That account is anything but fat. $30,000 gross? Fucking insignificant, and I lead a very thin life with no familial hang-ups. After all is said and done with the expenses/taxes of living my shitty little life, I'll have $~13,000 in the bank at New Year's, as compared to a year ago. Granted, that is a net profit of $~13,000 per year, yes. But it is in no way fat. I'm still eating Kraft Mac 'n' Cheese, and I only buy those boxes when they are on sale for $.99 or less per box. I do occasionally treat myself to Slim-Jims™ when they get them in bulk at Wal-Mart. *BELCH*
Nice job with your trading - I found your thread interesting. The one thing I couldn't figure out was this: you were turning a day trade into a calendar spread only for margin purposes so you could hold it overnight right? Why is that any more advantageous than just closing the position out and re-entering the next day?
K, so here we go. First year of the real shit. Final cumulative since last update... Final summary for the year... It was a great year. I did well. Until...*drum roll* I fucked up on Dec 18th. Yeah, fucked it up big time. I went long right at the peak and kept thinking about rally rally rally, without looking through what had happened over the past year. After Dec 18th, the bull's legs started to give way. But I was stubborn and decided to attempt to feel what it is like to suffer the consequences of my actions. A bad case of applying sim to real "just to assure I could handle it." *sighs* To answer @bh_prop specifically... This whole endeavor first started out in CL with the idea of being able to hold positions long-term with minimal margin risk. This was achieved with the margin credits. Then CL got weird on my method near the end of March, so I took a break. I tested and tested and then saw the NQ's major motions, and so thought of that being a good daytrade opportunity. During the summer I messed with daytrading the equities in sim. During that bit, I started thinking of the previous exploits with CL. The whole idea of "an order entry solution", as xandman put it. The idea then became..."I am going to enter here and my target is X. I will not have a stop, because there are many pullbacks. My entry will recover." So a daytrade became a position/swing trade. At this point in my thinking, I had deduced that time is the edge there. What is my stop? A fixed tick value, or time? Time trumps all, with a large enough bank to be able to survive the unrealized draw. So I started working that angle, of just going long and staying there. No more need to "trade". Just enter and hold it. Easy. "Why is that any more advantageous than just closing the position out and re-entering the next day?" Yes, this is the bugger I am coming to grips with. I went in with this idea at a very bad time. I have concluded that just entering and holding a loser is very inefficient. While my losers sit there, lost, I cannot do anything else but wait for them. But by closing a loser early and working back up to BE, you are still in the game and not swinging in the breeze, and can make more by the time the old position gets back to BE. Here is my example, and why I think Buy1Sell2 is gonna' yell at me...My current open positions. This is not really prudent risk management. *sighs* On the surface it looks bad. And to me the June NQ entry burns me the most, because it was just a 20-point buy-in. Should have waited. Alas, should have could have. Anyhoo, that is my current status at this year-end. Thank you for following this odd journal of 2017. It's gonna' get even weirder next year when I get my ass out of that open position sling. I may get burned, or may come out smelling like rose water and Lysol™. Who can tell? Shout out to my favs, you know who you are. (And hey, xandman, where have you been? I miss your dog with the bondage ball in it's mouth. hehehe!) P.S. I may get back into CL and ditch equities. It just all seemed less stressful. In the end it is all challenging, sure. But I miss the fun of energies.
Oh yeah, one other important bit I am forgetting to mention... That transition from CL to equities didn't work so well because the whole basis of the CL method was being able to reposition losers against winners many months out on CL. MANY months. CL is active over a very long term. NQ and YM? Stuck in just two trading months. Heed that peeples! (Hi speedo)