I think today might turn into a pretty nice day with an upside move. Oh well, Its Friday and im lazy though. Gonna go throw insulation and work up an itch. Reminds of what the rest of the world goes through anyway. When I'm done with that I will come back here and post some more, just on the methods im going to be using and what my goals are etc etc. I would urge you guys to read the last guru promo thread I did here at http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8127 About 75% of my profits come from this, so if you understand it, then you will get more from the journel I think. Brandon
>accuse me of being a shameless guru homo Assuming you using 'homo' as a generic insult term, and not to 'come out' to the rest of us, I for one, am embarrassed for you.
I have more embaressing stuff to admit too also. I said I was not going to take another trade, that I was going to go insulate my attic, and I took another trade. I also said I thought we would be going up, but I took a small scalp short. Went short the ES at 893 (12:37) and covered at 891 as it sold off kinda heavily on decent side volume and into the 200ma on the 1 minute chart. Cover time was 12:45. Please keep in mind all my times are CT, I cant deal with East Coast time or it throws my whole life into a spin. End result now is -6.5 on the NQ, and +2 in the ES. I made 4 trades to do this. End result (after commissions) is a loss of $54. Brandon
Several hours ago my biggest worry was that today was my first day of the Journal here on ET and already I had two mishaps. First I did not spell Journal correctly (Jounel) and one of the kind moderators kindly changed that for me, and second it would have been nice to have started with a winning day. Oh how a few hours will change things. Ive insulated my attic for a few hours and managed to get a sh** load of fiberglass insulation down my pants (please dont ask how!) Miserable, and now I really do have something to worry about (scratch, scratch Plus, I was not able to get tickets for tomorrow's Iowa/Wisconsin game (sold out) so now I'm gonna have to pay scalpers $90/100 for them. This isnt so bad except that three days ago the game wasnt sold out and I should have gotten my tickets then, Id have only paid $15. I know, I know...one of the cardnal rules is "dont chase price too far", but some things ya just cant miss. (the bottom for example,LOL) Anyway, I want to take a few minutes to explain how I do things etc so you know what to expect and have some perspective. All this stuff is based on opinions I have developed myself, and methods and techniques I have learned from other people (the only exception to this is my Gap methodology, which I did come up with all by my lonesome) 25% of my trades and 75% of my profits are generated with my gap methodology. For me it is the most consistent way to take profits out of the market. I have both a mechanical approach to it, and a discretionary approach. The mechanical approach is a lot more consistent and produces more profits then my discretionary gap trades. I suppose this has something to do with being able to plan a trade very well ahead of time and having a lot of consistency with in the method then. Unfortunatly I have always been a discretionary trader and I have a hell of a time executing the mechanical system. I beg for GLOBEX to go down so I don't have to take a trade, I get out early or late, adjust stops early etc. While I "should" be up 58% with the mechanical system, I am down 9.5% on the mechanical system. My results here continue to suffer because I am a pretty good descretionary trader and I always think I can improve it "just a little bit" by adding "a tiny bit of discretion". Unfortunatly discretionary and non discretionary methods really don't mix . I am improving here though, making slow and steady progress. When I first started (7 months ago) I was only doing 1/4 of the trades with in the system, currently I am doing nearly 2/3 with in the system. Its been very hard to accept that for this particular strategy my system is a better trader then I am, but I am getting there. Sooooo....even though the mechanical system is a lot better in theory, I have yet to make it so in practice. All of my profits still come from discretionary trading. My biggest edge is in the gaps. Again, you can read my thread here on trading the gap, I think there is a lot to learn from it and I got a ton of positive feedback from it. That tread is located @ http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=8127 Outside of the gaps I just use some basic T/A and common sense. Each night I look at the ranges of the SP500, DOW30, Nasdaq100, Nasdaq Comp, 5 Year Note and the TICK. I want to see what the markets status is as it relates to volatility. I look for things like Inside Range Days, Outside Range Days, Narrow Range Days, Wide Range Days, NR4's, NR7's, WR4', WR7's. Linda Rashke and Toby Crabel both have a lot of awesome stuff about this, but the basic idea is that volatility is mean reverting, so if you have had a period of trendlessness and narrow ranges (as an example) you should be on the lookout for breakout type trading. This means trading above/below breakout points and using continuation patterns as your guiding light for the day. I learned to use Keltner Channels from Chris Terry and rely on them heavily in picking which continuation patterns to trade and which to pass up on. The basic idea is that you want to see a thrust, and you can use the Keltners as a very good visual tool. Using these has increased my accuracy by 30% and my profits on this pattern by over 50%. I also combine it with ADX in the next largest timeframe and TRN direction, this works out very very well when you have a trending market. I look each night at the 120 minute charts to see where were are...ie if we are in a bigger picture intraday range. If we are, or if we have had a period of expanded volatility I trade with reversal patterns more then with continuation patterns. This is one of my weakest area's and after commissions I am just barely profitable here. If every day was like today and yesterday, for example, I would be one hungry SOB because I dont make enough to support myself in a range or following expansion. A typical result is something like -$75 to +$125. My goal is to make between 7.5% and 15% per month. I have a money mgnt stop in at 12% for any single month. I think that most traders screw themselves by using way too much margin. Ive busted out twice using Exchange Min. requirements. They are way too low IMHO. One Nasdaq Emini can be traded for every $8000 in my account, One SP500 Emini for every $10,000 or One Dow Emini for every $20,000 (the Dow is higher because of its limited liquidity once you get away from the open, eventually this will probably be able to come down). The prices I report are the average fill as reported by members of our chatroom...so for example if we have three traders that took a long and they got 800, 801 and 802 as fills, then the average price of 801 would be reported. Entry's and exits are both done like this, then the dollar figure is given on the basis of trading a single contract. Because in the real world everyone has to pay commissions I assume Advanced Futures ( http://www.advancedfutures.com/) rate of $4.90 +$1.00 for Pats ($5.90 per round turn) If you are looking for a futures broker, you should definatly check them out. For the record, I have no relationship with Advanced Futures, but I do know Mark and have found him to be an honest guy who treats his clients right. Sorry for the long and rambling post here. Its late, the Iowa Hawkeyes are ranked 10th in the BXS, they are gonna win the Big Ten this year, We have a home game against Wisconsin tomorrow and I just got done with some early celebrations. Either tomorrow or Sunday I will try to clear up anything here that wont make sense to a sober person. Everyone have a great weekend...GOOO IOWA!!!!!!! Brandon
Here's a man going for 4ES points day average (per single contract I assume!). There was quite a discussion about 2/day. WE'll see how pans out.
Brandonf, You wrote about finding a system hard to follow, on another thread that was started by ddefina. How do you expect others who didn't make the system to follow it better? It's a semi-falme but I feel that Black Box system or trading a system written by others fail because they don't have the background perspective to trade it. Still, I knew a guy who worked at the now gone Pacific Stock Exchange in LA. He used to be a specialist in there and he was extremely good at opening moves. He would just trade for first hour or so and sit back and relax for the rest of the day. I learned(not taught) a lot from him about discretionary trading. I hope your system works well as much as him. Opening moves are great opportunity if you know how to trade it. Just my little opinion.