FastTrader Futures-Trading Journal

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Quote from TMTrader:

Whats there to investigate? You where trying to catch a bottom when there was none. You where trying to catch a falling knife - Spare your hands and don't do it again. :)

TM Trader
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LOL! Sounds really easy the way you say it. I realize the mistakes, but mind you yesterday I gave back like 18pts from the morning, and day before even more. From time to time, self-destructive behavior just creeps its way into your mind. Particulary when you're really successful for a while. You can lose quite a bit of humility very easily. Once that happens, you're spinning in circles (or really losing big time, if your other trades ain't winning yet either). You have to grab that behaviour by the roots, find the reason, and pull it out. Plus, figure out how you could've done it better.

As for the "daily log chore" - I do this every day man - Winning or not, doesn't matter! I have an archive for every month which has an archive for every day, which every day has in it;

- A folder with all the executions (platform snapshots)
- P&L's
- Folder with the "naked" charts for the day in several timeframes (these are images by the way - printable)
- Folder with "indicator analyzed" charts for the day " " "
- Reviewed trade charts (several pages of 1min chart - all trades marked on it - also print this out and do manually)
- Full comprehensive daily Excel spreadsheet, embedded with the full log, millions of analyses, charts, etc (charts from the numbers crunched, not futures charts)
- Daily checklist (which things done, which not, which rules broken)
- Daily comments (my diary, all the stuff I did and thought during RTH - including stuff from digital notetaker)
- Recorded session(s) for the day (i.e. platform market recordings)
- Full downloaded tick replay file including all the tape data for the day (eSignal)


So, this is all the stuff I put into each new day's log folder. Sounds arduous? You bet it is! It's several hours every day. Is it worth it? Hell yeah! No way in the world would I give it up. The more of this I do, the better I get!

I learn more from my post-mortem studies every day than I do during RTH, actually. Why? Well, I look at things more objectively, I diligently review and fine-tune my style & parameters etc etc. There's lots of stuff to be learned.

The "marked trade charts" idea is stolen from the Velocity_Trader chat, where Mark talked about how he forces his prop traders every day to print out 3 pages of 1m chart and makes them mark every buy and sell, and connect them to the exit with a line, and all this with different colored pens. He said retrospectively, all his trader thanked him for it. Well, I certainly do. It's the best thing I ever did.

Out of this extremely beneficial routine eventually evolved the entire post-mortem routine described above. For me, there's no looking back.

I believe that your success in trading is totally dependent on the amount of work you put into it. The harder you work, the better you get.

Mere observation will hardly get you anywhere. I know my ground, I look at every number, probability, parameter and chance in the market, every day. I know my ratios inside-out, I know the market I trade inside-out, and every gap and opportunity and recurrent time delay. I've measured it all. I still do every day. If you want to take money off me, you will have to beat that diligence, or wait for the few times (like yesterday) where I just behave stupid for psych reasons. Remember, if you trade my market, you will be facing me, and there's no mercy. It's you or me. It's who worked the most.

Survival of the fittest. If I work out a few hours every day, chances are I'll be fitter than those who don't.


And I tell you what: If I ever posted a truly serious and valuable post on ET, then it is this one.

I'm outta here gotta get up super-early 2moro - Have fun, folks!
 
Quote from Scientist:


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So, this is all the stuff I put into each new day's log folder. ...
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could we have a snap short of a sample page from each folder for 1 day.
 
January 28th (Wednesday)

Total trades: 5 (2 Longs, 3 Shorts) 3 Winners, 1 Loser, 1 Scratch

8:45 AM - Short 1 ES 1146.50
8:54 AM - Cover 1 ES 1146.00
Result: +0.50

9:12 AM - Short 1 ES 1146.50
9:15 AM - Cover 1 ES 1146.50
Result: 0

9:29 AM - Short 1 ES 1147.00
9:38 AM - Cover 1 ES 1146.75
Result: +0.25

1:24 PM - Long 1 ES 1136.75
1:25 PM - Exit 1 ES 1135.50
Result: -1.25
Notes: Hunting the bottom; a bit early on my entry. Guess I could've held on and bailed for small profit.

1:27 PM - Long 1 ES 1135.00
1:29 PM - Exit 1 ES 1137.25
Result: +2.25

Overall:
ES: +1.75

OK, not a very good day considering the range. But I do have a few questions. This morning, I was very patient with my trades and ended up giving back profits. I mean, most of my trades from this AM, I could have made at least 1 ES pt per trade, but I held on, and then took marginal profits. What's the deal? My problem in the past has been exiting too soon (still have that problem), but now it seems like being patient isn't helping either. Should I just shoot for 1.25 on every trade?

-Fast
 
Fast, I think somehow one has to decide what they expect the market to do on a given day before the open. For instance, one should expect that the market would be quiet, narrow ranged today waiting for the Fed anouncement. On option expiration days, expect bigger than normal swings. Etc.

BTW, if one had thought about what could happen with the Fed announcement today, it would have been prudent to put on a short before the announcement. The reason is because the Fed was going to do one of two things.

1) Leave the phrase "considerable period of time" in their announcement which would be a non-event and the market would probably not have a big advance with a "status quo" and could even decline on a "sell the news" mentality.

2) Or, remove or change that statement, which they did to "we can afford to be patient", with a less accomodative statement. A less accomodative statement should have been expected to move the market down, which it did.

I didn't act on this analysis but sometimes after-the-fact it is obvious that one should be considering what the possiblities are before hand.

Quote from Fast_Trader:

[BOK, not a very good day considering the range. But I do have a few questions. This morning, I was very patient with my trades and ended up giving back profits. I mean, most of my trades from this AM, I could have made at least 1 ES pt per trade, but I held on, and then took marginal profits. What's the deal? My problem in the past has been exiting too soon (still have that problem), but now it seems like being patient isn't helping either. Should I just shoot for 1.25 on every trade?

-Fast [/B]
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Quote from pspr:

BTW, if one had thought about what could happen with the Fed announcement today, it would have been prudent to put on a short before the announcement. The reason is because the Fed was going to do one of two things.

1) Leave the phrase "considerable period of time" in their announcement which would be a non-event and the market would probably not have a big advance with a "status quo" and could even decline on a "sell the news" mentality.

2) Or, remove or change that statement, which they did to "we can afford to be patient", with a less accomodative statement. A less accomodative statement should have been expected to move the market down, which it did.

I didn't act on this analysis but sometimes after-the-fact it is obvious that one should be considering what the possiblities are before hand.
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Wally; I actually thought about that in the morning and discussed it with lsudaytrade, who I was in touch with most of the trading day via AOL IM. He got a nice short in before the announcement and did pretty well today :)

I have to say, I was not expecting the sell off to be this strong though. I was expecting ES to go down to S1 and rebound.

-Fast
 
Fast, I agree that one could have thought it would be a minor sell off. The stock market has been moving exactly opposite of the bonds intra-day for quite a while now. ----- Stronger economic data good for the economy, good for stocks, bad for bonds.

Now with a Fed statement leaning a bit away from easing should knock the bonds down, which it did. But then there would be some logic that it would be good for stocks. I think that last statement is correct in the longer picture (for the next few months anyway) but traders and CNBC, etc. got everyone thinking a move toward tightening was going to be bad for stocks so down it went.

Quote from Fast_Trader:

......I have to say, I was not expecting the sell off to be this strong though. I was expecting ES to go down to S1 and rebound.

-Fast
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Quote from pspr:

Fast, I agree that one could have thought it would be a minor sell off. The stock market has been moving exactly opposite of the bonds intra-day for quite a while now. ----- Stronger economic data good for the economy, good for stocks, bad for bonds.

Now with a Fed statement leaning a bit away from easing should knock the bonds down, which it did. But then there would be some logic that it would be good for stocks. I think that last statement is correct in the longer picture (for the next few months anyway) but traders and CNBC, etc. got everyone thinking a move toward tightening was going to be bad for stocks so down it went.
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I was not too surprised to see the bonds drop lower, and there certainly was some insightful discussion today about reality vs. expectations, and CNBC certainly took the expectations and got it pretty far from "reality" and that, IMO, was a classic set up for disappointment.

Meanwhile, I luv the bonds! :D

off to party
 
Quote from pspr:

Fast, I think somehow one has to decide what they expect the market to do on a given day before the open. For instance, one should expect that the market would be quiet, narrow ranged today waiting for the Fed anouncement. On option expiration days, expect bigger than normal swings. Etc.

BTW, if one had thought about what could happen with the Fed announcement today, it would have been prudent to put on a short before the announcement. The reason is because the Fed was going to do one of two things.

1) Leave the phrase "considerable period of time" in their announcement which would be a non-event and the market would probably not have a big advance with a "status quo" and could even decline on a "sell the news" mentality.

2) Or, remove or change that statement, which they did to "we can afford to be patient", with a less accomodative statement. A less accomodative statement should have been expected to move the market down, which it did.

I didn't act on this analysis but sometimes after-the-fact it is obvious that one should be considering what the possiblities are before hand.
More...
W-O-W! I can't believe I stopped trading at 2:00pm just to miss that mega-fall 10mins later! :mad:

Seriously, though... *still rubbing sleep from eyes to glance at US charts* ... "Did the market just fall like 23pts on ES yesterday from HOD?" Shocking!!! :eek:

Actually, now I'm starting to realize the reason behind my late "catch the knife" notoriety... It's because we've been in a big bull for several weeks, and catching knives & fishing bottoms was a breeze and worked well! Now, once the market is bearish, or even just remotely uncertain, any down-move can easily be perpetuated to death by the chaos-theory domino-effect caused by panicky sellers and their stops being run...

pspr, your comments as to "what to expect" seem plausible, yet I find it very difficult to make such assumptions myself and profit from them, except for after-the-fact of course. I've looked at a lot of news and reactions, but I personally, while having no problems just trading charts (or even eco# announcements to some degree, IF I had pro news such as Bloomberg), I certainly don't find myself able to confidently enough make conclusions like you just did, in advance, and profit from them.

If you can - I would be happy if you started a thread on it or sth like that.

I like your comments on "deciding what to expect the market to do on a given day before the open". Your examples are very good and I think it would be cool to work out a list of logical (if - then) rules like these to better align your expectations to the next day's market environment. Perhaps you should start a thread on it, too! I would be glad to visit! :)

Warmest Regards,
-S
 
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