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  1. 4

    40yo's new career or bust

    We've got enough capital saved to live until June of 2004 without any profits. I've heard about scared money, but obviously I've never lived it. During papertrading we had 10 losses in a row and neither my wife or I were concerned. It's just part of the game. We'll see how we really feel in...
  2. 4

    40yo's new career or bust

    It's hard to give the numbers you want so here's what I have. For the test from 1994 - June 2001, the ave. profit per-winning trade was $1,923.00. The ave. loss per-losing trade was $974.00 and the profit per-average trade was $949.00. The % of winning trades was 52% and the % of losing trades...
  3. 4

    40yo's new career or bust

    [cont'd] By the time all this work was done, it was 2002. I had setup my system with a realtime datafeed so I could watch it in action and was happy with the way it performed using the 5 min. bars. My wife and I decided that we had enough time and money to test this idea for six months and...
  4. 4

    40yo's new career or bust

    [cont'd] Next up, I decided to build my own system. One that I could use to make consistent profits based on some overall tendency in the markets. I used excel to look at the data and create probability distributions. One thing that caught my attention was standard deviation of the SP data...
  5. 4

    40yo's new career or bust

    [cont'd] At that point I figured there was no way I could trade off of charts. In my profession we lived by probabilities. ex. (it's far more probable the buying habits of a 18 year old aren't set in stone than a 45 year old). I decided I needed a method to trade using probabilities...
  6. 4

    40yo's new career or bust

    This is yet another journal of a novice trader. Why should anyone be interested? My motivation is simply to be able to communicate with others that have either been down this path and succeeded or early stage traders looking to learn from my experience. Background: I'm a 40 year old...
  7. 4

    Jokes

    THE PERKS OF BEING 40 & OVER 1. Kidnappers are not very interested in you 2. In a hostage situation you are likely to be released first. 3. No one expects you to run into a burning building. 4. People call at 9PM and ask, "Did I wake you?" 5. People no longer view you as a...
  8. 4

    Chances of an Ivy MBA??

    My MBA is from Wharton. I don't know what others do to get in, but this is what I did. I went to a career counseling firm and gave them a resume. I told them I wanted to get a MBA from a top school. They called my references and I got called back a few days later. They told me how they could...
  9. 4

    Trading Plan

    Everytime the equity hits a new high, I check to adjust the base. If it's in a drawdown, the base doesn't change. The base number of ES contracts is based on the average range of the past ten trades versus the previous ten trades. If the range is declining, then the base is increased by 1. If...
  10. 4

    Trading Plan

    Not at all! It just helps me confirm that I haven't missed something. I've sensed a lot of fear from others, so in spite of my preparation, I'm sure there's something that's casuing so many to be fearful. We've already funded the account with 200k. 160k of it is in Tbills. The other 40k is...
  11. 4

    Trading Plan

    Good stuff! Lots of different ideas. I not sure why they're so concerned about Martingale style MMGT. I don't think anybody would try to double up on each loss. I also don't think anybody would double up on each win as in a pure Anti-Martingale strategy. I think they're stuck in the...
  12. 4

    Trading Plan

    In a random game the odds of a streak happening are the % chance of the event raised to the power of the number of events in the streak. So, for independent trades where 50% are winners, the chances of 11 losing trades in a row is less than 1 in 2000. If you know the chances and have enough...
  13. 4

    Trading Plan

    I did think about it. Of all the possibilities I think the intraday trading range on the ES going back to 5-6 points everyday is highly unlikely. If it does and stays there, then my method will lose money consistently. They don't call this speculation for nothing. Thanks for wishing me luck...
  14. 4

    Trading Plan

    Thanks, I noticed some of this too. One of the things I noticed during papertrading was lots of losses during the Fall Jewish holidays. I went through my nine years of data and ranked the 20 smallest range days of the year. I found the days before and after Thanksgiving, the day before...
  15. 4

    Trading Plan

    My wife knows it well. Do you think I could've sold our house and convinced her were going to try daytrading for a living without her being 100% behind the idea? She's done as much of the papertrading as I have and knows the logic behind what we're doing. Both of us are MBA grads, so the concept...
  16. 4

    Trading Plan

    I'm flattered that you'd go through the trouble of posting such thoughtful questions. I may be way off base and I'd love to hear your thoughts after reading my reply. I used the same amount as I have in my funded account, 200k. I wasn't doing one lots, so the ROI isn't any big deal. Most of...
  17. 4

    Trading Plan

    Thank you for sharing your outline. I like the schedule for the day idea so I'll add that to mine as well. One question, you have (g) Objectives and several sections for goals. What kind of things do you put under objectives that aren't part of the goals? Thanks again
  18. 4

    Trading Plan

    Thanks for the advice. I know you have the best of intentions. I'll be starting with one Emini and plan to trade small during the month of November. This will give me enough trades to verify the slippage estimates. Once done, I've got to ramp up and see if this is going to work. Unfortunately...
  19. 4

    Trading Plan

    That's a scary thought. Because I've only got one chance at this, I thought I'd better give it my best shot. I know nothing about trading. I've tried to learn some patterns like flags and pennants, but when I wrote the code to backtest them, they lost money. I hope I'm around long enough to...
  20. 4

    Trading Plan

    The only one I considered was the stop order. I allow for .5 pt. slippage per round turn in the tradestation code. As I understand the orders, the limit and stop limit orders may not be filled. I just want a fill if a price is hit. My basic method is to figure the daily range for the past 5...
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