Birth of a trader

Here's my charts today. It was a choppy market for me. However I find it kinda funny that I have 5 trades on both, and the win/losses happened in the exact same way. It wasn't intentional and didn't realize it until I made the charts pretty for posting.

Emini
5 trades:
6 pts per contract = $300

T-bonds
5 trades:
17 ticks per contract = $512.80

P.S. I switched to ninjatrader, and I will only post these as long as you find them useful!
Cheers
 

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Thanks for the chart. I'll Skype you later today and go over it with you if that's OK.

Right now I'm reloading software on my computer. I brought in my strategies from my home laptop that I had been programming and ran them on my work computer and got radically different results. After a few go-rounds with NT support, I've decided to wipe this computer and start over with a clean installation of NT. Originally I had 6.5, then upgraded a 6.5 version, then loaded 7, upgraded, etc. My laptop was a clean install, so I'm hoping to get the 2 computers to at least be on the same planet.
 
sounds like you have been having as much fun as I have. First day trading with NT. It threw me off a little. Missed a big double bottom trade that I should have seen!
Can't wait to talk to you on skype
 
All sim today. 6 trades, 4 winners and 2 losers for +52 ticks. I took 2 trades using the daunting 'Swing Break Out' play. Gotta kick the training wheels off...
 
6 CL trades today and net positive (sim), but if you lift up the hood, there's room for improvement.

Trade #1
This was just plain stupid and I'm going to let it go at that. I saw the congestion and took the trade anyway. I rationalized it with LL, LH, spinner doji nonsense, but the truth is I shorted in the middle of a range. -6 ticks.

Trade #2
Price closed below the EMA after making a LL. The previous bar also tested the upper end of the range. Another dumb trade, because I traded in the middle of a range. -11 ticks.

Trade #3
The only reason I took this trade was because it was sim. I placed a buy stop 1 tick above the range after the prior strong bar. Had a hard stop in. +25 ticks.

Trade #4
After moving higher, price returned and tested the prior range. Figuring prior resistance now became support, I went long 1 tick above the prior bar. I didn't do the math on this, because I should have had my stop below the low of the prior bar, but instead kept it at 11 ticks. It was good that I got out BE +1 because I would have been stopped out at the very bottom of the next bar. HOWEVER, price didn't go below the prior bar, which was the logical stop.

Trade #5
This is another trade I wouldn't have taken in real life because it was so close to the oil report. The 07:10 bearish engulfing bar and the next two bars indicated a failure to go higher. As the 07:25 bar fell, I placed a limit order at 85.64. I took 10 ticks of heat, then the oil report came out. Got 3 ticks of slip in my favor. How real is that? +28 ticks.

Trade #6
The market had been ranging all morning, and the big 08:45 bar pushed right up to the upper limit. I had been looking for a 15 tick scalp trade and had the DOM set on 15 ticks and forgot to change it back to 25 ticks. Place another buy stop above the big green bar that initially set the range at 06:10. Got filled and hit the target for +15 ticks.

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Congrats on your nicely profitable day. Whether sim or not, it should give you confidence.

Just a couple things I wanted to mention.

1. Be careful of Trade 4. It was right at the open of the US market. Sometimes the setups that look good end up being not so good. It tends to get a sudden jolt of volatility that can turn a good setup into a loser.

2. I'm sure you know this, but be very careful about taking trades "just because it's sim." I can understand if you're experimenting on taking more signals, trying to just swing away while working on your trading, but when you take a signal before crude inventories, what is that really teaching you? You're (read: you're = a general person) basically gambling on the outcome. You don't learn anything whether you profit or take a loss. Your mind will automatically accept that the outcome is not normal and therefore the learning opportunity will be zero. If you profit you will think, "sweet, a profit!" If you take a loss you will think, "Yeah I didn't expect much, it's crude inventories, it's just sim, I probably shouldn't have done that."

The only real learning opportunity is that you will just tell yourself that you shouldn't trade before the news, but you already knew that!

I firmly believe that you should try to treat your sim account as close to your live account as possible. You aren't going to completely master trading in sim since live trading will ultimately bring forth some emotions that are hiding in the corners of your mind, but sim can absolutely give you the confidence that your strategy works. It can cement in your mind that taking a handful of trades today will leave you positive on the week. However, if you just take every bar break without any real purpose, you'll never figure out where you stand because your subconscious will always be left knowing that you "would have" done things differently in a live account. Then once you go to a live account you'll hesitate, and those emotions that were hiding will suddenly come out to play.

My goal for simming was to work on a few things, but mainly, to work on taking more trades and seeing where I end up. It is to build confidence. My goal for this week is to have at least 25 trades. I think in the last few months I was averaging 1 trade per day and that just wasn't going to cut it. I am at 12 right now. 9 on Monday, 2 on Tuesday, 1 today. Right now I am +71, 11 profits, 1 loss. These are actual trades that I took (sim) not the unreliable running total I was keeping track of in my journal. I'd say I should be >+100 if I was taking more trades. My problem right now is that I start to get protective of my profits so I start to distract myself, give up on the day, because I just want to lock in my profits. I have to bust through that wall and not be afraid of getting one-ticked or giving up some profits in pursuit of more profits. I have to start learning how manage the "less good" trades. This week has been very good for trading, imo, as the signals I like to look for have pretty much come racing out of the gates. My confidence is getting much better. I think I'm starting to get more bold with my decisions.

Good luck to you! I know that you know all of this, however, I'm hoping that maybe a little piece of this is helpful. At least writing this to you helps me as well.
 
Quote from FirstDegree:



Just a couple things I wanted to mention.

2. I'm sure you know this, but be very careful about taking trades "just because it's sim." I can understand if you're experimenting on taking more signals ...
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That's exactly why I'm doing it (with the exception of the oil report trade - that's just plain crazy stuff). When I'm in sim, I'm just as focused and serious as I am in the real world. I'm not taking trades for funzies, but am testing stuff.

The clearest example of this is the swing break outs (or any break outs for that matter, triangles, wedges, etc.). My real world experience is that a spike sometimes reaches out and snags me, then drags me down for a full stop. HOWEVER, I have had some success with that trade, both real and sim, and I know others have too. My selective memory seems to remember the losers more.I know I need to take all of the trades, and let the statistics keep me floating in the black. I'm going to let sim prove it to me.
 
Could you show me an example of a place where you're having trouble with the pivots, with the price "snagging" you? I'm having trouble visualizing exactly what the problem is that you are having.
 
Quote from frank8800:

Trade #3
The only reason I took this trade was because it was sim. I placed a buy stop 1 tick above the range after the prior strong bar. Had a hard stop in. +25 ticks.
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This is an excellent setup and I'm not sure why you'd "only" take it in sim. Strong, long overnight trend up, a period of consolidation in a range that never broke support, buying at the NYMEX open, and a well-tested resistance zone for the breakout.

Quote from frank8800:

Trade #5
This is another trade I wouldn't have taken in real life because it was so close to the oil report. The 07:10 bearish engulfing bar and the next two bars indicated a failure to go higher. As the 07:25 bar fell, I placed a limit order at 85.64. I took 10 ticks of heat, then the oil report came out. Got 3 ticks of slip in my favor. How real is that? +28 ticks.
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Just for fun, I always do a hypothetical pre-inventory trade, assuming no stop loss and a fixed target. Today mine was a short @ 85.70 with a buy limit @ 85.30. How real is that? :D

(The question is would my limit have been filled in the real world?)
 
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