In 20 years of trading, I have never traded futures. I feel at this age, I don't want to start something new, because I don't have time on my side anymore for the learning curve. It took many years to regularly get profitable doing what I am doing. No margins, no big risks, simply place my bracket orders daily and let the bracket do the rest. End of the month withdraw the net profit above my account base amount to supplement my income. Clean and simple.
If only we can all be like you, 20 years is a long time to be consistently profitable. Hats off to you sir and thank you for sharing your method. Question: Looks like your exit is automated but do you or can you automate your trade or have to manually enter? Regards,
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thank you for the compliment, but I wasn't profitable in the beginning. It took several years to figure this out before the final system was programmed and complete. I have to manually click the transmit button on the semi-automated bracket order "after the option opens." Here is the reason why its not total automation: If the option opens with a severe gap down opening that is below my pre-determined Buy Limit, I then need to change the bracket parameters (Buy Limit, Sell Limit & Stop) before transmitting the order. Example: Lets say my original Bracket is Buy Limit=1.50 Sell Limit=1.90 Stop=1.10 and the option opens at 1.20. If I had already transmitted my bracket order manually or used total automation like I.B.'s API (Automatic Programming Interface), the Buy Limit would have filled at approximately 1.20 (+ or - a bit). With the Stop in the program set at 1.10, the possibility of a Gap Down opening dropping another -.10 is almost a certainty and the trade would have lost because because the program was set in motion pre-market. In this case I would adjust the bracket to: Buy Limit=1.20, Sell Limit=1.60, Stop=0.80. You really need to wait and see the opening price and then if a big gap down opening, adjust accordingly. It happens too often.
Thank you. It is a very interesting approach. I need to think it over carefully and see if I can adjust my method to accommodate this. Certainly make trading a lot less time consuming if the exit is set automatically.