Screw TradeStation

Apparently TS in their infinite wisdom rolled over to the H contract a week early on the CME Forex futures products so anyone using continuous contracts on their charts (most of us do) your data is incorrect. I wouldn't have caught it if I wasn't using another broker to clear with.

But the tech support is trying to tell me that this is normal and I should trade off the H contract prices - which is dumb because everyone else is still trading the Z contract.

Apparently their "data integrity group" says this is all normal and by the book but i've never had this issue before in the 3 years with them as a client using continuous contracts.

I mean, the H contract has no where near the volume as the Z and yet they want to base the movement off of the H contract instead of something with 18x's the volume? WTF TS?

The tech support guy was trying to convince me that I wanted to trade off the H contract prices... ummm lets take a vote? Who wants to trade a contract trading 11k volume, or the one trading 200+k. I think i'll stick with the one trading the most volume. Or how 'bout just trading the contract that ALL THE OTHER TRADERS IN THE WORLD ARE STILL TRADING?!?! Rollover is the third Thursday of the month (supposedly) so what they are smoking over at TS is beyond me - but its gotta be some GOOD SHIT.

I ended up not trading at all today. I was waiting for TS to address this problem, but seeing as how they aren't going to it looks like i'll be having to manually change all of my chart symbols for a week before actual rollover occurs and change it all back.

I'm Baaaaaack!

Well after a refreshing piece of vacation with the family its time to get back down to business. I'll be back trading tomorrow like usual from 9-11AM CST. I've been keeping track of the daily outcomes on woulda/shoula/coula and there were 2 days of solid profit on Monday and Tuesday but I probably would've ended up net negative today had I traded.

I'm trying to refrain from "rule building" my method out and stay true to the broad logic it employs which is a big struggle for me. But overall the idea is 100% the same as it was a month ago as well as the management, entries, etc. with only maybe a couple tweaks here and there. But those tweaks are mainly put in place to allow myself the ability to hold some runners a bit longer, or take a second entry on a higher timeframe all using the same entry logic and management.

Ok, here is the other news. I've been developing the blog but i'm at the point where I need to decide on a blog name so I can dig into photoshop and start personalizing a template.

I'm kind of going with the idea of somehow putting a beating to the markets as most traders get beat by the market... so i'm just spitballing ideas here....

bitchslapthemarkets
shankthemarkets

or a completely different avenue...

thetradelifestyle

Your thoughts and input would be greatly appreciated!!!

In Missouri - Taking 10 days for R&R

I know - i'm a pansy. There are a couple reasons for the laziness. 1 - It really helps to have an additional monitor for order entry and management and right now i'm just on a laptop. 2 - I've been hitting it HARD for the past two months working long hours and 7 days a week refining methods, throwing them out all together, and getting back to the basics. 3 - its the holidays, i'm with my family, and i'd like to spend it with them rather than in front of a computer.

So I wish you all the best of luck in the pre-thanksgiving markets!

Weekly Update

Well first week back and I finally started coming into my own. I decided to trade only the first two hours (and Fridays till the first winning trade i.e. its 9:07 right now!). Frankly, its got more than enough opportunity for myself, it doesn't get me burnt out, and frees up time for me to do other things. I recently finished reading 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris and it kind of put things into perspective for me. All work and no play makes Matt a dull boy.

I've mentioned this before here but i'm finally starting to do something about it. No more pooring over charts endlessly at night, during the day, trading for 18 hours at a time. It makes me a crabby bastard that no one wants to be around (including myself). Two hours, get in, get out, live life. If you are interested in reading the 4 Hour blog (its my favorite blog out there) check it out here: http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/.

In other news I really started pulling the trigger effectively and making some progress. I didn't knock it out of the park this week. That's due to 1)letting the bigger risk trades (that alone were worth +600.00/per this week) go and 2) being a pussy earlier in the week. But when it was all said in done I made more money this week than I have in 6 months? Maybe all year? Best thing yet? The stats.


18 Trades, 98.10 in commissions (YIKES!), 8 wins, 8 pars, 2 losses, -31.25 in negative slippage, an 88.89% win rate, and 12.26% account growth.

Next week i'm out of town in Missouri but i'm going to be trading from there (i think) or I may just take the week off for the holidays. Either way i'll update you.

New Equity Highs

Traded real poorly today, missed out on an easy +300 this morning AT LEAST. Took a couple other trades for some profit and called it a day at 11AM. The more and more I trade the more and more I feel like I just want to get in, make some money and get out with that profit and call it a day. Two hour work days? I don't know, but i'm certainly working towards that. This is a intense occupation and it requires a lot of focus. Trading for 6 hours a day is doable but it isn't pleasant. So trading less is something I am considering. Not to mention I think 80% of the moves in the FX markets happen by 11AM CST and the 20% that remains into the afternoon is hit or miss most of the times. I like efficiency and if I can be more efficient by working less (and making more) then its a move for the better.

But what I wanted to talk about was that a lot of my poor performance this week hasn't been from bad trades - its been from not pulling the trigger. And a lot of that comes from being back live for the first time in a long time. Confidence isn't at its peak yet and so some of those entries just seem SCARY. The only way you get rid of that fear is by getting in on those trades and building confidence. So slowly but surely that's happening.

Even with my craptastic performance this week - here is the equity curve thus far. Pretty good direction I think! Up +9.6% so far this week.

Hai Guise!

Allright, we all know by now that i'm a shitty blogger. My trading career has been all over and back again in the past few months but i'm back at it after some huge changes in my trading.

However, rather than start back up here with the same old same old, i'm going to be creating a new blog on a new website to discuss not only my trading outcomes, but my progression, ideas, and branch out into a lot more non-trading topics. I like cars, travel, cool things to waste discretionary income on and random useful info. While that content will take the backseat to the trading posts this new creation is not going to focus purely on trading, but more on the trading lifestyle.

Hopefully it will show progression in my career and life and the interaction between the two.

I'll invite you all over to a temporary holding domain until I decide on something to call it all. But I can't do that until its built, and so that's what i'm doing as we speak.

I hope to have more for you soon!

CME Tick Data Changes

Allrighty, so on the 5th, the CME started reporting more granular tick data. Oh joy! In a nutshell from the marketdelta crew:

:: Summary ::
The CME has begun “unbundling” some ticks/trades that were previously being sent as a single tick. From inspecting charts of the ES, it appears that the net result of this change is that approximately 2.5 times as many ticks or trades are being sent on average, WITH a much smaller average size per trade. The change does not effect the volume, just the number of trades (more trades with a smaller average size).

:: Here is what it means and what you will begin seeing ::
1) More Tickbars: If you are using tickbar charts, you will start seeing approximately 2.5 times as many tickbars per day as you were before because there are approximately 2.5 times as many ticks per day. The CME claims this will give the user a more accurate tickbar picture.

2) Slower Backfill: Backfill or downloading of historical data will take longer since there will be more ticks/trades to download.

3) Larger Database: The amount of the space in the database required to store a day of tick data will increase. Thus, the time it takes to backup or verify the database will increase.

4) Fewer Big (large lot) Trades: If you are filtering trades based on volume (in Time and Sales windows or using the Volume Breakdown indicator), you will see fewer large trades since many of these larger trades have been replaced with a few smaller trades. This change is rather substantial. The number of large trades (> 199 lots) per day on the ES dropped from approximately 1800 to approximately 400.

Now where my input comes in is with the adjustment needed to alter your current trading timeframe to the new adjusted timeframe. The TTM folks came out and said "multiply by 2.5x's" so a 233T is equal to a 582T but like most things out of the TTM folks, it sounds easy, simple, and sassy, but delivers nothing but epic failure. So I did my own analysis using a barcounter in TradeStation.

Taking the last 10 days prior to the conversion and finding the average amount of bars per day in two different timeframes I had been trading and comparing them to the average of the new amount of bars post October 5th the following results were collected. I then adjusted the needed increase in ticks until similar results were found.


What I found was that the conversion was between 1.5X's and 1.75X's as much data to correctly convert your old timeframe to a comparable new timeframe. But without any doubt it certainly isn't a conversion factor of 2.5x's as was suggested by others.