my journal 2

New video by airelon on futures' margins and lock limits in particular:



Lock-limits don't exist in every market and happen rarely on the markets I am trading, such as CL. But if they'll happen on CL (10 dollars), I'd be screwed. My systems are not prepared for such an event.

http://www.investorwords.com/5643/lock_limit.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/lock-limit
http://financial-dictionary.thefreed...com/Lock+Limit

http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equi...mit-guide.html

I have been going through the CME's web site for half an hour, searching for the lock-limit rules but except for the link above I found very little, unclear and too spread out. I am surprised, after hearing airelon's explanation of CL's lock-limit and it works, that I am not finding anything on CL's specifications page:
http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/ener...fications.html

Ok, getting there....

I read this thread:
http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showth...ght=lock+limit

Then went on Corn's specs page and found what they're talking about:
http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/comm...fications.html

It's called "Daily Price Limit".

Then I went back on CL's specs page and it is not there:
http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/ener...fications.html

So what is airelon talking about? Could he be wrong? Or could the CME's CL page be wrong? I doubt it.

Now, this is good, because the ES does have a Daily Price Limit, too:
http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equi...fications.html

So that could mean the CL doesn't have one.

Now GC doesn't have one either:
http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/meta...fications.html

Ok, found a thread on CL:
http://www.traderslaboratory.com/for...mits-1563.html

Wow, what the heck...there's more on GOLD and OIL on other web sites than on CME's:
http://www.wikinvest.com/futures/Gol...ly_Price_Limit
http://www.wikinvest.com/futures/Cru...ly_Price_Limit

I've done enough work for now, but I would temporarily conclude that www.nymex.com is not a web site anymore, since the merger (or whatever it's called). And since that happened the Daily Price Limit table which they used to list nymex.com has disappeared from the web, and only stays in non-updated web sites, such as wikinvest.com and:
http://www.investopedia.com/universi...mmodities6.asp

This is where I'll start from when I'll continue my search:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...=&oq=&gs_rfai=

One more good link but which puzzles me even more, as the equity indexes are missing:
http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/Price-Limit-Update.html

Ok, I finally found the info for CL as well:
http://www.cmegroup.com/rulebook/NYMEX/2/200.pdf

Way to go, CME... a goddamn labyrinth... thanks a lot for not writing anything on the CL specs page.

Quite high levels recently. Since I quit discretionary trading I think.

I guess I spoke too soon:
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/trad...ml#post1081060

That **** sucker son of a bitch employee who has to give me the loan is making me wait forever. Maybe because we, as compliance, gave him a hard time for the past two years. Because he's a slacker and won't file the suspicious transaction reports on time and complete. Or maybe he just works like crap in every field, as far as granting loans and filing those reports. On the other hand, I did get my previous loans within 24 hours, so I don't know what to think.

On the other hand, it might be good that they make me wait for a week, so I can stop being restless, as it's happening indeed. They're forcing me to take a break. Ever since I stopped discretionary trading I've stopped stressing out, rushing home to watch my computer... we'll see. Of course if I don't get my loan within a week, I will call the lady and ask her if there's a problem. Of course the lady is a nice one, but the guy whose signature she has to get is that asshole I was writing about.

Over 500 posts of feedback so far on my 2 journals, from 74 different people.



Only a few of them posted on both journals, precisely 7. That's surprising. As time goes by that number will increase, since the new journal is only 500 posts long.



This is the file, in case anyone is interested:

who_posted_20100319.xls


Another interesting thing I found is that my percentage of posts on both journals, despite them being written at different times and having different users in them, is always slightly above 80%.



Also, comparing my journal to others, I am noticing that I attract very few (quality) readers and even fewer who post of course. Another thing is that I've benefited from what they post. So, once again, thank you, readers, for suggesting me things to read, change, test. I rarely listen, but when I listen, it always helped me. Like the famous excel formula for calculating maximum drawdown I developed with Weighbridge, which to date is the single greatest contribution I've received for my automated systems:
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/trad...tml#post953574

Believe it or not, I used to manually calculate the maximum drawdown, which is necessary for automated trading, by summing up the losses of each and every one of my 40 systems, on a weekly basis. By now I'd have given up, but advised by and with Weighbridge we developed that formula you can find at the post linked above.

Pretty good.

Something I noticed is that, in order to decide whether signals need to be reversed, I've been measuring the profitability/unprofitability of the past week on friday, but there's entries on friday night which can only be computed on monday. So this could screw up my trading somehow. The most proper way to measure therefore would be to measure the past week's profitability both on friday night and on monday night. But it's too complicated, and the difference is not enough to reverse a week's profitability usually. This past monday turned friday's weekly gains from 500 to 300, and it was an exception in many ways.

Indeed, another thing to mention is that this week we barely did not reverse signals, with just a profit of 300. So this week the above-mentioned change between friday and monday could have made a difference. And I could have missed reversing signals that should have been reversed.

Another interesting thing is that I have not been making a lot: 300 last week, and 1200 this week. But it's ok because I didn't lose.

An unimaginable achievement: I stopped scratching my head for 3 weeks
Even if I didn't do anything else, I achieved this already: I have not scratched my head for about 3 weeks, a problem which I thought was impossible to defeat. Before now, it hadn't happened for years.


Like for trading systems, it's not "all or nothing"
The trick was this: you shouldn't consider your vices/addictions as something to defeat all at once, but as something to cut back on, as much as possible. Because otherwise if you say "from now on, never again", the minute you fail, you just fail all the way. You want to be able to allow yourself some leash, and be able to partially fail objectives, so you can still work on them, rather than fail for good, and give up on the project altogether. Until now, before this great idea of the excel sheet, I used the wrong method, "from now on, never again", I failed within a few days, gave up for another two years, then started again... and since I failed so much I started thinking I could never solve the problem. The trick is to be a little more tolerant towards yourself. For example: I might be extremely stressed out two weeks from now, and I might scratch my head for a whole day, but that's just one day on my chart, and I've got two months behind me of good results.

Drawdowns happen in life as in trading
It's like a drawdown for trading. One bad day, one loss, doesn't make your system defeated forever nor worthless. Ever since i started monitoring on a table and chart, and looking at my fight towards negative addictions as the equity line of a trading system, I also started being tolerant towards myself and accepting a drawdown, and that's when I learned to stick to what is a profitable system to fight my addictions (the system is simply to monitor them). Just like with a trading system, you can't expect your system to win every single time. Only a chart and a table enable you to see that, and to remember you have progress and good results behind you, and that a bad day doesn't make your method worthless.

I've already asked if I can have your system, haven't I?

No slippage.

I don't want to get all pessimistic on you, but are you sure about that? If I get one tick slippage more on each trade than I estimate, it breaks the high frequency systems I am looking at. Yours must be different, or you're going to find out your wrong. Are you entering on limits, at mkt or on stops?

Wow, thanks, I am flattered. As I said, if you have any business proposals, I am all ears. I wish I could find ways to raise some capital, but so far I haven't figured out any ways other than trying to trade them myself (with no success so far, due to the problems I wrote about). So I took that mother ****ing loan, which hasn't come through yet, thanks to that mother ****er lazy employee, who still hasn't signed my papers. Because he's a slacker.

As far as slippage, I've said enough about why they don't have it (provided we agree on the concept of "slippage", cfr.post above): in short, they're not high-frequency systems like yours. The only way they'll stop being profitable is if they stop working (e.g.: the markets change, or similar), and not because I underestimated their transaction costs. I am pretty sure about this.

I mean: I know my many problems (discretionary trading, interfering with systems, etc.) but I also know what I am doing right. Besides, we're talking about forward-testing results (with real prices, in real-time, taken straight out of TWS), so most of the potential miscalculations are already out of the picture. With back-testing results I would have to be more careful.

Besides, I can give you advice on how to develop your own systems, in case we can't find any viable business arrangements. One thing is: do not try to make high-frequency systems. Unless of course you already found some that work. I was unable to find high-frequency systems that were profitable. The longer the timeframe, the better. Precisely because the longer is your timeframe the lower are your transaction costs. Imagine if you were making trades that last one week on the CL, and had a target profit and stoploss of several thousand dollars. How relevant would your transaction costs be? Totally irrelevant.

Regarding your question about my entries: I am entering at MKT, always. Same for my exits.