Are my ambitions too much?

[ProfitTakgFool]

There's a mix of good and bad information here. Your dissent of breakouts as "the worst strategy out there" is silly and speaks a bit to your being focused soley on what you do. Personally, I don't trade breakouts often, but, I know they work given the correct approach. This reminds me of a thread where someone said "no one can make money trading directionally", which, BTW I do quite well at. ------>>> I agree Mike. I stand corrected. I am very inwardly focused on what works for me but that doesn't mean b/o's won't work for the OP.

Quote from Mike805:

There's a mix of good and bad information here. Your dissent of breakouts as "the worst strategy out there" is silly and speaks a bit to your being focused soley on what you do. Personally, I don't trade breakouts often, but, I know they work given the correct approach. This reminds me of a thread where someone said "no one can make money trading directionally", which, BTW I do quite well at.

Anyhow, don't start telling a complete noob that a certain strategy doesn't work. It's up to them to determine for themselves whether or not an idea is valid.... who knows, maybe a fresh interpretation of an old trick might prove profitable.

To the OP,

Your system requires a bit more thought and testing. 10 days is a drop in the bucket. Furthermore, a trader makes money NOT a system, as PTG said, become a good trader first, then code a system based on the knowledge and experience you've acquired.

Also, I recommend TradeStation for someone in your position. IMO it is the easiest way to quickly backtest without much software knowledge.

Mike

 

[drosengarden]

Quote from ProfitTakgFool:

You have to understand things like impatience, impulsiveness, situations of fear, and so on. Once you begin trading with real money you will know what I'm talking about. Once the market wacks you you'll remember it and it will weigh on you. You will start equating a current setup to the one you got wacked on when you shouldn't. This is a destructive path and something you have to be aware of. EVERYTHING changes when go in with real money and the biggest chance will come from within. You have to get a grip on that and understand and learn how to think and act like a trader. This is step 1.

I believe I partially understand what you are saying. Even in the few days I have been papertrading - I find a couple days that are STILL WINNERS - but not on the grand scale as the 1.5 weeks previous. So I started re-evaluating based on the days I got hit more with losses that shaved away my wins. At the end of it - I'm back to the same strategy that I started with - because making changes for those 2 or 3 days of NOT SO LARGE WINS (but wins none-the-less) just were not producing much more than trimmed wins on the other larger winning days.

As far as going in with real money - I had every intention of going in smaller just to test the waters. The question I asked about 1000 shares in one order (swapping from a long position to a short position - for instance) on the SPY - I was looking more or less for more feedback on if this is a feasible idea or if it would take VERY LONG for an order of that size to get filled - meaning that I come away TOO FAR from my original order price - and thus making my real life results look nothing like my paper trade results. I just wonder how these things go with REAL LIFE order fulfillment - when you start throwing $100 to $200k in an out at each moment.

And lastly - you say if I want to be a trader - I must think and act like a trade. Good idea - so how does one go about doing that...?

Thanks again!

 

[drosengarden]

Quote from silvermotion:

for the data - opentick (free) or esignal (not free, thats what i use)

then to create bots :

if you have time to dedicate to this, in esignal you can follow easy tutorials that will give you enough javascript knowledge to be able to code indicators and scripts to do your backtesting for you automatically. Basic indicators can be coded easily (its just a mathematical formula that will be plotted on the chart) but coding scripts that will do backtesting for you (in a script you assemble the conditions for the entry and exit of the trades you want it to take) can be more complicated and tedious.

Once you have a script that generates money, its already 3/4 of a working bot, because it takes and counts the trades and the P&L correctly, you just need to add the commands for the order entry(Buy conditions met, send buy command, etc) which is pretty easy. I use ninja trader for that purpose. The bot runs in esignal, sends commands to the ninja trader platform, which execute the trades through my broker.

if you dont have time, you can hire people to do it for you, but youd be handing them your secrets. If your thing works and it generates money, you don't want to do that

I got into OpenTick and I've downloaded the free NinjaTrader "research tool." (I think that is very good of NinjaTrader to let me have it at with the software for free - until I am ready to get into the live game - then pay for it at that time! Novel marketing idea!)

OH! By the way - OpenTick is "unfiltered" data. Does this mean it is full of errors and otherwise unreliable? NinjaTrader states that a known issue is "bad" historial tick data from OpenTick because it is "unfiltered" data. How much of an "error" am I dealing with here? Does this make the OpenTick data completely unreliable then...? And then what is "throttled" data - is it better and who provides that?

But you say that you use Esignal for "bots" and then plug that into NinjaTrader for the actual live order placements. Why not use NinjaTrader for the system building and backtesting? From what I am seeing so far (VERY elementary at this point) it would appear that you can build AND script strategies and backtest them ,etc - for the buy and sell signals.

I just wonder why you add the extra layer of software in Esignals if NinjaTrader has the same functionality.

Thanks.

 

[Cheese]

Quote from drosengarden:

I've noticed that several people have read my post - but alas - no replies.

That was no surprise because everyone knows there is an unending supply of fantasists continuously arriving at ET. There will always be some wanabes trying to lead you further on. But here is the answer.
Forget it.

Trading is for the very few players who learn or know how to make themselves rich from the market. This isn't you. There is a combination of savvy and personality that makes the winning total. This is a total which means a player - one among few - who can make themselves rich off the market or markets. Stay away is the best answer for you.

 

[drosengarden]

Quote from Cheese:

That was no surprise because everyone knows there is an unending supply of fantasists continuously arriving at ET. There will always be some wanabes trying to lead you further on. But here is the answer.
Forget it.

Trading is for the very few players who learn or know how to make themselves rich from the market. This isn't you. There is a combination of savvy and personality that makes the winning total. This is a total which means a player - one among few - who can make themselves rich off the market or markets. Stay away is the best answer for you.

And I suppose that you get high by smoking the dried skin flakes off your bed sheets after a week of use?

I wonder how much arrogance one can stand in him or herself before even he or she is finally offended?

But thanks for taking the time to reply! I supposed you were just born with that skill set - and I am the unfortunate heir to the "cheapside" never to be graced with the title of "nobility."

Did you actually think that would work?