The other thing I do is spray paint my under-arms like they do in the Fresh Prince, because I believe it will get me into housing in Bel Air.
+$21.23 I had a really, really bad day. The morning was off to a bad start. First thing, I had an erroneous tick that took me into the red where, for whatever reason, the system executed and closed a trade early. I figured, ok, cost me $10. Then another trade took me well into the green, two or three trades deep into the green. Then my system took on a deadbeat trade on a stock that had earnings due out after the close, so the behavior was not what my system expected. When I realized what happened, I adjusted the trade manually to minimize the damaged, but the trade ended up costing me commissions on a flat. Finally, around 2:30, my network connection dropped. So I went to my "backup network", which is a sprint mobile broadband card I have for the sole purpose of logging in over a different network. So I log in, check all my positions, everything is fine, so I leave the sprint card in so the system would close out the positions on the right signal. Then, my system was getting ticks very, very slowly in a batch fashion that it is not typically used to. Because of this, a batch of ticks flew in and my system took on another trade. I should have turned the damn thing off. I wasn't thinking. Then it got worse. The sprint card lost its signal, and I was blind for a half hour. I had to run out, find another computer, log in over the web, and see if my trades were working. The final trade cleared into the green, but since I had no way of checking when to exit, I simply took the profit. - VERY MENTALLY CHALLENGED BEHAVIOR (-1) - I got to trade (+1) - No extreme profits (-1) - Did not start dot com business (-1) Self-performance score: -10000, because I should have thought about some of the shit that happened today before it happened. I'm taking the rest of the day off and dedicating some serious thought as to how to avoid disasters like this, even as a lowly, mentally-challenged retail trader.
Oh f***, you know what I did wrong today? I didn't drink any gatorade or vitamin water. Failure was bound to happen.
I wish my system had such small swings. I'm having a hard time handling the large swings that average about $500. My system is not fully automated yet (I have to physically trade all the signals that are generated). I really wish I had 1) a fully automated system and 2)up and down swings less than $100. So, props to you. You are on the right track.
Thank you. I went out of my way to design my strategy so that the equity curve looks very smooth. If there are any crazy jaggies in out of sample tests, I toss the strategy aside and look for other candidates. I designed around my psychology. For a while there, I was doing discretionary stuff in addition to the automated stuff. I found that to be really, really difficult. I can't trust myself to execute when the time is right, so on my account PnL, you see all these smooth automated trades and these blotches of idiocy that make no sense. When I looked at my equity curve, I'd really beat myself up and feel bad. So I said, why am I doing this? And ever since, it's been nothing but targeting smoothness as much as possible. But even that leaves room for error. I think, rather than shoot for aggressive profits at the moment, I'm more interested in finding ways to stop making real mistakes. I want to avoid beating myself up psychologically. I take big losses pretty hard emotionally, so system design for me has become an exercise in pain minimization more than anything.
This journal is short on details and long on entertainment. Strangely, it's my favorite journal to date. Keep the faith! Perhaps a shirt like this to go with those shoes would bring the benjamins.
Awwww yeah. When I got that shirt on, with some shoes, and some gatorade, the honeys come up to me on the streets and they are all like, "Wassup Garch? You, uh, think you can share a lil time wit me wit yo fly ass self?" And I'm like, "B* please. I can't be all up in here making $20 so I can spend it on you. I gots to PRO-GRAM... in EasyLanguage, all up on this retail platform wit penny-po-share commish, gnome sayin?" Which is how I end up in front of my computer writing trading software, which in turn lets me buy shirts like that. Sippin on gatorade and v-wat, beeahtch.
4/20, I think you had a little too many PED (performance enhancing drug) hits, don't blame it on network loss, it was all mental.