2014: The Battle for Survival

"I don't have a co-located server myself because of the same security considerations. But I definitely needed to control over-trading etc. So, what I did - I set up a computer in a room in my house. Room remains open only during the weekend. Sunday evening (since I trade globex) and room gets locked. Please don't think that I don't have access to key anymore. I just hang the key in my bedroom. To control the urge that I don't go and open that server room, I have made a register where I enter whenever I open the room during the weekend and write down the reasons to open the room. It is just a very simple control system that is employed by all physical premises - that is - similar to the way they keep a check and record of all the people entering and exiting."

Wow - now that's what I call discipline !:cool:
 
you need go to apply for military training.like SEARS.
how about jail?

I am wondering how many traders are subtaging themselves for successful trading.

I am a lousy trader. I do not curse myself if I made mistakes. we are human beings. do not try to be Adam and Eve. just admit: God, I committed it.

overtrading is just an execuse. under the hood, you have a strong self,or ego.

I once traded over 100 trades on sweet crude CL a day. that is insane, just commissions amounts to thousands per day, my brokage IB love it very much. but I am happy too, why, I finally turn a deep red day into a deep green one. I do not think that is overtrading. It just proves how persisstent I am for the quest of GREEN.end the day I may just net couple hundreds. my wife hates the fact I give too much to IB. but I donot curse myself. I just do what I should do, be practical. no matter what measures I take, whether disciplined one, oreven dirty one, or ugly one, I just aim for the results. if the results benefit me, I do it.

I once shorted REGN years ago, when REGN around 40~50. that is horrible experience. I remebered Ishorted it when it starts to showoff technical breaout at50~55, shorted it at 50, then REGN toke off from there, I shorted 2000shares, REGN shoot to58~60+ range, when I looked at the RED NUMBER keep rising (above 20k+), I get frozen, almost lost mind to cover at those high level. glad I become clam, my logic started to kick in, I know first time breakout often pullback, Ijust watched the peak reversal signal (thinking about reversal short procedure in my mind), step by step, finally it pullbacked to almost where it tokeoff, I immediately cover there, lost couple of thousands. then I started to buy, next day REGN dropped 10% more to 40~45range, my buy become RED again, I was kind of sick about REGN! but I become calm again, I think that is overdone, I just need be patient. next next day REGN started to rally, then my buy become GREEN. after my loss in first trade recouped, I dumped all. then see it clamb climb... it is a pain. never touched it again. now it is at 320+!

if I cursed myself, I may cover it at the highest. or I may dump it at the lowest. since those places are when we traders lost mind we are the weakest level! we need courage to hang on or ride out bad situations. Volatility is our friend, also is our enemy!

cheer up
 
Period Update for February 2/1/2014 - 3/1/2014 (4 weeks)

Ugly month, down 24K (19%). Basically wiped out my gains from January with one stupid trade on 2/14.

The month was lacklustre until then, and wasn't going to be remarkable, but somehow managed to make it memorable on that day. That was the only time I had to stay at home this year during market days, having taken the day off to be with kids - whose school was closed for the day. It probably should have been a day without trades, judging from the lack of signals from my automation. So subconciously trying to avoid "wasting" the day, shut down my system when I saw CRAY, shorted first at 35.2, and commenced the mad averaging down until I was short 6700 shares (from an initial 1500) as the stock raced to 38 in early trading. Watched helplessley after maxing out, watching for a pullback to break-even - never happened all day long. Quite a trend.

Still hurting from that trade, and will be for sometime. On the positive side, the month would have seen some gain without that trade.

Code: 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Opening Balance:                	124,233
Net loss for period 		        (23,646)
Cash Withdrawal				 (2,500)
------------------------------------------------
Net Balance:                   		 98,087


For the Thread YTD  2014 (1/4/2013 - 3/1/2014)

Opening Balance:                       101,037
Net loss		    	          (450) (Down 0%)
Cash Withdrawal			        (2,500)
------------------------------------------------
Net Balance			        98,087
----------------------



TRADES

TYPE	Exit Date/Time		                     P/L
OPTION	2014-02-03-15-51-48	****	2185.2
STOCK	2014-02-03-15-03-15	****	-1950.5
STOCK	2014-02-04-14-32-48	****	598
STOCK	2014-02-05-11-12-08	****	-3264.8
OPTION	2014-02-05-15-04-11	****	-3054.5
STOCK	2014-02-06-10-43-51	****	15.5
OPTION	2014-02-06-10-32-05	****	-2574
STOCK	2014-02-06-13-20-09	****	-1183.5
STOCK	2014-02-06-16-28-35	****	-2265.7
STOCK	2014-02-06-18-59-51	****	-311.2
STOCK	2014-02-07-15-41-09	****	-884
STOCK	2014-02-07-15-42-07	****	1314.5
OPTION	2014-02-07-10-16-32	****	533.5
STOCK	2014-02-07-10-24-45	****	2172.4
STOCK	2014-02-07-09-35-58	****	18.5
STOCK	2014-02-10-15-44-10	****	-98.8
STOCK	2014-02-11-15-24-20	****	3912.4
STOCK	2014-02-11-12-48-11	****	-731.4
STOCK	2014-02-11-15-49-32	****	-4139.9
OPTION	2014-02-12-15-47-19	****	4586
STOCK	2014-02-12-12-02-12	****	1246.2
STOCK	2014-02-13-14-52-56	****	-61.7
OPTION	2014-02-13-15-42-18	****	-1396.8
STOCK	2014-02-13-15-29-05	****	1022.2
STOCK	2014-02-14-10-33-40	****	555.2
STOCK	2014-02-14-14-31-25	****	-27505.09
STOCK	2014-02-18-09-52-33	****	-1140.73
STOCK	2014-02-18-15-49-07	****	425.44
STOCK	2014-02-19-15-53-37	****	851.42
OPTION	2014-02-20-14-54-38	****	1072.16
STOCK	2014-02-20-12-23-59	****	-486.04
OPTION	2014-02-20-09-43-19	****	2409
STOCK	2014-02-20-15-42-58	****	-2369.04
STOCK	2014-02-24-15-52-27	****	-240.45
STOCK	2014-02-24-15-49-06	****	-931.59
STOCK	2014-02-25-10-00-52	****	-708.02
OPTION	2014-02-25-11-23-42	****	9339.32
STOCK	2014-02-25-15-52-31	****	588.08
STOCK	2014-02-26-09-52-18	****	-484.61
STOCK	2014-02-26-09-58-25	****	1852.95
STOCK	2014-02-26-10-47-53	****	1329.42
OPTION	2014-02-26-10-14-09	****	-2454.47
STOCK	2014-02-26-15-15-58	****	2144.15
STOCK	2014-02-27-14-28-44	****	-324.6
STOCK	2014-02-27-15-49-13	****	-117.9
STOCK	2014-02-28-10-05-56	****	-12.8
STOCK	2014-02-28-15-53-52	****	-2533.1
STOCK	2014-02-28-15-49-26	****	-594.47

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You don't like to listen to advices, but here I go again as usual. Get someone to analyze your trades and stick to those types/days what are profitable. Example: Don Miller on average sucks on Mondays, his annual returns would be like 15-20% better if he would just take a long weekend and wouldn't trade on Mondays, not to mention the extra free time.

You made 10K in your option trades last month, why not just stick to those? (not to mention the savings on commission) Can you give us a breakdown of last year's options vs. stock trades? If there is a tendency (aka trend) you should exploit it....

Edit: After a quick check, you made 7K with your option tradings last month. So YTD you would be up 17K and would have saved a shitload on commissions instead of being in the red....

Edit2: I did a quick check in your 2013 journal, and looks like the option trades were mostly the losers:

"Pekelo: I am not sure if this is true for the rest of the year, but most of your option trades were losers. So you might want to stay clear of those, if this is similar for the rest of the year.

Neke: Yes, I have tightened the conditions for the option trades and trading less of them. I think I have not been able to break even on the spread."

The clear indication here is that looks like the tightening worked and you should concentrate more on what works....
 
Pekelo said:
You don't like to listen to advices, but here I go again as usual. Get someone to analyze your trades and stick to those types/days what are profitable. Example: Don Miller on average sucks on Mondays, his annual returns would be like 15-20% better if he would just take a long weekend and wouldn't trade on Mondays, not to mention the extra free time.

You made 10K in your option trades last month, why not just stick to those? (not to mention the savings on commission) Can you give us a breakdown of last year's options vs. stock trades? If there is a tendency (aka trend) you should exploit it....

Edit: After a quick check, you made 7K with your option tradings last month. So YTD you would be up 17K and would have saved a shitload on commissions instead of being in the red....

Edit2: I did a quick check in your 2013 journal, and looks like the option trades were mostly the losers:

"Pekelo: I am not sure if this is true for the rest of the year, but most of your option trades were losers. So you might want to stay clear of those, if this is similar for the rest of the year.

Neke: Yes, I have tightened the conditions for the option trades and trading less of them. I think I have not been able to break even on the spread."

The clear indication here is that looks like the tightening worked and you should concentrate more on what works....
More...

Yes, I am always looking at past performance for improvement on my strategies, but I will not over-analyse, otherwise I will simply be trying to curve-fit. Like you mentioned, options were losers for much of last year, but have now shown good performance this year. Even for stocks, back out the -28K loss on CRAY for a trade that should not have been, and suddenly the performance is very positive.
 
neke said:
...back out the -28K loss on CRAY for a trade that should not have been, and suddenly the performance is very positive.
More...

You haven't reached the "uncle point" yet.

It's kind of funny that you mentioned curve fitting, IMO that's exactly what you are doing with the above statement.
 
Tonkadad said:
You haven't reached the "uncle point" yet.

It's kind of funny that you mentioned curve fitting, IMO that's exactly what you are doing with the above statement.
More...

Not at all. It is not curve-fitting when I set out the year with stated aim to avoid trades initiated outside my system, and then the trade in question Is the only trade this year initiated outside my system (shut down the automation to initiate it).
 
One thing I did at the beginning of the year was to group my trades into strategies, and set targets for the years expected performance. These are figures I thought were realistic targets for each strategy (not overly optimistic, and not too conservative as well). Attached is the sheet showing the expectations vs what has occurred so far. I have made sure that all trades were classified into one of those strategies identified at the beginning, even if there were rule violations. For the sake of this journal, I will name the strategies with generic names: option1, 2... for options, and stock1,2,... for stocks.

Stock3 is where I included the CRAY trade. Without that trade, that strategy is about break-even (Option3 has not fetched a trade yet, and I am considering deleting it.

Code: 
         Initial Projection   Current Amount
		
option1      10000                2840
option2      10000                15303
option3      10000                0
option4      10000                -199
		
OPTOTALS     40000                17944
		
stock1       15000                -815
stock2       15000                -1515
stock3       10000                -27980
stock4       10000                 5893
stock4       10000                 6022
		
STKTOTALS 60000                   -18395
		
GRAND TOTALS 100000               -451
 
I keep track of my trades by strategy. It can be a real eye opener to review trades in a journal when they are sorted by strategy. You will see which strategies are making money for you and which ones you should drop. As Nick Radge said, you should do more of what you are good at and less of what you are not good at. A trade journal can be invaluable in that regard.
 
neke said:
Not at all. It is not curve-fitting when I set out the year with stated aim to avoid trades initiated outside my system, and then the trade in question Is the only trade this year initiated outside my system (shut down the automation to initiate it).
More...

I meant it from a psychological perspective, as in everything would be ok if I just didn't do that trade, but you did and from what I read this is a recurring pattern.
 
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