Hi there, To quickly introduce myself and as to why I open this thread: I traded forex and a bit of futures for a couple of years but with only (very) moderate succes. After that period I stopped trading completely for around 1,5 years. Just watching charts like once every two weeks. But I did used that time to reflect on what went wrong previously and things that can and should be improved. So now, after a period of around 6 months of sim trading, I feel ready to give it a go again. Will it work ? I guess we'll soon find out. I plan to be as transparant as possible: I will post all my trades (and daily statements). Don't expect (or ask for) live calls. This will not happen, the above should be enough. As I have a "regular" job (with irregular hours though), it might happen that there will be no update for several days or longer. I expect to trade only parts of days, never a full day. I found out it works better for me anyway like that. As for the trading itself: I'm a big fan of cycles and my system is based around that. Only E-mini Nasdaq 100 futures will be traded. Leverage is one contract per $3K. (nr. of max. contracts has to be a multiple of 4 though). 3rd stopout of the day will be the final stop for the day.
ok, let's kick off. Current account balance is: €13,970.00 + $1,815.32 Just one trade today. Went long shortly after open. Sold half after closing the gap. Since I was still bullish, let the other half open. A bit of bad luck with the stop on the second half.
Did you study of Nasdaq and discover there are three different sessions of Day session in the Indexes and each has it's own personalities? Some signals work better than others, some need to be not used at all during different hours? How many times over did your sim trading provide over the original starting account size? Good luck.
Thx. If you're referring to the fact that the futures data is missing on the chart when the US markets are closed: that's done on purpose. I found my system to be working better when I leave that out. Also I don't like trading outside of the US open hours. It's usually slow and there are different margins requirements to take into account. JP
yesterday's result: $ +683.76 (700 minus costs) I was hoping to start this thread with at least a full week of trading. But due to some change in plans, I will not be able to trade later today.
Result will be (slightly) positive however I'm not happy today. 5 trades in total. I mismanaged the entry on the first two trades. Guess what, they resulted in a full stop out. Maybe there's a lesson there... The only one smiling probably is my broker happily accepting commissions. I know it's pre-FOMC but there are some nice little swings. My dayplan was for a bullish day with some downpressure the first hours. So I expect it to pop up later after FOMC (but we'll see about that of course) Got to go for today. JP
Not sure what to say. I think today I broke every rule there is (bad entry management, bad (no) signals, trading too large.... ) In fact I hesitated to post the trades but I did it anyway because otherwise there's no point in keeping a journal I guess. But please do not use this as an example for good trading. I thought I was past this sort of thing but live trading seems still another animal than sim. The worst of all probably is that I was largely down and made up for it by increasing size and then coming out ahead. Mentally very bad. Anyway, I will take the day off tomorrow to rethink and study this. No live trading. Result will be ~$+690. The only positive thing I see today is the fact that my system actually works, I just need to follow it. JP
yesterday's result: + $694.14 no trading today so the summary of the week is + $1496.70 (~+8.5%) I will try to trade at least 3 days next week. JP