ES Journal - 2014

[tiddlywinks]

added at 1142.4, tightening stops

Therein is your severe giveback issue...
You are using UNREALIZED gain as a trigger to add. Since your trades are held overnight, overnight margin requirement is the basis. In this trade, $1000 UNREALIZED is not even 1/4 of the margin needed to hold an additional contract overnight. If this was intraday trading, $1000 unrealized gain may be more than enough to add one contract. Bottomline... a more robust money management scheme based on the funds needed to carry the type of trade will serve you well.

 

[DarthSidious]

Therein is your severe giveback issue...
You are using UNREALIZED gain as a trigger to add. Since your trades are held overnight, overnight margin requirement is the basis. In this trade, $1000 UNREALIZED is not even 1/4 of the margin needed to hold an additional contract overnight. If this was intraday trading, $1000 unrealized gain may be more than enough to add one contract. Bottomline... a more robust money management scheme based on the funds needed to carry the type of trade will serve you well.

I don't know how Visaria trades, but you are making an assumption that someone's position sizing (and money management, which is related) is dependent on exchange margin requirements. You should not make this assumption. Exchange specified margin requirements exist to deal with the exchange & broker's risk, not yours. For example, some brokers give you $500 intraday margin, because they think they can close yours trade before you lose $500 per contract you are carrying. This has absolutely nothing to do with what risk you are taking on by carrying a contract for $500

 

[Ditch]

FWIW, since 1-1-2000 there has only been one occurence ( aug/nov 2006 )where the S&P didn't have a significant retracement for more than 70 days.

 

[tiddlywinks]

I don't know how Visaria trades, but you are making an assumption that someone's position sizing (and money management, which is related) is dependent on exchange margin requirements. You should not make this assumption. Exchange specified margin requirements exist to deal with the exchange & broker's risk, not yours. For example, some brokers give you $500 intraday margin, because they think they can close yours trade before you lose $500 per contract you are carrying. This has absolutely nothing to do with what risk you are taking on by carrying a contract for $500

Do you realize how silly you sound?

an assumption that someone's position sizing (and money management, which is related) is dependent on exchange margin requirements. You should not make this assumption.

This has absolutely nothing to do with what risk you are taking on by carrying a contract

 

[DarthSidious]

Do you realize how silly you sound?

No. Educate me, with logic. Not by simply proclaiming me silly.

Edit: Hint. When you talk about risk, think who's risk? Exchange margins are there to protect the exchange from getting hurt. You gotta figure out how to keep yourself from getting hurt, and it doesn't have anything to do with exchange margins. Exchange margins simply set up the boundary condition

 

[tiddlywinks]

No. Educate me, with logic. Not by simply proclaiming me silly.

Edit: Hint. When you talk about risk, think who's risk? Exchange margins are there to protect the exchange from getting hurt. You gotta figure out how to keep yourself from getting hurt, and it doesn't have anything to do with exchange margins. Exchange margins simply set up the boundary condition

ET is a waste of time for logic. Obviously.
BTW, margins are not boundaries. If they were, futures trading losses would be limited to the amount of margin required. Clearly not true, but that defies logic on ET.

 

[DarthSidious]

If they were, futures trading losses would be limited to the amount of margin required. Clearly not true

Just because something doesn't work in 100% of the cases doesn't make it invalid. Anyways, you can start a discussion whn you get a hang of this "logic" and "persuasive argument" thing. You haven't yet put forward a single argument towards why I am wrong

 

[tiddlywinks]

Just because something doesn't work in 100% of the cases doesn't make it invalid. Anyways, you can start a discussion whn you get a hang of this "logic" and "persuasive argument" thing. You haven't yet put forward a single argument towards why I am wrong

Frankly Darth, I'm not interested in swaying your beliefs.
My initial post was directed to Visaria, who trades TF overnight, who mentioned problematically to have given back several weeks worth of gains, If he finds value (and logic) in my post, cool. If not, cool.

 

[austinp]

I was up massively for the funds i manage in the 1st two weeks of this month....(

One thing you can do to stop some bleeding right now and forever: quit trying to trend-trade crude oil with -100 cent initial stops. CL does not consistently trend any more like it did prior to late 2012 Dodd-Frank act. Now it is all algo slams with congestive chop followed by abrupt price explosions either direction.

I've evolved to using -5 cent initial stops, scratch the chop trades and aggressively exit profitable trades. That, and quit for the day when up enough.

No advice for you in ES which is uber range-bound right now, so good luck with that. But CL is highly tradable, just a different way of managing trades than in times past. What works now is completely different than what I used to do in the past, circa 2012 - 13 versus now.

 

[Visaria]

Chill, guys, we're all mates here


Tiddlywinks, the reason why i have had a drawdown is because of losing trades, nothing to do with overnight margin rates. TBH, i don't even know what the margin rates are.