Doji tell us how you never have a losing day trading futures?You must tell us your secret as i've never heard of anyone who trades futures with a win % like yours.
Weekly Update for week 17/50 ended 05/07/2010 Nasty week, down 34K (13.7%). New low for the year. Seems it is becoming two steps forward and one nasty step backward from personal indiscretion or market madness as in this case. Can't complain very much though since for the most part it was my automation working according to rules: but it is apparent I have not made enough provision for extreme volatility like witnessed this week. Was long a bunch of oil-related issues early Monday which I was too glad to close at break-even. Should have stayed and let the automation close the trades, but was heading for meeting and was fearful of letting the positions remain. The account should have been a lot more. Wednesday was long again a basket of stocks and was up more than 40k at one time (soon after posting the screen shots), but was greedy (after Mondays lesson) wishing to capture even more gains. Was not to be as the market pull-back turned into a sell-off, and I closed with half of the profits gone. That should still have made for a nice week until Thursday. Well everyone knew what happened then. Was triggered into a bunch of stocks early in the day, and watched in horror as one-by-one they all got stopped out at maximum loss (6K). What was worse, as the positions closed they released more buying power for my automation to initiate new positions which got stopped out. By the end of the infamous spike down (3pm) I was down 61K for the day when I triggered remote shut-down of the application. Well none of my stocks made the bust list (Would cetainly have been horrendous to be down 60% per stock!). I have used my maximum-loss stop rules for three months now, and not once have I been stopped on an automated position (only discretionary ones that I averaged down). So it was a real shocker that I have to think of ways to avoid - like closing all positions and shutting down for the day if I am stopped twice. I will have to see what options to take over the week-end. I still believe my automation is the way to go. Bye for now. Code: Opening Balance: 248,007 Net loss for the week 34,049 ------------------------------------------------ Net Balance: 213,958 Number of Trades 57 Number of Profitable Trades 25 Since Inception of Thread 01/10/2010 - 05/07/2010 Opening Balance: 410,000 Net loss(Less Margin Interest) 196,042 (Down 48%) ------------------------------------------------ Net Balance 213,958 Number of Trades 600 Number of Profitable Trades 296
are you fucking kidding, how the hell is thurs a good day for traders? doesnt matter if you are long or short, it was one of the worst days. I am sure there are a few who got lucky with the dice roll but that doesnt change anything wtf....
I lost all my profits I've had since October of 09 this week. Even though Monday was my best single trading day ever.No smart words from my end other than it was a tough trading week and I very much appreciate your thread !!!!
I've laid out on this site exactly how I trade in painstaking detail. I posted my ugly messy journey in getting to where I am now. I've often posted my trading blotters and my charts with entries and exits and reasons so anyone can look at a chart and compare what I did to all the detail I've posted here about how I trade. I've described my thought processes behind the trade and also the crowd psychology behind the T/A. Not much more I can add at this point. I spent months trading ES and CL in my sim account, month after month after month, because when I first started trading ES live I sucked. I'd either stop out for a scratch only to watch the trade move nicely without me, or I'd place a wider stop and that would get hit. I decided it just wasn't for me until I figured it out in sim. Every night I moved my charts off the screen to the hard right edge and worked on choosing "A" setups, with entry, stop, and target (still do this, by the way). "A" setups have a lot of confluence, reinforced by a variety of factors that I've outlined in many previous posts. So I got to the point where I was having 90% win rate backtesting on paper and duplicating it in real-time in sim AS LONG AS I only took the best setups. It came down to trading with the trend or waiting for confirmed reversal, using momentum in my favor so I could quickly move stops to break even, and also curing myself of "miss the boat" disease where I'd get in too soon because I was afraid I'd miss a move. So what, you miss the first move, but the second move is confirmed and those trades are SO DAMN EASY! I PM'd a friend on ET back in January after achieving this incredible record of backtesting on paper and sim trading and said, "I always feel like there should be NO reason to have a losing day, but that's crazy, or is it??? In the past when I was all confidence and no fear (and no risk mgmt as well) I seemed to have very long strings of winning days." And he replied to me: "I know of no reason not to have many consecutive winning days." I was plagued by this irrational fear (planted in my psyche by all the naysayers on ET) that as soon as I started trading futures live everything I achieved in paper/sim would vanish and I'd started losing everything, because I was told again and again that futures traders all blow up. Well, I finally got over that, and guess what? Everything I was accomplishing in sim actually worked in my live account. Wow, imagine that! I also have an incredible visual memory for patterns and numbers. I know the phone number of every store I've ever called, every friend I've ever called. I know my credit card numbers by heart, my VIN numbers at least 3 cars back. I keep thinking I'll run out of brain space someday but so far so good. So something as visual as trading is easy for me now that I mastered patterns that signal the easy trades. I posted my trading blotter on ES Journal today. Look at those trades and tell me they weren't low risk/high reward setups. I will have losing trades because even the best setups can fail, but I venture to guess that my losing days will remain very much in the minority. If I'm one day killed by a black swan event like yesterday's crash, well that's the nature of this business, anything can happen.
My trading platform froze the bid/ask prices during the crash, so I had no idea where price was on anything until I looked at the charts, and then my stock charts flatlined, and all I had that was actually reflecting (sur)reality was my futures charts on another PC and a different charting program and I didn't believe what I was seeing, but I really really wanted to buy that dip in the 1060's. So let's say I've no idea what kind of trouble I could've gotten into with a working platform. Maybe I would've gone all in in the 1060's only to watch the market lock limit down and re-open down another 100 points, wiping out my account. Really, you never can predict a what can happen in massive auction based heavily on automated buy/sell programs. Tell you one thing, I'm glad for that platform freeze because it kept me out of trouble and now I know for a fact I will NEVER jump into that kind of volatility no matter how enticing. Neke, remember how the first half of the year always toughens you up, then you more than triple your account in the second half? Good. Now hold that thought and have good weekend with your family, which no market crash can take away from you.
When you manage money, i think its better to not initiate new market positions or be in it every single day , thats market premium risk you are eating everyday, and one day it might bite your ass.
It's a Super Good Day for us but for you is definitely fuck-up!!! guess you are losing Big... that's why you are so angry! In this game of trading...only a few so called "lucky guys" with super skills win the game. The true is trading is not like playing baccarat or rolling dice in the casino.. just luck! All of us wanted to win and win big, but if you cannot afford to lose, please don't trade or gamble in the casino. "Angry"-bad emotion will not help in your trading or get back your money. if you believe trading is luck- then i wish you good luck in your trading.