Journal of ashes and Eminis

I was being sarcastic in a nice way!

The best kind of sarcasm. :)

When you are more confident increase to 2 .....3......4 contracts.

'Tis the plan! :D

Take a look at some charts!

'Tis not the plan! :p

You are generating way too much commission.

I whole heartedly agree. This should improve as my timing and confidence improves. I don't think I'm doing that bad seeing as how this really is my first attempt at chartless trading. I'm bound to be a bit over-clicky until confidence builds.

Good luck!

Always, and very much appreciated! Many thanks...
 
Quote from hii a_ooiioo_a:

Completed my first E-mini trade today. Bought NQ on March 28, should have sold it of course. Held it for 10 days, sold it this morning +24 points. P&L $480, commissions $4.80 (1% exactly :))

I held it through a couple significantly down days, and overnight for 10 nights. I didn't use charts or candlesticks or any of that other fancy analytic stuff.

As long as futures don't have Time Decay the way options do, I think with some patience you can generally come out with a profit even if things go the wrong way for you at first, and without a lot of frenetic trading (with tons of commission charges). Of course, here I am make generalizations after my very first trade. Silly of me I guess.
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hii a_ooiioo_a,

Is this your normal style of trading? At the very least, you had to sit through a 31 point move against your position. Just curious as to where you throw in the towel - 50 ? 100 ?
 
Actually I had to sit through 48 (at the extreme) points move against me. Version77 is correct, I was using HOPE. But is that really the worst thing to use? It is if you're trading options, because of time-decay.

Well, if the fancy analytics are so much more useful than my blind hope, did everyone here sell NQ and ES monday morning at 10:00am?

I'm not claiming that what I've done or how I've done it is smart. I just wanted to point out that holding overnight, which was something I never intended to do, turns out not to necessarily be the worst thing in the world. I never intended to hold overnight, and certainly not over a weekend, and yet I held my first trade over 10 nights and two weekends, and came out ok.
 
Okey dokey,

I'm glad it worked for you, *this time*.
I was just curious as to whether or not there was a plan or strategy based on more than hope.

Just seems a bit risky in the long run to make it a habit.

Best wishes and may many more profits come to you.:)
 
Thanks. Anyhow, one thing I do really like about E-minis is you can trade them through the night (except friday and saturday nights). If you think the wise thing to do is bail, you can, long before the opening bell. In fact, that's what I did yesterday, I closed my position at 6:00 am. That's kind of fun in itself.
 
Today: -4.5 points / 15 rts / 1 contract
Last 3 days (points before/after comm.): -1.0 / -3.89

Fifteen round trips in half an hour. Ack. I hit my 3 tick target zero times! Woohoo! Managed several full point losses. I seemed to have my suspenders caught in the car door. I may just have to plot these trades out on a chart to see what happened. Seems I picked the wrong time to quit drinking. (That's a joke, haha).
 

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Took a moment of time out of my sorrow and noticed the rally, so, breaking my plan, the desire to get at least one single 3 tick hit forced me back in. Kaching. Piece of cake. If I have more patience, maybe they can all be that easy. Anyway, new daily totals...

Today: -4.0 points / 16 rts / 1 contract
Last 3 days (points before/after comm.): -0.5 / -3.46

Oh crud, I put in my target incorrectly! Only got 2 ticks, thought it was three! Par for the day...
 
I mean no offense, and as I've been entirely open about how cluelessly I myself have approached this whole issue, I am not sitting in any position of superior judgement.

I don't even understand the types of signals you use to prompt your trades (my inadequacy, not yours). My question is whether in the end those signals are really all that much of an improvement over my silly blind hope eenie-meenie approach, at least my commission is limited to one rt.

In my own simplistic way, I am trying to be helpful and not intending to offend, so I hope you can take my comments without feeling offended by them.
 
Quote from hii a_ooiioo_a:

In my own simplistic way, I am trying to be helpful and not intending to offend, so I hope you can take my comments without feeling offended by them.
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I realize that, which is why I deleted my post. It was reactionary, just as my trading was today.

I am posting this journal not with the intent of getting advice, though I know that is inevitable. I have been trading live long enough now to have heard most lines of thought and opinions on the "proper" ways to trade, etc. It is now up to me to do what I need to do to survive, so I am trying this, that, and the other thing. I am trying to find the method in myself, to be all new-agey about it. The method I am working on right now is one I have attempted for only a few days. Give me time to learn it before telling me to move on to method Y or Z.

:)
 
I too am trying to work out a good way to approach this game, which is why I throw out my thoughts on it. I've only made that one NQ trade, and haven't tried it again since monday.

I also understand how edgy a bad trading day can make a person, I apologize for jumping in at a bad moment with my remarks.
 
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