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Broker: Advantage Futures, Ninja/TT and InvestorRT/IQFeed.
Trading: Treasury futures
Posts: 312 since Nov 2010
Thanks Given: 194
Thanks Received: 912
A disappointing day full of mistakes. I had set up my ATM strategy for corn based on trading 1 contract rather than the two I actually trade, and even though I caught the mistake with time to get out manually, I didn't and lost twice as much as I should have. Then I didn't take a 6e short that would have been a winner. I took one later that I was lucky to scratch. Finally I reentered QM after taking a winner there earlier, totally in line with my rules, but didn't like the trade and took a loss before I would have been stopped out. QM never got to my stop point, and would have been a second winner. I'm least upset about the last trade; my instincts have been pretty good about exiting trades before they hit their predetermined stops and targets. The corn snafu was inexcusable.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows..."
First, a bit of background. In Big Mike's price action tread (, I was asked if I keep a journal. I admitted that I don't keep a classical journal, but rather a simple set of statistics that could be intrepreted as a simplified form …
Broker: Advantage Futures, Ninja/TT and InvestorRT/IQFeed.
Trading: Treasury futures
Posts: 312 since Nov 2010
Thanks Given: 194
Thanks Received: 912
Jeez, we want to move there for the outdoor lifestyle and the relative warmth. Wintertime highs are a lot higher than in Chicago, although it is just as cold at night.
Just got home this evening. One thing that struck us was the high real estate prices in Boulder, though property taxes were less than half of what we pay for comparable properties. Property values are very high where I live, but even so it looks like we won't be getting much of a break if we move. We're mostly looking in an area on the Northwest side of town between Wonderland Lake and Kalmia Ave. We need a yard big enough for the dog and in a wooded enough area to attract birds.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows..."
Well, I am a bit liberal in my bias, and my father lives north of Chicago. I don't know how people do it to be honest???
Anyways, Boulder is a great place especially if you have kids, and it is VERY active compared to the rest of the United States. However, coming from Honolulu it was just tooooooo cold and not as active as Honolulu.
Great place though, friendly and fun. I love downtown on a nice summer day (Pearl Street Mall) and just a cool place to live. One of my favorite places if you like getting 15 inches in the middle of May! That is when I decided to move on... haha...
Good luck as I know it is a bit stressful to pick up and move cross country. Well, half-cross country!
Broker: Advantage Futures, Ninja/TT and InvestorRT/IQFeed.
Trading: Treasury futures
Posts: 312 since Nov 2010
Thanks Given: 194
Thanks Received: 912
My bias is the same as yours. I'm not sure whether you're referring to the weather or the taxes (" I don't know how people do it to be honest???"). I have no objection to paying my taxes, I was just commenting on the relative levels. It's possible Colorado has other sources of revenue, such a oil & gas leasing.
Anyway, thanks for the good wishes. I agree, moving is stressful, and selling my home will be stressful too.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows..."
Broker: Advantage Futures, Ninja/TT and InvestorRT/IQFeed.
Trading: Treasury futures
Posts: 312 since Nov 2010
Thanks Given: 194
Thanks Received: 912
After many months away from the screen, I'm taking another crack at mastering screen trading. For anyone reading this who is not familiar with my posts, I'm a former floor trader from the CBOT with many years experience who has not mastered the transition to the screen. My hurdles are maybe not the normal ones a new trader faces: I'm comfortable with risk, pretty disciplined about taking losses, well capitalized, and able to execute a trading plan. My biggest problem has been finding a methodology that produces consistent profits and works in a timeframe that matches my attention span. I am not a programmer, though I have messed around with it a bit. I think trying to program and backtest have in the past distracted me from concentrating on price action. As a pit trader, part of what differentiated me from my competitors was my ability to tape read, and I've decided to try to focus on applying that skill to screen based trading.
My search for an edge has led me to the threads on this forum dealing with winning methodologies, and since Perry did a webinar this summer I started with that one. In his webinar, (though not in the early parts of his thread "Perry's Trading Platform"), Perry made a lot of statements that resonated with my own experiences in the pit, and I quickly decided he thinks a lot the same way I do about how to be consistent, and his ideas might work for me. Specifically, in the webinar he emphasized small profits per contract, increasing profitability by increasing size, and avoiding spending too much time trading in a day, maybe three or four hours. My transition to successful pit trading came when I realized all I had to do was make one tick per contract four times a day to have a good day. I knew I could easily find four very solid situations in a day where my risk/reward was very favorable, and by only trading these situations I quickly became a consistent winner. My aphorism was, "You don't have to make a lot of money to make a lot of money."
Anyway, I spent a couple of evenings looking at trades generated by what I perceive Perry's general setup to be, saw that for now at least it has generated quite a few trades and a good winning percentage, and this morning I made my first serious attempt at sim trading Perry's system as if I were trading live. This means I went through my normal pre-trading routine and got down to it as though I were risking real money.
I've customized Perry's screen layout to make it easier for me to read. One indicator he provides, ForceIndex v.2 does not seem to give useful information, which leads me to believe I don't have it configured correctly. I'll be getting in touch with him about that.
I'm trading 6e, using a 4 range chart (my first experience trading with range charts, usually I use time or tick based charts). For now, I'm using a goal based risk/reward system. 4 tick goal, 8 tick emergency stop but earlier exits if conditions change after I put on the trade. Given that the potential risk is so much more than the profit target, this system needs to provide a very high percentage of winners! I hope eventually to be able to identify situations where I can let profits run more to even out the r/r.
The results today: 9 trades, 6 4 tick winners, 1 5 tick winner which is a mystery to me since I use an atm strategy with a 4 tick profit, 1 4 tick loser, 1 8 tick loser. I quit after the 9th trade, almost exactly 3 hours after I started. My general money goal is to make about 16 ticks per unit of size trading 6e. P/L $170.02 net, commissions $2.36/side (I set this up months ago for this instrument, I can't guarantee it's right but I will check).
Observations: Distractions more frequent than I like, since we're rehabbing a house and my wife kept coming in with questions. After annotating my chart, I realized I'd better write stuff down as I'm trading or I'll forget why I did or didn't take a trade.
Indicators: Panel 1 is MASlopeMulti, 5 and 20 EMAs. Panels 2 and 3 are the same moving averages set up so it's easy for me to see whether both MAs are moving in the same direction and how many bars it's been since the 5 EMA has been going in the same direction. Panel 4 is DMplus_v3a, period set to 5, with JeffsADXv2 superimposed as bars so I can easily see whether or not it's moving up.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows..."
