I have no idea why I didn't do this - start a futures journal - before. ...OK, I lied. As soon as I wrote the above, I realized that I do indeed know the reason - and I know it from experience with my other journal: it's because, as soon as I start documenting what I do, I lose the option of being a f%*#^@g dilettante about my trading. And making that kind of commitment, in public, is seriously terrifying when you don't have any idea of what you're doing - because I don't commit to things lightly. But when I do, it means that I a) have the full intent to carry it out regardless of almost any cost, and b) that I see at least a dim shadow of how I'm going to get there; that I at least have a reasonable chance of doing so. I don't mind bleeding and sweating and feeling like an absolute ignoramus along the way; that's what happens when you learn like I do, by pushing myself as hard as I can and barely pausing when I make it past a previous limit. Lather, rinse, repeat until undeniable success or failure (but nothing in life is a failure if you survive and learn from it.) So, OK. Futures. Here's where I start getting serious about them. (Oh, and - much gratitude to @Overnight, @danielc1, and @sstheo for their contributions to the process. Seriously couldn't have made it to this point without your kind help, guys.)
Ask yourself...Why? What is the reason for your reluctance to posting live real money trades on this anonymous forum? If you will follow through with consistency with being honest in your journal thread, you should have no problem being honest with yourself in your trading. I have mentioned over and over again, I give no flying fuck about me posting my live trading performance in a journal. It affects nobody. But at least it is honest and true. I have no ego to bruise. It is simply the trek of a person trying to journey the road to profit. Don't be so squeamish. Grab yourself by your balls and squish them when you fuck up, and let everyone else here know when you are self-flagellating. Works wonders for the liberation of conscience. Based on my chats with you, I get the sense that when you get the Futures down, you will be a monster, because you have the mind for options. When you can combine the futures with FOPs? Unstoppable.
See, that's the problem with text-only media: getting context across is hard. I thought that what I wrote was absolutely clear - and it's obviously not. I have zero problem with being honest about my struggles, and being embarrassed while I'm learning is a completely alien concept to me. I've been educating professionals for decades, and I understand how the learning process works, better than damn near anybody out there. Not boasting, simple fact. I also not only know, but believe with damn near fanatical intensity that using your courage to face new challenges is where all the growth is - and that it's something you create within yourself when faced with a challenge. And that you wither away as a human being if you don't do it actively and regularly. And none of that is what I was talking about. Frankly, that's the easy part. Hell, for me, it's part of my rewards for working hard. A gain in/recommitment to courage, honesty, and integrity in my life? I'll take a great big heap of that, please! When I make a commitment, I'm signing a chunk of my life over to the thing I commit to. If it's something I'm that serious about, it's going to create time/effort/people conflicts, and all of those will have to be resolved and normalized. And, as with anything this large and this different from my previous habit and thought, it's going to require that I become a new and different person: one who discarded an equally large something from my life and replaced it with this new thing. Some part of who I am is going to die in order to make room for this. Trading has already been a HUGE series of changes for me - my perspective on this piece of the world, where I've been blind all my life, has been through an earthquake and a volcano eruption - and this is going to be even more of the same. That is the hard, scary part. My experience and my intuition both tell me that even the process of doing this is going to make me grow, and so I'm diving in. But... man, that cold water is a hell of a shock to the system in the first moment. What you saw was my reaction to it, that's all. Ah. Yeah, that one is something I need to work on; I don't always realize when I've driven myself beyond the point of reasonable benefit. There's been a number of times when I fell asleep behind the computer this past year, stupidly staring at the screen long past the point where what I was seeing made any sense. Not sure how to improve that one without losing something valuable in the process. Persistence vs. perseveration... I'll give it some thought. Thanks, ON. I'm looking forward to it all.
Where are you in the Futures journal now? Is this where it starts? You caught my attention with FJ and your BWS name. I have a sailing endorsement on my Masters and have been trading off and on for over 20 years but never successfully. And now I intend to begin again. Thinking about options as I once again have a small account. Any thoughts?
@Fmann151 - yep, this is where it starts. I'll be recording my futures trades and my thought process here, both to keep myself accountable and to share whatever I discover in the hope that it'll be useful to others. Been trading options for almost a year now, and have learned one amazing hell of a lot; actually made a rather decent profit overall despite not having the slightest clue of what I was doing at the beginning - and only have a small clue nowadays, but enough to keep me both excited and profitable. A thousand miles of water past my keel, only a million more to go... I spent 20+ years cruising and living aboard, a number of them down in the Caribbean; living on land these days and missing it. I still go sailing with friends - can't avoid it if I'm anywhere in the Tri-State area in the summer, they'd kidnap me and chain me to the helm or the chart table! - and will probably go back to living aboard full time at some point. So pull up a seat, pour yourself a G&T (or, due to the traditional rarity of refrigeration on cruising boats in the islands, a warm rum and Tang... ), and keep an eye to weather. I suspect we'll see some storms by and by.
@BlueWaterSailor I'm curious, will you be also trading futures spreads? Recently I've been intrigued by the posts of @bone and his knowledge of exchange traded spreads. I'm not too sure what he means by that, but from my understanding a normal pairs trade could be to Sell Bonds, Buy Notes, or short crude/long brent? Will you be doing this? I heard trading spreads lowers your P/L standard deviation (which makes sense) and is more stable than flat price. Also the margin benefits of spreading your risk has its benefits. So yeah, will you be trading spreads as well?