No, I wish I was that good but in today's market structure I don't think it is possible. I use MA's, critical levels, RSI, and MACD. I track several time frames for confirmation of what I am seeing.
Interesting read. How come your equity is around $350k? I thought your started your account at $100K. Do you make that much money this year? It looks like, from your thread, you are about break even by now. Am I missing anything?
Prop and retail account combined. During the year I have moved additional capital into both accounts. In hindsight a bad move given what I went through midyear. It has been a learning experience. I am actually breakeven on the year now after being down close to $100k at one point. Clawing my way back to green. It has been a wild ride but I guess one has to go through drawdowns like this to take trading to the next level.
Good for you that you managed to come back from $100K deficit. I had this kind of loss once, and it took me few months to get back to trading. It was not easy.
Thanks. It is never easy psychologically. I lost confidence in my trading abilities and my system which was a mistake. It took looking back to what made me successful and getting back to basics to turn things around. It's not about making back what you lost. It is about getting back on track mentally and back to what works for you. The rest will take care of itself.
Just wondering, when you say you are back to break even, is that taking into account the $100k you've presumably drawn this year (10k/month)? or your account is break even in addition to the 100k Would like to follow your journal and would like a better grasp of the accounting. Thank you.
Includes deposits / draws. My equity adjusts up / down based on them. Hopefully that answers your question.
Week ending 11/11/11 -800 Boring week for pairs. ATRs contracted into the end of last week so I did not expect much production from them. I was still able to work some of my existing positions while reducing risk at the same time. Pairs can drift and consolidate quite a bit as volatility dies out. First losing week, albeit a small, on my new basket strategy. All part of the game and the reason for trading it with small size. It has a positive expectancy so far. I will keep trading it with small size through the month of Nov before sizing up. ES is getting better. One bad trade due to a bad habit of fading and sizing up too quickly cost me 6k on Wednesday. With the new strat trading them my net liq on this strat is up 1800 including that big whopper. Going forward disciplines, like with everything else, will be key to making this work. I will have to earn sizing up. I'm guessing market will continue focusing on Europe. Regardless of what the media is saying, don't let Friday's action fool you. Bond markets were closed so volume was light giving us that strong move. Still expecting good action this week.
Week ending 11/19/11 -4500 Tape bombs in CVX and RIG cost me approx 4k. I was torn between holding the pairs with them and decided it was not worth the overnight risk given what happened to BP when they had the gulf pipeline leak. The only thing I regret is not waiting for dead cat bounce to get out. Oh well, looking at the spreads closing prices on Friday, would have recouped 2k on RIG pair but lost an additional 2k on CVX one. I did the right thing in my mind. Maybe in the future I will consider holding half for pullback next day, puking half on dead cat bounce. Another 3500 draw on basket strat. That is 2 weeks in a row but still up overall. All part of any successful strategy and I am still optimistic that there is something there. ES trading is getting better and better, +2500 this week trading 3 contracts/trade. Dead on with my targeted weekly P/L for it. I feel good going forward but need to stay hyper focused with disciplines. As f'd up as this sounds, trading ES intraday is actually keeping me super disciplined on pairs cause I am not trying to micro manage them. Thanksgiving week could be interesting. The so called "super" committee could really botch this deadline. 3 months to get something completed and it is not looking promising at all. We all know the definition of insanity right? Typically holiday weeks are bullish and the breakdown of the ES daily wedge on Thursday could help that case for retracement. However, I will be on alert Wednesday and will be trading Friday without a doubt.