While I'm happy that Coffee is trying to make a comeback, I'm shocked and amazed that Cocoa just can't take a break from up only. I'd never have been brave enough to long this if it wasn't systematic. Average entry of the 3 around 8900, seems hellishly expensive. Some people don't like the short hours of ICE Soft markets, but the good thing is there's less chance for price moves to revert, and more chance for me to lock in a nice ratcheting up of the stop losses tomorrow.
Some pain porn, stopped out of Malaysian Palm Oil (long) first position today. Been weeks since stopped out of anything. Quite the double top on it, I had high hopes for palm oil because prior to my entry the trend looked beautiful but I was too late. Still have to wait for the other two to get stopped out, or maybe it will reverse, I have no idea. Natural gas (short) - first two positions were stopped out quite a while ago, only have one left and it just keeps surviving, toying with my stop, spiking all over the place. Every time I think it's going to start the downtrend, I get either a gap up or today a mega-green candle Most of the in-profit positions keep playing with me, pulling back, then pushing forward again. Plenty of sideways action on the in-between positions. Bonds acting kind of funny, though I don't have any long end.. and I don't really know rates/bond fundamentals well. Today going to roll Orange Juice long to March, for which I'm going to earn a few $k credit, though roll earnings/costs are built into the back-adjustment of data it's still nice psychologically to not have to pay for the roll.
You're banned until the end of the year. I'm not tolerating this insulting language for one more second.
You are doing good on your trading side. But why are you feeling emotional about coffee or cocoa or even palm oil? Is this not supposed to be systematic trading? Why do you care when they go up or down?
Without getting all ra ra kumbaya about it, I do have a few thoughts on the topic and not everyone agrees but it's my opinion FWIW. Firstly it's better to acknowledge you feel something, pretending you don't, and sticking your head in the sand doesn't work. I've seen traders hold it in, then when the drawdowns start they go all quiet, for a while. Then after some time they have a big outburst "fuck this, I'm out" and dump their positions or revenge trade, something stupid. Having said that, I'm pretty chill about it. I slept through Powell's conference yesterday, while having 100+ orders in the market for stock mean reversion systems and a fairly high SPX delta. I just didn't want to only post the good stuff like "wow this is so easy" and thought it might be interesting to add thoughts here when I saw this guys journal about losing days: https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/losing-days.382207/ I'm flesh & blood, systematic trading only handles trading rules. It doesn't turn me into a stone cold robot, that no longer cares about winning, losing, or money. How could it possibly? In fact, the giving back of losses and handling of drawdowns is one of the main reasons a lot of people cannot run trend following systems themselves. This strategy is pretty famous for that. Yesterday was a good example. Before I went to sleep, Cocoa was up $26k for the day (it still is) and along with a few other positions had taken my portfolio back to ATH. I wake up, check the port, and it's down a bit back to 2 days ago. Turns out Powell said some stuff, people overreacted, and I got stopped out of partial positions in indices. A few stock systems also got hit. I feel a bit annoyed, not just because of the money, but I was planning to do orders late and have a day outside. Now I have to do my orders on time, and double check everything is ok. Curiosity has also got me back involved, now checking individual systems to see how stocks are doing. There's a VIX trading system I want to see if it's finding a short side opportunity, if it is I have to do orders quickly. One thing systematic trading DOES remove - is the need to watch and track all the financial news, fundamentals, talking heads and all that crap. I don't even need to follow fintwit, though I do sometimes for entertainment value and to engage with other system traders. I'm pretty grateful for that, it's why I have time to journal because I'm not glued to CNBC or pouring over economic macro reports.
Yesterdays chaos - stopped out of: -M2K medium term (Russell), still in long term -SXF medium term (Canada TSX), still in long term -MES short term & medium term, still in long term -MYM long term (Dow) - no other Dow positions left. Todays orders: -Exit the new corn long, reverse Keltner breakout -Short Euro, another 2 contracts 2 more systems -Short CHF another contract -A bunch of roll orders -Short VIX Feb futures. A separate system, VIX is the only thing I don't run the normal trend rules on because there's some special rules that work better. Rob Hanna's QuantifiableEdges VIX course is highly recommended for learning edges in VIX trading. Doesn't trade often, but when it does there's a good R/R. Last time was before the election, paid well when VIX got crushed afterwards. VX is not as high as I'd like, but it's still at a level combined with the VRP that indicates some room to drop if things calm down again.
The chaos continued another day, as the stock market recovered slightly the trend following portfolio had its worst correlation day to date - 95% of shorts went red at the same time as 95% of longs went red. Orange juice went limit down. Cocoa & BTC gave back some profit (cocoa was up to $115k at one point). CAD short gave back some profit. Some positions in small profit went into red. Last Nat Gas short finally stopped out. No new positions or exits for Monday, except rolling BTC long to Jan. I made one manual change last week, I noticed the Micro FANG+ Index had terrible volume at contract roll. While normal hours trading is fine, having difficulty with rolling is a warning sign that volume may not be good in the future. So I exited it with ~$10k profit and swapped it for a new position in Micro Nasdaq (MNQ), that's fairly correlated but not exactly the same. After two very red days, Net M2M result is now flat. These kind of highly correlated negative days are rare with such a diversified number of positions, but it was unfortunate that it happened on the same days the stock market took a beating. Anyone who thought there's no emotions in systematic trading might be given a wake up call if they see ~$120k of profit evaporate to -$287 within a week. This is trend following. It's not easy to sit through, but it's worth it if you understand the expectancy over the long term.
I never had the stomach for system trading. That kind of loss of profits would make me depressed, or loco.