I found a trading plan on the net. 1. Mission Statement 2. Goal Setting 3. Financial and Time Commitment 4. Record Keeping 5. Trading Plan Methodologies 6. Drawdown Rules and Contingency Plan 7. Compensation. 1. a. To make money on a consistent bases without taking significant obvious risk of my whole account. b. to use this program as an incubator to create an advanced scalable program. 2. To be prepared to commence trading by Jan 2. My goals are to scan 20 to 100 markets a night and trade when filters say go. My profits or losses will be dependent on how many trades there are. If I did not get 2 to 10 trades a week... I will either find new trade methodologies, find more markets, create a new program or hire someone else. 3. Financial and Time Commitment. This part of the plan is good... Because it almost made me quit. I know I can not review the markets within an hour of going to sleep... Because then I do not sleep. I wonder if I should try and get up and hour early... which is tough for people on west coast. especially if I plan to make notes and bonds part of the program. (Wow... this trading plan is a really good idea. How much do I really want this.... We will contemplate this further. This is going to forece me to schedule my life. Very consist schedules are something the former surfer in me deplores.) 4. Record keeping. Reminds me I have to make sure I still have trader tax status... So all I have to do is keep my P&L for taxes. I will keep my trades in a spreadsheet or trade software if I find them. 5. Type A. Type B. Type C. Type D. This will be my experimental program... When the program gets larger enough I will trade researched ideas very small... so I can add trade methodologies in future. Type a will be done as follows. .5% at first level scale at 3 points mentioned in previous post. But if trades continues to second level I will scale in with . 5 to point 1.0 percent of account. The second piece will be dumped in part around previous buy in level. There will be some discretion. Type B - same as above but no buy in. Type C - see above. I will never have more than 10 trades on until the account is much larger. I will also strive to balance out long and short... if both trades have been profitable. I will start out mostly with Trade As... if I can find them. Because in the past they were very accurate. I will review. Daily and hourly charts or longer for trade selection. I may execute of shorter time frames.
I will dramatically change my program if I have a 35 drawdown %. I will consider changing at 25% 7. I will payout 10% of profits I make to myself to keep myself interested. I will also pay taxes out of this fund. Probably not expenses for now. The good news is that for now... I do not need this money or projected income. However, with a wife and 4 kids.... things do change. However, part of the reason I stopped trading last time is because my trading profits were used to fund real estate purchases. (twice) This program will not be used for other investments until it is very large or it becomes apparent I should let a different manager take over.
Update... I am going to combine TradeStation with portfolio backtesting. I am looking into traderstudio. I am currently setting up screens in Tradestation. I realize I do not have the hunger or patience for charting time that I had when i was younger. In the last few days I have tried looking at a few hundred charts... and I just did not care. That is so foreign to me. This use to be a game of looking for buried treasure. I will set up my screens... Still on track for a Jan 2 beginning. I am also a little leary of funding an account with this rehypothecation issue going on. I hope that is resolved soon. So far I have not been too impressed with IBs public statements.
Let us know how you like it. BTW, why did you post this thread in the P&R section? Was it because this is were all the smart people hang out?
TA rocks!! Galpal came over this morning to get a coffee and chat. I racked up a few trades and showed her the charts and the account gains. She wants to learn to trade and I'd love to have her as a trading partner.... happiness is a little artwork on a chart; a few channels, some wedges, some support and resistance observations, some proprietary stuff [a man can't tell his woman everything, she will lose respect for a weakling that would do like that..] and life is sweet!!
well I am a bit late on the start date. Account shall be funded by tomorrow. I went through the hoops today. I purchased murrrys software at the beginning of the year. I have not opened up the package. I have been too busy with work and family and my extra time was wasted on my political thread. So far. By tomorrow. I will have 32,000 in and IB account. If I am find trades I will put more in. I have tradestation. I need to get comfortable with radar station. I also need a few more monitors. I will do some research on that issue.
update. account is funded with 32 thousand. I purchased murry ruggiero's software... many months ago. I have not opened the package. I will start to look at it in the future. today.... I wlll try and get tradestation ready for trading small this week. I am going to start with stocks... and etfs. In the past I traded bonds well... but overall when I stopped trading I was slightly ahead with futures on a gross basis... but down on a net. We will see if I can improve on that in the future. 1. goal for today and monday... a. define two swing trades... I will be willing to take. b. define my universe of stocks. c. set up my trade list for the day. d. determine if I want to increase universe by looking at hourly charts.