I am starting a journal to record my trading activities of 2012. Basic information about my account: Starting capital: $4500, Trading instrument: QM, Trading strategy: Long or short. Trading purpose: Make money. If you have any comment, please participate in this journal.
Hi there ... a couple questions for you : 1) do you have a backtested plan?, and 2) have you sim traded for awhile to make sure that plan works at least in some form of practice? I hope you are not planning on trying to scalp QM. It is prone to hideous slippage, and that plus the .025 tick size presents 2 pretty sizeable challenges, imho. Anyway, best of luck to you.
1. I have a plan, but it was not backtested. I don't know how a backtest is done. 2. Did some sim trading. Not sure if it worked, because my discipline broke down after a little while of sim trading. So I never knew if the plan really worked. But it's reasonable to say that the plan will work while I, as a trader, may not. Dec. 27, 2011, Tuesday: Started trading today, couldn't wait for the new year. Got up a little late 8:30am CT (about half an hour after pit open), looked at the chart, no setup had shown up during previous half hour, so I didn't miss anything. Waited for another hour, no setup. So I shut down the computer. So no trade to report today.
Good for you for NOT TAKING A TRADE when there was no setup. However, what do you consider a "setup". Also, you seem rather new to trading so I hope you can afford to lose your money... Because you will. In fact, you probably will lose 3-10 times that amount before you start to get it right. Good Luck.
In the spirit of peer pressure, I'd like to bet against your prediction that I will "lose 3-10 times that amount" before I start to get it right. If I lose 3-10 times $4500=$13,500-$45,000, I will invite you to a restaurant of your choice in a city of my choice. If I don't lose that amount, you will invite me to a restaurant of my choice in a city of my choice. Of course, the amount of loss is easy to know. The term "start to get it right" may be difficult to define. How about changing it to a fixed time, like the end of 2012 or 2013 or 2014. You pick a time, if you accept my bet.
Today saw the reoccurence of the old problem. Entered, walked away for 5 minutes, came back, noticed that the trade was not going anywhere, exited the trade with 2 ticks profit. I was not supposed to exit, according to my plan. I did it against my plan. If I let the plan play out, it would bring in the targeted profit. But I destroyed it, again. I think I also hesitated at entry, but it is not deemed a serious problem, not for now.
Well I may be inclined to take that bet except for a few things. 1) I have no idea when you started trading,...I assume very recently 2) you could "win" the bet by doing nothing at all so you would lose less than $13,500 3) So I am supposed to trust you when you say you win and THEN fly out to a city of your choosing and meet some guy I dont even know from the internet in a restaurant for dinner?.....Sounds a bit creepy to me. 4) I really could give a shit whether you win the bet or not. On many levels in fact I hope you lose less than $13,500 before you start getting it right. I just know from experience that not one person that has come up with their own method and actually traded REAL MONEY in the market has lost less than ~$25,000 before starting to get it right. Most people say it takes 10,000 hrs of screen time to become successful. I think that is BS as it took me about 2500 hrs....but it still cost me close to $30,000. I hope you beat me...Good Luck to you. I will say that NOT taking the trade is almost as.... if not MORE important than,... taking the proper trade so at least you are about 2000 hrs ahead of everyone else because of that. Now you have to work off the other ~8000 hrs or so. You never mentioned what your "setup" is. Good Luck. N54_Fan
A strange but dangerous idea came into my mind last night: I wanted to open a short position and waited for an overnight drop. This idea came from the API numbers. Crude oil alone, that might work, but year end accounting need of funds means the funds will try everything to buy up the equities market, which will prop up the crude oil to a large extent. So I persuaded myself not to do it and went to bed, thinking that oil would drop to around 97 next morning........ Anyway, woke up and found no drop. Made a mistake of looking at ES movement, missed an entry or two, didn't expect action at that moment..... Then entered the third one (short), but it refused to go in my direction. But I was not going to give up on this day when inventory number was going to tank the shit (I thought). So I cancelled the stop and waited, and waited......... Luckily, no serious buyers showed up, because the equities were really trending up. I guess the oil traders all knew the API numbers, only idiots would buy before the numbers. I waited for an hour and 5 minutes. Got out with 2 ticks profit minutes before the inventory numbers came out. Some idiots decided to sell minutes before the numbers and got me out.