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Hello everybody, thank you for your interest on my journey as a trader. Here I will be posting the ups and downs of my trading career, may it be long and prosper!
A bit about me:
I am still a rookie when it comes to trading. I started researching the markets at the beginnig of 2020 (before the pandemic hit), and started trading live on stocks exactly two days before the world went crazy. Needless to say that the strategies I was planning on using didn't work very well. I was smart enough to figure out that I was out of my depth, and I managed to lose very little money.
I stopped trading until october 2020. I was an engineering student back then, and I was writing my master's thesis. When I finally graduated, I was able to start trading again, but this time I switched to futures. I also dabbled in some algorithmic trading, developing systems to backtest strategies in the forex market, but I never went live.
When it comes to trading, what I like to do is scalping. My journey as a trader so far can be summarized by this headline: "man spends months trying to find the best market to scalp". I have finally settled on the MNQ. The spread is good, the commissions are ok, and it moves a lot. It's perfect for me. Also, knowing that other people here on FIO are scalping it succesfully gives me hope and drive to move forward.
My level of experience:
I have been watching the MNQ move for at least three hours a day for the past five months. During this period I also paper traded a lot, seeing what worked and what didn't. I'll explain my findings in my next posts. Having said this, I certainly have a lot to learn yet, especially because I don't have much experience trading live. You will watch me either crash and burn, or become a professional trader that makes a living trading the markets. I guess it will be fun to watch either way.
I will only trade money that I can afford to lose. I currently have around 750 dollars in my trading account. It wouldn't make much difference to me if I lost them all, which I think is a good thing. I will go very slow at first, trading 1 MNQ contract and trying to make 20$ a day. My daily loss limit will also be 20$.
Why I'm writing this journal:
I think accountability is important when it comes to trading. If I know that I will be posting all of my failures here, I will be much less inclined to make stupid mistakes. The shame of having to write a post where I say "I have lost control and blown my account in one day" is what will keep me in check.
I would be absolutely fine with losing my money little by little, 30$ at a time. It just means that I need more time to learn. However, I would be absolutely mortified if lost it all because I couldn't control myself. I am the captain of my mind god dammit!
Will I be a winner or a loser? Well, at least I will be a player. Hopefully a player that plays by the rules.
My trading style:
As I said, I like to scalp. I've tried many different styles, but scalping is what comes natural to me. I trade the MNQ, looking for at least 16 ticks of profit with a 16 tick stop loss. If conditions are good, I often try to get more than that, looking for a 2:1 reward to risk ratio. Sometimes, if the market is moving with conviction, I'll ditch the take profit and just trail the stop hoping for a bigger win.
I only trade the first two hours of the US session. Right now I start the day with the live account, and once I reach my maximum profit or maximum loss I switch to sim. This way I still get to experience all the action and hone my skills. 16 ticks in the MNQ is 7.12$ after commissions, so it takes about 3 trades to reach my daily goal. This means that I am usually done with the live account in the first 20 minutes of the trading day. When I switch to sim, I try to take it as seriusly as possible. The goal is to one day be able to just scalp away like a professional. In total, counting both live and sim trades, I'd say I do anywhere between 20 to 50 round trips a day.
My trading setup:
Trading platform: Sierra Chart with Denali data feed
Broker: AMP/CQG
News squawk: TradeTheNews
Well, I wanted to make my first journal entry today, but my clearing firm (CQG) had other plans. Apparently they were having some problems today, and my broker decided to raise margins to 25%. I didn't have enough cash in the account to trade with such a high margin, and I wouldn't trade anyway if there might be problems with my orders. So I just took a holiday for today. I hear that now the issue has been resolved.
I wanted to post some pictures here to show the tools I use when I trade, but I discovered that I need to have a higher post count to add images. No problem, I'll do it as soon as I can.
All right here is the first journal entry. We kick off the week with a nice green day, I took two trades today for a total gain of 18.24$ after commissions. Both trades were winners.
I took both the trades right at the open, when volatility was high. I don't usually trade during the first minutes of the day, but price was moving with good continuation so I decided to enter. When price is moving like this I like to enter with stop orders, and usually because my target is small I'm able to get out almost immediately. In the chart below you can see my entries. Honestly I don't know why they are slightly offset from the candles, but I think it is because I use denali for data and CQG to clear my trades.
This is a 4 tick renko chart. It moves really fast, especially at the open. I like to use it for these quick momentum scalps. Sometimes I use an 8 tick chart, or even a 16 tick chart, depending on how the price is moving.
As you can see I have a few basic indicators on the chart, I'll try to explain everything tomorrow in a separate post.
In any case, I was able to reach my goal of 20$ a day (almost) so all is good. See you tomorrow!
Congrats! I have been trading the mnq for about a month now using a 5 second candle stick chart. I've found more success swing trading intraday using 3 targets (2 at 20 ticks, 1 at 40 ticks, and 1 at 100 ticks).
I personally need the big wins to offset losses.
Double entry on the journal today, because yesterday I was too busy.
2021-06-23
This was a losing day unfortunately. I was in a bit of a rush, and unprepared to say the least. I feel like I took too many trades and got too carried away, usually I'm more selective with my positions. Still, it's just a 22.80$ loss, nothing to worry about.
2021-06-24
Today price action on the MNQ was a lot slower compared to yesterday. I took five trades, but I had to scratch two, and I took a half stop in one. There was a lot of back and forth in the price action, and I decided to switch to sim while I was up. So, it's just a 7.60$ but I'm happy with it.
So far this is still a positive week, hopefully I'll be able to come back strong tomorrow!
Used to do the same thing..(used one of your chart examples 6-23)....but found I had to eliminate trading in Chop....take a look at what I did....added a TDI indicator (put rectangles around chop) and also a SMAHist indicator at the bottom....note the horizonal lines at 3 and -3...if you are not outside of those..... didnt take a trade....in chop, shows chop.....I see most of your losses are in chop trades....also note the TDI indicator when it has broken out(the other strange shapes)....shows a good time to take a trade as long as SMAhist is outside the horizonal lines(3 -3)....been there done that......hope this helps a little....
Non vedo l'ora di vedere i tuoi risultati, anche ho appena iniziato live trading sul MNQ oggi.