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I think I understand where you are on your journey...I was at a similar point once.
My first reaction to reading thru your journal is "damn this person has a shitton of trades each day". If you have a system that works and that system spits out that volume of trades, well that's okay. If it's not working, perhaps look at trading less. That is something that helped me a lot. It's hard to sit on your hands but sometimes that's what it takes.
Another thing, go back and look at your losing trades. If you had a wider stop, would most of the trades end up coming back into winning territory? If so, how wide of a stop would you need to let trades run longer?
Just some things to think about. By no means do I feel qualified to give advice...but hope to help when I can.
Thank you for the advice. I actually already went down the road of taking few trades in a day, in fact I did that for the entirety of 2023. It never really clicked for me, even though towards the end I was breakeven for three months in a row. I took 2 to 6 trades a day on the ES and CL on a higher timeframe.
However I always wanted to get back to the NQ for some more active scalping. So in February 2024 I did exactly that on a demo account, and got really good at it. In the beginning of my trading career (back in 2021) I couldn't make money even on demo.
Seeing that the potential is there for this kind of trading, and given the fact that it suits my personality a lot more, I decided to commit to it. I just need to fix the emotional mistakes, the edge is already there.
Another daily stop for me today, but I'm a lot happier with my performance compared to yesterday. I managed to stay a lot calmer, but i failed to get in tune with the way price was moving.
I feel like today then MNQ kept changing behavior and I constantly had to play catch up. It took me some losing trades to adapt to the volatility that came in after 10:00.
I was basically breakeven at 11:00, and I think i should have called it a day there. From 11:00 to 11:30, while I remained calm, I definitely overtraded. I simply could not get in tune with the movements and lost a ton of trades in a row. I noticed that this usually happens after I have been trading for a few hours, so it's likely related to tiredness. I will keep an eye on this the next week.
As I have stated in my previous post, my goal today and going forward is to reduce the mistakes I make due to frustration. Today I was successful in this, I only feel I got a bit hot during the last 6 trades of the day. Definitely an improvement.
Today's loss puts me at around -300$ on the week, which is less that what I have earned on an average winning week in this account, so it's not at all bad. I know I can easily make this amount of money in a single day when the price action suits me.
I will post the weekly review tomorrow, stay tuned.
Unlike what some other more "traditional" traders will tell you, I think it's possible to do well by trading frequently. I do not trade very frequently any longer, because it saps my energy and causes me to lose focus of what's going on. Which brings me to this...
I'm curious to see the long/short count breakdown per half hour today, if you're open to sharing. Taking frequent scalps in a given direction over a half hour period makes good sense. Taking frequent scalps where you're flipping long/short is bound to end poorly. This depends on the day of course, but today, there was a very clear sequence of auctions:
(1) up, after NFP
(2) little pullback in the first 5-10 minutes of cash trading but then a clear continuation of premarket push higher into the 10am ISM number
(3) search for buyers from 10am to about 10:55am
(4) an almost obligatory final finishing sell print, after a 2-way tape between 10:55am and 11:15am as the change of momentum shifted
(5) only up for the next 3 hours after 11:15am
(6) complete chop for the last 1.5 hours
If you did any of the following, you were swimming upstream:
- selling during (2) except for maybe the first 5-10 minutes
- buying at any point during (3)
- selling during (5)
- sitting at your computer during (6)
This is perfect hindsight of course, but you'll just have to believe me when I said in a discord chat I'm in, at 10:55am, "ready to rally, flow just shifted IMO". I was early, and on another day could have been flat out wrong (though ES only made a new 2-tick low, while NQ and YM both held their lows). But the point is, during the 10am to 11am period, I was not buying, because in my view, I saw a very clear search for buyers, and they hadn't been found yet. It was *not* a 2-way tape and sellers just kept marching it lower. Buyers had not been found yet. First I saw of them was at 10:55. The character changed then across all indices, and the market as a whole was primed to turn, in my view at the time.
If you are actively trading *both* sides during a given sequence (roughly define the "sequences" of the day as those bullet points above), you *will* lose sight of what's going on and you *will* succumb to frustration and all of the things you mentioned in your last post. When the market is in a truly balanced state, trading outside in from the edges of a given distribution (even a short, small one) can make sense. But it almost never does exactly that. Usually there are sequences where one side has the ball, even if it's not a strong advantage. You will always have a tailwind when you trade on that side, and almost guaranteed to have a higher EV trading with one side only during a given sequence.
Since we're talking about a specific day, here's that day, with sequences 2, 3/4, and 5 highlighted:
I didn't discuss this, but note that you have a lot going on near the NQ lows: (1) major support from the 2/22 gap up (see NDX chart, don't use NQ for this -- see 2/22, 3/5, 3/15, 3/19, 4/16, 4/29), (2) VWAP, (3) last week's high. Ask yourself whether the market might be wanting to test that area before continuing higher. If so, why buy before that, even a scalp? Just food for thought.
It is very challenging, but when you are in tune with the market it feels so rewarding. I also like the fact of having a large sample of trades each day.
Here are the stats of each half-hourly period:
i definitely struggled with this, I kept switching bias and scratching trades that would have been fine. The loss of the last half-hourly period is entirely because of this problem. I lost sight of the big picture and started entering positions at market, completely out of rithm. I record my screen when I trade, and watching the recording from 11:00 it's clear that I'm trading completely differently compared to the rest of the session. I opened a ton of trades at market (I usually enter with limit orders) and I kept re-enterning after every loss. This ties the outcome of a single trade together with the next (instead of being separate datapoints), because the entry is a function of where the previous trade stopped out. just another mistake i need to avoid.
While I don't use your approach in terms of how to categorize the market, I completely agree with the fact that I need to focus more on what price is trying to do on a bigger picture. I usually can see the change in behavior and react pretty quickly, but today I was just behind the curve so to speak. For example look at my performance between 10:00 and 10:30. It took me a ton of losing trades before I finally managed to adjust to the change in price behavior. Like you, I was waiting for buyers. After 10:20 I was really expecting a quick spike higher, but it kept fooling me and i got chopped up at the end.
Anyway thank you for this in-depth analysis, I really appreciate posts like this.
Definitely some underperformance, but I'm ok with it. The goal was to not have those huge PnL swings from last week and avoid getting stuck in positions with too much size. Mission accomplished.
This $313 loss is small, I can make it back in one solid day of trading.
The loss is entirely due to commissions, I traded 420 contracts and my round turn trip is $1.02, so total cost is $428.40. I can't wait to be able to increase my size and start trading the NQ instead of the MNQ.
Why I think I underperformed
The fact that I couldn't "bail myself out" by adding to losing trades and hoping for the best definitely played a role. this week I always accepted the loss, but I still opened a lot of stupid trades. I need to adjust my executions because I can no longer increase my size and hope to fix a mistake. I need to stop making the mistake in the first place.
If I remove the times in which I got emotional (or tired, like yesterday) I would have been positive on the week. Not by much, but positive nonetheless.
I outlined the mistakes I make in a previous post. My goal for the next week is to avoid doing them altogether. I still expect some slip ups here and there, I think any professional trading like I do has them. But they need to be far fewer compared to this week.
Finally, I wanted to say thank you to everybody who took the time to post in this thread and give me suggestions. They are always appreciated.
Third losing day in a row, but lots of improvements. I made very few mistakes today and I am overall happy with how I traded. I never "lost control" so to speak and I never overtraded.
The problem is that the MNQ was completely dead today, and I think I was asking too much from the market. I had to double my clip size, but this also doubled the impact of commissions. Then I had a string of losers, and I had to size back down to 1 contract. My goal is always to hit my daily stop trading the smallest possible size.
Having three losing days in a row tells me that I'm not really in tune with the current market environment. I need to work on my win % and limit my risk as much as possible during this period of drawdown, so tomorrow I will be more selective and less aggressive.
Here are the stats for today:
Today I also have opened an account with topstep, they are offering a 92% discount for the launch of their new platform topstepx. It's not the discount that enticed me, but the commissions they offer. They offer commission-free trading, so you pay $0.74 for micros and $2.80 for minis, round turn. This is huge for my strategy. In my current account, instead of being up $208, I would be up $693.
So going forward I will trade both accounts, one hour each every day. I need to integrate the new trading platform with my statistics dashboard, once I have done that I will start posting the stats of the new account as well.
2024-05-07
Today I made some decisions concerning the two accounts that I have. As you know, yesterday I started a new challenge with Topstep because they offer very attractive commissions, which are a big part of my trading strategy.
So now I have two accounts: one with apex and one with topstep. The problem is that they are on different trading platforms, and as I discovered today I really don't like switching platform in the middle of my trading session. I also don't like having two separate trading accounts with different rules.
So here is my decision: I will try to pass the apex evaluation by the end of the current period (which ends on May 15th), but focus my efforts on the topstep account, which is a lot more favorable for my trading style. Since I have so little time to pass, I have to increase my trading size. I don't like being in this position because it affects my psychology, but there really is no point having two separate evaluation accounts with two different funding companies.
Now on to today's performance:
My plan was to trade 1h on the apex account and 1h on the topstep account. I started with the apex account, and at the end of the hour I was down $46.28. I switched to the topstep account, but really didn't feel comfortable taking trades. It felt silly changing platform in the middle of the session, no professional trader does this. This is where I made the decision of either passing or failing the apex account.
I went back on the apex account and kept trading like I usually did, but soon realized that at this pace I would never have a chance to pass in time. So I decided that I would trade 1 lot of the NQ and be super selective with my entries to avoid blowing the account on a string of losers (I seem to have plenty of those in the last few days). It went ok and I'm up $481.44 on the day.
Here are the stats for the day:
I really don't like doing this, but I don't have much of a choice. I still haven't decided how I will manage both accounts from here to May 15th. Maybe I should just not take trades on the topstep account until I either pass or fail the apex account. Or maybe I could scalp on the topstep account, and have a DOM up for the apex account where I can open a position when a really good setup happens.
Anyway this is the situation now, wish me luck on the apex account!
2024-05-08
Finally a solid trading day, the NQ had some decent moves early in the session today. Hopefully the choppy price action of the last few days is behind us.
In the end I decided to trade only the apex account for this week. The new topstep account will have to wait until next week.
Like most of my days lately, I started with some breakeven performance, but then I found my sea legs and got to my target of $400. I would have continued, but unfortunately there is a "consistency rule" and I can only make a maximum of $500 on any given day.
I'm happy with the statistics for today, it seems that I was able to get back to a good win %. The average PnL per contract is also above my expectations of $1.5 for the MNQ and $15 for the NQ.
My mental game was also on point today, and I made no stupid mistakes. I think that since the stakes are so much bigger with the NQ, it forces me to be more prudent than usual. Also, when I was trading the MNQ, I could reach a daily PnL high of $40 for most of my trading days before giving it all back. So getting to $400 on the NQ seems a lot more achievable than what I was shooting for with the MNQ.
