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I’m a 33 year old looking to retire early (aren’t we all?). Been trading since November of 2008. For the first few years, I dabbled in Forex trading, without any success. Haven’t blown any accounts, but haven’t turned a profit either. After a couple of years of calling it quits, I started trading stocks and holding for larger periods of time, with better results, but not spectacular. In 2017 I started trading options, with even better results, until the global pandemic hit and I barely managed to keep the account loss under 25%.
Still trading options and investing in stocks right now, hopefully with a few lessons well learned, but now I want to set aside a small amount of money for daytrading Futures (mostly the stock indexes and currency futures). The starting amount will be 5000 EUR and I’ll be trading through InteractiveBrokers.
Hopefully, this thread will keep me disciplined and bring a little more accountability to the mix. Feel free to comment and let me know when I screw up as I start posting my daily trades
My account was just funded and I executed my first trade in the Micro E-mini S&P Futures: a 4 point scalp on the long side. I can't post a chart right now, unfortunately, since I have less than 5 posts, but here are the trade details:
Symbol: MES
Entry price: 4534.5
Exit price: 4538.5
Net P/L after commissions and fees: +$19
Notes: I struggled with the thought of closing it as soon as it was 1$ in the red. Thankfully, I stuck to the rules and let the trade develop. I manually trailed my stop and finally got stopped out at the beginning of a correction back down near my entrypoint. Once I get to 2 contracts per trade, I will close out one contract for a smaller target and give some more room to the other one (using a wider trailing stop), but right now I want to build discipline and keep it simple for at least 1 month.
I was very busy at work today, but managed to place a 5 point scalp on the Micro E-mini S&P.
Time of entry: 10:24 EST
Entry price: 4530.25
Exit price: 4525.25
Exit time: 10:41 EST
Duration: 17 mins
Net P/L after commissions & fees: +$24
Notes: Still not used to Trader Workstation, I made a few weird mistakes by trying to place orders on the chart and actually lost 2.25$ out of the above profit (another sell order was triggered and then bought back for a 1 tick loss - with commissions, that's about $2.25). Besides that, I was pretty disciplined with how I managed the trade. The initial stop was for 5 points, but 2 or 3 minutes later it was moved to 1 point above my entry.
I felt like it wouldn’t be of any benefit at the moment for anyone to describe that, until I’ve made at least 50 trades and there’s at least an inkling that the methodology is profitable… It’s a discretionary approach, based on price action, support and resistance and OHLC prices from higher timeframes. I also use an intraday VWAP and trade the first or second touch after the trend is established. You can see that in the previous two charts I posted. Those were both trades taken at the VWAP (the line that looks like a moving average). I enter trades on the 1 min, 2 min or 5 min charts.
I’ll be going into more details as I post more trades.
Here are some fundamental rules and targets for September:
1. I will execute a maximum of three trades per day.
2. I will take the day off when I have reached a profit of $20 or more (4 points in the micro emini).
3. I will take the day off when I have lost more than $40.
5. I will avoid trading into important news events.
6. I will not trade currency futures that are affected by bank holidays (e.g. don't trade M6E or M6B on an EU or GB Bank Holiday).
7. The focus will be MES, but if I find a good setup on M6E or M6B during the first couple of hours of the London session, I will consider taking it.
$ Target per day: $20
$ Target per week: $100
$ Target per month: $400
Once I have reached this target in a month's time, I will look for enhancements (such as scaling in for a total of 2 contracts and using a runner). Until then, I will stick to the above rules and targets.
Fantastic set of rules, utilizing a lot of fundamental trader psychology to limit your excitement on the way up, down, or wherever as you've also limited your number of trades per day. With the modest monetary goals you've set, you can have a dose of emotional connection to your trades while never really risking your overall capital. I'm also a very new trader, and brand new to futures. I will happily follow your trade journal, as your experience closely reflects mine so far. Best of luck and hope to keep seeing you win!
I missed out on today's down move in the Emini due to work and toddler related things. I was pretty patient afterwards and planned a nice long entry for the bounce up after a triple bottom at the LOD. Though the entry was great, I tried to exit using the "Close position" button in IB's platform and I'm not sure what happened, but everything got messed up, I had to restart the platform and ended up closing the position for a meager 1.5 point gain. Then all my support and resistance lines disappeared... Anyone else had these sort of issues with IB's platform?
Anyway, I then thought we'd bounce back down from the VWAP and retest the lows, but took a loss. Since the bullish momentum was strong, I reversed my position and recovered part of the loss, ending the day with a $4.37 loss.
Positive notes of the day: I stuck to my rules and stopped after 3 trades (and never exceeded $20 in losses).
Negative notes of the day: Platform issues really pissed me off, which clouded my ability to read the price action on the next trade.
