beat the market journal

six months ago, I was told temporarily laid off, I setup a 5k future account in IB(put more than 10k, then withdrew some to 5k), mainly traded sweet crude Cl/NQ/YM/ES, after three months, 5k is gone. then from this Feb., I put 25k (made a loan from my 401k plan), I started to gradually gain back the loss. then I put the bailout money back to my 401k plan this week.

currently my account is at $4381.7 ( I withdrew 1k in this Feb., that means in this six months I gained $381.7). after six months in future trading, I felt there are tons of money in the future market to make, but when I look at mine results, it is very disappointing.

I am planning to trade full time and forget about the call-back. I am ambitious. I have good sense of entry price whether short or long, but I am too nervous about holding. little noise ticks will easily lure/shake me out of a very profitable trade. when I sat down to the computer after the closing today, I saw I actually pin down the right intra-day bottom of sweet crude. but why I did not make profits? I am totally puzzled.

in this journal, any comments/suggestions/criticizings are all welcomed.

my aim is to beat the market. if the market moved 2points either way(up or down) in a day, I need make more than 2points to claim myself a winner. in my case, I only can trade 1 contract of sweet crude from 9:00am to 2:30pm, so the actual daily move will be from 9:00am to 2:30pm for sweet crude(IB will not allow to trade during 2:15pm to 2:30pm because the session is near the end). for example, if the day opens at 83 at 9:00am, ended at 85 at 2:30pm, if I made 2.01 points, then I beat the market, if I just made 1.89 points, I am a loser. I do not care about trading strategy, whether short or long, whether many scalpings or just few intraday swing tradings. if I trade a different symbol that day, then use that symbol's move to claim win or lose.


I will start this journal next week.

 

did some warm-up trading in sim account.

but as you know paper account is totally different from real account. my account is very tiny, just around 4.3k. even not enough to trade 1contract of sweet crude (overnight). my emotion runs high. when I do live trading, I felt I am gambling either live or dead.

I know I can not beat the market now, I hope I will do better every day, then around some point finally I can beat the market daily most time, for example 7 in 10 days (I think no one can beat the market every day, that is not realistic). if I can reach that level, then I will terminate this journal.

I will just report how many trades (type:scalp, breakout, support/resistance or whatever) I did, how points I gained, what obstacles or mistakes i came across, then I will compare my results with the market. if the market from opening to closing moves X amount(whether up/down), then I need gain X+ to claim myself a winner, if not I am a loser.

 

no live trading today, warm up day

today I will study the ways how I can beat the market, try to lay out a trading system which fits me. since my account is tiny, I can not afford to hold overnight position, I can not hold a position which is against me more than 3% of my account value (in sweet crude, I can not afford to let the market against 0.3points) . in order to beat the market, I need trade in and out frequently to generate high sales to overcome underfunded problem, make it seem I have a big account. if I trade 10 times, then my account looks as 4.3k*10=43k account, or even more 20 times a day, then my account looks as 4.3k*20=86k.

from this point of view, my strategy or trading system will be mainly in intra-day tick to tick scalping or intra-day major swing or trend.

as you know, logically I can do 10 even 20 times to make my account look big, but every thing has tow sides. if I were a poor hitter, I hit 10 times, I lose 10 times, those tiny losers add up, I may lose my account in a day or two. so I must find out what is the blending strategy that fits me.

also in scalping, how I manage my risk, yes, take out 0.1 or 0.2 point of gain from sweet crude is piece of cake, but yes again, lose 0.1 or 0.2 point in sweet crude is just as quick as the gain. do I use hard-stop? or mental stop

or first I try to catch major movement, wait patiently to see those setups, then ride the market to build my account to remedy the underfundedness problem? then phase in scalping?

 

Advice:
stop trading $100,000 CL contract you gambler,
Trade 100 shares of uso, won't make you money, but you aren't suppose to.

 

Hello Trader198,

You are showing a great deal of courage opening a journal on ET with the meager resources you have to trade with. This normally releases the ET hounds from hell on a ‘newbie’ trader like you. Some of the items you must be prepared to hear are:
- Losing multiple accounts. Because you are so under funded playing in a professional leveraged arena you should plan on being wiped out many times over.
- Learning curve. For pros small ‘newbie’ futures or forex accounts are their lunch money. At this point you have no tested ‘edge’ and all you are doing is gambling among the big money. Consider your self lucky you even survived. Traders in these arenas put ‘years’ of work to learn their craft. You had better be prepared to pay your dues to join the club if you are going to trade leverage to start.
- Preparation to Trade. Your trading plan is probably a set of mental notes. These probably shift on a minute to minute basis. Are you even prepared for what can go wrong? This will not get you many days of ‘real’ trading.
- Market knowledge. You say beat the market. Do you even know how these markets work? Have you studied seasonal market forces? Do you know what a COT is all about?

If I had several more hours I would tell you about the other ‘small’ things you missed.

 

if now I already beat the market, then I am not here to launch this journal.
I do did three live trades. initially I plan to short SOMX in the morning for a profit-taking ride since there is no share to short. I noticed POL.
I thought I am in paper account, but actually I am in my real account. I bought it at 9.55 with 100 lot, sold it at 10.31. looks I beat the POL (pol opens at 9.45, now it is at 10.14). we will see where it closes. did not get it when it legged down, my limit order is 9.81, but it just visited 9.9.

shorted QM tow times when it drops to morning low. the morning rally fooled and shaked me, end up taking profit too quick. also QM has low volume, hard to pin down exit/entry price. next week I will shift to CL, that is smooth, esy in and easy out.

this week end with 550+ gain.

 

one trade on QM 0.175 gain, bought it at 79.7 in the thrust and sold it at 79.875.
crude opens at 79, and closes at 81.25 moved 2.25 points
obviously the market beats me far more than 10 times.

the whole day I was busy with preparing a layoff lawsuit, actually I am not in a mode to trade. just curious and turned on my TWS at 10:30am, saw the thrust, very attractive (the price danced around 79.7+ and 79.57+), so I entered it as a test, I strongly felt I should buy CL , but because of the unfinished lawsuit preparing, I killed the position and continued my lawsuit preparing. what a great buy when I look backwards.

tomorrow I will start to trade seriously.

 

qm (0.275 point gain) bought QM at 81.075, did not take the profit in the first thrust, then fooled by the drop back, gout out just in the break out thrust.

then try to short it at 82.175, but feel uncomfortable because of yesterday's strong rally, missed it. try to buy it at 81.3 with a limit order, missed with 0.25, and "boom" without me.

kind of pointless today, give up. the market wins. will be in sideline the rest of the day

 

Sorry, OP, but I am fairly certain your journal will not last a week. You are gambling.

Newbies trading CL highly leveraged never turns out pretty...

Would love to see you prove me wrong, however.

 

pretty frustrated. before I start, my fear controls me, so I lose. 0.3 point gain

just did two trades, one trade before the report around 6:30AM with 1 tick gain

then after the report, bought QM at 80.025, sold it at 80.275, why not use trailing stop? I can not believe myself, my fear ruined a nice trade. the market wins again.

I will be in sideline the rest of day. hope tomorrow I will do better: strictly use stop loss to control my fear and maximize my gain