The BS sim journal...Add your own BS!

[qlai]

A word of caution

More like a paragraph Sorry I am knocking it down (for myself that is) due to it being too subjective.

 

[volpri]

More like a paragraph Sorry I am knocking it down (for myself that is) due to it being too subjective.

Roflmao...ok a paragraph of caution The markets are filled with uncertainty. But there are signs of pressure if a trader knows what to look for. Math does not make the markets any more certain stats too are uncertain. Roflmao

 

[Overnight]

@Gotcha I found an aha moment here regarding the display of trades in NT with these custom bars, and it is eye-opening. I never looked for it before, because what I saw during the day is NOT what is displayed here, and I am ferklempt.

I am easing myself back into live, and after the close today, I decided to look back on the chart displays...

Here's today's trades, sim and live...

Oh, summary first so you can blah it. Yes yes, I get it, heh. Then follow the individual trades. The trades with the account number starting with 9 are the live ones...

Trade #s 8,9 (really one trade) and 29 are the live ones.

Now check this shit out...

What you see there is real trade #29. See the pink sideways triangle on the exit? Good God man, THAT IS NOT WHAT THE CHART LOOKED LIKE AT THE TIME OF THE EXIT. I have no idea why Ninja is showing this. For shits and giggles I opened up a 5 min chart for the plot of that trade, and here is what it looked like...

NT7 is fucking possessed or something. I need to go into the broker statement when I get it tomorrow morning and check the time stamps with the Ninja logs. So maybe I am not crazy?

 

[Gotcha]

See the pink sideways triangle on the exit? Good God man, THAT IS NOT WHAT THE CHART LOOKED LIKE AT THE TIME OF THE EXIT.

I have no idea how to read these charts, but it certainly looks like the exit is in the middle of nowhere since the bar doesn't actually go that high. Obviously price did reach this high level, since you obviously exited at that price, but ya, something strange is going on. Funny you decided to buy so high into the move.

As for the results, well, who can knock if when you have a profit over 3k. But since you were down over 1k to begin with, who is to say what you would have done in live trading at this very same point.

I'm not sure why you are trading two contracts though. It doesn't seem like your strategy relies on scaling out, so all you're doing is adding more pressure in my opinion. If you're too scared to trade live, then perhaps its because you're scared to lose money. But if you're scared to lose money, then why are you doubling the risk right off the bat?

Honestly, I think a trader needs to first show themselves that they can take trades live exactly how they practised in sim. Then they need to prove to themselves that no matter what happens, they will stay true to their trading plan, even after multiple losses. You see it yourself here as well how your first 2 trades end up being over 1k in the hole. And this was on 2 contracts. Then you mysteriously went to 1 contract for the subsequent wins. None of this makes sense to me.

If the goal is to trade live, then multiple contracts and multiple instruments are a bit of a distraction. If you really sit down one day and say you will trade live the entire day, what will you do? I doubt you would trade like most of these sim trades, so why sim this way? You need to trade in sim the way you will trade live. Since you're too scared to go fully live, whatever you're doing in sim is a waste of time.

You probably have $1000 to blow, so why not just set this aside for one day and trade how ever you want. If you hit this drawdown, just make sure you will stop, and then you can evaluate. I bet you will have done things much differently. If instead you make good money, then just carry on. But you will more than likely learn that what you were doing in sim you just can't do live and this will mean that you will need to make adjustments.

 

[Gotcha]

Now that I'm home, I was able to look at your entries and plot them on my chart. I have no idea what is going on. My data is even after a re-load, so it should be perfect. Green arrow is at your time stamp of 14:48:03, and as you can see, price just wasn't there. Your exit is even worse. Obviously, the fill must have happened much sooner, anywhere from around 14:48:30 to 14:48:38. There were 8 seconds where price was at 6759.25. But your time stamp of 14:48:59 is much too late. How does your data look at this time if you can plot a 1 second chart?

 

[Overnight]

Now that I'm home, I was able to look at your entries and plot them on my chart. I have no idea what is going on. My data is even after a re-load, so it should be perfect. Green arrow is at your time stamp of 14:48:03, and as you can see, price just wasn't there. Your exit is even worse. Obviously, the fill must have happened much sooner, anywhere from around 14:48:30 to 14:48:38. There were 8 seconds where price was at 6759.25. But your time stamp of 14:48:59 is much too late. How does your data look at this time if you can plot a 1 second chart?

Indeed, it looks the same. I just don't get it. Also notice how it plots the trades one bar shifted to the right, as compared to yours.

I checked the statement, and the prices reflected in the journal match (Unfortunately, the statement doesn't list trade times. Forgot about that).

I took a couple of real trades today, and one of them shows the same display error. Thankfully, it doesn't affect the actual trade executions at the price I have the limits set to. I never noticed it before because I rarely ever plot the text of the trades on the chart. Just never had a need to have that clutter on top of everything else. For now I'll keep them on when doing live trades and try to notice them as the occur in real time.

 

[Overnight]

Well, one thing I noticed as I adjust to day-trading is that I tend to have some cruddy losing trades first thing in the morning, and then by increasing position size and then focusing really hard I can recover and then find a zone. When in the zone I then reduce position size and get on with business.

As I zoned in I put some real trades on, but when the afternoon rolled around I was working on these posts, so decided to stay in sim for rest of day. But it flowed so beautifully.

Also, Gotcha, pretty much all the trades you see are at least 2 CTs. Only a couple of exceptions. The journal just displays a bunch of them as single lot trades due to how the CME processes them. As for the rest of the stuff you mention on the psych side, I'll continue that in the PM we have.

 

[Gotcha]

Indeed, it looks the same. I just don't get it. Also notice how it plots the trades one bar shifted to the right, as compared to yours.

View attachment 196956

I checked the statement, and the prices reflected in the journal match (Unfortunately, the statement doesn't list trade times. Forgot about that).

I took a couple of real trades today, and one of them shows the same display error. Thankfully, it doesn't affect the actual trade executions at the price I have the limits set to. I never noticed it before because I rarely ever plot the text of the trades on the chart. Just never had a need to have that clutter on top of everything else. For now I'll keep them on when doing live trades and try to notice them as the occur in real time.

This is very worrying. Its one thing to be off by a second, but we are talking crazy shit. I mean imagine if you were following a fast chart. How the hell could you trade it? I would find out where the problem is first. In real time, what do you see? When you get a fill, does it match with where price is at the moment?

I'll continue that in the PM we have

Still waiting. Do we even have a PM going??? LOL

I honestly think if your intention is that you're ready to trade live, stop with all this sim trading. You have shown many days now that you are up several thousand dollars. Its time to reproduce this in live trading. If you can't, then the real work begins of trying to find out why.

 

[Overnight]

This is very worrying. Its one thing to be off by a second, but we are talking crazy shit. I mean imagine if you were following a fast chart. How the hell could you trade it? I would find out where the problem is first. In real time, what do you see? When you get a fill, does it match with where price is at the moment?

Yes, when looking at the unirenkos in realtime, the order is sitting at a certain place. When the price as displayed by the bar reaches my order level, it fills. The thing is, I never looked at the actual execution plot on the chart until you noticed it and brought it up, as it never affected the executions. As mentioned, for the near future I will have the marker/text plots on the charts for the real trades and try to notice in real-time what it shows. But I KNOW that as I stare at the screen in real-time, I see that unirenko bar hit the limit order on the chart. Every time. Every trade.

Still waiting. Do we even have a PM going??? LOL

Yes, from a week ago, ye of fuzzy memory. I'll get back to you in PM when of the mind to talk about it again. Right now I'm in three-day weekend mode, let the mind rest.

Its time to reproduce this in live trading. If you can't, then the real work begins of trying to find out why.

I agree 101%. Endeavoring to do that, but am easing myself in, rather than just jump in all ape-shit-like.

P.S. Actually, I just realized what I can try regarding the chart discrepancies. The CME must have on record the time stamps on the order ticket. I could probably call them with the order ID number and get the time information to assure it matched what the NT journal is printing...Just gotta' figure out which department over there.

Or the broker? Although if the broker knows, why wouldn't they include the time stamp on the statement? *shrugs*

Neat, I love new things to try and discover a bit more about how the exchange functions.

 

[Gotcha]

Or the broker? Although if the broker knows, why wouldn't they include the time stamp on the statement? *shrugs*

Oh I doubt the CME will talk to you. I would imagine that if you dig deep enough, there must be some sort of a statement from the broker that has this information.

I honestly don't know what the problem can be though. Given that your 1 sec chart matches mine, and given that price was nowhere around where you fill is, then ninja must be making bad time stamps. If we look at your exit of 6759, this could have only happened in that 8 second window that was much sooner. So I would say the time stamps for some reason in Ninja are off. I don't know how this could be, but there is no way for you to get an actual fill at 14:48:59 when the last time price was there was 14:48:37.