Just wanted to share one thing that keeps going through my mind about losing my account, which it turns out, I almost lost it, but it still has enough in it for data fees and 1 trade at my normal stop loss, so my account isn't totally gone. I mailed in the exact amount I had withdrawn in the last couple months. This way it can't lose much, but gives me enough to take lives trades and work on self control. I don't know how long I'll wait before taking a live trade again, but I have some ideas of how I want to have a very structured system. Also, I want to make sure I follow it consistently in demo first before going live again. Anyhow, the biggest thing that keeps going through my mind about why what happened happened is that there seems to be a big disconnect in my mind between trading and the reality that there is real money that can be lost. When I began taking extra risks not in my plan, it just didn't seem like I was really going to lose so much money. It's like one of those times when you know something could happen but it just doesn't seem like it will. Sometimes those things happen and sometimes they don't. It's much easier to recognize the danger of something when there is immediate feedback. For example, if you decide to jump across a creek and miss, you fall into the water and have immediate feedback that your decision to jump across the creek was risky. I kind of wish with trading there was a bucket of water that would be thrown at me when I begin to trade risky, so maybe I'd learn quicker to stop. There's got to be practical ways to help with this. I use Sierra Chart's locking feature after a certain amount is lost. But then on losing days I began resetting it and found I could reset it in about 10 seconds and that didn't give enough of a "cool down" period for me to get my emotions under control. Presently, I will limit myself to a very small account so that if I do lose it, it won't be that much. Maybe by the time I'm ready to use larger amounts of money I'll have established better methods of self-control and can keep more in the account. I'm still going through The Mental Game of Trading by Jared Tendler. I'm working through mapping out my emotions and all the factors influencing my complete disregard for having rules in trading when I started losing. I'm finding a long list of warning signs that I need to work at becoming tuned to if I'm going to overcome this. I also have listed all the rules I broke that day and a couple of other days that didn't turn out as badly, but probably desensitized me to noticing how I was getting completely away from a rules-based approach. One more difference is that I'm not so set on making trading work for me. I've started to accept the fact that I might not have the right temperment to trade. I know that I do have the ability to trade and make a profit. That's part of what I really wanted to prove to myself. But the rules that I need to follow to make a profit are difficult (self-control, stalking a trade, waiting, not blowing up my account, etc). I'm still questioning if it's really the price I want to pay to become a trader. It's actually kind of freeing to think I might give up on trading as a legit trader. Maybe I will always be a hobby trader and just enjoy the game of trading, but not be so determined that I will make this work. If nothing else, I'm definitely learning more about myself.
Is there anyone reading this who wants to share ideas that can help with learning to not blow up an account? I'd love to hear from others, even if they are untested ideas.
On March 13, you posted results of a back test you did on a basic version of your system. When asked about further back testing, you mentioned that you didn't have access to Bloodhound. On May 26, you found that NT's Strategy Trader could help you on the way to automation without Bloodhound. You then continued : "I've been asking myself why I'm trying to automate my trading plan as much as possible and wondering if it's worth spending so much time on it. I guess there's several answers to that question. I'm trying to fine tune my strategy. I need to know the statistics behind it. I want to have an alert system that helps me find a really good trade, and all of this should help with knowing which alerts will be the most helpful. It will be helpful to know the time of day the strategy performs best." However, you omitted the main answer. Based upon what I've read in your journal, together with my own personal experience, I believe it's your only way of succeeding.
Thanks! I really appreciate this response. I stopped working on automated trading because it was time consuming and are some key elements I use in trading that I can't figure out how to automate, and don't know if it's even possible. So right now my trade entries look better than the robots' entries, but the robots do consistently better than me long term because they aren't breaking the rules. The robots also have drawdown periods...overall they are profitable, but I haven't wanted to live through a drawdown in live trading. I will definitely move forward with using them and refining them. Thanks again!
I've decided to start up this journal again but not for showing how I'm doing with trading. Instead, I plan to spend a few days each week on trying to learn to code a NT8 strategy and I'll use this journal to track what I'm working on. My schedule will become very busy in about a month, so I'd like to hopefully get somewhere with this before then. My plan is to develop a working strategy and make it available on this journal as well as show the steps of learning to code it and backtesting results. I do not plan to use anything that I currently use for trading to build this strategy. At this point I plan to improve a 5 minute or 15 minute MACD strategy that is not working very well. At the time I ran the strategy I was only using Standard Resolution. Most of the strategies I built using Standard Resolution did not work at all when repeating them using High Resolution. I have not tested this using High Resolution, but it's very likely that it won't work in it's current form using High Resolution. These are the Standard Resolution results of the MACD strategy I want to improve and learn to code in NT8 in the next month: This journal will help me to stay focused and hopefully will result in a useful strategy. I hope to learn to code through the process so that I can code the method I currently use. If this MACD strategy works then I'll either adjust it to fit with what I currently use, or use it as a stand alone entry system. I see nothing but positives for trying this.....except for the frustration of coding. I am not a coder. I have never done coding. I do know someone who has, and seeing them go through periods of debugging that were exhausting and frustrating for him made me never, ever want to code anything. Well, now I'm going to try and frustration with debugging might just be part of the journey I can't avoid. And one last thing. This is for fun only. I am not planning on this making me a million dollars, although I think my chances of it making that much are probably greater than my chances of winning a million dollars playing the Lottery (especially because I have never bought a lottery ticket). And thanks to Expiated whose MQL4 journal, showing how he is learning to code MT4, has somewhat inspired this adventure. And also thanks to the others who have been helpful in pointing me along to this path of automation or what may turn out to be semi-automation.
My plan for learning to code in NT8 is not going to focus very much on learning how to program. I may have to spend more time in this area eventually, but I want to rush the process a bit, get a quick overview of what the basics are, some of the terminology and what resources I have to draw from. Then I will try to use a cut and paste method using existing strategies, either AI generated, or from the strategy builder to form what I think will work. When it doesn't...and I'm not expecting it will at first, then I'll have to troubleshoot why, and that will likely help the learning curve move along quickly. If it does begin to work for backtesting, then I can make adjustments to it a little here and there and see how they work. Seems simple enough, but nothing is ever as simple as it seems it should be. Especially when it comes to trading. This thread lists the resources I plan to spend some time on starting tomorrow: https://ninjatrader.com/support/for...al-support-aa/1120360-nt8-programing-language
I have decided on a better plan than trying to build a robot to help with not blowing an account, although I do think having a robot can definitely help with it to. I need to limit my live trading to one trade a day, with a set maximum stop loss, that I can use lower than that amount, but not higher. If it works in demo, I might just always trade this way. One trade a day. It's too easy for me to give in to the impulse to make up a loss. There may come a time when I will take more than one trade, but I don't think that should come until I'm successful at trading one trade a day live. The thing is, if I can even win 50% of the time and have a high reward to risk, it will work. By stopping for the day after only one losing trade I will develop the habit of stopping and that is about the only thing that is going to help me not get into the cycle of taking just one more trade to make it back. That doesn't mean that I won't build robots to help with sticking with my rules and backtesting to improve my rules. But with or without a robot I think this is the best habit to develop. The one problem with this, that always leads to why I take more than one trade a day, is that the more time I spend practicing, the better I read price action. I do need this chart time. Still not sure exactly how to get the chart time with trading and yet be strict about only taking one trade a day, but for starters, I will go back to doing "line paper trades" which is something I somehow got out of the habit of doing. That just means drawing lines where I think a trade would work and then watching to see if it worked the way I thought it would. The other thing I plan to do is continue to work at replaying and trading specific areas using Sierra Chart's replay because I can repeatedly enter and stop and redo it until I get it right. I do think that is really helpful. There's something about seeing price on a chart and thinking you can trade it and then actually trying to trade it and realizing it's not as easy as it looked, and that's what replaying has been helping me with. So, moving on, I think the best plan for me to get back on my feet with trading again is to take only one DEMO trade (really wish I was ready for live) and post it here each day and keep track of how I'm doing. I'll know when I'm ready to go live because keeping track of it here will help me to trade by my rules and I and whoever cares to read this will be able to see my track record. And I think, when I trade live, I will likely continue to post on here too. Maybe for forever, depending on how it goes. It will help me be consistent. Why do I feel like my trading journal is cyclical, always repeating the same adventures?
Didn't take a trade today. I'm trying to be very sure before placing a trade. There are only a few patterns that I feel comfortable trading, and they didn't happen when I wanted them to happen. I'm only trading the ES now, and have been finding that waiting until around 9 am Central Time is when I can sometimes find a good trade, so I wasn't ready for the move to begin at 8:05 am. Even if I was ready, I don't think I would have thought that was the best entry time of the morning. There was also a nice break up right at the open, but since so often there is whipsaw around that time, I have decided not to trade right at the open but to wait to give the whipsaw time to die down. Well, waiting meant not getting into the type of trade I was looking for. I guess I can count it an accomplishment that I didn't take a trade because I followed my plan. But the trend up was really nice and I'm hoping, in time, to be in trends like that. Sometimes Mondays seem to trend better than other days. I need to spend some time looking at just Monday charts to see if anything seems to repeat itself. It's helped a lot that I've given myself the freedom to fail. If it doesn't work, or this takes a really long time, that's fine. I like trading. I like setting goals to work at getting better. And I really like it that there is the possibility that someday the hard work will pay off. But if it doesn't, I will have enjoyed the journey.
Demo trade made 4 ticks. Today's trade was difficult for me to sit through and I ended up closing it early. I'm not sure if there's a way to know when the ES is going to chop around for a bit or trend. It's not something I read very well. I'm trying to find very low risk trades that move quickly into profit, and that was not what happened today. It's emotionally difficult to have only one trade per day, because I want to close a trade that goes against me, and then re-enter when it begins to move back into the direction I want. Although that can work, it is what gets me into trouble overtrading, so I'm stuck with having to just sit through trades that are uncomfortable to be in. This one could have easily taken out my stop loss. It wasn't a very good risk to reward ratio. On the chart I show some white lines. The first white line is my original stop loss position of 14 ticks. For now, I plan to take profits early in what I hope is a trend. However, that doesn't give me the emotional practice of trailing a trade through drawdowns when trying to stay in a trend longer. So I have decided that with every trade I place I will pretend to still be in the trade so I can practice trailing it. The second white line is where I would have trailed if still in the trade, in this case placing it below the next 15 minute candle. The last white line on the chart is when I gave up on the theoretical trade and just wanted out while still in profit--it would have gone against me 10 ticks and I would have made 12 ticks on it. If I had stayed in the trade it would have continued to slowly grind higher (not shown on the chart), but it's not a strong trend and I'm glad I'm not in it.
Taking only one trade means I can't fiddle with a trade the way I'd like to and this is becoming very difficult. If I didn't have this journal to report to, I would have definitely traded multiple times on the ES today. I don't like to make excuses for poor trading, but I do have excuses . I was disctracted with something else today when trying to trade the ES and I didn't feel in tune with it. I didn't see any of my favorite set ups except once, and that one did work, and I almost took it, but the ES was trending up slowly and that just doesn't feel right to me. Is it because I'm use to the NQ and expect moves that are so quick I can hardly get in before it takes off? I don't know, but I hesitated too many times and ended up not taking a trade UNTIL I decided that rather than have to explain about not taking a trade, I really should just try for a few ticks, and then I'd have something at least. But again, it kept moving higher, and I just didn't feel confident to get in long....I'm sure I would have tried it if I could have closed a trade moving against me and gotten back in quickly, but that's the habit I'm trying to work on overcoming. So, I waited and finally thought I saw where I could get 4 ticks guaranteed in a counter trend trade. I expected price to push lower...after all, it had been going up way too long, right? And guess what!! It did go to 4 ticks....but it didn't break through enough to actually close the trade. UGH. And I had an 8 tick stop loss. The whole trade was wrong. I am still trying to not countertrend trade unless I see a double top, or something really sure about it, but this set up didn't qualify, which was why I tried to only go for 4 ticks. The worse part was that rather than closing it right away when I was wrong, I let it go against me, no longer because I thought it was going to work, but because I didn't want to take a losing trade. I closed it for a loss of 3 DEMO ticks (after fees). But I never should have taken the trade. But I'm still wondering why the ES is moving up without retracing much, when it's going so slowly? I usually get stuck in the ranging behavior and want a trend to happen. Today's action was kind of like ranging sideways making a slow trend up. Whatever. It was actually a beautiful trend up. Lots of opportunities for scalp entries that could have been held onto...only I don't know how easy it would have been to get into them because I didn't trade them.