Ready or not, I went live 7/27

[tiddlywinks]

First, Congratulations on going live!!
Live trading is where true learning occurs.

As for these folk saying you trade too much, screw them!
These are the same folks that say you need a trading plan, and that you should take all the signals your trading plan provides. So if you are trading your plan, forget about SOMEONE ELSE'S idea of how many trades you should make. Trade your plan! Do not "second guess" your existing plan.

The same concept of who cares what someone else thinks or says, here's a personal ditty... Trading one contract, for me, doesn't work. Just not enough skin in the game. I day trade NQ primarily, with a bit of YM, and RTY, each $5 ticks. The $5 means nothing to me. 3 contracts is my minimum. $15 minimum per tick keeps my attention. See... who cares? Whatever is comfortable for you. Full disclosure, I avg 36 trades per day. Give me volatility and those numbers go up.

Again, congrats on going live!

 

[volpri]

Stick with one contract. No need to blow thru your account so fast. If the better MOM and THE OTHER BETTER THING you are using works, it will work with one contract. You have alot to learn yet. You don't need all that cash in your account. Max 5000 for 1 contract. If scalping (1 to 3 point) you can do it with 2000, if SL's are held fairly tight. But you gotta have a high win rate for scalping, which you don't have yet.

The problem with having the money in there, that you don't need in there, is falling into the temptation to succumb to "revenge" trading. In others words, you get disgusted with 5 losses in a row and decide to "loadup" and get your money back. It is a serious cognitive error because if the method you are using isn't working with 1 contract then the "loading up" is just tossing yourself out to pure luck. You might get lucky and be made whole but it is not because of the method, nor because of loading up. The next time you find yourself in a bad deficit, your brain, which is very adept of reminding you of your previous success in "loading up" will incessantly prod you to load up again. It is called the "recency effect" in psychology.

The recency effect is a cognitive blind spot where your mind tricks you into placing more importance on a recent event (such as the lucky, seemingly successful, loading up revenge trading) than the present event (the trade you are in now or about to get in) that happening in the moment thus influencing the present decision for action. Your brain loves pleasure and it remembers the joy you experienced when were made whole again by loading up. This bias will hammer away at your account.

This is why I have said that the more important thing is psychological preparation. Of course, one's system is important but not to the exclusion of a trained mind.

Now your mind (and perhaps your wife) will remind you of week 1 over and over again. Having a system and executing it are two different things. See, on SIM the system did ok. When real money is on the line psychology suddenly enters the picture "big time". That affects your performance as a trader. And trading is probally one of the highest performance activities found on planet earth.

Not trying to throw a bucket of cold water on your trading but just trying bring to light the reality that occurs when one enters the world of trading.

Heads up DO NOT fall into revenge trading. You will blow your account faster than crap goes through a goose.

When i talk about psychology I am not talking about positive attitude and that sort of stuff because it is, (i.e. the market) what it is, REGARDLESS of your attitude. The market knows nothing of your positive or negative attitude and even if it did it would not care about it and worst it will not make one iota of a difference. When i say psychological preparation I mostly talking about how your mind and emotions will deceive you and trip you up. You have to train your mind to be in sync with the markets, as the markets could care less, and is not interested, in being in sync with your trading concepts...ideas.. or strategies. This is blunt I realize, but the sooner you realize this and do something about it, then you may increase your odds of winning in this game. Even then, all that I say above is NO guarantee. That is just the way it is.

 

[Handle123]

Honestly you should stop before you put in too much effort. An unsupportive woman who doesn't understand trading is deadly to a trader.

LOL, I divorced my unsupportive problem, didn't make me a better trader then, but all the benefits there after. Yeah, if you succeed they will spend it and you work harder. Last one who wanted marriage would not sign 23 page pre-nup, guess that was not supporting me enough, HAAAA.

Thanks to everyone who posted in the thread "Am I ready to go live?"!

Having gotten good funds in my real trading account, I went live 7/27. As anticipated by many, it was not an auspicious start.

7/27 I woke up late, slightly hungover, and did not read my affirmations before starting to trade. I traded foolishly (3 contracts) and broke some of my "rules". Here's a screenshot:
View attachment 176382

As part of my risk/cash management rules, since my equity promptly dipped below $24k, I traded 2 contracts starting the next day. Upon four losing days in a row, even though my equity was still above $16k, and in consultation with my wife (who said she was "not happy"), I started trading 1 contract yesterday.

Here is a screenshot of today's trade (I stopped trading early before the end of the session). I won 4 points on one trade and stopped for the day.
View attachment 176383

For Comagnum & Gotcha & others who pointed out the "slippage" issue, I did indeed experience the phenomenon of not getting fills at a limit order until it was evident many orders in front of me got filled. I did have to use market orders to avoid not getting filled at a limit level.

Here are the numbers so far:
View attachment 176384
View attachment 176385

Not pretty.

I did survive this first punch. I redoubled my focus and have a strong positive attitude.

Perhaps some of you may find my affirmations (I read them before the opening each morning) interesting:
View attachment 176387
View attachment 176388

Next week should be better. I think I'll start trading 2 contracts again... Doug

Really comes down to back testing on number of trades, I never advise anyone to start with three lots, you can expect first couple months of making ton of mistakes, even buying when you should be selling, I recall my first 2 months were one disaster after another after I completed my first well back tested method and yet each day the system made money cept several days of small losses. You have not proven to yourself or us you can be consistently profitable. I say not proven to us as you have decided to do a journal, you want positive feedback. Prove to us you can be profitable for couple weeks, then when you up $3k, add a contract, let the money be judge when increase contracts based on one lots and number of contracts total of contracts to be traded.

As far number of trades, based on past back testing, my best is 20 trades in so many minutes and each profitable and done of the day as back testing then shows choppiness rest of the day. And if I get losses early, system has taken as many as 140 trades to net goal. So all should be based on your testing.

Have you tested length of time in winning trades? I use time stops, after so much time and not at least able to lock in plus one tick, my target is now to get to plus one tick. Usually smaller timeframe, less number of bars. Winning trades for me often allow me to get in and gone. You can try limit orders of stop with a limit of one tick beyond so you don't get in far beyond where you want to on regular stops or even market orders.

Good luck at getting in at the top or bottom, we never know for sure, but understanding price action well can help like Swing average from a 5 bar pivot low to highest pivot high=keeps ten day average of this and another ten day average of down swings, so say the average up swing been ten points and you get a signal at 9 points, can take the trade, but get quicker to protective stop or take a point and wait for next signal.

Good Hunting.

 

[volpri]

First, Congratulations on going live!!
Live trading is where true learning occurs.

As for these folk saying you trade too much, screw them!
These are the same folks that say you need a trading plan, and that you should take all the signals your trading plan provides. So if you are trading your plan, forget about SOMEONE ELSE'S idea of how many trades you should make. Trade your plan! Do not "second guess" your existing plan.

The same concept of who cares what someone else thinks or says, here's a personal ditty... Trading one contract, for me, doesn't work. Just not enough skin in the game. I day trade NQ primarily, with a bit of YM, and RTY, each $5 ticks. The $5 means nothing to me. 3 contracts is my minimum. $15 minimum per tick keeps my attention. See... who cares? Whatever is comfortable for you. Full disclosure, I avg 36 trades per day. Give me volatility and those numbers go up.

Again, congrats on going live!

Sorry but I don't think he needs congrats for "going live" and losing close to 2000 in week 1. He needs to face up to the reality of those losses and try to discover why they happened and not just carry on in week 2 the same way...doing the same thing. Bottom line what counts is profits. One trade or 25 trades. At EOD (if day trading) we all get our report card. He made an "F" week one. That doesn't mean he has to make an "F" week 2 but he best make haste and identify what he did wrong. Pumping him up isn't gonna help him.

 

[nonlinear5]

1. You lost 10% of your account value in one week. Reduce your position sizes.

2. By your own admission, you trade while you are hungover, you brake your own rules, and you trade "foolishly". This is unlikely to change. Automate your trading.

3. From your paper trading results, it doesn't look like you have a profitability edge, once you take slippage into account. Go back to the drawing board.

 

[Gotcha]

My thoughts.

1. You first said you went from 24k down to 16k and I was shocked. But looking at it closely, it seems like you're only down about 2k, and much of this was because you started with 3 contracts, so things happen quick.

2. I agree with tiddlywinks regarding number of trades. You can take as many as necessary that set up. Where exactly are the major moves that @lawrence-lugar talks about, and especially these days in the ES when it moves in a 7 or 8 point range during RTH? Obvious and major moves is a bit of a fairly tale in my opinion because once its obvious, its very risky to enter with tight stops, which I think you are using. Obvious moves to me fall more into the swing trading category and require waiting for very good setups, which might not happen every day.

I've seen the best traders take 20 trades or more a day.

3. Even going back to 2 contracts is a killer. Unless your strategy specifically requires scaling out, and hence you need to start with at least 2, you're putting on way too much leverage. You have already shown that you can't follow your plan as you said you broke your rules, so why lose more money than necessary when you fuck up even more? It will happen without a doubt. You need to get beaten down multiple times before you might actually be prepared to always do the right thing. Because of this, you might as well lessen the damage.

4. You wife is a huge problem. You guys don't think alike, nor feel alike. If she was even a trader it would be a huge problem cause she could be thinking long while you're thinking short. But the fact that she isn't even a trader means she doesn't understand any of this. Learning to trade is learning to do the complete opposite of everything else you learn in your life. You can't use the same logic and intuition that gets you through life and expect it to work in trading. She therefore cannot help. Updating her will be pressure you don't need.

5. The last thing I should do is critique your trading plan, but it sounds like you think its good to get in during the middle of a move, and skip the top or bottom. Sure, waiting for confirmation is sometimes good, but it leads to large stops. If you get in where a turn might happen (the top or bottom), you're getting in early, and can use a tight stop. Sure you might be wrong, but clearly based on your results that seem to be after confirmation, you were still wrong very very often. The name of the game is something more about how much you're willing to risk vs. how right or wrong you are. It would be helpful to see a detailed chart with your entries and exits.

 

[Gotcha]

And, and last point:

6. I don't agree with qxr1101 at all about not limiting to number of points. The fact of the matter is you never know how far a trade can go. If your stats show that you're often able to get 8 ticks, but rarely able to get to 12 ticks before it comes back to you, why not just take your profit? You take your stops religiously hopefully, so targets I think should be thought of the same way.

Obviously none of us are any better than the next guy to tell you what you should do, but the minute to use fixed stops and targets, you can breathe a sigh of relief and just focus on entering. When you're new, there is too much to worry about. But if you keep a consistent stop and target, you can at least see what works about the trades that hit profit and what doesn't work about the trades that hit your stop. Sometimes, there is even nothing to see as its just a random distribution. But if you miss taking profits and it comes all the way back to you, you'll be dealing with lots of emotions.

Clearly your trading plan might be different, but for a new trader, I think fixed stops and targets is essential, and then you just focus on reading the PA and entering, and developing a thick skin to see the trade through. It also gives you great stats to analyze after. You will find that half of the time, its all random anyway, so all you can do is put on a trade and it either hits stop or target and then you move on. Its hugely beneficial to do it like this and not be tied emotionally to the trade that you are trying to squeeze the last tick out of.

 

[_eug_]

And, and last point:

But if you miss taking profits and it comes all the way back to you, you'll be dealing with lots of emotions.

There will also be a ton of emotions if you take your profit at 2 points and then thing moves a full 8 points in your direction after you get out. I guess this is where scaling out comes in, or at least a trailing stop.

 

[Gotcha]

There will also be a ton of emotions if you take your profit at 2 points and then thing moves a full 8 points in your direction after you get out. I guess this is where scaling out comes in, or at least a trailing stop.

That's true, but I imagine there should be at least a sigh of a relief that a trade finally hit the target and not the stop for a change!

 

[volpri]

There will also be a ton of emotions if you take your profit at 2 points and then thing moves a full 8 points in your direction after you get out. I guess this is where scaling out comes in, or at least a trailing stop.

We all have our ways. For me, if the ES MOVES 2 or 3 points in my favor i am locking that profit in UNLESS there is a strong compelling to stay in the move. If after I get out the moves continues, i just jump right back in. I don't mind the comm. ES is too mean reversion prone. Plus tight trading ranges and channels now days.