Noob Style
- Thread starter nooby_mcnoob
- Start date
Check out theICE.com. That is the futures exchange where they have the Russell 2000 contract.
You should also probably be journaling every single one of your trades. Time, entry, exit, volume, S/R, thoughts, observations.
You also could journal every day what other major asset classes did. What was the volume on SPY, QQQQ. What did crude do? Gold, ags, bonds? Dollar, VIX?
You might end up seeing some patterns after a long enough time of doing this.
Just my opinion, but I do think that futures would be a much purer way to implement your strategy. If you decide to check them out, however, don't over leverage or you will be done before you really get started.
You should also probably be journaling every single one of your trades. Time, entry, exit, volume, S/R, thoughts, observations.
You also could journal every day what other major asset classes did. What was the volume on SPY, QQQQ. What did crude do? Gold, ags, bonds? Dollar, VIX?
You might end up seeing some patterns after a long enough time of doing this.
Just my opinion, but I do think that futures would be a much purer way to implement your strategy. If you decide to check them out, however, don't over leverage or you will be done before you really get started.
I'm usually not for the touchy feely stuff but some of that website has some good psych content.
So I reset my IB paper account to have $25K which apparently does not allow me to do much. After learning the other fun stuff that goes along with this, I closed my position for a grand total of $-12. FWIW, the original trade is now up nearly +$1.50/share :eek:
Will resume tomorrow. Going to try changing the amount to $50K and see if I can trade with that instead. Maybe I should just stick with $100K USD?
I'm also not sure I understand the IB rules. "Buying power" means you can only go long that amount but can't short it?
Will have to read up some more.
Doh.
Will resume tomorrow. Going to try changing the amount to $50K and see if I can trade with that instead. Maybe I should just stick with $100K USD?
I'm also not sure I understand the IB rules. "Buying power" means you can only go long that amount but can't short it?
Will have to read up some more.Doh.
Morning summary:
Net: $-202 (live trade)
This morning only had a couple of opportunities but I made a mistake with a stop. Instead of putting the stop below the next resistance, I put it below the current resistance. That is the majority of the loss above. The same trade would have put me net positive had I put the stop below the next resistance, though not by much. Signals are non-existent so I spent most of the morning going through old data and twiddling my thumbs. I am in a trade now which is positive. Will probably scalp it.
I expect the afternoon will have absolutely no action at all. If so, I am probably not going to make any more trades because with this kind of activity, I am trading against the scalping bots and that is never going to go well in my opinion.
I'm still not sure I understand how IB's balance works. So I have $50K in the paper account now and I figured that would allow me to buy/sell at least $60K worth of equity (on margin.) Apparently there is some "past day equity with loan value" thing which doesn't make any English sense to me.
Net: $-202 (live trade)
This morning only had a couple of opportunities but I made a mistake with a stop. Instead of putting the stop below the next resistance, I put it below the current resistance. That is the majority of the loss above. The same trade would have put me net positive had I put the stop below the next resistance, though not by much. Signals are non-existent so I spent most of the morning going through old data and twiddling my thumbs. I am in a trade now which is positive. Will probably scalp it.
I expect the afternoon will have absolutely no action at all. If so, I am probably not going to make any more trades because with this kind of activity, I am trading against the scalping bots and that is never going to go well in my opinion.
I'm still not sure I understand how IB's balance works. So I have $50K in the paper account now and I figured that would allow me to buy/sell at least $60K worth of equity (on margin.) Apparently there is some "past day equity with loan value" thing which doesn't make any English sense to me.
Closed the trade. Totally bot-driven move. I don't trust it!
Morning: -$147
Morning: -$147
Net of sales: $-99, Net of commissions: $-138
% gain on capital: -0.2% - multiple from index: -0.06x
% gain with leverage used (~$70K): -0.2% - multiple from index: -0.06x
% index gain: 1.05%
Today's trades were pretty good except for two main issues:
* I haven't figured out how IB's margin works. If I want to buy/sell $70K worth of stock, how much $$$ do I need to deposit with them? I did not know this so I had to use sizes of 300.
* An erroneously placed stop accounted for the bad trades today. If I had placed it according to my "system", which would be below the next resistance, would have been positive today. Lesson learned.
One of the things bugging me today was that it seemed a lot of the price movement was driven by bots. I'll be watching trading using BookTrader a bit more I think.
Although there was not much movement in the morning, I missed an important signal in the morning (unrelated to resistance/support) and did not trade it. I will have to pay more attention.
Modifications to strategy:
As suggested by someone posting on this thread earlier, using longer time frames helps a lot for determining the trend. However, I find that once a signal occurs, changing to a smaller timeframe is helpful to see whether it was an anomaly or not.
% gain on capital: -0.2% - multiple from index: -0.06x
% gain with leverage used (~$70K): -0.2% - multiple from index: -0.06x
% index gain: 1.05%
Today's trades were pretty good except for two main issues:
* I haven't figured out how IB's margin works. If I want to buy/sell $70K worth of stock, how much $$$ do I need to deposit with them? I did not know this so I had to use sizes of 300.
* An erroneously placed stop accounted for the bad trades today. If I had placed it according to my "system", which would be below the next resistance, would have been positive today. Lesson learned.
One of the things bugging me today was that it seemed a lot of the price movement was driven by bots. I'll be watching trading using BookTrader a bit more I think.
Although there was not much movement in the morning, I missed an important signal in the morning (unrelated to resistance/support) and did not trade it. I will have to pay more attention.
Modifications to strategy:
As suggested by someone posting on this thread earlier, using longer time frames helps a lot for determining the trend. However, I find that once a signal occurs, changing to a smaller timeframe is helpful to see whether it was an anomaly or not.
Wanted to say: this made me hold on to trades longer than I should have. Not that the result was bad, just not a good idea.