The Sincere Journal

This is not a journal that will describe trading strategies and results. This is a journal that will describe my inner emotions and thoughts. This is my quest to become a better trader through self insight. This is the truth about me.

First of all I promise to be sincere and truthful about everything I write. However there are two exceptions:
1. I will not reveal my real identity of fear that my current employer might think that my trading activities interfere with my professional life.
2. I will not reveal any significant trading edges (if I can find them…).

Who I’m I?
I’m 38 years
I live in a smaller city in the north of Europe.
I have a university degree in engineering and started my professional career in engineering and then moved into sales.
My current job requires that I do some business travelling but it also allows me to work out of my home one or two days per week.

My financial status:
My current salary is about 75 000 USD/year. I pay about 50% in taxes. Basically with this salary I break even every month after the mortgages and household stuff is paid.
My biggest asset is our house, and I estimate my net worth to be roughly 60 000 USD.
I also have an income insurance that will guarantee my salary for a year should I lose my job.
I have about 15 000 USD in the bank and 3 000 USD at IB.

My “dark side”
- I suffered from panic disorder and I were treated with antidepressants for about a year. This must have been in 2004. I still have milder panic attacks on occasional instances, but things are much better now compared to 2004.
- I haven’t met my father since I was 18 and he divorced my mother.
- My BMI is 34 which I just found out is “Obese Class I”.
- I surf way too much for porn.
- I have hemorrhoids.
- My discipline isn’t the best.

My “bright side”
- I have a wonderful wife and two great kids.
- I don’t smoke and only drink occasionally
- I have a good education and a relatively well paid job as a sales manager in the healthcare industry.
- I’m very serious and detailed in what I do.
- People trust me and treat me as a leader.
- I’m a hard worker.

My trading history:
I probably made my first trade when I was 15. I bought a bank stock which had retracted from an earlier high and I thought it looked “cheap”. Since then I have trade of and on for various periods. I was very active during the late 90’s and then stopped trading after loosing everything I made during the 90’s. A few months ago I made about 15 000 USD in index options, however I quickly lost most of it soon thereafter. I’m sure I must have lost a few 10 000s over the years. Could it by 100 000s? I’m not sure. I currently have a project where I enter all my trades into Quicken to get a full overview of my money.

I’m attracted by “get rich quick” securities like options, futures, forex and pennystocks.

I have stopped putting up goals like make X amount in Y time. My only goal right now is to become a better trader and in some way work within the trading industry.

Let the journey begin. Please be kind.

/Sincere

 

I've been doing some testing of a system that is almost constantly in the market either long or short. The system does better when the underlying security (in this case YM) isn't trending. For example between 18:00 and 18:30 it did quite well and obviously much worse after 21:00.

This systems uses 3 contracts and a 3-step exit. System stop is 30 points. Targets are 4-6-30 points.

I actually try to have 8 systems running simultaneously to evaluate different systems parameters, but unfortunately 7 out of the 8 systems "crashed" during testing.

Time in the diagram is CET and represents regular trading hours ET.



Now my son wants to go out and play in the snow, so I will!