Rules/aims:
Previous journal years:
2019 - https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/snuskpelles-kind-of-intraday-adventures-2019.328589
- Trading ~53k CFD account. Why CFDs when futures are so awesome? A) I'm already committed (in code) to a platform w/ API, B) said platform works decently for my purposes, C) I am too lazy to move everything to mini or micro futures right now, D) ESMA regulations applies to my provider including negative balance protection, which is a good thing among several bad things about CFDs.
- Why a journal? I've figured out I am less likely to stick my head into the sand due to boredom or under-performance if I feel ashamed about it.
- Stick to the strategies listed listed below (even where intentionally ambiguous). Last year was highly experimental, this year I better stick to the processes that seemed to work.
- Spend less time in front of screen musing over potential trades and getting nerve wrecked over existing discretionary positions. I should do more of what I like which is coding. Limit full discretionary trading to rare events (see strategy #1 below).
- Return +50% over the year on normalized currency adjusted basis (w.r.t. to withdrawals/deposits and USD/SEK price) with max 20% DD. 50% per year is really my minimum to make this worth the effort long term versus a lot of other things I can continue doing in my life and the amount of dedication this trading style takes.
- In short, making trading as simple as possible. I want to live to my late 80s like my grand parents, not die in my 30s in a heart attack because I sat up all night monitoring a losing over-leveraged position.
- Equity index major event trading, mainly my favorite Nasdaq 100 index futures CFD. You know, FOMC decisions, random news like trade war tweets, scheduled watched data like PMIs; the sort of thing that tends to stirr up fairly reliable but infrequent intraday trends. Have a good reason for entering. Leverage allowed to sub-account max, European ESMA limits me to 20x leverage anyway. Try to automate more regarding this over the year, especially scanning for tradable intraday trends and position sizing.
- Could be seen as an extension of above strategy: BTFD on panic, until it stops working at which point I will probably be shorting heavily due to special circumstances anyway. I will try to make this more systematic over the year.
- Algorithmic dumb beta collection strategy: scaling equity index and maybe bond index CFD positions depending on volatility, upcoming gaps, mean reversion etc. I didn't do this very well last year despite running for a bit in June-July, mostly due to being a pussy and not re-starting post October drop. Could easily have doubled my return last year if I had let beta exposure be near one instead of near zero. Can't see myself running wilder than 2-3x leverage of total account on this in ideal circumstances.
- Ad-hoc simple algorithmic strategies for specific trade ideas. I realize this is like saying "everything but the kitchen sink!", but it does make sense: E.g. let's assume I think XAU and XAG will trend up nearest months. Rather than manually entering a position which probably would be poorly scaled and probably be entered in a bad moment of FOMO, I can let algo gradually scale me in, with volatility adjusted position sizing, to minimize risk of getting a large DD. I'm also working on several more advanced algos but I am not at all sure there will be any results from that this year either (I jumped into algo trading without knowing shit about it 2014).
Previous journal years:
2019 - https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/snuskpelles-kind-of-intraday-adventures-2019.328589
