IB sent me an ultimatum to stop my automated systems because of excessive messaging. The worst part was that I had always respected the exchange benchmarks and wrongly assumed that IB wouldn't mess with me as long as I respected it. I watch these products everyday and see programs doing even more cancel/replace with an other FCM than what I was doing and they are not MMs as there are no MMs on these markets. Lesson learned. These systems represented 1/4 to 1/3 of my income. I made a good year though.
Most Important Lesson Of The Year.
- Thread starter Eddiefl
- Start date
IB sent me an ultimatum to stop my automated systems because of excessive messaging. The worst part was that I had always respected the exchange benchmarks and wrongly assumed that IB wouldn't mess with me as long as I respected it. I watch these products everyday and see programs doing even more cancel/replace with an other FCM than what I was doing and they are not MMs as there are no MMs on these markets. Lesson learned. These systems represented 1/4 to 1/3 of my income. I made a good year though.
Watch porn AFTER you're done trading. Not during
Quote from Piffle:
I know everyone says that you have to trade in a way that fits your personality, but sometimes a successful method just finds you when you aren't even looking for it. It would be pretty stupid to discard it if it could potentially make you a lot of money. I have been doing discrectionary trading for the last 2 months and it has been going extremely well. This really chaps me because I am a very analytical, math-brained person, but I'm not going to fight it if it is working this well. I can't reduce what I'm doing to any kind of mathematical equation, and I'm learning that that is ok. Yes I have objective signposts (S/R, dow theory, buy/sell volume) that I use, but I am basically trading by feel (that is painful to say).
This is my most important lesson of the year. Don't try to impose your view of what the market "should" be doing on your trading. Learn to see what it IS doing. I am getting away from trying to build mathematical models to predict the market and just learning to flow with the market. Not only has it been profitable (and I still have much to learn), it is very zen and very satisfying to feel in tune with the market.
I'm sure there will be plenty of new and "exciting" lessons in the year to come.
I agree. I found that I am a disretionary trader. I tried to apply a structured system but found that just observing price action and trying to be on the same wave as the market, is much more profitable for me.