Maintaining Self Discipline

[studentofthemarkets]

I'm taking another break from my journal---except that I do plan to post some things on a NT8 MACD strategy. That is taking a while though.

I need the break because I am considering trading the Euro futures. I need some time to watch it and demo trade it before committing to it and I don't think I'll have much to write about in this journal.

What complicates the matter is that since I blew my account, I only have enough funds in it to trade the Micro 6E, and that looks nearly impossible to trade, unless I trade for more than a few ticks at a time. I don't think I have the temperament to hold trades overnight--I'd never be able to sleep knowing I had a trade on. So, my plan is to try to get trades that will last an hour or two and then it should be fine (I hope). Maybe with time, I will trust myself to have more money in my trading account and not lose it all from lack of self-control. Also, I really don't like the size of the 6E, in addition to the margin required. A losing trade of 10 ticks is $67.00 after fees and several losses in a row would add up fast, although the flip side is that a lot of money could be made quickly if good trades were made.

I have actually put a lot of thought into this decision to consider the Euro futures. I think the most important factor for making the switch is that I think I can move to breakeven easier on it than I can with the ES, and if I can do that, then I wouldn't be so stressed out about trading and being afraid to get into a trade. The ES doesn't always retrace, but it does often enough that I rarely even try to move to break even. Moving to BE quickly is the one thing I miss about trading the NQ.

Here is a chart that shows what I mean. Suppose you entered at the cross of the black trendlines and moved your stop loss to BE relatively quickly. The white ellipses show all the places where price would not have come super close to stopping out the trade before giving at least a little profit. There are 5 of those places on the 6E and only 1 on the MES from yesterday. Today the MES was a lot better, but still, I think I'd like to work on the 6E and M6E for a while and see how it goes.

 

[expiated]

I am considering trading the Euro futures.

Thought I would drop by to see what you were up to. I am hoping to design an automated trading protocol this weekend that will back test daily charts profitably. If I succeed, I will transfer the methodology down to four hour charts, and from there, see if I can't work its application all the way down to five minute charts.

Based on my initial configuration, which looks good so far at the theoretical stage, I see the Euro-U.S. dollar as having turned overall bearish in June, which it still is. But, it's sort of confined itself to a limited range during August and September, which is why I will be looking for buying opportunities during the next week or two.

 

[studentofthemarkets]

Thought I would drop by to see what you were up to. I am hoping to design an automated trading protocol this weekend that will back test daily charts profitably. If I succeed, I will transfer the methodology down to four hour charts, and from there, see if I can't work its application all the way down to five minute charts.

Thanks for dropping by! I've been busy with seasonal work and haven't been as active on E.T.

I took a look at your MQLA Journal and see that you have finished your backtesting! Congratulations! Must be a relief to see that your equity graph is positive!

Finally! I am at last finished with the back testing. What I will do now is continue day trading manually using the methodology that yielded the following results...

Thanks for sharing the EURUSD chart!

Based on my initial configuration, which looks good so far at the theoretical stage, I see the Euro-U.S. dollar as having turned overall bearish in June, which it still is. But, it's sort of confined itself to a limited range during August and September, which is why I will be looking for buying opportunities during the next week or two.

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It'll be interesting to see how the EUR USD moves in the next few months. It does look like it could be starting to head up, based on the break of the trendline in your chart and it seems to be bouncing from a strong support area. Just going by Technical Analysis, it will be interesting to see, if it does break to the upside strongly, just how far it would go, since it seems like there is a lot of resistance on the weekly and Monthly charts if it breaks above your daily chart range highs (solid black line). The next lower support level on the weekly and monthly charts is pretty far away. Hmmm, when in doubt......it'll probably range and throw everybody off.

I have been pulling up the 6E chart to watch it sometimes, but I have been trading the YM lately. It's much easier to trade the Micro YM than to trade the Micro 6E with a small account. I'm not sure which one I like better as far as Technical Analysis goes. I think the 6E is more predictable. But the YM has some predictableness too, just shows it differently than the 6E.

My current goal is to make a more thorough trading plan, stick with it, and stop switching my trading instrument. I'm still using backtesting sometimes to help with understanding the probabilities of the indicators I use, but the backtesting doesn't have the ability to do all that I do in trading. I am still slowly working on possibly learning to code in Ninjatrader. I watched a few videos on it, but I find it is time consuming and much easier to use the simpler strategy builder in Ninjatrader to do some basic backtesting.

I'm glad you put in the time to learn to write code so that you have your own EA that is working! Hope it works better than what you are hoping for!

 

[expiated]

It does look like it could be starting to head up, based on the break of the trendline in your chart and it seems to be bouncing from a strong support area. Just going by Technical Analysis, it will be interesting to see, if it does break to the upside strongly, just how far it would go, since it seems like there is a lot of resistance on the weekly and Monthly charts if it breaks above your daily chart range highs (solid black line).

Maybe, but I wouldn't count on it. In developing a longer-term expert advisor, I discovered that the 12-day baseline I've been using to gauge longer-range projections was not long enough. It only gives me the immediate longer-term trend. There is an even longer, overall general longer-term trend (if that makes any sense) which is conveyed by the 40-day baseline. (It is important for me to consider both of these measures in combination.)

According to the latter measure, EURUSD is just getting started heading south, as of the middle of June. True, I wouldn't be surprised to see it pull back, but NOT much higher than 1.1919, at which point, what would surprise me is if it didn't start heading south again...