Spydertrader's Jack Hershey Futures Trading Journal

[dougcs]

fwiw, I again traded for real, one lot, today with these results:

7 Win
3 Losses

Net points: 10.25 less commissions.

S. it is scary but my chart and yours looked too much alike today.

Doug

ps-I likely won't post my results daily, but I've seen some anti Jack threads recently, and thought posting occasional real results would be beneficial and balance some of the negative comments.

 

[EdgeHunter]

Quote from makosgu:

The work is minimal as I have template spreadsheets buried on various harddrives that I need to blow the dust off of. I'm pretty savvy with most things conding. The work required is minimal. My real problem is time which is usually negative for me. My weekends are busier then the work week and my days tend to begin (5 am) and end (1 am) on borrowed time. I throw up alot of posts kind of as an archive of crap I fully intend to complete. I am also extremely savvy with MSAccess and all sorts of db SQL/PLSQL programming. I like to be able to simplify things to minimal effort. For example, there is yet another program I use called xlq by qmatix. I have ZERO affiliation with the guy but he's got excel app that interfaces with IQFEED/IB/Yahoo and other resources to stream realtime stuff. It can do alot for me because it leverages off the flexibility of excel. What I am trying to do is simply boil down the vol analysis to several inputs.

-an arbitrary number of days of data (ie. 60 days)
-an arbitrary fractal (ie. 5M)
-a practical time window (ie. 9:45 am to 3:30 pm)

Providing this template would allow any user to profile whatever it is that they trade. Tools like this cut out unnecesary technologies which others may or may not have and allow for users to adjust things to their hearts delight. It'll be up soon. There will be nothing magical about the template. It will just be versatile. There is a similar one for equities that calibrates to each instrument...

Sounds interesting....

i use a RTD excel feed similar to XLQ... that pulls data from iqFeed... so i understand your real time streaming part...

would not 20 days of Vol / Vol price point data be better than 60... more in line with the latest volatiltiy...

thanks...

cj...

 

[bi9foot]

Here is a screen shot of my Tree level trades this morning. I could not find a suitable entry in the morning, my first entry was the FTT at 10:05 .

Columns are direction, entry time, entry price, exit price and net.

This is simming, without tracking P/L just using four buttons LONG, SHORT, REVERSE and FLAT.

I found myself dropping to lower resolutions inadvertantly (3rd and 4th trades). I kept reminding myself to think change/no-change and that really helped me stay at the correct resolution.

I am sure there were moments where I was in the red, but change/no-change kept me in the trade for eventual gains.

Net without commisions is 11.75

<img src="http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/attachment.php?s=&postid=1397743">

 

[Pr0crast]

Quote from bi9foot:

I am sure there were moments where I was in the red, but change/no-change kept me in the trade for eventual gains.

Yes I have found this too in my strict forest simming... For much of the day I'm breakeven or in the red (on brief channels and low-slope channels), but since in the market all the time all the big moves are caught. Starts to actually feel like the "pool extraction" Jack talks about.

 

[palinuro]

Quote from bi9foot:

Here is a screen shot of my Tree level trades this morning.

Thanks for posting that. It's interesting to see the exact times posted, and then to think about what your thought processes must have been at the time. Yesterday morning I got too caught up in my own thoughts about details and couldn't connect them usefully to the bigger picture (even though I could see it well enough).

Unfortunately I then had to go out and so missed both afternoon runs, which I think would have been a lot clearer.

 

[PointOne]

Quote from Pr0crast:

Yes I have found this too in my strict forest simming... For much of the day I'm breakeven or in the red (on brief channels and low-slope channels), but since in the market all the time all the big moves are caught. Starts to actually feel like the "pool extraction" Jack talks about.

STOP right there!

If you enter/reverse very close to a point 1 or point 3 why are you in the red (for more than half a bar)?

Remember Spyder strongly recommended to us to delay SIMing until we could identify the Forest FTTs while blindfolded with our arms tied behind our backs. If you are sitting through retraces in the red then you need to go back to annotating and logging, no button pushing. (How do I know this? )

 

[Pr0crast]

Quote from PointOne:

STOP right there!

If you enter/reverse very close to a point 1 or point 3 why are you in the red (for more than half a bar)?

Remember Spyder strongly recommended to us to delay SIMing until we could identify the Forest FTTs while blindfolded with our arms tied behind our backs. If you are sitting through retraces in the red then you need to go back to annotating and logging, no button pushing. (How do I know this? )

I think you misunderstood. In the forest trading rules, we HOLD through the nondominant retraces and our action points occur on RTLXO's and PT3's. FTTs and flaws do not enter this picture EVER, so whether or not I can identify forest FTTs blindfolded has absolutely nothing to do with anything but TREE trading which I assume is what you speak of . Surely I am not in the red as price ascends from PT3, for if I was I would most definitely be on the wrong side of the market. By "in the red" I am talking about realized profits as I exit or reverse. Surely you can see that if a channel is weak, not very long, and not very steep, a profit is not guaranteed on the forest trade. This is what I am talking about. This, and watching some of our profits slowly dissipate over the retraces is an unavoidable part of forest trading that provides clear motivation for learning the ways of tree-trading. But nevertheless, sustaining a small -0.5 pt loss on a weak forest trade is a small price to pay to catch the 15 PT moves of today's monster forest trades.

I hope that provides some added clarity to my statement.

Many of us have gotten to the point where our logging and annotations are great, but we still need practice on staying at whatever level we intend to (forest, tree, leaves, bug, etc) without inadvertently hopping back and forth. For now, I have chosen the forest, with an ever so slight discretionary sprinkle of trees. Nailing this with discipline is where the simming comes in.

 

[ivob]

Quote from Pr0crast:

Yes I have found this too in my strict forest simming... For much of the day I'm breakeven or in the red (on brief channels and low-slope channels), but since in the market all the time all the big moves are caught. Starts to actually feel like the "pool extraction" Jack talks about.

I noticed the same. The market will give it all to you but you have to be in it. (on the right side preferably

Maybe that's what Jack means with his DO, BE, HAVE.

DO what you learned, BE in the market, HAVE gains. Or BE in the market, DO what you learned, HAVE gains (I forgot the order

regards,
Ivo

 

[PointOne]

Quote from Pr0crast:

I think you misunderstood. In the forest trading rules, we HOLD through the nondominant retraces and our action points occur on RTLXO's and PT3's. FTTs and flaws do not enter this picture EVER,

When you said you were in the red, I thought you meant you were in the red. My mistake.

As to the Forest resolution rules - often the new channel's pt3 occurs within the previous dominant channel - so what do you do then - wait for the BO of the TL and x2x? This is usually way after the FTT is confirmed. I think you may be on the Amazon rainforest resolution.

I don't recall ever dropping the FTT (not ftt) from our action points - waiting for the pt3 is acceptable because it takes great skill (and finer resolution tools) to capture a price near pt 1 and pt3 is also an excellent entry with more gaussian confirmation. It should never lead to sitting through a mini-drawdown though.

P1

 

[KK70]

Quote from mephistoII:

I think it is very apparent by now to all who have been following along from the onset of the journal, that the real 'secret' for attaining the final plateau will be found in the mastery of self. We are being handed the tools for the mechanics of the trade (not to mention still only honing our forest skills primarily) - but each among us must find their own way on the psychic frontier of self-control and discipline.

I think you have hit the nail on the head. IMHO, the PVT method for equities is a lot more objective and relies less on trader skill. SCT requires a significantly higher degree of trading motivation and skill. One can understand and implement the equities method after reading/understanding the threads a couple of times but SCT requires a greater level of effort from the trader himself.