 10 would have
hit goal
3 Speed entry - Rapidly increasing pace - Saved day (Screenshot shows how time going slow for increasing green bars, then it really speeds up meaning real money entering game. About 5 seconds to place buy limit
Well morning session went awful similar to yesterday. Was saved in evening session similar to yesterday. I told myself to sit out the first 5 minutes of open since I pulled the trigger too fast yesterday and of course there was a wonderful trend that I just had to watch for about 5 minutes. I'm not setting any time restrictions in the future. If I see my setup, I'm going to trade it. Maybe I would've missed that amazing move up regardless, but I don't want any excuses.
When I did enter my first trade, it was a fairly garbage trade. I typically like to see at least 8 bars in the same direction before I consider entering the trade and I don't like when there's any interruption in that, even if it's one bar the other way. I want higher timeframes to be enticed into trading as well. 8-10 bars is enough to get their attention (at least that's what I tell myself). Anywho my first trade was a weak trend at best. Only took it because it broke S/R but there was no strength behind it.
Next two trades in morning (MYM) weren't awful but certainly not the best. They both had some short-term momentum and broke some sort of resistance, but they certainly weren't clear on the left. Easily in the middle of a larger trading range which I always tell myself to stay out of. I know some people are great at trading these but I'm currently not the best at it. I should have adjusted my PT on two of the trades since price stalled at Resistance, but I'm trying to not touch my stops. I really need to remember I only get three trades so I shouldn't waste them on subpar trades.
Evening trades on MNQ were much better. Very happy with all of them. Not only because the first two were successful, but because I actually listened to my own rules. First two trades on MNQ, I just kept moving my sell limits and buy limits away from price until a big order came through which carried me to the promised land. The 3rd one I could have probably entered earlier but price was not moving fast enough for me to justify entering.
I've certainly been getting luckier in evening this week. I think it's partially due to better entries and also that the bars move so slow that it's very clear to see when activity is picking up and pushing hard in one direction. You also have a little time to get your orders in where the morning you can be clicking your mouse frantically and miss by a second. Then watch price just pass you by.
I really have two entries. 8 -12 continuous bars in one directions followed by 1-2 bar pullback, then enter in same direction (as long as clear on left or big opening on left). The other is placing a buy/sell limit order 4-10 ticks from S/R and wait for a big institution or Daddy Warbucks can come through that I can piggyback on. It also could be a bunch of stops getting hit which fuels my advance as well, but I like to envision that the evening session is just a bunch of amateurs playing around and then a few big dogs come in here and there after they have dinner/drinks.
I'm slightly positive so far this week after commissions so that's good. It could be worse and maybe it will be by the end of the week, but I feel like I'm learning and that's the most important thing in this developmental stage.
Once I have a large enough sample size, I plan to evaluate which type of trade is more successful for me: the 8 SL 8 PT or the 10 SL 24 PT.
My goal is to to keep as many variables constant as possible so I can really see which adds value to my trading. I plan to keep unirenko bars constant because it clearly shows trend and my strategy is largely based on short term trend momentum. I plan to keep my two entries constant but will also be comparing which is more successful. The variable piece for me right now is my profit target, stop loss, and trailing stop loss.
I am tracking all sorts of fun stuff on each trade which is a pain to input but hopefully worthwhile months from now. I have just a generic screenshot of each trade in blue and will be just including this going forward as it's easier.
Pretty happy with most of my entries today. Best day of the week from a P/L perspective. The only entry I would really take back would be my 1st one again. Can't seem to win the first one. Considering scalping one just to get in the groove. Like making a layup before shooting a 3 pointer. Sticking with my current stop loss/profit target orders for full two weeks though just for the sake of the consistency.
The big win of the day was not jumping into trades that looked enticing but weren't really perfect. Limiting myself to 3 trades in morning/evening has really helped my patience. Now I still entered into one bad trade (1st of day) but I'm OK with the other few. On the 1st trade was trying to guess the direction of the day. I put a buy limit pretty far from where price opened so if it really started to move, it would be easier for me to enter. I do this often in evening for MNQ. Can't really do market orders based on my current SL settings. Also could get an awful fill if liquidity dries up suddenly. Anywho, didn't move my buy limit up fast enough. Oh well.
I included a screenshot of how I draw my S/R lines. I just zoom out as far as Ninjatrader lets me which is usually 1-2 hours. Then draw the high, low, and some of the areas that get hit frequently. That's typically the only drawing I do. I might add another high if we get one (I think I did today). I only trade for about 30 minutes so I want 100% of my focus to be on price movement. I'm watching like a hawk.
I also have started listening to some somewhat relaxing music while trading which makes the passage of time more enjoyable. This is what I was listening to this morning: <- Deep House Live 24/7 Youtube Station - Like something you'd hear on a beach in Ibiza. I've never been but that's what I imagine.
I'm still amazed with this Risk/Reward of 1:2.4. In the past few months, I only did less than 1:1, often more skewed to the risk side. I take the same entries regardless or R/R so it will be really interesting to see after a month or so if 1:1 or 1:2.4 perform better. Each time I see it go the full 24 ticks, I just think "Wow, how did that happen." It happens so fast too. My average time in the market was 15 seconds today.
All evening trades went well. Last one was extremely lucky. One of the main things I look for in evening session is accelerating price. If those bars start blinking or jumping, I start moving my buy/sell limit order closer to price. I pretty much always have a limit order in. I just have it pretty far from price and certainly far outside S/R. Far enough that if some huge order came in, I'd catch it maybe but price won't crawl into it.
I plan on doing a lot of market reply research this weekend. Love market reply. It's like back to the future. I just pick random days from a few weeks ago and see if I can be successful.
That's it for today. Good luck tomorrow to all of you trading real $$$!
Well finally won my first trade of the day finally. First two trades I was happy with. 3rd was a poor decision. Not a strong short term trend. Can clearly see all the Moving Averages going haywire. Bad sign. Whenever they are in tight grouping and in smooth lines, I win more. Clear trading range. Should have exercised more patience. I forced myself to watch after using my 3 trades and of course the break of the trading range I was looking for came moments later. No evening trades today of course.
Definitely had some valuable takeaways from the week. Whenever I traded against the 60SMA I tended to lose. I also left a ton of points on the table due to my 12 PT trailing stop on my 10 SL 24 PT - Might have to play around with that in market reply this weekend. I really screwed the pooch with MYM this week, but learned something about patience (I think) so that's good. I also know I was lucky a few times on MNQ so we'll see what next week brings.
On a whole, not a bad week. My sim account is as $2037. I started at $2000 about a week and a half ago so a little before I started journaling. Once I get to $2500, I will go back to live using 1 contract. My goal for the next week is to get to $2050 in Sim so $13. I can do that right? Haha, I hope. Certainly harder than it sounds. My goal for the next month is to narrow down what I want for my stop loss and profit target since I'm only going to start with one contract when I go live again. I just need to continue eliminating poor choices and hopefully progress will follow. I'm going to start posting my Ninjatrader Summary/Analysis going forward for my Daily results rather than my pivot table because it's easier.
The plan for Saturday and Sunday is to wake up around 7:30, run, then spend a few hours in Market Replay. I'm going to pick a random week from the past few months and try to go through it the same way I traded this week. 3 trades in morning and 3 in evening. Practice how you play.
I also plan on going through a lot more journals this weekend (new and old). This site is packed full of experience. I love starting at the end of the journals because people are very open and honest about what did and didn't work. All the mistakes I make, everyone else has made a hundred times over. A lot of people will have similar entries that I have. It seems it's all about eliminating mistakes and controlling risk. My hope is that I can retain some of the things I read and apply it when I trade so that I can maybe avoid some of the more painful mistakes. I love seeing the term "monkey brain". I've started using that in my everyday conversations.
I was reading this one on my lunch break and thought it was excellent advice:
I will try to share a few lessons of what I have gleaned in the trading business. Take it as a grain of salt. You may or may not agree with them or even think I am crazy but I believe in them.
Trading is the toughest psychological game on the planet. …
Ill be honest I didn't read all the posts yet, but I give props to anyone who uses Pivot Tables to track results. Im an excel addict, if anything can be tracked in a spread, its going in there.
Yeah, same here! They certainly get the job done. I'll still be showing my weekly/monthly results and any other stuff I track in pivot tables but for Daily just showing Ninjatrader since it includes commission.
Happy with the morning trades. I didn't change any settings from last week but it was a struggle not to. I was fiddling around with market replay over the weekend, testing out new trailing stops on my 10 SL 24 PT with a trailing 12 triggered at PT 4. Next week, my two orders will both be 10 SL 24 PT with the only difference being the trail, then I can compare which works. I already have it set up just not trading it this week on sim because I said I wouldn't change anything for two weeks and don't want to lie to the public.
The goal is to get my sim account to $2500. Started at $2000 almost two weeks ago and as of the end of today I'm at $2,040.12. It has been a slow crawl. Today should have been better than it was, but I'm happy any day I don't give fake money back to the market.
Overall, happy with morning trades. Won all my 8 SL 8 PT trades. Not as lucky with the the 10 SL 24 PT trades but that's how it goes.
1st trade of the evening was awful. I haven't been trading futures that long, but I've looked at these unirenko bars long enough to know that it's rare to get an uninterrupted line of 20+ green bars, even on a super strong trend. There's usually at least a tiny pullback. Anywho 1st trade on MNQ bought at the top of a decelerating long trend so poor choice. Should have bought a wee bit earlier. Sometimes when it's so slow I get tricked by any sort of pickup in activity.
Then I proceeded to sit on my butt and watch nothing happen for about an hour. Was getting ready to call it a day but the range was so tight for so long that I thought something must happen. I also figured everyone on east coast was probably wrapping up dinner around 7ish so they might be logging back on. That's what I like to tell myself.
Well my patience was rewarded. Acceleration, my favorite 1 bar pullback and the floodgates opened. Next minute was madness. Liquidity dried up and market was moving. Got FOMO and entered around S/R however I typically avoid placing entries so close to S/R and definitely got burned here. Waste of a trade. Oh well. Wrote it down, on to the next.
So to summarize the day. Happy with choices in morning. Two poor decisions in evening. Win of the day = Sitting for an hour just watching the bars and finally have my patience rewarded with a big move (for me). Good music makes the waiting more enjoyable.
I started really diving into some of the journals and whatnot on nexusfi.com. I was overwhelmed with appreciation that all these veterans are sharing their experiences/wisdom. This thread is amazing:
I've been somewhat systematically searching for the golden nuggets of information and wisdom that FIO has to offer in order to consolidate them into one place that will make it easy to locate and reference. There's probably more out there than …
That's it for today. I cut myself off at 7:30ish PM each night for some quality time with the ol ball and chain.
Could only take 1 trade on MYM this morning since I had a busy day at work but it was a good trade. It was a perfect set up. Trend in each time frame headed same way. Got through the chop. A string of strong uninterrupted bars with a 1 bar pullback not near a S/R line. Perfecto.
Started the evening off right. 1st trade was a good one. Then things really started picking up. There is no way I could trade MNQ during the day with my current style because it's way too fast and jumpy for me. In the evening it mellows out so it's almost like MYM in the morning, except when it picks up. Anywho made the same mistake I made yesterday except two times. Two FOMO trades after super long ST trends (to me a long ST trend is about 20 uninterrupted bars). I had a hunch it would continue down since the trend was so strong but it was really gambling at that point. I try to avoid any pullback that is greater than two bars but was blinded with greed.
I know this is Sim, but for me the motivation is to get out of Sim. I do not want to be in Sim. I'm really itching to trade real money again but clearly I'm not ready. I would have been up around $15 or so bucks today (which would have been great) but those last two trades put me in the hole.
I also notice that this week I'm doing way better with my 8 SL 8 PT vs my 10 SL 24 PT. I think the real reason for this is that I have too wide of a stop loss on my 10 SL 24 PT for my current style of trading. It's 12 triggered at 4 PT. I give back so many ticks and I know based on previous testing that something like 6 or 7 would do the job if I really have momentum behind me.
What have I learned from today that I'd like to apply tomorrow. Do not place an order if there are more than 15 uninterrupted bars in either direction.
The positive takeaway from the day is that I'm following my "clear on the left" rule. I've stayed out of some trading ranging and developed some patience that I did not show in my previous months of practice.
I'm sure this analogy has been made millions of times, but I really see how trading is the digital version of trench warfare. Each side holding the line. Testing for weakness. Advancing. Retreating. Big break. Opposing force rushes through the break in the line until defense can reassemble. Attack and Counterattack. I never want to be on the front lines (trading ranges) or even the first guys to break through (initial breakout). I want to be the medic coming through afterwards just picking up the pieces here any there and back to base before anyone realizes I was even there. Certainly caught in the crossfire today.
I definitely need to spend more time in market reply to get a bigger sample size for my strategy and really build trust in it. I'm inconsistent in execution so that doesn't help. My main focus the rest of the week will be entries where I waited too long. Next week will be nailing down a stop. Going to review the charts on MNQ now.
