Taking 410K to 4million by Year End 2010
- Thread starter neke
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Weekly Update for week 39/50 ended 10/09/2010
Disastrous week, down 26K (10.8%). Another major set-back on my attempt to break out of this rut. New lows in confidence.
I did have some premonition on Monday when I reached a high of +5K in P/L intraday only to close up barely +1K. I thought I should be on guard the rest of the week. Unfortunately that message got lost in the heat of the battle. Got long LPS on Tues. Stock got halted just before I could get out at end of day, got out the following day, losing 6K on normal size. The total loss after that came to 9K via some other bad trades. Then revenge set in as I placed an order to buy 1000 EQIX at 77. Got filled as the the stock crashed hard, and I decided not to get out but average in. My position monitor immediately closed out my trades that were above size, and instead of stopping, I decided to commit the unpardonable sin: remotely shut down my system, and then proceeded to average down until I had a size of more than 4K shares, four times the intended size. Watched helplessly, and eventually capitulated near the low of the day, losing 20K.
Still wondering why I had to shut down my system. It was there to protect me, and so far I had been diligent not to exceed the size limit until Wed. I still want to believe this is one off, and I will be faithful to my size limits going forward. Sure it would still have been a losing week, but not by this much.
The ability to remotely shut-down the system was primarily for cases where the system is acting incorrectly, or on wrong market data, or extremely unexpected market scenarios (say May 6), not to override my position monitoring. I shall look at limiting this capabililty to only those defined scenarios.
Disastrous week, down 26K (10.8%). Another major set-back on my attempt to break out of this rut. New lows in confidence.
I did have some premonition on Monday when I reached a high of +5K in P/L intraday only to close up barely +1K. I thought I should be on guard the rest of the week. Unfortunately that message got lost in the heat of the battle. Got long LPS on Tues. Stock got halted just before I could get out at end of day, got out the following day, losing 6K on normal size. The total loss after that came to 9K via some other bad trades. Then revenge set in as I placed an order to buy 1000 EQIX at 77. Got filled as the the stock crashed hard, and I decided not to get out but average in. My position monitor immediately closed out my trades that were above size, and instead of stopping, I decided to commit the unpardonable sin: remotely shut down my system, and then proceeded to average down until I had a size of more than 4K shares, four times the intended size. Watched helplessly, and eventually capitulated near the low of the day, losing 20K.
Still wondering why I had to shut down my system. It was there to protect me, and so far I had been diligent not to exceed the size limit until Wed. I still want to believe this is one off, and I will be faithful to my size limits going forward. Sure it would still have been a losing week, but not by this much.
The ability to remotely shut-down the system was primarily for cases where the system is acting incorrectly, or on wrong market data, or extremely unexpected market scenarios (say May 6), not to override my position monitoring. I shall look at limiting this capabililty to only those defined scenarios.
Code:
Opening Balance: 239,032
Net loss for the week -25,930
------------------------------------------------
Net Balance: 213,102
Number of Trades 21
Number of Profitable Trades 9
Since Inception of Thread 01/10/2010 - 10/09/2010
Opening Balance: 410,000
Net loss(Less Margin Interest) 196,898 (Down 48%)
------------------------------------------------
Net Balance 213,102
Number of Trades 1094
Number of Profitable Trades 583
BREAK-DOWN BY AUTOMATED/DISCRETIONARY
Number P/L Best Gainer Worst Loser
AUTO 11 2,305.30 5,216.40 -5,821.40
DISCR 10 -28,235.20 3,672.50 -19,846.60
TOP/BOTTOM DISCRETIONARY TRADES
TICKER ENTRY DATE/TIME EXIT DATE/TIME QTY PURCHASE AMT SOLD AMT GAIN/LOSS TYPE
EQIX 2010-10-06-09-48-58 2010-10-06-13-21-44 7400 551095.9 531342.1 -19846.6 LONG
(above is total qty traded, maximum position held was 4k shares)Neke, I really appreciate the brutal honesty of this journal. It must take a lot of courage to write your logs when you know you had a week like you did this week, so I sincerely applaud.
That being said, if you are doing stuff like shutting off your position monitor, etc, and doubling down and making mental mistakes, I think you should take the rest of the month off and take a mental breather.
You are on tilt, and you need a mental reboot. I'm not telling you to quit, since your record previous to this year speaks for itself, but you should really take breather, at least for a week or two. You seemed to be off your game, and rebooting might help you focus again.
The markets will always be there. Your account unfortunately might not if you keep at it like this.
That being said, if you are doing stuff like shutting off your position monitor, etc, and doubling down and making mental mistakes, I think you should take the rest of the month off and take a mental breather.
You are on tilt, and you need a mental reboot. I'm not telling you to quit, since your record previous to this year speaks for itself, but you should really take breather, at least for a week or two. You seemed to be off your game, and rebooting might help you focus again.
The markets will always be there. Your account unfortunately might not if you keep at it like this.
Neke, with all due respect it seems your trading has been negative expectancy for a while now. Why not size down until you find some consistency. It seems to me that your equity is doing exactly the opposite of what you want, going down. And it is going down consistently. Why not size down to very small position sizes until you find some consistency once again and build some confidence? Remember capital preservation is key and you are only pissing away money. I am not very clear on your trading system(s) but your equity curve is telling the story. Why not size down, put a band aid on the bleeding until you build some confidence? Good luck.
Neke,
Great journal from a reader point of view. Much respect for having the brass ones for maintaining it. I am going to make this a little bit quick because any typing is difficult lately.
I think it was Ed Seykota who said "everyone gets what they want out of trading" or something close to it. Well sir you are getting what YOU want out of trading and from someone watching this multi-month car crash it is plain as day.
It would appear that the reason you shut down your computer is that your not interested in making money but rather your interested in the action and the avoidance of immediate pain. Your trying to fight who you ARE and that is a fight you can not win. You do NOT need to change your rules you need to change what your thinking and why your thinking it.
You made the limit size rule for a reason and the reason I would guess is that from previous trades you found that this rule would save you money by limiting your loss. You did not follow this rule because it was "TOUGH" or hard mentally to do. Call me a liar if you can but I bet you can't. The reason getting out of the trade was hard at the proper time was your fighting against yourself and your mental frame of mind. How can you win a fight against others when you are busy fighting against yourself?? You can't and from the outside it is plan as day.
How many days have you taken off from trading this year that was by your choice? I bet not very many if any. Take Monday off if you want my advice. Disrupt your routine so that you can start to break the mental merry-go-round that your on. If you feel that you can not take a day off due to all the money you may be missing out on then you know for sure you need to take a day off by the way....
You may have stepped over and gone to the dark side but the good news is that you can from the next day you trade start making money. Ending higher or lower for the year makes NO difference and hopefully you can understand that. What ONLY matters is from THIS POINT forward in trading you do your best and that you make money. Once you trade with an edge and are profitable there is no need to worry about what you did yesterday as we all know profitable trading takes care of everything and as long as you have working capital the sky is the limit.
Get yourself a copy of Mark Douglas "Disciplined trader" and read it this weekend. It will start you on the right path. Next step is this is a must is to get the audio book "psycho cybernetics" by Dr. Maltz and Kennedy. anyone who is trading and has not listened and or read Dr. Maltz's book several times is leaving a lot of gains on the table.
Next step is get some MP3 to listen to about mental trading attitude to put you to sleep at night and learning breathing/relaxation techniques
The good news is you CAN fix this and you can end this year on a very good note. It is much better to have this type of problem then a problem that is hard to fix like your algo is no longer effective.(or think about all those specialists that were killed when ECNs showed up)
Best to you Neke and I know how you feel as I have made every mistake in the book and invented a few myself. It appears you have what it takes to make it so it is just a matter of if your willing to look inside to allow yourself to be as good as you can be.
RW
Great journal from a reader point of view. Much respect for having the brass ones for maintaining it. I am going to make this a little bit quick because any typing is difficult lately.
I think it was Ed Seykota who said "everyone gets what they want out of trading" or something close to it. Well sir you are getting what YOU want out of trading and from someone watching this multi-month car crash it is plain as day.
It would appear that the reason you shut down your computer is that your not interested in making money but rather your interested in the action and the avoidance of immediate pain. Your trying to fight who you ARE and that is a fight you can not win. You do NOT need to change your rules you need to change what your thinking and why your thinking it.
You made the limit size rule for a reason and the reason I would guess is that from previous trades you found that this rule would save you money by limiting your loss. You did not follow this rule because it was "TOUGH" or hard mentally to do. Call me a liar if you can but I bet you can't. The reason getting out of the trade was hard at the proper time was your fighting against yourself and your mental frame of mind. How can you win a fight against others when you are busy fighting against yourself?? You can't and from the outside it is plan as day.
How many days have you taken off from trading this year that was by your choice? I bet not very many if any. Take Monday off if you want my advice. Disrupt your routine so that you can start to break the mental merry-go-round that your on. If you feel that you can not take a day off due to all the money you may be missing out on then you know for sure you need to take a day off by the way....
You may have stepped over and gone to the dark side but the good news is that you can from the next day you trade start making money. Ending higher or lower for the year makes NO difference and hopefully you can understand that. What ONLY matters is from THIS POINT forward in trading you do your best and that you make money. Once you trade with an edge and are profitable there is no need to worry about what you did yesterday as we all know profitable trading takes care of everything and as long as you have working capital the sky is the limit.
Get yourself a copy of Mark Douglas "Disciplined trader" and read it this weekend. It will start you on the right path. Next step is this is a must is to get the audio book "psycho cybernetics" by Dr. Maltz and Kennedy. anyone who is trading and has not listened and or read Dr. Maltz's book several times is leaving a lot of gains on the table.
Next step is get some MP3 to listen to about mental trading attitude to put you to sleep at night and learning breathing/relaxation techniques
The good news is you CAN fix this and you can end this year on a very good note. It is much better to have this type of problem then a problem that is hard to fix like your algo is no longer effective.(or think about all those specialists that were killed when ECNs showed up)
Best to you Neke and I know how you feel as I have made every mistake in the book and invented a few myself. It appears you have what it takes to make it so it is just a matter of if your willing to look inside to allow yourself to be as good as you can be.
RW
Taking advice from Bobby W - that's gotta be a new low.
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