Background I traded my IRA account from $9000 to $16000 in 2002, then I fought the uptrend from March 2003 until now by buying puts on indices and stocks. Now my account stands at a little over 5000. Since future trading is allowed in IB's IRA accounts, I will trade 1 ES contract in this account from now on. Objective I will use this Journal as a record to test some ideas. This journal will close if the equity drops to the point where I cannot trade 1 ES. On the other hand, I will start trading 2 ES when equity rises above $10000. Before that point is reached, 1 ES is the limit. At this time, the ideas I want to test are: 1. Can jumping in and out of a position beat buy(sell) and hold over an extend period of time? 2. Can one make money consistently with a simple system? 3. Is unscared money (vs. scared money) key to trading success? System (or the lack thereof) I will trade only from one side at a given time. At this time I believe the next few weeks/months will be down so I will trade from the short side exclusively. This will change when I believe the intermediate trend has changed. To determine the trend, I look at only weekly charts of $SPX and $BPSPX, using two indicators MACD and CCI. I will jump in and out using intraday $SPX chart from Yahoo Finance. Stops and targets No fear -- This is unscared money. Blowing up the account means I will retire at age 65.1 instead of 65.0. As a result, I will use only mental stops. And in general the stops will be large enough so I won't be shaken out by spikes. I don't expect to be stopped more often than perhaps once a month. No greed -- Doubling this account means I will retire at age 64.9 instead of 65.0. I will take profits whenever I feel like it and wait to establish the original position at a better price. I expect my trading frequency to range from a few time a day to a few times a week. Other I have a day job, that means I cannot watch the market all the time. So I will leave limit orders sometimes and just hope that they will be filled. On the other hand, my day job makes this no fear/no greed experiment possible.
Good Luck!!! So basically you buy or sell a single future contract based on your directional bias for the week ahead? TM Trader
I have a good feeling.. that he will outperform 90% of all the daytraders trying to scalp a few points a day consistently. --MIKE
This is certaily my hope. The idea to start this experiment formed after I read a number of Journals on this site over the weekend. All the daytraders and scalpers blowed up sooner or later. I'd like to try something different. Let's see what happens.