Your narrative rings true and your trade amounts and results are nothing short of stunning considering the size of your stack. Please keep us posted with as much detail as you are willing to share. This could become a legendary thread for ET.
To follow is my NinjaTrader generated reporting. Also, I wanted to post this while I still had some thoughts on this week fresh in my memory as I had a really bad day yesterday and want to address the issues that lead to it. I did however, have a very good recovery today and also did some analysis and self reflection which may provide some insight and clarity. So Wednesday I had a $2K day which is great but I was actually up about $3K at one point and ended up giving $1K back towards the end of the day. Sucks, but still the highest gains in a single day on this young account so far and had my balance up to about $16K. Then it creeps in, "...another day or two like this and I'll have doubled my account in 3 weeks! Yay!". Then Thursday started out very much the same and I'm firing on all cylinders. Again, I get my profits up to a little more than $3K and was within a hundred or so dollars of doubling my account when everything went to hell and I ended up down $2K for the day. Crap! (see yellow box) Wile E. Coyote eat your heart out. I have just perfected the "U-shaped" gun-barrel! That's the price of me holding out for a couple hundred bucks just to reach a milestone. It wasn't so much "greed of $$" but rather the psychological stroke of reaching the milestone. Very painful. Don't let this happen to you! Not a single negative day until Thursday but when I did I sure made count! Next I run a report that shows "Net Profit by hour". Duh I know that I can consistently pull $400 to $1K out of the market a day depending on when I get started. I also know that I do best during the London session and the open of the U.S. session. After that the volatility shrinks and while I may get some more swings the reward is less and possibly irrecoverable. Just say no! Additionally I had moved up to trading more on the 15m chart and scaled my trade size up to match the time-frame. Had I of still been trading on the 5m there was at least one area for me to bail and I would've still been in pretty good shape by market close on Thursday. Because of the draw-down I went back to the 5m chart and minimum lot sizing. Today was a net $950 day and I was done by 11:40 cst. Seems like my best rhythm has been to get $300 - $400 going pre-market and then the biggest trade is usually my 1st or 2nd at the open. I've been really busy with other "life" stuff lately and don't see that slowing down any time soon so my posting on this thread may be sparse but I am going to try and update it at least once a week if possible. I also took some screen shots of the NinjaTrader "Chart Trader" tools hoping to explain how I use it to quickly snap to a specific entry point on the chart so that will probably have to be in a separate post and I'm not sure if it'll even make any sense to anybody or even be useful as some traders aren't using NT and really, this "feature" is probably one of the things I find most useful for me entering and exiting my trades. As far as I know, the other platforms don't really have this capability. I originally wanted to be using Tradestation because I have a lot with them but alas it doesn't "do that thing". I have some ideas though which will be shared at some point. As I'm typing this I can see where I could've still been trying to squeeze something out but WHY!? how much is enough? I'm going to look back and try to answer some other posts I haven't been able to get to until now. Then it's grandkids for the weekend which actually already started but one of them is napping now. Wish I was too zzzzz
Have you considered taking next week off to reflect? You are close to 6K profit for the month. That's 72K per year. Not shabby at all! And next week is FOMC day intermingled with big tech earnings. Can be ugly times, especially with this new SARS-like virus running around.
Most of the time yes. I am usually eyeing several possible areas of support or resistance for potential entries and exits. These can be patterns or trend lines along with major (i.e. common) moving averages (on multiple time frames) and Fib retracements. There has to be confluence between multiple information points. Usually there's more than one and so I may take a bite with the first one and then add a 2nd or 3rd bite if price continues to pull into deeper levels. Just classic TA really. No magic indicators or silver bullets. I'm a big believer in "visualization". I use it in many other things that I do besides trading and investing.
hmmm, I think there's a question in here. oh, there it is! post a trading plan? well actually no, I don't really have one as this is basically an experiment and possibly a way to pay for a trip or a kitchen remodel in addition to funding other investment ideas. i actually don't want to be doing this day in and day out. if there's a plan i guess it would be to get this account to a point where I can have some longer term swing trades going on in parallel with some other investment strategies I have in play. I have option trades and so forth but the tax advantages and lack of time decay in futures appeals to me. plus it's much easier for me to manage. but that's just me. to elaborate on any type of plan i can say that i have a "plateau system" for taking profits and allocating them elsewhere. in the case of this account, the first level is to grow it to 1.5 times the starting balance ($10k to $25k) then take $10k off and put it to work in something else longer term. rinse and repeat. it looks something like this.
I may take the week off but not for those reasons. I use to avoid those things like the plague (pun intended) but have actually done quite well trading major chaotic events. Hey, somebody's gotta do it! My wife and I have taken some trips and also have more on the way plus we are celebrating 30 years later this year and will be having major blow-out party (we have one every 5 years). lots of planning a prep for that plus i do ALL the bbq which is about 3 or 4 days straight of just smoking meats. Additionally, I have another profession that has firm dates and can take me away from the trading desk so I have to optimize the time I have available to work the trading desk here in my man-cave for continued revenue stream. who am i kidding that i've been retired since 2009.
I love your "plateau" withdrawal plan. Thanks for posting your candid remarks about your big drawdown. I am confident you will learn from it and keep marching higher.
actually did a little better yesterday than NT was reporting. me thinks the extra $100 was from small trade at market open 5pm Thursday.
They have the same name as the OP!!! So clearly he has a natural affinity. Or maybe he is the founder himself? Haha.