I am going to journal my daily PnL and thoughts for awhile. Maybe a month, maybe more. I deposited $26,000 @ IB. I am giving myself $1000 draw down before I would pull the plug. There will be 100% discretionary entries. I have things I look for based on scans. When I see something I like I will pull the trigger. 100% mechanical stops set at +1/2% or -1/2% from entry price. Initially with a ridiculously small risk per trade of $25.00 gross. In other words each trade will risk .001% of total account size. I will adjust that each day according to closing cash balance on the ledger. Position size accordingly. Winners will be held for either a 2% min gain from entry or MOC. Or if I get a fat tail move in my favor(should I get so lucky) I will look for capitulation in the PA and then punt. My intent here is not to make a difference in my lifestyle. But to take it back to where I started in individual equity land. And see if there is something there for me again. There are many more opps on a daily basis than trading ES. And I look forward to tracking the universe and hopefully picking a few bright stars intraday while keeping the black holes count small. If I get to a certain number of trades under my belt and come to the conclusion that risk metrics need to change then I will adjust. Nothing is ever set in stone but max max loss allowed. Funds will be in tomorrow. 12/4/14 I will be ready to rock.
A few questions if I may: 1) $26k is the total amount you are managing, correct? 2) $25 is what you will risk on each trade? If so, that's less than 0.1% of $26k, not 0.001% (that's what you wrote) 3) Your stop is gonna be 0.5% from entry on all positions? are you assuming all shares have the same volatility? Bad assumption.
4) there is no provision for adding to your positions - why would you not want to do this? 5) Or if I get a fat tail move in my favor(should I get so lucky) I will look for capitulation in the PA and then punt. What do you mean by 'punt' in this context?
yes I am assuming only 25k base cap. I misplaced decimal. 1/10th of a % per. yes, metrics will be analyzed every 100 trades and adjusted accordingly. I dont proclaim to know everything. But I know this in an expert fashion - when I get a winner it barely goes against me. Fixed % stop position sizing is good for the names I will be buying/selling. PnL will dictate how terrible my assumption is. I dont pyramid up or down, ever. punt - pull the rip cord - cover - get flat -
Test fire one down range... bot 186 MTSI @ 27.40. 27.26 stop One only today. Want to make sure things settle up correctly and commission is proper. etc...
Yesterday I put two more on after finding the real time report window. Everything looks ok. Time and tick working fine so no margin BS pops up. Began tracking metrics in excel sheet. Ending days result @ -22.21 net.
Bot 66 EXPE @ 91.35. SLD @ 91.85. Volume spike after highs printed brought on the near term sellers sold around there -------------------------------------------- 3 open bums... Sld 216 AGNC @ 22.65 - 7.00 here Bot 169 PWR @ 30.24 -25.00 here Bot 230 VIPS @ 22.19 - 7.00 here