Rules/aims: Trading ~53k CFD account. Why CFDs when futures are so awesome? A) I'm already committed (in code) to a platform w/ API, B) said platform works decently for my purposes, C) I am too lazy to move everything to mini or micro futures right now, D) ESMA regulations applies to my provider including negative balance protection, which is a good thing among several bad things about CFDs. Why a journal? I've figured out I am less likely to stick my head into the sand due to boredom or under-performance if I feel ashamed about it. Stick to the strategies listed listed below (even where intentionally ambiguous). Last year was highly experimental, this year I better stick to the processes that seemed to work. Spend less time in front of screen musing over potential trades and getting nerve wrecked over existing discretionary positions. I should do more of what I like which is coding. Limit full discretionary trading to rare events (see strategy #1 below). Return +50% over the year on normalized currency adjusted basis (w.r.t. to withdrawals/deposits and USD/SEK price) with max 20% DD. 50% per year is really my minimum to make this worth the effort long term versus a lot of other things I can continue doing in my life and the amount of dedication this trading style takes. In short, making trading as simple as possible. I want to live to my late 80s like my grand parents, not die in my 30s in a heart attack because I sat up all night monitoring a losing over-leveraged position. Strategies/instruments: Equity index major event trading, mainly my favorite Nasdaq 100 index futures CFD. You know, FOMC decisions, random news like trade war tweets, scheduled watched data like PMIs; the sort of thing that tends to stirr up fairly reliable but infrequent intraday trends. Have a good reason for entering. Leverage allowed to sub-account max, European ESMA limits me to 20x leverage anyway. Try to automate more regarding this over the year, especially scanning for tradable intraday trends and position sizing. Could be seen as an extension of above strategy: BTFD on panic, until it stops working at which point I will probably be shorting heavily due to special circumstances anyway. I will try to make this more systematic over the year. Algorithmic dumb beta collection strategy: scaling equity index and maybe bond index CFD positions depending on volatility, upcoming gaps, mean reversion etc. I didn't do this very well last year despite running for a bit in June-July, mostly due to being a pussy and not re-starting post October drop. Could easily have doubled my return last year if I had let beta exposure be near one instead of near zero. Can't see myself running wilder than 2-3x leverage of total account on this in ideal circumstances. Ad-hoc simple algorithmic strategies for specific trade ideas. I realize this is like saying "everything but the kitchen sink!", but it does make sense: E.g. let's assume I think XAU and XAG will trend up nearest months. Rather than manually entering a position which probably would be poorly scaled and probably be entered in a bad moment of FOMO, I can let algo gradually scale me in, with volatility adjusted position sizing, to minimize risk of getting a large DD. I'm also working on several more advanced algos but I am not at all sure there will be any results from that this year either (I jumped into algo trading without knowing shit about it 2014). Note that I always report trades after the fact and tend to be less precise about exits than entries. And when it comes to algo generated orders I currently don't report them individually at all (if I can make my algos use Twitter that may change, but priorities...) Either way, I don't recommend anybody trying to piggyback my trades. To recite my previous journal: This is not investment advice and you're an idiot if you treat it like that. Previous journal years: 2019 - https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/snuskpelles-kind-of-intraday-adventures-2019.328589
Currently open (from last year), algo long XAU + XAG vs USD, short XCU vs USD in approximately equal amounts. Currently $416 unrealized. Algo is slowly scaling in here by adding every time period on which it reaches a new peak profit (up to a maximum of 9x leverage on committed $16k), so would be quite a lot more if that had not been the case.
Buy JP225JPY x 3 @ 23388 stop 23182 Counter-trend dip buying @ around $600 risk, may the force be with me. Long term up trend looking less overbought though. To be fair I wouldn't be super suprised if we get a global correction soon into the new year, but as I yet have zero beta exposure it seems appropriate to add some.
Buy AU200AUD @ 6692 stop 6682 $300 risk, much more narrow stop now that I sense/expect immediate trend change. Edit: We'll see if this was a good idea. Risk is stop is where everyone else incompetent has them.
Random algo meandering on positions above, mostly fluctuating between 0 and -250 MAE => I went in too greedily. Gonna multitask some other work and will leave this unattended as it's pretty stale.
Move stop 6678, trade has been on longer than I anticipated. It went out into some positive MFE and then back under.