By Age 25

The Month Update - New Ideas, Computers, & Success?

2010-07-09T10:38:00.002-05:00

Just a quick update here. First off I finally finished my new trading (& gaming hehe) rig yesterday. What can I say... ATI Eyefinity kicks ass. I'm going to get a LOT of use out of this new system. Its so nice to have something that nice and snappy, runs flawless, has 69" of HD screen space, and monitors that don't flicker on and off at will.

On the job front i've been applying at multiple prop firms in the greater Chicago area trying to land a "Junior Trader" or "Assistant Trader" position at a firm. Anyway I slice it i'm in a rut here in Omaha. Professionally, personally, financially - I need a drastic change. If anyone knows of firms looking to hire or job opportunities out there give me a shout!

On the subject of trading. Awais has been yelling at me for years about just trading off S/R and simplification. I'm making a concerted effort to do just that. I trade with 1 line on the charts these days and nothing else. The only reason I use that one line is to gauge momentum of a trend (i'm looking for steep fast trends to trade in). Beyond that my trades are bare bones simple - support coming resistance and vice versa. The result? Solid on sim (aren't they all?).

But the honest to god truth is once I started looking for this stuff something clicked and I have started to "see" this happening everywhere. I honestly think my ability to read price action has gone up about 1000% in the past two weeks. And that's in no small part to having no distractions on my charts. My only concern is that my risk:reward is a bit better than 1:1. However my win rate is above 75-80% thus far. We'll just have to see how it develops.

Anyhow, thanks for checking in and your continued interest in seeing i'm not dead, down, & out just yet.

Cheers!

Baby Steps to Context

2010-06-11T10:00:00.005-05:00

My good buddy Awais (http://www.eminiplayer.net) sent me an email this week containing a blog comment by an excellent trader, Ziad. Ziad, among other things quintupled his trading account in a year and banked six figures last year. And i've heard hes cleared tens of thousands in profits on a single day this year so its someone I would heed advice from. If you'd like to read it (and I suggest you do) check it out here.

The point of his comment was that most traders endlessly (and fruitlessly) hunt "setups" to trade. More importantly they hunt setups with no pause or consideration to the context within which those setups are applied. I think he rightly points out this inherent characteristic in most of us and our seeming inability to take a step back and recognize this. So i've decided to make a concerted effort to add more context into my setup. However, I need to apply that context in a way that suits me.

If you've been following my progress (or lack thereof) for any amount of time you'll know that I like a solid trade plan and a rule set for my setups. I'm not the type of trader that thrives on just clicking orders in to the market off of feel and read and managing the outcome. However, I recognize that this attribute has also been a detriment to my trading success in some instances. For now I want to compromise with Ziad's assertions and my own personality and meet somewhere in the middle. This means adding context, but in a way that I can quantify, even if in some basic and rudimentary way.

The one setup i've been working on is nothing more than a minor pullback in a major trend. That statement alone requires more context in the setup than i've ever traded with before. It means I need to identify a MAJOR TREND. Not just any wiggle, not a range bound market, not some oscillator extreme. I need a logical read on the market that identifies only a major, almost spastic trend to jump on. For now if that means using 1 moving average on my chart to help my eyes see not only momentum but the strength of that momentum (how far price is pulling away from that moving average or falling back towards) then that is a layer of context, albeit basic and rudimentary context, that I can use in my favor.

That small bit of context is also something I have never applied to any of my trades. A trade was a trade was a trade and it didn't matter where on the chart it occurred, I didn't even look at how defined a trend was, or how much strength there was in a trend. While i'm sure many (probably including Awais & Ziad) wouldn't see this measure as the true extent of Ziads post it remains a start.

Baby steps folks... baby steps.

Incommunicado

2010-06-06T18:44:00.003-05:00

Well i've been on "vacation" for almost a week now and i've still got a good week and a half left spending time with friends and family. Its been nice to take the pressure off and clear my head while I re-load for my next trading attempt.

I have a rough sketch of my entry (yes that's singular because for the first time pretty much ever I will trade ONE and only ONE setup). And yes... I think that is a pig you just saw fly by your window.

I'm also putting together a new trading rig (3 23" 1080p monitors via ATI 5870 Eyefinity technology, i7 cpu, 6GB ram) little Matt is going to be in charting heaven by the time the week is over! No more trading off of a single 15" laptop screen!

I will try and post some of my daily results this week if I get an hour or two to trade but don't hold me to it. As I mentioned before i'm still up in the air as to whether or not trading a set time period everyday or to a set dollar amount everyday is best. But in sim mode i'll be trading every setup along the way to get experience with the new trigger.

And since this blog is as much about my journey as it is about trying to help other aspiring traders get a leg up I thought I would share with you 4 threads that have been a big source of inspiration getting myself back up and ready for round 83 of this trading journey.

Here they are, these are my favorite threads from Walterw on TradersLabratory.

I think all of the above threads have a lot of sound logic and glimmers of simple genius sprinkled throughout. Some of them are 30ish pages but there is a lot of good information in them and they are worth the time! I think there is a clear structure provided for a simple and profitable trading system in each one of them.

Looks like its about happy hour here so this is going to be my view from here on out.

Cheers!

Still Alive...

2010-05-24T21:19:00.003-05:00

Just dropping a quick note to say i'm still working at my trading, albeit in a slightly more kicked back sort of way. I needed a little mental va-cay and to get away from the screens for a bit. In fact i'm going on vacation for two weeks the first of June to spend some well deserved time away from everything to re-charge the batteries.

In the mean time i'm working on one simple trade using almost nothing on the charts. I still think less is more and am trying to capitalize on that. The other thing is on the management side of things, both on the individual trade targets and possibly some daily goal targets. If 8-9 ticks is an easy target then why not take it? Why try and manage for huge runners each time if they never quite work and that +9 turns into a par or worse?

Also on the daily profit target... I need to make just 200.00 a day on average each day to match a 40k/year salary. That's 8 ticks in the 6E/J/S on two contracts. When you put it like that, why the hell do we all try and walk in a nail 80 ticks each day? So basically i'm trying to revisit and reevaluate everything in my trade plan and see if there are changes that might need to be made. You don't know unless you question it!

Dear Range Bars - We're Over

2010-05-12T15:19:00.005-05:00

I've been really getting back to basics... deconstructing my rule sets and allowing the idea of flexibility back into my trading. One of the things I have been focusing heavily on is risk reduction. Which brings me to range bars. I really like the logic behind them but i've found that the reality of trading with them can be less idealistic than the portrait usually portrayed. If you listen to providers like EOTPro (nothing against them!) range bars are going to usher in a new wave of consistency and reliability for retail traders because its "new technology". But I have a few complaints.

Straight up - my entries surround an engulfing pattern of some kind. I want to see price close higher or lower than the previous candle. At the most basic fundamental level I see this simple interaction as an indicator of buyers and sellers shifting power. Not perfect, but I dare you to find a shift from buyers to sellers or vice versa where this doesn't happen - not to spoil it for you, but you can't because this has to occur for price to reverse. This in no way means that the pit isn't going to try and f**k with you or that your just getting faked in too early, but this pattern HAS to occur so i've chosen to focus on it as a baseline.

Now the tricky part is getting a shift at a "good price" where you can have a reduced risk profile. By definition a range bar is almost always going to get you in later because your requiring the market to move X amount of bars in favor before you get a confirmed close and a new bar. My hypothesis is that by getting in at the range bar price you're already too late to the party. It typically occurs after the move is already well established and doesn't have a lot left in it before it stops and backfills either to reverse or continue on. Either way its much harder to hold for gold when a position is against you than when you've got a stop at par. Period. End of story.

One of the blogs I follow continually is The Deucalion Viewpoint. What always amazes me about Sandy's performance is that he can walk in and nail 20 ticks like its nothing. And when you deconstruct his entries a bit you can see one of the key reasons he can do this is because his entries aren't late - they aren't after the move is already established its always right around the tipping point. He has small risk, and thus he can take her +15-20 easily out of a swing. Moreover, when things look like they are going to get nasty for you by being in "earlier" you are taking a minimal loss of a tick or two bailing on a position rather than a -7 tick loss.

Again, this is only theory but today in practice it paid dividends. I only traded two markets *GASP* (I know right?) the 6E and the 6B, was in and out with less risk on every trade than 1 normal trade off my range bar charts and got almost 2:1 on every trade. Now its just sim, and this is like trader 101 stuff, divergences and not fighting the trend too much with crisp entries and I can already tell you I think i'm done with range bars for good.

So moving forward i'm going to try and keep everything BARE BONES SIMPLE. A little divergence, some simple patterns and some logical management combined with a much better chance of getting more than I risk sounds like a fairly good recipe for now.

Cheers!

Bread & Butter

2010-05-10T15:15:00.002-05:00

Today was the start of re-focusing on the "Bread & Butter" trade. The one that's supposed to be there and perform throughout it all. In all of my testing and trading there has really only been one setup that I find to hold up through it all and that's what I was focused on executing today.

And our baseline was like this:

NQ: +0, -9
YM: +13, -9, +18
6S: +3
6J: N/A
6E: +16
6C: -9, +11, -1
6B: +3, -1
6A: -9

Net Ticks: +26

Ummm yea. I've never been so underwhelmed by +26 ticks before. I think it needs work. 4 Losers and 4 Wins in a day isn't exactly what i'm going for. But I will say this - the new relaxed management is the ONLY reason some of the winning trades are approaching 2:1.

In a sidenote - the long anticipated trading documentary "Floored" started getting released in 10 minute increment episodes today. Check it out at http://babelgum.com/Floored

A Game Plan

2010-05-09T14:59:00.003-05:00

Last night I had a long talk with Awais on all things trading... and came up with some "Ah Hah" moments during the conversation that spurred me onwards. Lets not forget that I had been legitimately making money on my live account until this past few weeks when I went off the deep end. I have one setup (my original pullback setup) that just works. So i'm going to just trade that and only that.

The "Ah Hah" moment was thanks to Awais who said he had changed his trade management. Awais never gets to par. At least not in the way most of us do. He will use a hard safety stop and then mentally observe price action and watch for ques that say it might be a good time to sacrifice the position. I get tons of pars, a lot of times on moves that tend to work and work well. But I don't participate because I remove myself from the signal after a measly 3-4 tick move in my favor. Frankly, that's noise in most markets.

I can't tell you how many times i've written in this very blog that I was "high ticked out" or "it kicked me out at par by a tick then went +20 in favor". So i'm going to be simming my one setup this coming week but relaxing the management HEAVILY. Not just on the pars, but on the exits as well. I need my setups to get greater than 2:1 and for that they have to be allowed to run big. My fear all along has been taking losses. Even the idea of -1 tick was revolting to me. But that has distracted me from getting wins, let along any big wins. I'll be much richer if I have a few 3-4 tick losses here and there rather than a bunch of pars if I can replace those pars with 15-30 tick winners.

So this week i'll be on sim trying to relax that management and see how it plays out. Depending on how it goes i'll go back to live next week.

Cheers!

An Update

2010-05-04T10:09:00.003-05:00

Well I wish I could waltz in this week with stories of revised setups and success but i'm afraid i'm going to have to disappoint. I have never had such a quick reversal of fortune - from delusions of grandure Friday morning, to just delusions Friday evening, to desperatly scrambling for something - anything Saturday and Sunday, to outright failure Monday and today.

I have literally spent 14-18 hours in front of this screen for the past 4 days trying to come up with something - anything that looked like it might have a chance. What i've found has pretty much humbled me into submission. The setups I was using before all of this recent simulation shenanigans are still critically flawed with their risk : reward. If you shrink the risk you amp up the losses, and if you increase the reward you amp up the par efforts where +10-15 turns into naught.

I'm not giving up - if this blog is a testament to anything its that I keep taking the hits and finding something to spur me on my way. But I will say this - I haven't been this disalusioned with the past 5 years of this trading journey as much as I am right now. Typically when I fall I find something to latch onto that gives me renewed hope for profitability and consistency. This time? I'm still falling and haven't found anything to catch me just yet.

Sorry to have nothing to report to the influx of new followers to this blog just when things looked like they might be getting saucy but I just got laid out by reality and shes a cold hard bitch.

On Pause

2010-05-01T13:14:00.002-05:00

While basking in my apparent glory late Friday I decided to code up my idea and visually automate the entries. Worked like a charm, but oh wait it started showing areas on the chart that for all intents and purposes I should've been in, but I hadn't taken the trade. Worse was that many of these areas were losing trades. It was an odd mix of trades that I had seen in real time and taken and trades that I had just ignored and not looked at.

I THINK that my mind was playing games on myself with pattern recognition. Backtesting I would see a certain pattern that had worked and then I would apply my entry and management technique, but if the pattern didn't play out correctly my eyes would kind of skip over the entry as if it wasn't there. Needless to say its a dangerous game to be playing.

What is curious is that my live sim results were so out of this world good. It was reinforcing this misnomer. But having the computer "see" for me and really looking at what is there has forced me to reconsider things. Needless to say i'll be on sim until I can sort this a bit better and prove it in real time. I'm still CLOSE but i'm no where near what I thought I was. I guess the Lamborghini is on hold for now.

All those Losses Catch Up

2010-04-30T10:45:00.002-05:00

Its not as bad as it sounds, in fact I fared pretty well considering I couldn't do anything right this morning. Took two full stop outs in the YM and NQ and a bunch of pars in the other markets as I tried to gain some profitable traction to no avail. One loss I deserved as I was flat out wrong about price direction but the other actually was a low tick out which kind of seems to always sting a bit.

It just didn't come together as smoothly as the other days this week but this is all part of the game and is to be expected. The good news is that I really just need a few partials or a solid winner and i'm back up on the day. Unfortunately I only got one partial winner and it was in the NQ as well so I only netted +110 off the trade rather than +325 or something in some of the bigger pairs. But for the first time its nice to have a positive risk : reward trade potential so that even when things go wrong its not so difficult making it all better again.

As i'm writing this i'm short in the 6J and just peeled off my first contract at +9, and went to +3 on the second, so maybe this losing story might not turn out so bad after all. And oh wait it just filled at the secondary target for +14... so that's +325.00 in the bag and we are back up on the day!

Looking back over this FOUR DAY trading week (I was experimenting and refining Monday) the results are ASTOUNDING. They aren't just a bit better than anything i've traded before they are out of this world better than anything i've done before. On a per contract basis they absolutely blow out every single one of my results (sim and live) over the past two years in this blog.

Next week i'm pushing live with 2 lots on the smaller markets (NQ/YM/6B) and trading 1 lots in the larger markets to keep my $ risk 100.00 or less per trade. Wish me luck and check back to see how it goes in for real!

Trade Results (SIMULATION):
6 Trades, 2 Losses, 2 Wins, 2 Pars
Gross P/L: $265.00 or $132.50/per contract

Weekly Results (SIMULATION):
Gross P/L: $2123.75 or $1061.88/per contract

A Decent Day

2010-04-29T10:55:00.003-05:00

We'll keep this short and sweet. Took a loss in the 6B, had 3 pars, and 3 winners. I have to say i'm really starting to gain confidence in these entries and the management. The entries are just soooo much more consistent than anything i've been using probably ever. I mean the Win/Loss rate forward testing so far is 80% for gods sake. If you include pars the trades this week are hitting 93%!

Now i'm not going to suggest that I know what the hell i'm doing or that I will make money using this when I go live (what a crazy notion eh?) but it does look promising. Today was a nice standard day that did not have the volatility we've seen the past few days this week. Most of my wins were in the NQ or the 6B but I still walked out with a decent profit. And its worth noting that i'm still walking out with a dollar per contract win much greater than anything i've been able to post up using my "old method".

Trade Results:
7 Trades, 1 Loss, 3 Wins, 3 Pars
Gross P/L: $375.00 or $187.50/per contract

Another Good Day?

2010-04-28T10:40:00.001-05:00

Well... things continue to look promising here on my end. I had three winners today and a whole gwop of pars (7). Now as frustrating as it is to hit 5 pars in a row, that 6th trade was a +337.50 winner, another par, and then a +425.00 winner and then a par and a smaller winner at 5.00/tick in the YM for +115.00. Ummm... yea. Now I hate churning and burning commissions as much as the next guy but if when the trades do go your way you can cover yourself and then some off of ONE winning trade it becomes acceptable for myself.

As far as the actual entries are going the filtering process i'm trying to run the trades through probably won't ever keep. The raw format of taking all of these trades is kind of what makes it work. I don't know which one is going to break favorably, and none of the basic analysis seems to point to any definable correlation. Ideally i'd love to cut out half the pars and a loss here or there but that just may not be possible. For now, things look fairly good. In fact i'm pretty safe in saying that even on a per contract basis today's performance was about 2x's my best weekly result.

Trade Results:
10 Trades, 0 Losses, 3 Wins, 8 Pars
Gross P/L: $877.50 or $438.75/per contract

Progress Report: Refinement Needed

2010-04-27T10:49:00.003-05:00

Didn't post yesterday as I was really trying things out more than actively trading. Today I took what I learned yesterday and went to work. I still have some work to do! Most of my time has been spent refining management, stops, and targets to find the best balance for the first target, getting to par, and ratcheting up stops on the positions.

The good news is I think i'm safe in saying i'm developing something worth while here. My results today had their fair share of losses (2), pars (5), and partial wins (5) and full wins (2). I think the entries are pretty damn salty and the management is getting close to being acceptable. And while I understand that these results are at 2x's the size, they still work out to be much better than my single contract results the past few weeks. So onto the results:

Trade Results:
14 Trades, 2 Losses, 7 Wins, 5 Pars
Gross P/L: $606.25 or $303.13/per contract

Now that's not too shabby right? But lets get a little more detail on this. First i'm going to be churning more contracts and more commissions than ever before. So i'd damn well better be able to offset it right? Today I would've accumulated $76.30 in commissions. Now there isn't really any way around this, but what I want to make sure is that i'm not spending $5.45 on a trade to get back $6.25 each time. There has to be some efficiency to the trades as well. Today on average each trade was worth $21.65, which offsets the commissions by nearly 3:1. Not great, but i've done much worse!

Lets not forget that today's results (while on Sim, and thus fairly useless for all purposes) is about 3x's the per contract winning days I have been posting up for weeks now. Which tells me one thing: this new revision is much more efficient!

I'm going to keep working and keep trading on sim the rest of the week and see where we end up!

Simplicity Defined

2010-04-23T10:31:00.004-05:00

Today I stopped trading live and started a period of demo trading. While I find this frustrating I believe its necessary. Over the past few weeks we have eked out a profit here and there but a few things have become VERY apparent.

1. I'm carrying huge amounts of risk (9 Ticks Initial) considering my account size.
2. My winners are not larger than my losers.
3. I have a large percentage of par trades that are inefficient.
4. My entries are not precise enough (if they were I could use smaller stops).

New or old setups make no difference, the point being that there have been cracks in the armor and that sooner or later Mr. Market was going to crack. That's why starting today i'm going to start forward testing an idea based on the "How to Build a Trading Method" post from last night. I'm going to be looking to exploit areas on the charts where the novice money is reversing and having their stops blown out, or where stops are being trailed tightly and a reversal occurs to blow through them.

I'm also going to be trading under the assumption of a two contract setup with a fixed tick target for one contract, and a variable trailing stop contract for runners. I've discussed the issue with my broker and it should be no problem to go live trading the smaller markets (YM/NQ/6B) initially with 2 contracts as this is still less risk than 1 contract on the larger markets. But for the purposes of this forward testing i'll be trading all 8 markets for the experience and to test the validity of the setups.

This should allow me to do a couple things. On about half of the trades that don't exhibit large explosive moves I can lock in a take profits on half the position. Then on the other trades that do show the potential for runners I can get in and out with a profit quickly and use that profit to offset the potential losing outcome of the second runner contract in while still allowing me to catch the runners when they occur. The setups also requires a significantly smaller stop (6 ticks) which makes things MUCH more comfortable for me emotionally.

The hypothetical benefits of all of this are:

1. Less Risk (6 Ticks)
2. Statistically consistent initial profit (4 ticks)
3. The ability to catch big winners > 6 ticks

Here are a few of the signals from today.

Unfortunately the best signal didn't give me a fill but there was still money to be had. There were 6 trades today, all of which were either pars (2), partial winners (2), and runner winners (2). And all of this was achieved with less risk, more precision, more reward. And to be honest the signals are MUCH MORE SIMPLE. Not a complex rule sheet that's 8 pages long, just some good common sense rules that exploit the areas on the charts when the newbies are losing money.

Have a Great Weekend!

How to Build a Trading Method

2010-04-22T16:41:00.005-05:00

The following illustrations were provided by edabreu on Traders Laboratory and serves as a source of great inspiration and logic when designing a trading methodology. I always find myself coming back to it time and time again because it just makes sense. Its a good thing to reference when things aren't going your way in the markets and has made me re-think a lot of my trading rules that have gotten me to where I am, and will force them to change more to advance my skills further.

Right now i'm trying to construct a much more simple method, one that rely's on two things: 1. The statistical probability of reaching a predefined profit target on 80%+ of signals. 2. The ability to allow for large runners with a second contract on the same signals.

What i'm really drawing off of for inspiration is the two contract part of all of this... if you follow Ed's blog (http://protradered.blogspot.com/) at all he constantly posts up blotters that look like this:

Ed's trades always are taking quick profits out of the market, and still letting half of his position "ride" for big wins. But what it equates to is that most of the time hes taking something out of the market each time, protecting capital and locking in gains, while still letting the possibility of large runners occurring.

One of Ed's best quotes is this: "Once you accept the fact that intraday trading is about statistical probability of the immediate future, and accept the fact that the immediate is often just the next price bar, then all trading becomes a focus on making money. If you can concentrate on just making money each time you enter a trade, and make your decisions focused on capitol preservation, then all decisions become easy." -Ed Abreu

So here are the actual "How to Build a Trading Method" slides Ed posted late last year.

Cheers!

Rough Day

2010-04-22T10:43:00.001-05:00

Caught another couple of losses today. One was an outright loser, the other low ticked me out before working. I did re-enter and get the winner but it didn't do much to help the bottom line. The new setup hasn't really been panning out like I expected. Had I traded my normal "Bread & Butter" setups i'd be up on the week, but not by much.

One of the frustrating things is that i'm trading off the OEC Demo feed, and I built all of my rules trading off a true Range Bar chart. Well a couple weeks ago they started testing a Momentum Bar on the Demo feed, which means i'm now trading off Momentum Bars, rather than Range Bars these past few weeks. I have no recourse other than opening up a funded futures account with them which I don't want to do.

Here's the illustrated version to see what i'm on about if you're curious:

They told me today that they would be changing this on their next release which was coming "soon". It just kind of sucks because as traders we try and keep everything in our setups and approaches consistent, and then you have some outside force beyond your control waltz in and f*** it all up.

Trade Results:
3 Trades, 2 Losses, 1 Win
Gross P/L: $-82.50/per

Can't Catch a Break

2010-04-21T10:44:00.003-05:00

Took another loss today on one of my reversal setups... just a NASTY head-fake folks. It happens, its the danger associated with these setups and there isn't much you can do about it. I did have one of my new pullback setups today that was a winner, however it was in the 6B so it didn't do much to stem the bleeding in my account.

This week is shaping up to be ugly - but its not over yet.

Trade Results:
2 Trades, 1 Loss, 1 Win
Gross P/L: $-40.00/per

Not Going as Planned

2010-04-20T10:28:00.002-05:00

I was supposed to be rolling in cash this week remember? That new setup that was going to get me out to the strip clubs to make it rain? Yea, had another loss today. Certainly not the outcome I thought I would be getting but i'm committed to give it at least a week and let it do what I think it can do. If after that time i've seen no evidence of this performance i'll reevaluate things.

Trade Results:
3 Trades, 1 Loss, 2 Pars
Gross P/L: $-112.50/per

Pushing to Production Forces a Loss

2010-04-19T10:54:00.003-05:00

So I pushed the final pullback signal to production today and what happens on the first trade you take with a new setup live? It looses of course! Seriously... I think i'm right in saying this little phenom has happened to me EVERY time I go live with a setup for the first time. Oh well, at least its out of the way? And honestly, I missed the par level by a tick... shit happens.

Took two more trades that ended up going for pars and threw in the towel. Its only day one and we've got a lot more trading to do this week!

Trade Results:
3 Trades, 1 Loss, 2 Pars
Gross P/L: $-120.00/per

Down But Not Out

2010-04-16T10:45:00.003-05:00

First things first, I had a rough week, and i'm still only ending down 7 bucks gross. So we aren't talking disaster here folks. This issue was simply due to my double bottom / double top entries in my trade plan that cost me money this week. They have been removed and won't come back to haunt my profitability from this point forward. Today I had a couple pars and caught this (frankly scary) reversal pattern to the short side for +7. It came within 1 tick of stopping me out so I was more than just a bit relived when it finally dropped.

Here is one more interesting fact I was looking at today - since my trade plan revision 4 weeks ago, i've had only 4 losing days. Yup, out of roughly 20 trading days i've walked away a loser only 4 times. I'm sorry, but i'm astounded by that. It almost has an air of consistency about it doesn't it?

However today I did screw up and I passed on a winner in the 6E out of fear. I had just had that bumpy ride in the 6S and was feeling a bit sheepish. So there's the 87.50 I needed to bump me up into positive territory for the week gone - due to fear. Apparently i'm not perfect just yet.

The other thing I wanted to quickly mention was a little progress report on that pullback trade I talked about briefly yesterday. Today that one setup netted a bare minimum of +21 ticks in the 6J alone. And that's taking profit at +7/trade. As you can see each one of these signals ran at least +11 in favor. Could I use the extra 300-400.00 in my pocket? You bet. These kind of results have been coming in fairly consistently. In fact this week its given only 1 losing signal!

Honestly the only thing i'm really working on before pushing this to production is the trade management side of things and trying to gauge the best compromise between getting something out of the trade with a smaller target (+7) and letting them run further (>11) but hitting lower win rates. If you guys have any ideas i'm all ears!

Trade Results:
3 Trades, 1 Winner, 2 Pars
Gross P/L: $100.00/per

Weekly Results:
Gross P/L: $-7.50/per
Net P/L After Commissions: $-67.45/per
Win/Loss: 40%
Win+Par/Loss: 67%
Profit Factor: 1.05

A Slight Rebound

2010-04-16T08:44:00.001-05:00

Caught a winner and a par both in the 6B today. I can't complain, money is money and the trade worked perfectly even if it was only at 6.25 a tick. I've had to re-evaluate one of my trade setups and remove it from my trade plan. Its one of the core reasons for my losses yesterday and that gentleman, is the Double Bottom/Double Top formation.

Now i'm well aware that when I set out to re-vamp this blog and my trade plan a few months back I talked endlessly about the uselessness and futility of these setups and their high failure rate. I said that I would be relying primarily on pullback trades only. The truth is I lied a bit and thought I could still eek out some profit off of them. The results show the truth. Both my pullback and reversal setups have netted close to 300.00/contract each over the past few weeks. What do you think the DB/DT setups gave me? $-243.75. That's a pretty stark contrast. Not one winner, a few pars, and a bunch of losses. It fly's in the face of logic to continue on with them so they are gone as of today.

In other news I've been forward testing the past couple of weeks on another iteration of a pullback trade and its shown GREAT promise. Its outperformed my other pullback signal almost 2:1 in terms of net profit. But i'm not going to rush forward with it just yet. Too many times and too much money has been lost rushing things into my trade plan prematurely. But it is nice to know that yet another idea for a setup just might have merit.

Trade Results:
2 Trades, 1 Winner, 1 Par
Gross P/L: $68.75/per

Its Hammer Time

2010-04-14T09:59:00.005-05:00

For my account... I had to shut down early today for the first time. Took 3 back to back losers. Luckily two of those losers were in the NQ/YM so the $ damage was minimal but after racking up close to 200.00 in losses I called it a day. I took the trades that were there, just none of them worked. So in the interest of self preservation I threw in the towel around 9:45 this morning. Frustrating, but I can dig myself out of a 200.00 hole. To keep trading with a slightly jaded mindset and potentially digging myself deeper wasn't something that sounded like a good plan.

No one day should make or break your account!

Trade Results:
3 Trades, 3 Losses
Gross P/L: $-192.50/per

Just a bunch of Pars

2010-04-13T10:53:00.004-05:00

Took some good trades today, but all backfilled just enough to slap me out before continuing on. Ended up getting a few ticks here and there but nothing to write home about.

Trade Results:
3 Trades, 3 Pars
Gross P/L: $16.25/per

No Trades - This Time for Real

2010-04-12T10:30:00.002-05:00

Just nothing came down the pike for me today. Some markets were running, but a lot of them were making some funky big wedges and basically not giving me much to go off of. But today's lack of trades was not due to being scared like it was on Friday. Bring 'em on... i'm gonna nail each one of them this week.

Trade Results:
No Trades
Gross P/L: $-.--/per

No Trades

2010-04-09T10:51:00.005-05:00

To be honest I wasn't seeing much I liked in the first 45 minutes and I had some stuff to do so I skipped out early this morning. I missed a profitable short setup in the 6E for an tough and heat-filled +7. Its weird, when your doing crappy there is no pressure to perform, but the more up days I have the more I fear the inevitable losses that will come. I was actually worried about trading today because in the back of my mind I was thinking that I could screw up my good week with a couple of losses. Its certainly a new kind of fear that I haven't really had to deal with yet but am already taking steps to reign in before it costs me money.

Results this week weren't fantastic. I made a few costly mistakes and only added the additional markets after 3 days into the week but I still think I am on the right track. That's 3/3 profitable weeks back to back which is pretty amazing for myself. Now I just need to work on getting a bit more actual profit. Less than 200 bucks after commissions isn't a whole hell of a lot to work with - BUT i'm profitable. Frankly if I could average $200.00/week in a consistent fashion (which I think i'm certainly capable of) I can add size fairly soon. I'm starting to realize that this profession is not about getting +900 one day, and -800 the next, but coming in like a brick layer and laying just a little bit of profitable brick each day. I'd say my equity curve looks fairly healthy even though its not as upward sloping as I might like.

One of the things i've mentioned many times before on this blog is to not get caught up in the $/contract amount of money your making. Its much easier to make a consistent 50.00/contract each day and add 10 lots than it is to make 500.00/contract on 1 lot. I want to be trading 10 lots within the year and if I kept my performance exactly as it is right now I would be living the kind of life I have been dreaming about for so long.

Trade Results:
No Trades
Gross P/L: $-.--/per

Weekly Results:
Gross P/L: $223.75/per
Net P/L After Commissions: $171.20/per
Win/Loss: 60%
Win+Par/Loss: 80%
Profit Factor: 3.06

Rattled Neves

2010-04-08T11:18:00.002-05:00

Had a good par and a nice winner today. Problem was on the winner I entered, then preceded to miss my par target by a tick, then a HH close occurred, then it came two ticks from stopping me out. But none of this information is in my rule set for bailing on a trade, so I stuck with it... taking heat for over 45 minutes. Then she caved, and I saw profit at +9, thought ya know i'm not gonna walk out with a tick or two on this damn thing after all the time and I bailed... right before my target at +11 was hit.

So yay for holding and sticking to my guns and not being afraid, but nay for me bailing outside of my rule set. I'd give myself a solid B- on execution today. Close, but no cigar.

Trade Results:
2 Trades, 1 Winner, 1 Par
Gross P/L: $112.50/per

Welcoming more markets!

2010-04-07T10:47:00.000-05:00

Today went pretty well. Couple winners and a couple pars - can't complain even if I wanted to. Ok, I did get slipped a tick on one of my winners but hey... we'll let it slide this time. I decided to add the YM & NQ to my workspace as its really pretty easy to monitor 8 things at once when you have most things either automated to alert potential trades or the setups are so blindingly obvious they are hard to miss to begin with.

I had been considering adding the ES/NQ/YM/TF/EMD or Crude. I've been hearing horror stories about fills especially in the TF, even on 1 lots, and frankly I don't need that. The ES still sucks long phallic objects as far as i'm concerned and even though I could be more profitable in it with the higher $/tick, I still hate the way it moves and backfills. The EMD isn't going to be liquid enough moving forward with more size so its kind of a futile effort, and then there is crude.

Crude is awesome because it moves so fast and directional, but its also so quick sometimes it can catch me off guard. Trading relatively small range charts on a market like that can be dangerous because sometimes the moves happen so quickly I physically can't click in the right orders fast enough. So i'm sticking with the NQ/YM for now as a nice middle of the road compromise.

It sucks that both of those markets are 5.00/tick but here's the honest to god truth... a 7 or 11 tick winner at 5.00/tick is still money I didn't have before, its growth I didn't have before, and i'm not going to scoff at that. I just want opportunity in liquid markets and they qualify. When the time comes to start chucking a couple lots into the market they will allow me to do so with risk that is still less than my 1 lot trades in the 6E/J/S. Works for me!

So even though one of my winners was in the NQ and only equated to 35 bucks... that 35 bucks made this day a triple digit winner rather than a double digit winner and that's something I want to see more of!

Trade Results:
4 Trades, 2 Winners, 2 Pars
Gross P/L: $110.00/per

Sometimes you're just wrong.

2010-04-06T10:46:00.000-05:00

Today was a frustrating day for me... took an outright loss this morning, just sold into something that had no intention of selling off. It happens. It has happened before, it will happen again, and that is the danger of these LH/HL patterns, occasionally they aren't going to cave and they will burst back in your face. Today was one of those occasions. Textbook trade? Yup, so there is nothing more to say and its time to move on.

Earlier in the day I saw a 6B trade that triggered prior to 9AM so in my rules its a null setup, but it was trading 3 ticks away from my hypothetical stop level so I figured for less than 20 bucks a contract I can give this a go. I gave it a go, and it gave my stop a go for a 3 tick loss. Again, not a huge deal.

I took what I thought was an awesome setup later in the day that went +9 in favor before V-Reversing in my face (my target was +11). Nothing I could do other than take a tick as per my rules.

The good? I executed my trade plan well today and stuck to my rules, and my losses weren't horrendous. The bad? One of my trades was a loss and my other wasn't a winner. Bring on tomorrow!

Trade Results:
3 Trades, 2 Losses, 1 Par
Gross P/L: $-86.25/per

A 1 Trade Day & A Quick Observation

2010-04-05T10:52:00.003-05:00

Half of the currencies were chopping and bobbing today, the other half all made pretty much the same sell off but did so in very different ways. I took a textbook reversal setup in the Swissy and held.... and held.... and then about 30 minutes later if finally caved to my target. This trade reaffirmed the need to truly stick to your management.

The Swiss was moving step for step with the 6E and 6B this morning and those markets put in double bottoms and reversal patterns. Meanwhile my position was taking heat and I was convinced it was all over. Then the 6B/6E fell over on their face and I got the push I needed. The point is - I could've bailed a 100x's over, I was so sure I was finished up until the point where I won. YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT THE MARKET WILL DO - SO ALL YOU CAN DO IS TRADE YOUR RULES!!!

The other thing I wanted to mention quickly was an observation about my profitability over the past two weeks since I changed my trade plan adding the reversal setup, requiring LH/HL patterns on every setup, relaxing my management somewhat and sticking 110% to my rules. I think the graph below pretty much sums up the transformation don't you?

Trade Results:
1 Trade, 1 Winner
Gross P/L: $87.50/per

End of a Short Week

2010-04-01T10:54:00.001-05:00

Well I had my A game going this morning but the markets didn't want to play. I had 3 awesome setups and 3 pars. The markets in each case rallied 7-9 ticks in favor each time but my targets were at +11 for these trades and they stopped and reversed for par's each time.

Now on these setups (all were pullbacks) I manage them a bit differently and their par management is already relaxed so I did take a couple ticks here and there on the efforts. In every case my par stops were in no way affecting the outcome of the trade that I could make a reasonable change in a management technique to eek more profit out of these moves.

Anyway, it was a short week and I had my share of mistakes. But I still managed to walk out with more than I walked in with and two back to back weeks of profit is something I don't think I've achieved in the better part of a year. Progress may actually be taking place here!

Trade Results:
3 Trades, 3 Pars
Gross P/L: $47.50/per

Weekly Results:
Gross P/L: $142.50/per
Net P/L After Commissions: $93.45/per
Win/Loss: 66%
Win+Par/Loss: 89%
Profit Factor: 2.16

A day of Muck ups and F**k ups

2010-03-31T10:49:00.000-05:00

Missed a textbook winner today for +7 in the 6C. Just flat out wasn't paying attention. Was too busy drooling over a McLaren on a car forum to make money off of the trade. I'm never gonna get my new McLaren unless I FOCUS ON TRADING. So... pissed about that. I haven't missed a valid trade in weeks!!!

The rest of the day went a bit better... I took two more great trades, took a +1 par on one and a +7 on the other. Which brings me to a revision of rules (not a big one at all) but its this - take true break evens and stop jamming stops to get +1 and cover commissions. My +1 could've been +7 if I had kept my stop at break even. I didn't, pushed it as per my rules and got high ticked out for a measly tick before it dropped to the target.

I'm not trading for a tick - i'm trading for a full fledged winner. I can cover a lot more commissions with a winner than I can a singular tick. Today should've been +7, +7, +7 for $227.50 - and i'm walking away with a fraction of that. I've gotta be posting up triple digit days as the norm - not this measly sub 100.00 crap. Not acceptable.

Trade Results:
2 Trades, 1 Par, 1 Winner
Gross P/L: $97.50/per

The End of the Streak

2010-03-30T11:05:00.000-05:00

Had to happen sooner or later... 6 winning days in a row and the 7th wasn't to be. Nothing horrific. Got slipped a tick on a breakeven effort and took a legit loss on an up move that wanted to ping me out before it went where expected. We knew the losing trades were coming and I think we took them in stride.

Trade Results:
2 Trades, 1 Par, 1 Loss
Gross P/L: $-62.50/per

A Technical Mistake...

2010-03-29T10:43:00.004-05:00

So things this morning were stagnant and slow. Like real slow. But along came a bounce setup and I jumped in as I should've. Thing was that this bounce setup was also a reversal setup which now means I had competing and differentiated management techniques for the same trade. Wrut Wro.

One setup gets to par on a close through the High/Low of swing. The other waits for a move in favor. I ended up getting to par on the close through which in hindsight was not the best idea because I had only entered 2 ticks prior to the High and it closed through 1 tick on the opposing side. Not a lot of wiggle room folks. So once out at par of course the reversal management worked perfectly for a winning trade without me. Ain't that always the way?

Point is, I hadn't had this occur before and it was a weak point in my trade plan. I can't stress this enough - PLAN FOR EVERYTHING. I really thought I had a solid plan in place only to find out there was still a chink in the armor. A solid trade plan is the easiest way to produce consistent results and yet its the one thing most traders don't focus on at all.

My trade plan is printed out and in front of me at all times. I breakout my plan into my 4 trade setups, entry criteria, par criteria, trailing stop criteria, and exit criteria. I also would recommend having MULTIPLE solutions and rules to get to par or take profit. Rarely does the market repeat itself exactly... and you need to have rule sets in place to deal with every possible outcome to maximize your trade profitability. Once your done its just a quick glance to reference exactly what you have to do to execute the trade perfectly.

Later in the morning I caught another reversal setup a bit later in the 6C that worked great except for slipping me a tick on entry. No biggie!

Trade Results:
2 Trades, 1 Par, 1 Winner
Gross P/L: $60.00/per

Starting to Come Together

2010-03-26T10:45:00.001-05:00

Not much to discuss, took a nice reversal trade that went to the target but didn't fill and reversed. So I walked away with a tick to cover commissions. Nothing else developed. Honestly i'm really liking the pace of trades i'm getting. I don't feel overwhelmed at any time and I can just keep a solid hold on everything during my trade day.

I ended up making money every day this week which is AWESOME. I didn't hit it out of the park but honestly making an average of $50.00 a day is more than enough for me to add size and live life without want. Its the consistency of that $50.00 that I really need to prove moving forward.

Trade Results:
1 Trade, 1 Par
Gross P/L: $10.00/per

Weekly Results:
Gross P/L: $295.00/per
Net P/L After Commissions: $251.40/per
Win/Loss: 100%
Win+Par/Loss: 100%
Profit Factor: 14.75 (No losses other than -1 tick slippage)

Blahhhh

2010-03-25T10:56:00.002-05:00

I came, I sat, I saw.... nada.

No trade setups today folks. But I did read a fascinating story about the "Worlds Most Ingenious Thief". An awesome read if your bored over on Wired.com.

Trade Results:
No Trades
Gross P/L: $-.--/per

Consistency in the Air?

2010-03-24T10:51:00.003-05:00

Pretty quiet day over here. Took two "bounce trades" one got a par, the other went for a solid winner. These are the trades that are designed to let run and don't have predefined targets. Both were great trades and I did manage to perfectly execute and manage them both.

However, the second trade really spiked the interest of my evil douche-bag gremlin. My trade rules state that i'm to only get to par on a close through the high or low of the swing. And the trade bounced around for a full 16 minutes before doing just that. I thought the trade was done for soooo many times and the evil douche-bag gremlin was screaming "get to par you dipshit!". But I didn't. I beat that gremlins ass with a bat, stuck to my rules and had a damn nice trade.

If I keep this kind of crap up I might accidentally turn into a profitable trader - what a weird reality that would be.

Trade Results:
2 Trades, 1 Par, 1 Winner
Gross P/L: $120.00/per

Solid Trading

2010-03-23T10:58:00.000-05:00

Well after another day of trading i'm finding that i'm running a pretty damn tight ship these days. Spotting and pulling the trigger is a non issue at this point (which is a huge breakthrough in its own right). My weakness is sticking to the rule set once i'm in the trade, but having my rules printed out and sitting before me really reinforces my management.

Today for example I had four great trades, but the second one slipped a tick on exit (high ticking me out of a winning trade nonetheless) and when I got into the next trade I started thinking... "Well If I could just eek a tick out i'd be back up on the day". Now I know rationally this makes NO sense, but in the back of my mind there is still a little douche-bag gremlin there yelling these things at me. That's the kind of irrational bullshit my mind plays on me. I'm down on the day (by 10 dollars) and I HAVE to get it back. Good news is I took my anti-douche-bag-gremlin pills this morning and traded flawlessly.

Trade Results:
4 Trades, 3 Pars, 1 Winner
Gross P/L: $77.50/per

New Beginnings

2010-03-22T10:54:00.001-05:00

As you all know today was the first day of my restructured trade plan and setups. A lot is riding on my performance over the next two weeks to execute the trades as perfectly as possible and allow the results to speak for themselves. I find that its much easier to execute trades correctly if your setups mimic your own personal traits.

One of the things i've really tried to do is tailor my setups to my personality. I'm just not a very patient person. I'm not saying that if i'm in a trade i'll bail because its failing to achieve my first target within 30 seconds but I prefer to be in and out quickly. Furthermore, I perform better if I walk away with $87.50 on two trades rather than a par and $175.00 on one trade. That's just me. That type of trading suits my personality and allows me to have more faith in my trades, which in turn allows me to execute more reliably.

I only mention this because I know a lot of you out there who are still learning methods (probably not your own) often think you have to trade everything like everyone else does. Not only do I disagree with this, I would go further to say that it can be counter-productive to try and do this. Trading isn't a "one size fits all" profession. You could give the same 10 rules to 100 different people and you would end up with 100 different results ranging for horribly unprofitable to amazingly profitable. Those results are a direct result of different personalities interacting with not only the marketplace, but the rules with which they are told to do so. This all in turn affects execution which rolls over into a direct correlation with profitability.

That's all for my thoughts of the day, now onto the days trading. I had one trade around 10AM this morning in the 6J. It was a reversal trade that worked perfectly. The thing I found a bit eye-opening was that when your backtesting I would see this trade, record it as a win and think nothing more of it. The reality is that in real time it took 33 minutes from entry to exit to achieve and at one point it was down 5 ticks against me. Now in my backtesting I don't record times in trades (nor even think about it) or do I think about what those adverse wiggles can do to your psyche in real time.

Its very easy to see a binary outcome in backtesting of win or loss. I would encourage you all to take a minute to consider the reality of each of your back-tested trades. What is it going to be like in real time? Will that draw down make you question your motives? Will the market not going in a straight line to your target give you doubt? Will all of these things make you surrender the position for anything less than your back-tested outcomes? Its not something we often think about until real money is on the line. And by then it often becomes all too real all too late.

Trade Results:
1 Trade, 1 Winner
Gross P/L: $87.50/per

Taking a Step Back

2010-03-19T10:52:00.003-05:00

Behind the scenes there has been a lot of trade "tweaking" and creation over the past 14 days that I have neglected to share with you all. So I wanted to take a moment to explain what those changes were and their potential impact on my performance.

First BIG change. You remember my first week live? All looking fine initially, but it somehow just didn't come together? Well during that time I was trading 2 different pullback setups, lets call them Type 1 and Type 2. Now, I had combined their results in the back-test the week ahead to get my results, and while the Type 1's weren't hitting it out of the park I thought they were at least holding their own in profitability. Problem was, they were JUST barley able to do that.

Here are the back-test results filtered into each type rather than combined together.

Type 1:

Type 2:

Notice anything glaring? I certainly did. What befuddles me (yes I just used the word befuddles) is that it had snuck past me before. Take a look at my live results with the same filter applied... real trades I took were bang on and performing to expectation but were wiped out by all the bad Type 1 trades. Had I filtered my results to only take type 2's I would've been making consistent money.

Combined:

Filtered:

I was taking good trades, but they just were being covered up by the bad ones. However, remember last Friday and my back to back max losses on that pullback trade in the 6E? Well I do. So I started looking at my trades a bit closer and something blatant jumped out at me. And voila a new filter was born that kept 80% of the winners and cut out a lot of the inefficient pars and losses.

However, my new filter on my pullback trades meant they were going to be occurring less and less. For example we had two of them this entire week - BUT they were solid winners each time. So to offset the lack of trades I decided to push ahead with the setup i've been refining for weeks now.

The inclusion of "reversal trades" in my trading plan started early this week. Problem was I was still refining some of the rules and I shouldn't have gone live until those rules were set in stone. The winner on Wednesday that I screwed up would still be valid, and my loser on Monday wouldn't have. The back-tests of these trades is not as high of a Profit Factor as the other setups but it still is around ~2.0 when tested on 24 hour back-tests in all Forex markets and the ES, GCL, EMD, NQ, YM, TF, as well.

The Profit Factors during my actual live trade hours in the Forex markets have been greater than 5 which is something I can live with. Again, these trades are like the pullback trades in that they don't occur all that often due to the highly filtered nature of the setup but when they do they have proven to be very reliable.

The last change is one more setup that is another version of the reversal. Difference being that this setup looks to hit big runners each time by getting in earlier and holding for gold. These trades are frankly - rare. During my live trade hours I might get maybe 1 or 2 a week. But my oh my how they can win when they occur. I tested them on all the futures markets again using 24 hour charts and they came back with a ~90% win rate and a profit factor of 8.8!

To be honest this trade setup has got me seriously considering trading the Asian Session open in the evenings till around 12PM CST. Its just so damn consistent when it occurs.

All in all i've had a frustrating, yet illuminating week. With my trade rules set in stone now I finally need to lock everything down and go into a "no change zone" for two weeks. I have to see how the method can perform as it sits right now before changing anything else. I've spoken to the issue of too much continual change in a trading plan being counter productive and working against consistency and performance. I have to take my own advice and see whats what. Its impossible to say something needs to be fixed if I can't verify its broken in the first place.

As for today's action I had one of my nice pullback trades in the 6B and after it finished chopping back and forth she dropped like a rock. I took profit at the predefined target and walked away with +11.

Trade Results:
1 Trade, 1 Winner
Gross P/L: $68.75/per

Weekly Results:
Gross P/L: $31.25/per
Net P/L After Commissions: $4.00/per
Win/Loss: 66%
Win+Par/Loss: 80%
Profit Factor: .056

A Technicality Costs Money

2010-03-17T10:55:00.002-05:00

Today was a pretty slow day with chop and congestion taking over the 6A, C, S, and J for the majority of the morning. That left me with an opportunity in the 6E around 10:00AM. This trade was a reversal trade, something i've been working on and will talk about more later. But its basically as simple as it looks - its a LH/HL failure in a trend, or a reversion to mean. The LH/HL pattern is something that I look for in all of my trades and something i'll speak more on in depth in the coming days.

The trade is designed to take the first burst through a stop level and capture the initial push caused by the flood of orders entering the market and nothing more. I'm not looking for 30 pip winners off of these trades. When I am able to go at the markets with 2 contracts (which will be awhile considering my dismal live performance) I will take one of normally and allow the other to trail stops naturally to allow for potential big winners. But until then, its more of a scalp for 7ish ticks or so.

So what was my mistake today? Well it was caused by slippage (something I should get used to with the levels in use on these setups where a lot of quick churn is going to happen). I got slipped a tick on entry short. I have separate levels for getting to break-even and getting to +1 tick. The move worked in favor to my break-even level so I moved my stop to break-even right? Wrong. Due to the slippage my break-even stop was where my +1 stop should've been, and it came back up, high ticked me out at par, and went right on to my target. With slippage accounted for, i'm down 75 bucks from what I deserve.

In the future I will move to my normal break-even and +1 levels independent of my actual fill. Lesson learned.

Trade Results:
1 Trade, 1 Par
Gross P/L: $0.00/per

No Trades - FOMC Day

2010-03-16T18:38:00.002-05:00

I never trade the FOMC days. Typically slow and sloppy before, and spastic after. Decided to spend the day sleeping in, watching a few movies, working out, and polishing my tennis serve. All in all - a great day! Hope you all had profitable outcomes if you stuck through it!

More losses!

2010-03-15T10:29:00.004-05:00

Missed par levels by a tick and took a loss and had one small win.

Trade Results:
3 Trades, 1 Win, 1 Par, 1 Loss
Gross P/L: $-37.50/per

Ouch

2010-03-12T10:49:00.000-06:00

Rough Day. Took two back to back full stop outs in the 6E. Just got caught in chop that didn't want to go my way. Everything was textbook, but that doesn't make big losses much more palatable. And worse, it really makes the entire week look like outright failure. The results are simple, two losses, a bunch of pars and not one win make for bad outcomes.

The only good thing in all of this is that if I was being judged on execution of my trade plan it was truly a flawless week. Not one screw up. If only that correlated a bit more closely to trade outcome...

Trade Results:
2 Trades, 2 Losses
Gross P/L: $-200/per

Weekly Results:
Gross P/L: $-156.25/per
Net P/L After Commissions: $-188.95/per
Win/Loss: 0%
Win+Par/Loss: 67%
Profit Factor: .000

More Trades!

2010-03-11T10:50:00.003-06:00

I was actually complimented with some trade opportunity today and came close to catching a winner. As you can see, I took a great long signal in the 6B (I took a duplicate of it in the 6E as well) but as it hit my par level, it paused momentarily, rotated back down to its low to smack me out at par and then continued on its merry way without me. Frustrating, but textbook.

I had two other longs today in the 6E but both stalled at highs and came back in my face after being up around 5-7 ticks each. Thing is - I was holding for the runners as my rules dictate, and the runners weren't there. One of them stopped out on negative slippage but the nice thing about locking in a tick of profit on pars is negative slippage just turns a trade into an actual par. I can live with that.

Frankly i'm just happy to actually have some trades to take. I don't feel so anxious about not having any opportunity to try and grab anymore. Certainly not the same amount of trades as two weeks back or even last week but i'll take whatever comes my way.

The only other slight change i'm making in my trade schedule is quitting at 11AM CST rather than 12PM CST. I know I know, i'm a lazy pile of crap. Thing is this: the net results from the past 3 weeks after 11AM CST is 4 par trades... 4 Par trades isn't worth the additional 12 hours of work. I'm all about working hard, but i'd much rather work smart and efficiently when its going to count the most.

Trade Results:
3 Trades, 3 Pars
Gross P/L: $31.25/per

A Trade!!!

2010-03-10T11:54:00.001-06:00

To my shock and amazement I was actually able to take a trade today! The move ended up pausing at the highs and backfilling to take me out at par but as you can see... right idea.

So that's really all there is to report. Conditions were very nice today and I can't complain one bit. Solid trends, nice pullbacks, and lots of 'close but no cigar' setups. I took the one textbook setup that came along, managed it perfectly and took the exit my rules dictated. I can't ask for (or do) anything more than that.

As a side note to my fellow traders, a friendly reminder that rollover is coming in the next couple of days depending on which instruments you're trading... Keep an eye on the volume transition between front month and current month so you stay on the right contract!

Trade Results:
1 Trade, 1 Par
Gross P/L: $12.50/per

Day Two of Blah...

2010-03-09T15:14:00.004-06:00

Not one trade again today. Today was a case of big moves that occurred around 7-8AM and by the time I got to the charts at 9AM everything was in consolidation mode recovering from the big moves. Those conditions weren't conducive to giving me signals.

The thing about having no trades two days in a row when you've been averaging 4 a day is that it puts you back on your heels. It makes you second guess yourself, makes you wonder if you missed something, makes you wonder if your method is all its cracked up to be.

I've been down that road way too many times. So rather than embrace the fear and doubt - I think i'll just keep on doing exactly what I have been.

Trade Results:
No Trades
Gross P/L: -.--/per

All Quiet on the Western Front

2010-03-08T11:51:00.000-06:00

I came, I saw, I sat. No trades today. There was one just before my start time this morning which ended up with a couple ticks but other than that it was a lot of hurry up and wait. But that kids is what this game is all about sometimes.

The patience to sit on your hands when its not there is just as important as the ability to pull the trigger when it is!

Trade Results:
No Trades
Gross P/L: -.--/per

Close but no cigar...

2010-03-05T11:00:00.001-06:00

It looks like after all of the fight we put up we ended up losing money this week. I traded well today again but caught a loser in the 6S and was slipped a tick ontop of it. But as you can see in the image below... right idea... just a bit early.

So what i'm left with is results in stark contrast to last week. To make sure that i'm not nuts and falling down a primrose path to failure yet again I have analyzed the trades and outcomes from this week and compared them to last week. Two things became very apparent:

Missed trades on Monday and Tuesday while I got my feet under me and was having platform issues cost me big.
The trades simply weren't there like they were last week.

Missed trades cost me at least 175.00 worth of profit. Not massive, but it makes a difference. I also have decided to move towards giving my trades 1 additional tick of initial risk. I had 2 trades this week where I was low ticked out and could've turned full stopouts into either pars or nice winners. If I can accomplish that with only 1 additional tick of risk I think its worth it.

The more obvious reason for performance (or lack thereof) was the lack of profitable trades. I went back and looked at the actual setups from last week (I take a screenshot of every trade I take and log it) and i'm sorry folks, but they just weren't there this week like last week. There were just awesome trades everywhere that meshed perfectly with what I was doing last week, and that wasn't the case this week for whatever reason.

Take for example the total number of trades taken last week - 34. This week, only 23. Even including the missed trades it would still only be around 27. Conditions simply weren't as great as they were on the prior week.

But I remain committed and optimistic that there is indeed something here so I will continue on next week with the tiny tweak of additional 1 ticks of risk and keep at it.

Certainly not the week I was expecting (it literally went downhill everyday since Monday) but I'm still walking away from it having learned a lot and performed well under the conditions.

Trade Results:
1 Loss
Gross P/L: $-100/per

Weekly Results:
Gross P/L: $55.00/per
Net P/L After Commissions: $-70.35/per
Win/Loss: 54%
Win+Par/Loss: 74%
Profit Factor: .972

Rough and Tumble

2010-03-04T12:27:00.003-06:00

Today was by far the worst day i've hit yet. Just couldn't seems to do much right in terms of how the signals played out. I would get profit, then hit a loser, get more profit back, hit another loser. Rinse and repeat all day long. One of my winners today was solid, but was on the 6B at 6.25/tick. Both losses were at 12.50/tick. Sucks but that's life right now. That being said, I did exactly what I was supposed to and give myself a solid A on execution today. No fear, no greed, no trigger shyness, just solid execution.

I will say I am a bit frustrated with the results thus far. Don't get me wrong, i'm having more consistency and success than I have ever had before but the method is obviously in a drawdown period as the results this week just aren't in line with last week. Thing is though - that's ok. For once i'm remaining the constant in the market rather than trying to change X, Y, and Z around to "catch more". So when the markets decide to go my way again be it tomorrow or next week i'll be there to capitalize on it.

Trade Results:
2 Wins, 2 Losses, 4 Pars.
Gross P/L: $0.00/per

Day 3 Live

2010-03-03T12:25:00.003-06:00

I'll keep this short. Ended up the day with a scratch. Markets were fairly congestive, gave me 4 par trades, 2 losses, and only 1 winner. But i'm trying to break from my habit of comparing my profit for the day with my execution of my method for the day. While the profit isn't there today, I executed perfectly. I did everything I needed to do, caught every move I was supposed to and managed them all perfectly textbook. I can't say that i've ever really done that before. And frankly, if I can have a day like today where I had a couple losses, a small win, and a ton of pars and walk away basically unscathed... that my friends is progress.

Trade Results:
4 Pars, 2 Losses, 1 Win
Gross P/L: $1.25/per

Day 2 Live

2010-03-02T11:30:00.003-06:00

Today was awesome if for no other reason that I could focus 100% on my trading and didn't suffer any platform or data issues. However, it was one of those days where I didn't catch any big runners and half of my winning trades ended up being at 6.25/tick in the 6B and my 1 loss was at 12.50/tick in the 6J. Not to mention the two tasty winners I had to pass up because I have a self-imposed 1 lot limit on my account right now. Gotta crawl before you can walk ya know? But for now, its all 1 lots and that's the reality i'm faced with.

Overall there wasn't much action for me today. I'm usually churning about 10 trades a day, today I had 4. This is reflected in the overall P/L performance for the day. Its quite a bit under what I would've liked to see!

I truly feel like i'm coming into my own with this approach. For the first time I truly can look at the markets objectively know exact which markets are potentially in play and then I just sit back and wait to pounce. Rinse and repeat. All you professionals out there probably have been doing this since you were in diapers but for myself its a huge change. That change is playing a huge impact on my everyday psyche and attitude towards not only the markets but life in general.

I have been walking around with an uneasy angst about my continual failure in the markets and its finally starting to subside. But before we pop champagne - its only day two. Lots of career left to go!

OEC Side-note - I've talked to two other traders that were caught in the same issues with OEC Futures Data yesterday as I was. Apparently OEC did change some system stuff with the 3.5 roll-out which caused the problem. However one of the traders said that after 45 minutes on the phone with support that they were aware of the problem, were working to fix it, and that I might have free futures data reinstated by the weekend. Awesome!

*Checkout the new blog logo too! I know I know... its as awesome as I am!*

Trade Results:
2 Wins, 1 Par, 1 Loss
Gross P/L: $47.50/per

The Shit Storm that is my Life

2010-03-01T10:37:00.004-06:00

I'll try and keep this short, but the past 12 hours have been hellish. Had a great weekend and was looking forward to going live today (I did, more on that in a bit). Last night I logged onto my OEC Trader platform to check charts and just look at the moves. All of my futures data doesn't appear. WTF? I contact OEC support last night at midnight and they couldn't seem to replicate the issues.

In the meantime I had downloaded a new version of OEC (3.5 Demo) to see the new features and was pulling up the futures data with no problems, while 3.4 running concurrently could only reference spot Forex data. Hmmmm. My first thought was that they started filtering who got futures data (I only have a spot Forex account with them). Those fears were soon realized.

Lets get one thing clear - the only reason I opened an account with OEC was because I was explicitly told that no matter what account I had (spot, futures, equity) I could access ALL data. So I opened the account and had spent the last 3 months trading off their futures data with no issues.

Today I was told by customer service that you only get data for your specified account type and that it has always been this way. (I'm not insane, i've been using their data for months). They were befuddled at 1. That I was told all users got all data, and 2. That I had had access to futures data over the past 3 months.

Regardless - imagine my surprise when i'm all ready to go and today of all days the one reliable portion of my trading plan (data and platform) conks out and I'm left out in the cold.

To make matters worse the new versions of OEC have a bug that doesn't allow additional fractional digits to be added to the data box (so my moving average says 135.897 rather than being rounded up to 135.90). I use this functionality in all of my trades and now it was broken.

So now i've got a platform that doesn't work as it did on Friday, and i'm without futures data, and oh yea, today was supposed to be my first day live.

Long story short I did try to trade live today but between getting the data running and fixing platform calculation errors my performance suffered greatly. And it wasn't taking bad trades - it was missing AWESOME trades. So as of 10:30AM i'm calling it quits for the day. I still caught two winners but I conservatively missed $187.50 of profit to this point in time this morning. Were not talking woulda coulda shoulda trades, were talking they were there for the plucking but outside issues (customer support, data, and platform calculations) prevented them being taken as they were all last week.

So i'm just a bit stressed, pissed, and frazzled from the day and it had nothing to do with my trading. So hopefully i'll get things in order and the rest of the week goes smoothly.

I have to say I am amazed at the irony of the situation. This would have to happen to me today. Its like how all of us go out with our new methods and the first trade is always a loser? As if the markets are trying to smack you back down for trying to beat them. And now that I can beat them the only way to sabotage me was through killing my trade platform.

As far as today, I took two great trades, one smaller winner and one runner that I admittedly mismanaged. I thought price was stalling and I jammed my stop up and got +10 but it continued on in favor and the textbook exit was +15. Pretty big mistake but i've got the "live jitters" out of my trading now and we are good to go!

Trade Results:
2 Trades, 2 Wins
Gross P/L: $106.25/per

One week done!

2010-02-26T12:22:00.004-06:00

Well the first weeks results are and they are astounding. 5 days, 5 WINNING days, 3 losing trades, 17 winning trades, 14 pars for a tick, 85% win/loss, 92% win+par/loss, and a 6.136 PROFIT FACTOR!!!

On Friday's the action dies down even more quickly than a normal trading day so i'll only be trading a two hour trade period from 9-11AM CST. I looked at the trades after 11 but honestly the good moves were done and the chop had set in. The trades ended up being net profitable but only by a bit. Again, the efficiency of spending my time when the most and best trades come along is within the first two hours of the day.

The action today was fairly congestive and I didn't get any huge runners (I had a 10 tick winner but it was at half price for 6.25/tick in the 6B) and had two losses. Prior days on this blog with two losing trades usually ended up with my being pseudo suicidal, my account having a huge drawdown, and certainly no profit being made. Not anymore!

Trade Results:
5 Wins, 2 Losses, 3 Pars
Gross P/L: $132.50/per

Weekly Trade Results:
Net P/L After Commissions: $947.75/per

Another Day in the Bag...

2010-02-25T13:44:00.004-06:00

Traded really really well today. The morning kicked ass and while I didn't have any huge runners (and one of my winners was @ 6.25/tick in the 6B) there were solid consistent gains to be had. What i've noticed (and this is not a revelation) is that the moves in the afternoons just really aren't there. I think when i'm going to go live next week i'll be focusing on a 3 hour trade window from 9AM CST - 12PM CST.

Literally 85% of our trades this week have occurred prior to 12PM. And of that 85%, 92% were winners! If I include pars, 96% were winners! By contrast 12PM - 2PM has netted $-10.55 after commissions. Simply not worth the time. Previously I had only traded from 9-11 or 12 and never bothered with the afternoons and I will revert back to this practice. Once the European markets close down the odds of catching some good moves are outlier at best. Things go into consolidation and die down - not the optimal time for me.

Best thing thus far was checking out my running "live" profit factor results. Came in at a solid 6.17! Which is right on target with the backtest results as I am using two different pullback entries and one had a backtest of around 5.15 and the other at 6.00. Its very cool to see backtest results actually mesh up with real results for a change!

Trade Results:
5 Trades, 3 Wins, 2 Pars
Gross P/L: $168.75/per

A Loss! GASP

2010-02-24T16:20:00.006-06:00

First loss of the week this morning... 7 ticks fixed as always. But within 15 minutes I was back in black on the day. Then I followed the early morning action with some awesome trades into the afternoon. I got stopped out by a tick from getting a +20 tick runner (I walked out with +7 instead) but it was just one of those kind of fluke things where I got a 5 tick wide bar on a 4 tick range bar chart. OEC calculates their range bars differently from TradeStation and NinjaTrader and doesn't use "fake ticks" to fill in and create new bars so occasionally 5 tick bars can occur. No big deal... I took a kick ass trade and managed it perfectly. A nice move in the Swissy capped off the day with a solid +9.

All the other trades were just pars, but unlike anytime before pars aren't a commission loss. Each par I take I take a tick of profit out of the market so not only am I covering commission expenses but i'm adding (albeit very tiny) to my account balance with each non performing trade. You think it doesn't add up over time but it really really does. This week alone i've had 10 par trades with a gross profit total of $86.25 Without taking that tick of profit my account would suffer a $54.50 loss from commission expenses. This way i'm sitting pretty with $31.75 worth of additional profit which isn't much, but its a $140.75 swing in profitability!

Trade Results:
8 Trades, 1 Loss, 4 Wins, 3 Pars
Gross P/L: $203.75/per

Pullback Revelations 101

2010-02-23T11:42:00.007-06:00

This might end up being a pseudo novel so I recommend only to continue on if you are really bored or under the influence of something mind altering. That being said, I think there might be something of worth in the jumble that follows.

That massive losing day last week slapped some sense into me (and rightly so). What I was doing was fighting the market like usual. For the past year my entire method had been created around support and resistance - sounds good right? Well actually it was created around trying to catch reversals at support and resistance, double tops and bottoms, etc. All that is awesome save for one very important fact - each time I was fighting market momentum. Price may move into an area of prior S/R but unless it is dead set on reversing on a dime you stand to lose a lot of money very often. Typically there might be some reaction, maybe enough to get to par but rarely did you get a clean V reversal at those levels.

Whats worse was I was using fixed targets for profit so my winners were cut short every time and my losers weren't fixed and never really made up for anything. I was hitting 71% (Win+Par/Loss) on a good day. My account suffered to say the least.

I had been doing a lot of reading on different sites about profit factors and how important they are (much more so than win percentages) and so I did some simple calculations on my results of my S/R method.

Win/Loss (No Pars) %: 56%
Avg Win: $48.10
Loss % (1-56%): 43%
Avg Loss: $-81.37
Profit Factor: .76

Drrr.... why can't I seem to turn a profit? We are now entering Dumbassville, population me. My 71% rate was inflated by useless commission decaying pars. I was an idiot and I just never got around to realizing the fallacy of "But I have a 71% win rate INCLUDING PARS). Win rates mean nothing, especially including your pars. Profit factors are what keep you consistently profitable or not.

If you curious about trade expectancy and profit factors check out this excellent article by Richard here.

So I needed to do a 180 and change everything.

The issues I had to correct were simple and obvious:

BE NET PROFITABLE.
Achieve a method with a Profit Factor of 1.5+
Increase my ACTUAL Win/Loss ratio.
Increase my Avg. Wins, while limiting my losses.
Limit and have a FIXED risk.
Uncap winners.
Focus on reducing pars.
Getting paid for my par efforts to cover commissions.

First thing I did was switch to range charts. I had traded minute, volume, and tick charts my entire career and thought they were the cats meow. The problem being they still don't filter market noise well. I thought ticks did this great in comparison to minute bars (and they do in my opinion) but in comparison to range bars, well there is no comparison. They truly make the "picture" more clear for me by showing me the IMPORTANT movement of the market.

But the other big thing with range charts is this: They are a constant size. Obvious right? Well that obvious fact allows me to do a number of things. First off, I can have a fixed stop on every trade AND know what it is prior to me getting into the trade. Second, I know what my entry price is going to be before the bar ends, thus I can place my orders well ahead of the fact and get in when the market is making its move without scrambling for a fill only to be passed up.

Finally, it allows me to have a fixed target to get to par and a fixed loss each trade. I have been measuring off the size of my entry bar for par and target levels forever (and I like this method), problem was depending on the size of the entry bar on a tick or minute chart your par might be 4 ticks away or 14. It wasn't consistent. With range bars it is the same each and every time.

So now that I had part of the equation figured out I just had to come up with a simple entry method. I knew what I needed to do. One word - Pullbacks. I'd been slapped by trending markets more often than I cared to talk about so I decided to get on board rather than continue to hand over my stops to the trend traders. But the problem with pullbacks has ALWAYS BEEN this: "The trend is you're friend until the end". Well shit... if it ends that means i'm guaranteed to take a loss at the end of each trend - or does it?

In years passed I had recognized this inherent flaw in the ideology of trending pullback entries but I worked to avoid this problem by trying to utilize indicators and divergences in the markets. Problem was they were just as hit or miss as anything else. Turns out the answer had been in front of me all along - I just didn't SEE it until now.

If the issues with pullbacks is catching the "end of trend" where is the most obvious place to look for the highest probability of avoiding this losing trade? Why at the BEGINNING of the trend of course. By attempting to trade ONLY the first pullback from the start of a new L, H, HL, HH or H, L, LH, LL sequence you could avoid the situation almost entirely. Not only that but I found that typically these "first pullbacks" were the strongest and had the tendency to run the farthest. I know its rudimentary and blatantly obvious to all of you, but I hadn't had this "aha" moment until right now.

The following should illustrate what i'm talking about quite well:

The example is from a typical day in the currencies, not particularly trending at any one time... but the idea remains the consistent. The first pullback trades are the biggest runners, the most likely to run far enough to get to par, and the most likely to work in favor. Is it perfect? Nope. But its a good logical analysis of price action that seems to have a practical application.

But in the back of my mind I continued to think "but doesn't all of that extra profit from the smaller continuation pullbacks make up for the one "end of trend loser"? So we tested and tested and tested and came up with some pretty interesting results. **AND YES I RECOGNIZE THAT THESE RESULTS ARE NOT STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT**

ALL TRADE Results (5 Days, 9AM-2PMCST):
Gross Ticks: 106
Gross P/L: $1,088.75
Commissions (@5.45/RT): $288.90
Net P/L: $859.85
Win/Loss: 74%
Win+Par/Loss: 86%
Avg $/Trade: 20.47
Total Trades: 42
Profit Factor: 5.6

FIRST PULLBACK Results (5 Days, 9AM-2PMCST):
Gross Ticks: 43
Gross P/L: $513.75
Commissions (@5.45/RT): $81.75
Net P/L: $432.00
Win/Loss: 86%
Win+Par/Loss: 93%
Avg $/Trade: $28.80
Total Trades: 15
Profit Factor: 5.1

First things first... BOTH MADE MONEY. That in and of itself is a pretty big objective. And the second biggest thing to note is the profit factors on both. WELL ABOVE 1.5. This was in no small way due to the fact that I got BIG winners and had a small fixed risk. Actually you could make more profit by trading EVERY pullback but look at what you give up...

The efficiency of your system takes a huge dive. Taking only the first pullback requires nearly 3X's less trades, and increases the efficiency of each trade up 41%! Basically the added profit was due to a slight increase in winners but those winners were smaller overall compared to the 1st pullback trades, and you had more losses (6 vs. 1) and a LOT more pars which confirms our theory on first pullbacks. They simply run farther and are more consistent.

Frankly, i'd rather take less trades and have more consistent results even if it means less net profit at the end of the week. 15 trades over 5 days is still 3 a day and that's right about where I want to be.

So that's the story, that's what i'm doing, that's my revelation. The results this week speak for themselves:

Results Mon (2/22):
4 Trades, 1 Par, 3 Winners.
Gross P/L: $260.00/per.

Results Tues (2/23):
6 Trades, 3 Pars, 3 Winners.
Gross P/L: $402.50/per.

S.O.L.

2010-02-10T10:49:00.002-06:00

Turns out yesterday knocked me under margin by 20 bucks.... On sim mode until further notice.

Day 2 Results

2010-02-09T14:00:00.001-06:00

In months past days like today would leave me scrambling for excuses or at the very least wallowing in self pitty - no more. Was there volatility? Yup. Did I get f**ked by it a bit? Yup. Did I take a trade I was not supposed to? Yup. Did my method have more losers than winners today? Yup. Plain and simple - didn't have a good day, took one I shouldn't have and overall just didn't get profitable signals (4 losers, 1 winner). Draw downs happen. Tough shit. Bring on tomorrow.

P/L (in ticks):
-27

Day 1 Results

2010-02-08T14:30:00.002-06:00

Gonna keep these daily posts pretty short. I traded perfect today. No missed entries, no mis-managed trades, perfect in's and out's on everything. Now that doesn't mean that there were many profitable moves today, but I took what was there. I didn't catch any nice winners (in fact I only had 1 smaller winner). So no insane profits today... lots of pars (4 to be exact, 1 that slipped a tick on exit). But I walked away with more than I walked in with. Solid day any way I slice it.

P/L (in ticks):
+5

Is anyone still out there?

2010-02-05T19:07:00.004-06:00

I've been working overtime on a lot of new ideas and like usual most seem promising up until the point they fall flat on their asses.

A lot has transpired since I last posted. The highlights are this, I ditched TradeStation and opened up a brokerage account with Infinity Futures (Talk to Anthony and tell 'em I sent ya!). I've been nothing but impressed with the level of service i've had from them and the speed of execution in comparison to TradeStation is astounding. You don't realize how bad you had it until you switch to something this much better. Kudos to them.

But my leaving TradeStation also meant I needed a charting platform so I opened up an account with Open E Cry and have been using their platform. Really nice platform considering the cost (FREE!), has EasyLanguage support which was the key for me, live data to any market I'd want to trade and they too have had AMAZING support. All in all - leaving TradeStation is something I should've done a LONG time ago. The only thing I miss is the historical data - but if you can get around that DO IT. I cut my monthly expenses from 110.00/mo to 0.00.

I finally cut all the bullshit off my charts. No oscillators, for the most part nothing. I came up with a simple idea that offers me the lowest entry risks yet and the most consistency i've seen in any method i've ever traded. Furthermore I switched to range bar charts (*Gasp* I know right? But i've been amazed with the clarity I find!) Then again, we've all heard these bullshit lines out of my mouth once or twice before haven't we? The difference is this - trading (granted it was on sim) but as realistically as possible I was able to walk out not only a winner every day this week but a BIG winner in some cases. At least a big winner relative to my previous experiences. Today I ended up with a damn sight more than 400.00/per and ended up the week more than I ever have before at any time. Period.

Next week is put up or shut up time quite literally. Its time to put it all on the line once again and try and make a go out of it. I'm tired of losing, i'm tired of spending hours upon hours backtesting ideas, i'm tired of seeing my dollars get transferred into some other guys account, in short - i'm tired. Hopefully in one weeks time i'll be sitting here writing about how kick ass I feel and how great this past week was. To be honest, I literally can't wait to find out.

Cheers.

Screw TradeStation

2009-12-07T13:37:00.002-06:00

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!

2009-12-02T19:00:00.002-06:00

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

2009-11-23T17:33:00.003-06:00

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

2009-11-20T09:16:00.003-06:00

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

2009-11-18T13:19:00.003-06:00

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!

2009-11-17T18:54:00.002-06:00

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

2009-10-11T16:46:00.003-05:00

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.

Lets just say, I screwed up a bit.

2009-09-28T20:56:00.006-05:00

Meh... as the blotter shows... I made a number of mistakes today... mainly holding for my targets. I had more than ample opportunity to make this a profitable day and I just screwed the pooch.

Good news is this... a recent change in my approach is going to allow me to share my entries with you and my website is going to be reformatted to provide free educational content and only sell the indicator software for Ninja and TradeStation to make the entries easier. Bad news is I spent hundreds of man hours creating a members section and video archive of educational content that i'm now throwing away. Yay for me!

But more on that to come in the future. For now, all you need to know is that I found a dog and I screwed it today. But i'm making the market my bitch tomorrow.

For what its worth... traded correctly today shoulda woulda coulda been a +290.00/per contract profit and a 92% win rate.

First day, screwed up.

2009-09-24T14:58:00.001-05:00

Day started off fine, took two trades in the NQ. One went to its profit objective at +2.5 points only to not fill and come back and stop out for +1 tick. A second par trade also stopped out for +1 tick. So far so good. Textbook setups, good execution and management. Then I took a loss in the TF and got slipped a tick on exit for a -7 tick loss. Then the screw ups started. I completely missed a textbook winner in the TF for +7 ticks and then ended up getting long into the market on a setup that wasn't valid. I bailed on it after realizing it but not after taking a -2 tick loss. Not a horrific mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.

All in all, what should've been a par day got turned into a losing day and it had nothing to do with the approach and everything to do with me screwing it up. First day back jitters and lack of focus I suppose.

Trade Results:

NQ: +10.00
TF: -90.00

Going Live Tomorrow... Again!

2009-09-23T09:19:00.006-05:00

Sorry its been so long (I sound like a broken record with that phrase lately) but everything is finally taken care of and i'm ready to go. I'm not trading today due to FOMC but i've got the money in my account to trade the TF and NQ. So what i've done is this...

I took 3 timeframes that I really preferred and gave me the most trades out of the 9 I typically monitor in both the TF and the NQ. I'm doing this for two reasons. 1. Cut down on the charts I have to monitor and attempt a more simple approach to make the days (and overall results) much more clear cut. 2. There are some of my "longer term" daytrade charts that rarely give me signals. Therefore, i'm wasting a lot of screen real estate for something that isn't paying me nearly enough to justify its use.

So why trade the TF and the NQ? The idea behind this is simple, to use them as a hedge against one another's performance. I assume that every market has a set amount of probability in its winning and losing trades, however I can't control when and where the drawdowns are going to occur. So the only way to minimize my overall drawdowns on my account is to hedge out that risk by adding a new market. The idea being that while one market may be performing poorly, the other is performing well negating the effects and minimizing (or eliminating) any account drawdowns. The problem is this: The NQ is still fairly heavily correlated with the TF (or any other US market) so its more of a pseudo-hedge if anything but I am going to trade it regardless.

Ideally I would like to use the currencies as a hedge here but TradeStation's margin requirements on Forex futures are ridiculously high. But for example, last week the TF was horrendous for me. I lost a total of 300.00/per contract over the entire week and there was just nothing for me to do about it. It was the worst performing week i've ever seen in the market trading this method. That's just how the trades fell. But if I would've just been monitoring the EC on a 5 minute chart there was +562.50 of textbook profit in that market during the same trading hours as the TF during the same week. So in effect by monitoring an uncorrelated market I was able to hedge out the effects of a horrible week in one market with a great week in another. But until I can get into the Forex futures markets the NQ will have to do!

The idea behind this little experiment is to get some real live results to show the validity and profitability of the results using this approach. Backtesting can only prove so much. Its being able to perform at the hard right edge that defines a trader as successful or as a failure.

So to anyone still around reading this... i'm back along with this blog. Thanks for sticking with me and I can't wait to get the journey started once again.

Cheers!

Back from the Sticks...

2009-09-08T16:28:00.004-05:00

Well i'm sorry its taken so long but i'm officially back after a much needed "vacation" (which consisted of me working 10x's harder throwing together pre/post wedding preparations together).

I should be back at the screens starting tomorrow and get this blog back to daily updates. I've got some neat stuff in the pipeline and I hope to be posting some TF trades in the coming week on here.

I hope you all are doing well and I appreciate anyone who actually still checks in. Lord knows I haven't really given anyone a reason too. I've just been in a fairly big transitional period in my personal and professional life and had a lot of things going on. But its all been building towards an all-out assault on that goal list that is getting ready to kick off in a few weeks.

In fact, now that I think about it, I just finished up one of my goals on the list... I created an LLC and am now the CEO of Synergy Trading Group LLC. Thats a start right? One down, four to go!

Cheers!

Leaving town...

2009-08-15T19:29:00.002-05:00

Sorry for lack of updates as usual, but this week I took it pretty light... had two scratch days, didn't trade Wednesday (FOMC) and I took Friday off. I'm taking off in the morning for my sisters wedding and i'll be taking a vacation from all of the trading work i've been feverishly working on over the past two months.

A lot of hard work, a lot of time and effort spent, but it is really paying off in my trading and my business and i'm looking forward to building on my results for the rest of the year.

Big things are right around the corner! Good luck to you all trading in the coming weeks!

A Losing Day

2009-08-10T20:04:00.002-05:00

Not by much... just 1 tick. Went up +3.75 on the first trade, gave back -2.5 on the next, and -1 on another.

The first one was a perfect setup, the next two were so-so... but i'm focusing on just trying to take everything that comes down the pipe for the time being to establish a baseline.

Overall... not bad I suppose.

Trade Results:
NQ: -5.00

Day 2 is Better!

2009-08-07T11:53:00.003-05:00

Caught a sexy little setup for +3.75 today in the NQ. So that brings us up to +135/contract growth in two days, three trades, and a 100% win rate. It doesn't sound like much but when you consider its being done on a 1000.00 account - that equates to 13.5% growth inside of two days.

I'm not trading the afternoon on Friday as usual. But the real story is the TF which I desperately need to get my account up to margin for. Two trades today, up 400.00/contract. Daddy wants. But for the time being baby steps I suppose.

Hope you all had a good day.

Trade Results:
NQ: +75.00

Day 1 Live

2009-08-06T15:10:00.003-05:00

Not much to write home about. Two trades, 1 Par, 1 2X winner for +2.5 points. Pretty darn boring day.

There was a easy trade for +5 in the NQ that I passed on because it was testing the daily low when the signal occurred and I prefer to avoid setups around the day's highs or lows. In my opinion it involves another group of traders that would otherwise be uninterested in the setup. You get all of the action from people just fading the move that you wouldn't normal see. Not to mention, that the pit knows that their are people fading the high's and low's of the day and they love to step in and stop run at those places so I just skipped it all together.

Catch you all tomorrow!

Trade Results:
NQ: +50.00

Fair Disclosure...

2009-08-05T15:05:00.003-05:00

Had I been able to trade today it would've been a losing day. -2.25 after one par and one loss. Lately the NQ has just been kind of crap and in a sort of "drawdown phase" right now. Good trades come back by a tick to take me out at par before running, others just lose, but the winners have been fairly few and far between if i'm honest. The TF on the other hand continues to hand out free money like its the only thing on its mind. +380/per in that bad boy. I need to get some more money in my trade account so I can say goodbye NQ, and hello TF!

I called TS and apparently my account was on a default "margin call" because I had removed almost all the money from the account last month and was just using it for charting. So they reset the account and i'm good to go for tomorrow.

"Order Rejected"

2009-08-05T10:28:00.003-05:00

So I tried.... but my DOM keeps yelling at me that i'm a loser, and it doesn't like me and saying things like "Order Rejected". Apparently TS has me on restricted margin or something because they sure as hell won't let me trade the advertised margins.

Don't know what the deal is but we'll see if I can't get it sorted with customer service this afternoon.

Live Tomorrow

2009-08-04T13:17:00.002-05:00

Now or never right? I've got a paltry sum back in my TS futures account but enough to get me a few at bats in the NQ market. So I figure - what the hell, lets give it a shot worst case I get knocked under margin after a few trades until I refund with a bit more money. I've been doing quite frankly, amazing in the TF for weeks now (I still haven't hit that losing day just yet) and I see no reason why I can't have similar success in the NQ. It won't be easy, but i'm well prepared and i've got an approach that is about 10 X's better than anything i've ever used. So its put up or shut up time.

I fully expect to have lots of losing days, mistakes, and losing trades going live but I KNOW that I have probability on my side if I apply my rules correctly.

So lets find out. See you tomorrow!

Another Par Day

2009-07-29T15:04:00.004-05:00

Not quite sure how it happened as typically i'm up or down with a couple of trades but there was only one trade I got into and it was a par. There were other "signals" but they all kind of blew away so I passed on them.

I'm really trying to work on taking the best opportunities rather than every opportunity and I think its helping a lot in my trading.

However, today brought our 1 week experiment to a close. I think the results are very realistic (and they certainly represent the actual trades offered up the past week). Was everyday a huge winner? Nope. Was any day a huge loser? Nope. Some days were better than others, losses occurred, wins made up for them, and pars were scattered in between. But overall the method remained consistent.

Did it produce 10 points a day? No - but it wasn't designed to. It takes whats offered in the most consistent and probable manner and with a heavy focus on low risk situations and getting to par in a very conservative manner.

The end results were this:

Wednesday, +340/per
Thursday, +90/per
Friday, +70/per
Monday, +210/per
Tuesday, +0/per
Wednesday, +0/per

This represents a 3550.00 increase on the $25,000 account in 1 week or a 14.2% increase. Our win rate was well north of 70% and all of the trades were done using relatively small initial risk factors on purely intraday trades and small timeframes.

Is it perfect? No. But it represents the best method i've ever come up with.

Cheers!

Worst Day So Far

2009-07-28T15:18:00.002-05:00

Took a -100/per trade in the morning, a couple pars mid-day then caught a small +70/per in the mid afternoon and took +30/per out of a trade to the downside into the close at the end of the day. That last trade only got to par and was coming back up when I exited at the close of the day. Net +0.00 before commissions.

I'm just glad I could come back from a fairly healthy loss in the A.M. and not end up down that much by the end of the day. Alls well that ends well ya know?

Cheers!

Another day anotha dolla...

2009-07-27T16:57:00.003-05:00

Another relativly straightforward day in the TF. Three trades, an early scalp for +70/per, a midday par, and an afternoon rocket for +140/per. Total outcome was +210/per contract or +1050.00 on the 25k account trading 5 lots.

I'm trying not to be too encouraged and keep my head on right. There is a long way to go and after all, this is only sim. After that winning trade on Friday morning their would've been a losing trade for -80.00 to take me to +70 net on the day had I traded out the afternoon. Still - not horrible results here and its positive equity growth every day thus far.

I've got enough money together to refund my futures account and start trading the NQ to get my feet wet again in a live fashion. Hopefully i'll be able to use that account as a learning and demonstration account in the future to show results. However, for some reason my TradeManager analysis window won't pull up orders input throughout the day so i'm going to have to figure out some other way to present real trade results from this experiment on the website. I'm thinking maybe just a page showing the trades in the order and fashion that they came along and the potential for them if they were managed correctly. (Obviously i'd love to have an order statement to show... but TradeManager seems to do this to me every once in awhile where it decides it doesn't like me and won't show me my trades. Hopefully it corrects itself magically in the next couple of days!)

Anyhow - I'm planning on getting back to live in the NQ next week hopefully and i'll be sharing the live results on this blog with you all. Thanks for checking in and I hope you all are doing well with your trading!

I'm Not Dead

2009-07-24T09:41:00.003-05:00

Website is planned to launch end of August so I can be out of town for my sisters wedding and not have to worry about customer support and fixing little bugs, etc. during the little vacation.

This week i've been focusing on getting some results of the software traded in real time. So i'm trading this on just the TF everyday and trying to get some baseline results on a 25k sim account. I'm trading 5 lots so it would average out to 1 contract per 5K which I think is very conservative and realistic leverage. I'd still like to have (and will have) some live results as well but I think the CFTC disclaimer states that I must show hypothetical results in my advertisements so for the time being i'm sticking with my little sim account.

I am making a big effort to get realistic fills and take EVERY trade that comes down the pipe. Its fun to be back in the trading chair, and even more fun to actually be making money (even if its on sim for the moment). Its a feeling I haven't had in years. Anyway, the results so far are pretty good. I started on Wed. and made 340/contract on 4 trades, and yesterday walked out with 90/contract after a few pars, a loss, and a couple wins. Today i'm up 150/per contract on one trade. Overall though in two and a half days i'm up 580/contract or 2900.00 on the account.

Not great maybe, but i'm really just trying to show consistency and not getting beat down even when the market doesn't give much opportunity with runaway trend moves like yesterday. It still shows 11.6% account growth inside of two and a half days thus far and I think that's not too shabby. This, and only 1 losing trade so far.

I'm just going to trade the morning today (like usual on Fridays) and then take off for a movie and lunch with the fam. Enjoy your weekend folks!

The Trend is a Lie.

2009-07-16T10:17:00.004-05:00

You all saw it coming with my last post... I think that the trend is a lie, or at least not helpful to most traders. So whats the big problem with the trend?

First, the trend is BY DEFINITION LAGGING INFORMATION. For there to be a trend it has to have already occurred before you can define it yes? Then you are chasing lagging information, and typically doing so using more lagging information (i.e. moving averages, momentum oscillators, etc). This compounds an already huge problem even more. Whats the other issue?

The trend requires YOU to define it. You can give 100 traders an identical chart and each one of them will define the trend on the chart differently. Some will use market structure, others MACD on X setting, some using MACD on Y setting, and almost all using some combination of X, Y, and Z moving averages. So now not only are you trying to define lagging information, but you're trying to do it in a manner where your opinion is supposed to be the one the market respects. Guess what? The market could give a shit about you. Cold hard truth I suppose but nevertheless true information.

Would you agree that most traders focus on the 20/50/100/200 ema's because they figure most other traders watch these same moving averages? Which means what they are really trying to do is fix the problem of having them define the trend for themselves (because they recognize the futility of this) and figure out what the market (or at least the greatest majority of players in the market) is using to define the trend. But this isn't the biggest problem.

Then you have those trend traders who do great on the runaway trends but get NAILED as soon as sideways consolidation happens. Most cop out by running to another indicator in an attempt to filter bad trades. Others run to the "define the type of day" defense as if its possible to figure out what type of day (trend or range bound) will follow after the first X amount of time passes in the market. Seriously? I think most of us who have traded a while understand that at any point in time ANYTHING is possible. The worst chop in the morning can turn into a massive trend day, and the best trend day can stop and coil sideways for hours. To suggest that we can accurately define something that BY DEFINITION has to have already occurred to be defined ahead of time is bullshit.

Can anyone tell me what the rarest type of day is in the S&P 500? You win an e-high five if you answered "Straight trend day". Most days are range bound most of the time. We all know in the back of our minds that a straight trend day is an exception rather than the rule. As traders we should really try to identify the rule rather than the exception... but most don't.

But the problems continue when we start to look at the actual mechanics of entering a trade based on lagging information. If the trend must have already occurred (at least partially) to get confirmation to enter the trade (MA crossover, stochastic flip, etc) then price is typically already a pretty far distance away from where it was when the actual trend started. This leaves us entering into the market at an area where price is usually already at another decision point in the market. The difference being that by entering now we are going into battle with a much larger amount of risk (we have to put our stops down where the trend started if we don't want to get stopped out) but whats worse is we are going into battle at a turning point in the market with open risk on our position. The smart traders are able to get in where the trend actually started and go into this same turning point battle with their stops at par. Which would you prefer?

Then there is the simple logistics of what you are asking the market to do for you. Lets say you're a smart and savvy trader that knows they need to achieve 2X their initial risk or better on a trade to make their account grow. Good idea. Problem is that the larger your initial risk, the larger the move you need the market to achieve. So if you are entering with your larger initial risk based off your lagging trend information you have to ask the market to go much further in favor to get a needed outcome. By contrast if you were able to get in where the trend started you could use so much less risk that the market has to achieve relatively small goals to get you out of your trade with 2X the risk or greater. And the truth is it is much more probable for a market to move a smaller distance than a large distance.

And most traders can't figure out why they lose money? Most traders look to identify the trend and get trapped into this vicious catch 22 where the odds literally are stacked against them. The trend may or may not exist but the point traders need to realize is that whether it does or does not exist, it isn't profitable to try and define it.

Still want a moving average on your chart?

Is the "Trend" is a Lie?

2009-07-14T10:36:00.004-05:00

This blog has become freakin' boring hasn't it? Its all my fault I know. But i'm working diligently to get things done and i'm back trading everyday. I'm starting my Project400 experiment next Monday. Until then, i'm on sim with MB Trading trying to get used to their order platform again and all the quirks of their different orders. In new website news i've put the roll-out on hold for the time being. The website is done, 110% functional, and the content is ready to go for the most part, though its not fully rendered yet (i've got 60+ hours of video rendering to get through). But i'm not going to rush a course out into the real world with people spending real money on it if I can't be sure I can offer them something of value.

I think I can of course but I want to make sure so i've been in contact with various traders getting feedback and we all basically come up with the same conclusion. Results are needed and I couldn't agree more. Project400 should help somewhat but I am not pushing the roll out forward until I have personally been getting consistent results for at least a month. In the mean time, i'll post up my day-to-day outcomes on this blog for you guys to read about.

Onto the provocative question of the day. Think about it today, and i'll give you my opinion tomorrow. Is the "Trend" a lie? We all have heard "the trend is your friend until the end" but is it really true? How many successful "trend" traders do you know? What are the potential problems with trend signals? How would you define you're risk? How would you get out?

I have a sneaking suspicion the idea of trend is a false catch 22 that wipes out thousands of traders accounts each year. What do you think?

Sorry for lack of updates!

2009-07-07T15:05:00.002-05:00

A ton of stuff going on guys! I've been building the new website and its coming together great. But i'm such an anal retentive freak everything has to work just perfect and look just right so its taking longer than it probably should've. Right now the entire site is built and functional with content, galleries, newsletters, blogs, etc but I just started the actual members video content today and am only about half way through.

In other news i'm also migrating accounts back over to MBT. I'm starting a little thing for the website called "Project 400". I'm going to see how quickly I can double a 400.00 account on 10k lot sizing. So i'm not actively trading this week as the funds get pushed around from account to account.

I figure a lot of traders don't want to use a ton of capital to start trading and building a small account like that with relatively tame leverage and margin would be something worth showing.

Hope you all are still trading great! I can't wait to get back to the charts... way to many tasty moves in everything right now!

Cheers!

Way More Available Than I Took

2009-07-02T11:35:00.003-05:00

This morning was just a lot harder to trade than yesterday. The movement just wasn't there. Don't get me wrong - there was plenty for the taking, but in comparison to yesterday it wasn't quite as good. I actually only took two trades today, 1 par, and 1 win. There was a couple great trades in the EURUSD after I quit but I finally got my domain name and hosting set up last night so i'm swamped with development right now and am taking the rest of the day to work on that before I go to the Country Club.

In other news, yesterday was my first day back at my old job. And I gotta be honest... I had a blast. I got paid to bullshit with some nice gentleman, drive around in golf carts on a beautiful evening and hang out with some of my best friends. It got me out of the house and doing something social. A good thing any way you slice it.

Trade Results:

Forex: +15 Pips

2 Hours, 76 Pips, Done Deal

2009-07-01T10:50:00.003-05:00

Today I was by no means infallible. I took losses, pars, and wins over the 10 trades I placed from 8:50 CST to 11:00 CST. But it was an excellent day to trade and I feel gave very real world results. Days like today really cement home the need for proper risk:reward. So this is how the trades broke down: 5 Wins, 2 Pars, 3 Losses, or a 70% win rate. But here is the really cool part, my losses were: -5, -6, and -7 pips respectively. In some cases, they were simply the spread minus my entry price. My wins on the other hand went like this: +12, +16, +17, +19, +30. As you can see the wins are clearly much much larger than the losses i'm taking. Its the kind of stats that make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Here are some of the trades... I tried to include the charts with the most trades (wins and losses) on them.

Now i'm off to eat some lunch, watch some Wimbledon, and then go to work. Cheers!

Trade Results:

Forex: +76 Pips

10% Account Growth in 40 minutes? Yup.

2009-06-30T10:55:00.000-05:00

Ok, so its easy to do when you've got a 90.00 account I suppose, and you don't have to factor in the psychology of a 90,000 account, but still... growth is growth. Not to mention I reigned in my sizing to 2,000 rather than 3,000. So the profits are even smaller. I haven't posted in awhile since my last price action presentation and I wanted to share what i've been up to. I've been working feverishly on perfecting my price action indicator "Synergy". I've also been working on improving a couple of the setups to make them even higher odds, primarily focused on taking trades that can achieve a 2X target rather than just getting to par. The best part is I think I came up with some really cool stuff.

And I should get this out in the open right now - I am planning on launching a web site offering my indicator and method for sale within a few months. I know, i'm a douchebag right? The simple fact is this - I posted my webinar content a couple different places and got swamped with emails and messages wanting to know where they could get the indicator from and more information on the approach. I feel that there is a market for it, and i'm not going to charge what I feel is an outrageous price, but a reasonable amount even a cheap ass like myself has paid for other indicators before. I see no reason why I should feel guilty about trying to make a little profit off the work i've put into it. And before you honest and trustworthy followers mutiny on me - massive discounts if not outright giveaways to all of you who have been posting comments on this blog all along. You guys are the reason i'm still around and I see no reason why that shouldn't be rewarded with everything I have to give.

But lets get another thing crystal clear - I am a trader first and foremost now and always. My primary goal has been and continues to be becoming a consistently profitable trader. I can make exponentially more trading than I can selling a few indicators a month and I recognize this. Furthermore, i've no aspirations of helping others learn to trade if I myself am useless at it. But this has only forced me to step up my game even more. Yesterday I made a paltry 1.5% on my account - BUT it was growth via textbook trade setups. Today i'm up 10% so far. What I have spoken about before is becoming all the more apparent - this stuff works with my application and i've only just begun. Its too soon to pop champagne but i'm happy with what i'm seeing thus far. But enough boring life aspirations...

Three simple setups today, two winners, one par, +52 pips. The first was a GBP short off my new IB Fakeout Trend signal for +22, and then a long in the GBP off a Synergy setup on the double bottom it formed. The last was a inside bar reversal short in the EUR that got taken out at par. Simple.

*Edit* - Make that 15% by lunchtime!!! the GBP is being too easy this morning!!! Pinbar S at prior highs. Simple +20 pips. Net +73 thus far today.

Busy Day Pre-FOMC

2009-06-24T11:47:00.004-05:00

Setups have never been so plentiful, so powerful, or so profitable. You know that giddy feeling you get in your stomach when you really feel like you can make money trading? Typically that feeling is followed by massive losses in my accounts. Hasn't been the case with this price action nonesense just yet. Why?

I think it is a combination of a lot of things, but primarily: Taking trades at decision points in the market (i.e. S/R), using proper risk:reward for the first time in my life, NEVER fighting the trend, letting actual price action tell me their is something amiss at these decision points before I jump in, and getting in MUCH MUCH SOONER!!!

More sim trading today... the Oanda platform really isn't too ideal for placing buy/sell stops accuratly. Open E Cry is far superior but for the time being, i'm with Oanda. I had TONS of trades today and really got my pure price action goggles cemented into my head even moreso.

I continue to be staggered by the amount of good trades offered. And when I think about where I would be getting into trades using my old methodologies it isn't suprising I lost money constantly.

Heres a new video I made going over a live trade I took as I was making it and then explaining more of the trades I took this morning. I've spent the last night trying to tweak camtasia so I can give you all high quality, high resolution videos. So many trading videos on youtube and other sites may have good information, but if you can't tell whats in the videos because its too small and blurry whats the point? Especially when we are dealing with small price action signals, clarity is important. I haven't perfected it just yet, but I think you'll find its a vast improvement over even last nights presentation.

Video Down. Making a UBER webinar to be released in a bit.

And after receiving some questions on pinbars I thought I would do a quick video on the mechanics behind pinbars and how and where to use them on your charts.

Video Down. Making a UBER webinar to be released in a bit.

Thats all for today... Its FOMC as we all know so things are bound to get a little nutzo in the next hour. I'm planning on going live with this on my tiny Oanda account next week. Until then its just practice, practice, practice!!!

A Video Update Outlining New Setups

2009-06-23T14:00:00.009-05:00

I wish I would've blown out my account months ago because i've learned more in the past 48 hours than I have in the past 48 months.

I've been working crazy amounts of time developing an all inclusive Show Me indicator that could cut down on backtesting and make it very easy to not only scan markets but visually see at a glance potential trade setups. As I mentioned previously i'm focusing on pure price action entries around areas of support and resistance or pure trend entries. I'm putting a definitive effort on truly getting 2X reward on every trade - something i've never done before in my life.

The craziest thing about trading pure price action for me is how simple it really is. I had avoided it like the plague because I never wanted to put in the time to learn the setups and how and why they work. I was content to complicate my life with indicators.

But once you make that initial effort they are simple, they are everywhere, and i'm really able to get into trades with less risk than ever before. I used to wait for price to do X, Y, and Z on the indicators to get me into a trade. By the time the move was "confirmed" and I got in price had typically already made one hell of a move. This usually meant I was caught on the wrong side of the market once again and stopped for a loss. The best signals are the ones that occur right after the rejection where you can get in as the move builds from its point of origination. If you aren't in there - you aren't in soon enough.

It truly is a completely different mindset to anything and everything i've ever done before. But its so simple. I think the biggest difference in this approach is the avoidance of counter trend setups and the reliance on using prior S/R areas to define and qualify price action setups. I don't fight the trend anymore. I took so many great little IB Fakeout moves today with the trend it was crazy. I had 1 of 7 that didn't work. As far as the prior S/R is concerned with double bottoms and double tops i'm amazed at how often they coincide with price action setups together at turning points.

One of the other big things that I feel makes a huge difference in the approach is the idea of being the contrarian with these setups. I don't mean contrarian in the sense of shorting a rising market or randomly trying to catch tops or bottoms, but the idea of waiting for the market to fake people into doing just that, and then taking that group of traders money. I've never done that before. I did it a shit ton today and it easy as hell. Except I had always been on the other side of that equation. One of the things i've always heard is that the pros are always the contrarian point of view. I just never knew what it really meant or how to apply it.

The video is 10 minutes long but its well worth it. I feel like this is the most substance and profitable advice i've ever presented anywhere to anyone. I'm trying a new video host that should avoid the bandwidth issues I was having as well as being fast, free, and able to show HD quality.

Here's a new better quality video link as of 4:45PM.

Video Down. Making a UBER webinar to be released in a bit.

I thought I was going to have to hold off and only trade 60min/240min/Daily time frames but its just not the case. I think I can be just as effective and profitable trading the lower timeframes as well. For now, i'm doing it more for exercise getting used to the setups and can see myself drifting towards longer timeframes for bigger setups but i'm content to trade small and fast for the time being.

The Focus

2009-06-22T19:51:00.003-05:00

Small update. Just wanted to mention that the real stock trade that I went with (DRI) is still active with a long position from 33.54 in my demo account. The other play KIM was off a speculative idea I was messing around with but ended up scrapping. DRI is off of that intraswing S/R test idea i've been working on, with the trend.

My focus is on trading pure price action setups. I feel that's where I need to develop my skills and kill my reliance all together on indicators (save for maybe 1 MA). So i'm focusing on inside bar fakeouts, pin bars, and my fakeout signals for potential trades. The other thing is that i'm going to be slowing down the action. 1 HR, 4HR, and Daily charts for me for the time being. I stumbled onto http://www.learntotradethemarket.com which focuses on trading pure price action in the forex markets and ironically enough he uses the same idea i've been developing (he calls them fakey setups). But the main thing is that his setups and trades are the kind of stuff I want to exploit. I am planning on signing up for the course as its relativily inexpensive and its building on concepts and ideas that seem sound. Check out his youtube channel here for some of his trade ideas... I really think they have merit. http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=OzTrader&view=videos

So, other than that, i'm just in rebuild and relearn mode for the time being. I'm not live in any markets (including Forex) and won't be until I can cement a method down without relying on indicators.

If you guys know of any other good price action trading resources let me know!

In other news, there were no valid trades based off the scans tonight for equities tomorrow.

Positions:

DRI @ 33.54, Stop 32.25, Target 36.81

What i've been working on...

2009-06-21T10:40:00.004-05:00

Ok, so as you can well imagine i've been a busy little kid planning my next moves. I want to get a lot of this stuff nailed down and finalized before I start work in July which gives me one more week to do just that. But before I go into any of that - THANK YOU TO EACH AND EVERYONE OF YOU WHO LEFT A COMMENT ON MY PREVIOUS POST!!! The comments were heartfelt and sincere and went a long way towards reinforcing the positive aspects of my current situation rather than dwelling on the self-perceived negatives. This is a new opportunity for me plain and simple. And it sounds like a lot of you have been at these kind of spots in your lives and the key is to just keep pushing forward. So onto the broker debacles.

Last week I took all of my money out of TradeStation and they called back promptly wanting to close out my account. I told them I had already paid them hundreds in commissions this month and the next months data and platform fees should be waived regardless. So it gave me a month to migrate to a new platform. Putting 99.00/month towards their platform (no matter how accustomed i've come to it) is ridiculous for someone in my situation. But I have a copy of Multicharts and its almost the same thing. Furthermore I found out that I can open up a Mini-FX account (250.00 minimums) with Open E Cry and get free data (Including tick and volume) for all the currency pairs and nearly every futures contract you can dream up all for free and no platform fees!!!

Best part? Multicharts can use the data stream from Open E Cry which means I can essentially keep the same charting and workspaces and simply feed them data from elsewhere for free. Also, I can use their "Free Quotes" for charting daily and weekly timeframes for stocks as I pursue swing trading equities.

On that note i've been searching high and low for good low-commission equity brokers that have low account minimums. I have an account with TD Ameritrade but at 9.99 a side its too expensive when you consider the size of the trades i'll be putting on. I stumbled onto SogoTrade which offers 3.00 flat fee commissions on trades, 500.00 account minimums to open and all the features I need. Since i'll probably only be putting 500.00 or so into the positions i'll be buying the 6.00/rt isn't too ridiculous. This is more to get my feet wet and mess around for the time being. So what strategies am I pursuing?

Well I do plan on using the ChannelingStocks.com site for a 1 month trial run and see if I can't find a simple way to utilize their picks and my analysis but for the time being i'm not starting that service yet.

I've been focuses HEAVILY the past week on developing the "intraswing support/resistance" idea I was talking about. I really feel that my best bet for success is to keep my risk parameters low and aim for 2:1 returns. The only way I can realistically do that in my mind is to try and find swing highs and lows so I can have a defined stop and risk.

So I put on my EasyLanguage pants and started coding up my ideas. I came up with some really cool stuff and the best part was yesterday I figured out how to modify the code so I can just pull up a list of 500-1000 stocks every night in the scanner and be alerted to the 10 that put up potential trade signals that day. I am also going to cross apply this to the forex markets and use big scanning windows on different pairs and timeframes to search for trades.

My big idea is trying to find essentially candlestick patterns that identify areas within a swing where buyers or sellers are interacting and one side has clearly tried to push lower or higher and failed to do so.

Heres my scanner window right now with the stocks that fired off one of the two signals i'm looking for on Friday. Now this scan is of the entire S&P 500 and these were the only ones with signals. So its fairly selective to begin with. But added to the mix is that fact that i'm only taking signals that are following trends (H, HL, L, LL, or DB/DT's) and I look for one more secondary indicator to confirm they swings are at extremes and I just generally check that the swing is fairly smooth and concise. Of these 20 that fired off potential entries, only 2 ended up to be valid trades.

Trades for Monday:
Long DRI @ 33.54

These prices are at the close on Friday, so technically I would just be buying them at the opening prices on Monday.

I'm using this same strategy for the Forex markets intraday as well and i'll be posting up outcomes in those markets starting Monday.

So to recap, i've been a busy little beaver. I've put my ideas into code, expanded on them, backtested further, and created a rule set around them. I'm focusing on these types of trades only and not anything else I have used prior.

Throwing in the Towel

2009-06-16T16:08:00.003-05:00

If you've got 10 minutes to devote to reading this update please take the time to do so.

Today marks the occurrence i've been fearing for the past six months. It ended today. I promised my parents when they offered up capital to get me above margin requirements back in January that I wouldn't put their capital at risk. Over the past six months i've gradually drawn down my accounts in a slow and steady fashion. Today after taking another loss in the NQ I called it quits. I canceled my real time data feeds for the CME and withdrew my parents deposit from the account to hand back to them with a "Sorry, and thank you".

I'm planning on keeping my account with tradestation open and pay the 99/mo for the platform and use their free forex data. Starting next week i'll be going back to my old job working at a country club as an opportunity to make some cash. I will still trade forex on an experimental and small (i.e. my 100.00 account) basis in the mornings during the weekdays and work afternoons and evenings at the country club.

My sister is getting married in August and I don't want to go out and look for a "real" job knowing that I would have to ask for two weeks off days after taking a position with a new company. Furthermore, the country club offers a unique networking opportunity to bounce career ideas off of successful people in different industries and in some cases line up job offerings. In fact, I got my job at TD Ameritrade a couple years back as a direct result of cleaning the golf clubs of the former CFO. Its a deadend job but it pays well and will give me a little bit of income, sun, social interaction, and networking that's probably been overdue for sometime now. Furthermore, I need some time to plan out my next moves.

Let me make this very clear right here and now. While defeated, I am NOT giving up on this dream. I know its possible to make money in the markets. I've seen people do it. I've traded with some of the very people that follow this blog and seen them do incredible things with their equity curves. And to some extent i've had a taste of success personally. For myself, I have to simply rationalize the last four years of my life devoted this career as finding 10,000 ways how not to make money in the markets. However, i'm still in search of that one way that will make money.

As far as possible interim career choices for me i'm really at a loss for pursuing anything in finance. While I have a degree in finance, investments, and banking every job opening in the field where I live is for "Financial Advisers" which to me is basically a fancy way of dressing up a used car salesman and giving him life insurance and crappy mutual funds to shove down the throats of others rather than kicking the tires on a used Chevy. Not for me. I've seen what these people have done for my parents - which is why I fired all of them. So that's out. I'm actually thinking maybe about some kind of pharma rep. Something that i'm not stuck in a cubicle all day and I can get out and interact with people.

If you all have any ideas or recommendations for potential jobs to pursue please let me know!

So how does trading tie into this plan? Great question. The first thing I have to come to terms with right now is that any 9-5 will kill my ability to trade as I know it. At best it would be scaled back to Forex markets after hours and that's not really a prime time as far as i'm concerned. Here are the other ideas i'm considering after I get capital re-established.

The other idea i'm considering is to start back swing trading equities. Back in the day I used a service called ChannelingStocks.com. The idea being they gave you a list of stocks each week that basically would just ping back and forth between support and resistance levels. Now back when I traded with these picks I didn't know how to spot reversals and confirmed bottoms. I knew even less about risk:reward, momentum, and stop placement. The big thing they always said on the site was make sure to wait for the stock to reverse. Back then I had no idea what this really meant.

So today I took a look at a couple of their more recent picks from the last month and pulling up a daily chart of the three symbols yielded very easy entry methods by either 1) Waiting for a "Scalper" alert to confirm the bottom or 2) waiting for a fast HMA to cross over. Basically stupid stuff that if you stayed with the trade until the HMA flipped yielded some nice gains over a month period. And it wouldn't require me to do anything more than check charts once a night. Furthermore, there are lots of automated pattern scanning websites available out there for free so the idea of just looking for trades like this on a swing basis kind of appeals to me.

The other idea is to start up with Bright Trading and some of their "Pairs Trading" courses. I have a friend who has been trading with them for almost a year now and as far as I know hes been making consistent money every week since he started with them. But the course is pricey and Bright requires you have your Series 7 to join.

Here comes the most important part of this post. Thank you to all of you who read it weekly and commented over the past six months. Its been an emotional roller coaster for me and without the feedback you all have given me I probably wouldn't have lasted as long as I did. I wish you all the best and luck in your current and future endeavors.

The blog will stay alive and I wish to continue documenting my trial and error attempts at becoming a professional trader.

In truth its actually a bit of a relief. I can't tell you the last time I stepped foot in a mall, went out for a beer with friends, or enjoyed a movie. I have spent the past years avoiding all unnecessary expense and living like a monk in hopes of figuring this out. But it became a Catch 22. I would go treat myself to a movie, or a night out with friends as soon as I got profitable. But it never happened. All that did happen was me spending even more time in front of the charts and me missing out on the more important things in life outside of the screens. So this break is a needed one - if not simply for a mental rejuvenation and a way to find more balance in my life. Success in one area shouldn't mean utter failure in another and unfortunately i've let that become my life.

So the moral of the story is this: Thank you for watching. I'm only sorry I couldn't provide more insight into the markets and profitable ideas to apply in your own trading. I've not failed at this but merely found way too many ways that didn't work.

Down but not out.

Cheers folks,

- Matt

Down in Forex, Pars a plenty in NQ

2009-06-15T15:46:00.003-05:00

Took a relatively small loss in the Forex markets today and four pars in the NQ. Over the weekend I did testing on longer timeframes in the NQ and ES and am now trading charts similar to a 5 minute timeframe. My goal is to try and filter out the noise and get the bigger, stronger moves that will pay me better. This should cut down on comissions significantly, choppy trades, and trying to trade for ticks rather than points.

More in depth explanations available in the video. Its short at 5:51 and recaps the trades of the day and talks about the timeframe change in more detail.

http://www.screencast.com/t/XQI0Pu04h1

Trade Results:

Forex: -21 Pips
NQ: +0.00

+29 pips... or $8.70... wtf?

2009-06-12T10:32:00.002-05:00

So I went live today in FX and ran into the reality of margin I hadn't quite planned on. For some reason in my tiny little math confused brain I thought I could come in here with 100.00 and be able to trade 10,000 lot size with 50:1 margin. Durrrrrr no I can't. I can trade 3,000 lot size.

So I traded this morning, took some good entries, all winners and walked out with 29 pips after an hour and half. And on 3,000 lot size that is... 8.70. Saweet! But lets think about this in terms of percent return for a second. After the paypal fees the actual deposit was $97.80. Which means my 8.70 profit was actually a 8.8% return on the account. Not shabby I suppose.

In the future i'll add more funds to it so I can up the size buy for right now I think its probably a really good exercise for me to trade with this small size and see what I can do. No sense adding funds to an account that I can't grow. I need to be able to prove a distinct change in my profitability in both my futures accounts and my Forex account if i'm going to move forward trading.

Have a great weekend guys!

Trade Results:

NQ: +0.00
Forex: +29 Pips

Up in FX, Down a smidge in NQ

2009-06-11T15:43:00.004-05:00

Not a bad day, things were much choppier in the currency markets than yesterday all out directional slam fest. Took some pretty nice losses early in the day but kept with it and made it all back and then some. In fact, I had 4 losses in a row this morning... one winner erased them all. Thats the kind of stats I want to get behind. Ended out the day with +46 pips.

In the NQ it was not a bad day (ended down a point) but I just didn't get fills on 90% of the moves and the ones I did get in didn't really go anywhere and at the end of the day I caught a smaller loser for -1.5.

I am getting much better on the execution of these trades and the analysis. I had to work out kinks the hard way earlier this week with losses to figure out I needed to relax stops, and focus on the good directional moves, but i'm getting things nailed down. Furthermore, the currency markets are proving to be really good practice on the entries, management, and analysis in getting me back on my feet.

4 days of losses isn't anything i'd brag about - but if it was for a purpose and it taught me something its fine by me.

Trade Results:

NQ: -20.00

Quick Update

2009-06-10T15:17:00.004-05:00

Got nailed hard in the futures today. A stupid idea to try and limit risk ended up costing more money than it was worth. GIVE YOUR TRADES ROOM TO WORK. Lost enough to limit me to the NQ only for the time being.

In FX land walked away netting +187 pips today. Yup. While on sim, the fills are as real as they can get in forex unlike some futures account simulations. If I could do 1/10th of that each day i'd be stoked. Just waiting on my account verification to start funding.

Video is high resolution (close to 1400 X 700) but relativly short (8:05). Make sure you click the "Full Size" button at the top of the screencast page to view it correctly so it doesn't look janky.

Link deleted due to bandwidth concerns.

Trade Results:

I don't want to talk about it.

Papa Got Camtasia

2009-06-09T19:20:00.004-05:00

I finally got Camtasia studio so I can finally embed videos and share them with you. The video is 21 minutes long. I know. I'm not that interesting.

First couple minutes are a daily recap of the action and signals, the opening of a new Forex account and then I delve into my new "discovery".

Probably the most "DUHHHHHHH" discovery I could ever share with you all. But its enough to get me back into the signals and methodology I was using at the beginning of the year.

You get a e-high five if you actually making it through the entire video without punching your screen or thinking "why won't this douchebag stop talking?"

P.S. I promise my other video updates (baring break throughs) won't be nearly as long. It took damn near a half hour for this video to render on my laptop!

Link deleted due to bandwidth concerns.

Cheers folks!

Trade Results:

ES: -62.50
NQ: +0.00

Day 1

2009-06-08T19:26:00.002-05:00

Another video update and explanation of trades taken today.

Link deleted due to bandwidth concerns.

Trade Results:

ES: +0.00
NQ: -80.00

Video Update + My New Method Explained

2009-06-03T18:24:00.003-05:00

I decided to do videos tonight for the first time. I finally got my mic working and thought i'd give ole Jing a try again and get some videos explaining updates on this blog, my deadlines, profitability, etc as well as my new found discovery which i'm trading from here on out.

This came out of the blue, it goes against everything i've ever looked at or tried but I like it, its consistent, it works and its going to be my winning method from here on out. Oh yea, and i'm going to share it with you all.

I recently started reading this blog http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/. I highly recommend checking it out. Its from author Tim Ferriss of the "4 Hour Work Week" and while some of the blog is focused on business, marketing, traveling, random pen tricks, it was just a really good place I stumbled onto when I was depressed after having a losing streak on monday prior to this discovery. Reading a few of his posts on mental performance, stories of overcoming opposition and making the biggest discoveries in the 11th hour really got me back into it.

I may fail at this profession this time around - but i'm going to give it hell for the next two weeks and either rebound or go out with a bang. I've got nothing to lose and everything to gain. Stay tuned.

Part 1: Update on blog, my deadline.
http://screencast.com/t/VXAYRnTU

Part 2: The new discovery - Intraswing S/R.
http://screencast.com/t/AlGRsnvfRq3

Part 3: More examples.
http://screencast.com/t/z0DKYdZleA

Please give me feedback on this methodology!!!