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Yamato
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Yamato
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Yeah, and I also have experienced that the fact that things are clear in my mind at a given time, or that I sound like I've figured it out, doesn't mean that I will trade properly next time. I've learned already a while ago that "never again from now" means nothing at least for me. It will happen when it will happen. It will probably happen slowly, a little bit at a time, piece by piece, like you learn a foreign language and one day you finally understand a whole conversation/speech/movie.
I am not ready to make money and I don't know if I ever will be. But I'll keep trying. I'll probably be ready when I'll be tired of being myself. Of being right. Of being proud of being right. That's a constant in my life: wanting to be right in everything I do or say. With trading this means top and bottom picking and not wanting to exit a losing trade. I need to take a lot more humiliation by the market to achieve the modesty needed to take losses.
You know, i've been improving my sleeping habits ever since I've accepted that I won't always sleep the perfect 8 hours. The minute you stop caring about sleeping well, you fall asleep (or back asleep) more easily, because you're not constantly worried about how many hours you have left to achieve the 8 hours.
So maybe the minute I'll be ok with losing, I will win more easily. Or rather: I will win less, and lose more, but I won't blow out my account when I lose that 1 time out of 5 or 10. Yeah, because in fact the guy who makes money loses more often than the guy who tries to never lose - except he is the guy who keeps on blowing out his account.
I am becoming more normal and less of a perfectionist. And this is helping my work, sleeping... I could not stand to work with the door open, and now I've got this moron who needs to be social and say hi to everyone walking by, so we keep the door open. And I am more tolerant... I have to be tolerant, with myself, too.
I am going to be the rider on the storm of my own compulsive behaviours, trying to take advantage of them and curb them where they hurt me most.
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Yamato
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Yamato
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goddamn ****er at work: complaint
I have a complaint against this mother ****er at work who's abusing me and I have no weapons to fight against him.
This is what he does.
Well, he does many things and I am willing to put up with everything except this one thing that I cannot stand and that is hard to tell him.
He cannot just work like I do for several straight hours, without caring about what surrounds him. He cannot just think and look straight ahead at the wall.
He has to turn to me and look at me each time he is either bored, idle, or I don't know whatever else his stupid brain may be busy with.
This goddamn idiot even volunteers to go buy me a sandwich all the time - he is almost a well-meaning idiot - but he cannot understand (I only told him once and cannot tell him again) that I am very bothered by someone turning around and looking at me every 15 minutes, even if it's just for 3 seconds.
I hate this ******* and would like to have him killed. It really bothers me to be looked at - it distracts me first of all.
I don't give a **** if it's because he'd like to talk to me or because he likes the way I look or because he wants to be inspired by my hard-working expression.
He does not have the right.
Next time I'll try to be strong and tell him that if he wants my help with something from now on he has to stop looking at me every 15 minutes.
I hate this *******, I want him dead, and he tires me a whole lot every ****ing day.
Die, die, die. *******.
Why can't all these animals around me just die? The neighbours, the idiots at work...
I will use this anger against these animals to propel me to make enough money to quit my job. I cannot accept... I cannot... no longer. This cannot go on for much longer before I get a weapon and kill them all.
Essentially all I am asking for is that all rude people die. It is not my job to educate these animals, and it would be rude to do so. I need to become a profitable trader so I can have them all killed. Or removed from my neighbourhood at least.
*******s, ****ing *******s, animals, rude mother ****ers... I will kill you all. Get away from my life, you animals!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKbPUzhWeeI
I have a complaint against this mother ****er at work who's abusing me and I have no weapons to fight against him.
This is what he does.
Well, he does many things and I am willing to put up with everything except this one thing that I cannot stand and that is hard to tell him.
He cannot just work like I do for several straight hours, without caring about what surrounds him. He cannot just think and look straight ahead at the wall.
He has to turn to me and look at me each time he is either bored, idle, or I don't know whatever else his stupid brain may be busy with.
This goddamn idiot even volunteers to go buy me a sandwich all the time - he is almost a well-meaning idiot - but he cannot understand (I only told him once and cannot tell him again) that I am very bothered by someone turning around and looking at me every 15 minutes, even if it's just for 3 seconds.
I hate this ******* and would like to have him killed. It really bothers me to be looked at - it distracts me first of all.
I don't give a **** if it's because he'd like to talk to me or because he likes the way I look or because he wants to be inspired by my hard-working expression.
He does not have the right.
Next time I'll try to be strong and tell him that if he wants my help with something from now on he has to stop looking at me every 15 minutes.
I hate this *******, I want him dead, and he tires me a whole lot every ****ing day.
Die, die, die. *******.
Why can't all these animals around me just die? The neighbours, the idiots at work...
I will use this anger against these animals to propel me to make enough money to quit my job. I cannot accept... I cannot... no longer. This cannot go on for much longer before I get a weapon and kill them all.
Essentially all I am asking for is that all rude people die. It is not my job to educate these animals, and it would be rude to do so. I need to become a profitable trader so I can have them all killed. Or removed from my neighbourhood at least.
*******s, ****ing *******s, animals, rude mother ****ers... I will kill you all. Get away from my life, you animals!!!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKbPUzhWeeI
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Yamato
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LONG on CL
Very soon, at the next 33 ma crossover, I will make a LONG trade. I just made back on the GBL the margin needed to trade 1 CL contract.
This is not a trade I can miss though, because I will barely have the CL margin, so if I miss, I am ****ed and I cannot trade again. Hmm, actually that would be the perfect situation to make 1 trade per day.
The fight to be rid of humans goes on... my quest for money and solitude.
In the end there will just be me and my servers. My polite servers. My well-mannered machines.
Very soon, at the next 33 ma crossover, I will make a LONG trade. I just made back on the GBL the margin needed to trade 1 CL contract.
This is not a trade I can miss though, because I will barely have the CL margin, so if I miss, I am ****ed and I cannot trade again. Hmm, actually that would be the perfect situation to make 1 trade per day.
The fight to be rid of humans goes on... my quest for money and solitude.
In the end there will just be me and my servers. My polite servers. My well-mannered machines.
Yamato
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it's happening
After getting my ass kicked for several days in a row with bottom-picking tendencies a huge bounce is now about to see the light.
Now I have to hang on and stay with it until the 33 ma gets crossed again by price on its way down.
I will now celebrate with some wine and canned meat. And a special song, just for this occasion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKbPUzhWeeI
After getting my ass kicked for several days in a row with bottom-picking tendencies a huge bounce is now about to see the light.
Now I have to hang on and stay with it until the 33 ma gets crossed again by price on its way down.
I will now celebrate with some wine and canned meat. And a special song, just for this occasion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKbPUzhWeeI
Adamus
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Re: LONG on CL
You say that, and yet you are using Microsoft? I suggest your tolerance of your machines is only due to an ignorance of quite how stupid the people are who programmed them.
I could rant for ages, but suffice it to say: kill Bill Gates! Kill them all!!! :medieval:
You say that, and yet you are using Microsoft? I suggest your tolerance of your machines is only due to an ignorance of quite how stupid the people are who programmed them.
I could rant for ages, but suffice it to say: kill Bill Gates! Kill them all!!! :medieval:
Yamato
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Keep ranting. This is the place for ranting. Any ranting is welcome here. What does ranting exactly mean by the way? Is it a synonym for "complaining"?
Let me tell you: even a windows 95 is more intelligent than most people surrounding me. More polite and well-mannered, too.
And I was forgetting to add a song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKbPUzhWeeI
Let me tell you: even a windows 95 is more intelligent than most people surrounding me. More polite and well-mannered, too.
And I was forgetting to add a song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKbPUzhWeeI
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Yamato
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exited, re-entered, exited, re-entered...
I've done it again. It's a miracle I am still up for the day. Despite what I've said yesterday, I've entered, exited... on and on... many times... the GBL, then the CL, then the GBL again...
I even did not follow the moving average.
I think I need a counseling team to counsel me during my trading. The minute I decide to start trading everything I've said goes down the toilet. Actually the minute I get home.
Ok, now I am still long on the CL, despite the moving average having been crossed downwards a long time ago.
Now the only song that applies to me is this:
Now i have 25 minutes till margin call, and 25 minutes to not lose 500 dollars. And I was up 300 just a few minutes ago. But I didn't want to follow the ma this time either. My reasoning is right, my theoretical method is right, what I do is wrong every time.
[...]
Somebody up there likes me. Only losing 400 now, and 100 for the day, on the CL, and zero if we count the GBL.
Now I'll keep it open until margin call, for another 20 minutes and pray in the meanwhile.
[...]
Ok, losing 300 now, and net profitable for the day. Still praying.
Losing 200 now, and net profitable for the day on both CL and GBL trades.
Huge rise - so lucky or so loved by God.
I closed at a small loss of just 100 dollars on the last trade and almost 200 dollars profit for the day on CL.
This means that starting on Monday and I can do more reckless trades on the CL.
Damn, do I suck.
Anyway, I've already started another trade on the GBL, Long.
I've done it again. It's a miracle I am still up for the day. Despite what I've said yesterday, I've entered, exited... on and on... many times... the GBL, then the CL, then the GBL again...
I even did not follow the moving average.
I think I need a counseling team to counsel me during my trading. The minute I decide to start trading everything I've said goes down the toilet. Actually the minute I get home.
Ok, now I am still long on the CL, despite the moving average having been crossed downwards a long time ago.
Now the only song that applies to me is this:
Now i have 25 minutes till margin call, and 25 minutes to not lose 500 dollars. And I was up 300 just a few minutes ago. But I didn't want to follow the ma this time either. My reasoning is right, my theoretical method is right, what I do is wrong every time.
[...]
Somebody up there likes me. Only losing 400 now, and 100 for the day, on the CL, and zero if we count the GBL.
Now I'll keep it open until margin call, for another 20 minutes and pray in the meanwhile.
[...]
Ok, losing 300 now, and net profitable for the day. Still praying.
Losing 200 now, and net profitable for the day on both CL and GBL trades.
Huge rise - so lucky or so loved by God.
I closed at a small loss of just 100 dollars on the last trade and almost 200 dollars profit for the day on CL.
This means that starting on Monday and I can do more reckless trades on the CL.
Damn, do I suck.
Anyway, I've already started another trade on the GBL, Long.
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Yamato
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optical illusions of the market
The three lines above are the same length but they fool us, just like the markets: a green candle looks bullish, but it often doesn't mean anything.
Usual mcphee video about this concept (posted it before):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im5xK9kkNm0
As far as I'm concerned only the systems so far have saved me from this.
The three lines above are the same length but they fool us, just like the markets: a green candle looks bullish, but it often doesn't mean anything.
Usual mcphee video about this concept (posted it before):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im5xK9kkNm0
As far as I'm concerned only the systems so far have saved me from this.
Yamato
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I am going to watch this decent criminal stuff:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkDH3jzWv8w
The movie sucked. They tried to repeat the Usual Suspects and similar stuff, but it was total crap. Besides if you try to do that you can't pretend it's based on a true story. It was crap.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Cahill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkDH3jzWv8w
The movie sucked. They tried to repeat the Usual Suspects and similar stuff, but it was total crap. Besides if you try to do that you can't pretend it's based on a true story. It was crap.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Cahill
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Yamato
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Going to bed feeling pretty depressed. Believe it or not it's not about the systems nor about my discretionary trading. It is simply about this guy who looks at me every 15 minutes. It bothers me and yet I can't decide to tell him he's bothering me.
Not good. A wasted life due to either intolerance or too much education, which keeps me from speaking up.
It has been a constant problem in my life and lately it is a constant problem, with the neighbours, with my roommate.
The problem starts with them being rude. And it continues with me being polite with rude people. I just cannot speak up because i was taught that speaking up means being rude. I am prisoner of my own education. It's not a choice. It is such a strong habit that I can't change it.
You are born and your first easiest instinct is being an animal, but then you are educated and the easiest thing becomes NOT being an animal. And you can't go back to being an animal even if you try, unless someone really gets you mad. But it is not the same for everyone. For some of us it is stronger than for others. For me it is quite strong, because my mom was very catholic and my dad from a military background. And I took the worst of both of them.
And now it's impossible to unlearn what they taught me. It's much easier to stay away from rude people who would require me to be an animal to deal effectively with them. Rude people should stay with rude people. Polite people should stay with polite people. The two groups do not mix. I should always try to identify immediately who is who and stay away from the people too different from me. The problem is that I don't get to pick my neighbours (it's not easy) and I don't get to pick my roommates at work. That's why one needs a lot of money, so he can tailor the world to his needs.
Not good. A wasted life due to either intolerance or too much education, which keeps me from speaking up.
It has been a constant problem in my life and lately it is a constant problem, with the neighbours, with my roommate.
The problem starts with them being rude. And it continues with me being polite with rude people. I just cannot speak up because i was taught that speaking up means being rude. I am prisoner of my own education. It's not a choice. It is such a strong habit that I can't change it.
You are born and your first easiest instinct is being an animal, but then you are educated and the easiest thing becomes NOT being an animal. And you can't go back to being an animal even if you try, unless someone really gets you mad. But it is not the same for everyone. For some of us it is stronger than for others. For me it is quite strong, because my mom was very catholic and my dad from a military background. And I took the worst of both of them.
And now it's impossible to unlearn what they taught me. It's much easier to stay away from rude people who would require me to be an animal to deal effectively with them. Rude people should stay with rude people. Polite people should stay with polite people. The two groups do not mix. I should always try to identify immediately who is who and stay away from the people too different from me. The problem is that I don't get to pick my neighbours (it's not easy) and I don't get to pick my roommates at work. That's why one needs a lot of money, so he can tailor the world to his needs.
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Yamato
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Yamato
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matching back-testing with forward-testing
I've just made the final test in my month-long matching of forward-testing with back-testing trades of my systems. I had been asked by my investors to make sure that the systems got executed exactly the way they were back-tested. This to exclude that any drawdown was due to a wrong implementation of the systems. I've done that for 10 systems. Very very tiring. It took me over a month (of course I work at the bank during the week, so I only worked on this in the weekends).
I back-tested my (now) 60 systems with tradestation on Disktrading data. And I forward-tested them (and traded them in some cases) on excel and TWS, of course with TWS data. And, an important thing to mention is that, if you put them all together, they have made NO money in their first year of forward-testing.
Some may not work period and some may be incurring a regular drawdown. But we had to really make sure that those that failed did so because also the original systems had failed and not because they were not implemented properly. Initially I didn't want to do it, not just because it is tiring but also because I didn't want to see anything being wrong with my work, let alone having to second guess myself and find and correct my own mistakes. But then they convinced me, also because I don't want to be considered lazy.
The answer I found is that the systems do trade quite closely to how they were back-tested, so if they lose it is just because they're either bad systems or because they're in a drawdown, but not because they're not implemented correctly.
However, there are definitely differences and it was useful to find the causes, and here's the summary of what I found out.
I will start from the end and get to the point: today, with my last test, I found that the differences are not caused by a difference in data. Disktrading.com data, despite being very cheap is very close to IB data. I've downloaded over a year of data from IB and set it up on tradestation and the trades get executed exactly the way they get executed on Disktrading.com data, with over 95% correspondence, see chart below:
The differences, since they are not causes by data discrepancies, are therefore caused by these two factors:
1) tradestation and its "session problem". It's not a bug but it's a problem in setting up future sessions on tradestation which I could not find a solution to, despite browsing on the web for months (I may search more in the future, but there's little help for ts2000i).Tradestation reads the new session only starting from midnight, actually 1 AM (it won't let me start the session before 1 AM). And since most data is EST or CST, this means reading data from 7 hours later, since the regular session begins at 18 EST. Now the consequence of this depends on what parameters your systems are using. Using the close from the previous day can be solved by making the day end when the session ends (the session can be ended sooner than the end of the day, but not started BEFORE the next day). The range is practically the only (huge) problem for me, because the high and the low of the day can only be calculated 7 hours into the session, and this makes a big difference. I suppose since I don't have other parameters sensitive to the session start (other than the range) we'd have to attribute the other discrepancies to the fact that signals don't get executed sharply every 15 minutes... which brings me to:
2) trades being executed not every 15 minutes (like they were back-tested) but in the surrounding minutes (due to having to execute signals from 60 systems). My systems all trade depending on the time of the day by the way. The situation gets observed every 15 minutes more or less. But that "more or less" makes the difference. And I know from my Rome vs US server comparison how much of a difference even a few seconds can make. I have these two servers and their clocks are synchronized every hour with nist.gov, yet every week one of them misses a couple of trades, and every month there's opposing trades being made. Now imagine what discrepancies will be caused by a 5 minute difference.
Yet despite all these discrepancies (#1 and #2) that I cannot fix, the systems more or less trade the same way. They may even execute different trades but overall their results are close enough, so that if the systems lose in forward-tested mode, they also lose in back-tested mode. And viceversa.
Overall I'd say that when #1 is involved (I only have 17 out of 60 systems that use range of the day) I get heavy differences and all in one direction (the range will always be smaller if you calculate it from 7 hours later and this will always allow or filter out trades in one platform). The differences will be such that one system will be making a 2000 dollars profit and the other a 4000 dollars profit, but they are still acceptable, until I'll have solved the problem on tradestation or I'll have dropped tradestation 2000i for a better platform (it will take a lot of work to do that). I mean: I won't stop trading systems because one makes less money due to these (explained) differences. Furthermore, these differences won't cause a profitable system to become unprofitable.
When #2 is involved (always), the differences are smaller, more random (in the long run they'll cancel each other out), and totally acceptable.
Oh, and I forgot a third culprit but it's not a cause of major differences and it has the same effect as #2: together they could have the same effect as the range problem or maybe still a little less. Such culprit is the moving averages, which get calculated polling prices every 2 minutes rather than polling price every 15 minutes, because it works much better this way in my opinion (if I lose connection to IB, I'd much rather have the data polled every 2 minutes, because that way one bad cell will have much less effect).
I've just made the final test in my month-long matching of forward-testing with back-testing trades of my systems. I had been asked by my investors to make sure that the systems got executed exactly the way they were back-tested. This to exclude that any drawdown was due to a wrong implementation of the systems. I've done that for 10 systems. Very very tiring. It took me over a month (of course I work at the bank during the week, so I only worked on this in the weekends).
I back-tested my (now) 60 systems with tradestation on Disktrading data. And I forward-tested them (and traded them in some cases) on excel and TWS, of course with TWS data. And, an important thing to mention is that, if you put them all together, they have made NO money in their first year of forward-testing.
Some may not work period and some may be incurring a regular drawdown. But we had to really make sure that those that failed did so because also the original systems had failed and not because they were not implemented properly. Initially I didn't want to do it, not just because it is tiring but also because I didn't want to see anything being wrong with my work, let alone having to second guess myself and find and correct my own mistakes. But then they convinced me, also because I don't want to be considered lazy.
The answer I found is that the systems do trade quite closely to how they were back-tested, so if they lose it is just because they're either bad systems or because they're in a drawdown, but not because they're not implemented correctly.
However, there are definitely differences and it was useful to find the causes, and here's the summary of what I found out.
I will start from the end and get to the point: today, with my last test, I found that the differences are not caused by a difference in data. Disktrading.com data, despite being very cheap is very close to IB data. I've downloaded over a year of data from IB and set it up on tradestation and the trades get executed exactly the way they get executed on Disktrading.com data, with over 95% correspondence, see chart below:
The differences, since they are not causes by data discrepancies, are therefore caused by these two factors:
1) tradestation and its "session problem". It's not a bug but it's a problem in setting up future sessions on tradestation which I could not find a solution to, despite browsing on the web for months (I may search more in the future, but there's little help for ts2000i).Tradestation reads the new session only starting from midnight, actually 1 AM (it won't let me start the session before 1 AM). And since most data is EST or CST, this means reading data from 7 hours later, since the regular session begins at 18 EST. Now the consequence of this depends on what parameters your systems are using. Using the close from the previous day can be solved by making the day end when the session ends (the session can be ended sooner than the end of the day, but not started BEFORE the next day). The range is practically the only (huge) problem for me, because the high and the low of the day can only be calculated 7 hours into the session, and this makes a big difference. I suppose since I don't have other parameters sensitive to the session start (other than the range) we'd have to attribute the other discrepancies to the fact that signals don't get executed sharply every 15 minutes... which brings me to:
2) trades being executed not every 15 minutes (like they were back-tested) but in the surrounding minutes (due to having to execute signals from 60 systems). My systems all trade depending on the time of the day by the way. The situation gets observed every 15 minutes more or less. But that "more or less" makes the difference. And I know from my Rome vs US server comparison how much of a difference even a few seconds can make. I have these two servers and their clocks are synchronized every hour with nist.gov, yet every week one of them misses a couple of trades, and every month there's opposing trades being made. Now imagine what discrepancies will be caused by a 5 minute difference.
Yet despite all these discrepancies (#1 and #2) that I cannot fix, the systems more or less trade the same way. They may even execute different trades but overall their results are close enough, so that if the systems lose in forward-tested mode, they also lose in back-tested mode. And viceversa.
Overall I'd say that when #1 is involved (I only have 17 out of 60 systems that use range of the day) I get heavy differences and all in one direction (the range will always be smaller if you calculate it from 7 hours later and this will always allow or filter out trades in one platform). The differences will be such that one system will be making a 2000 dollars profit and the other a 4000 dollars profit, but they are still acceptable, until I'll have solved the problem on tradestation or I'll have dropped tradestation 2000i for a better platform (it will take a lot of work to do that). I mean: I won't stop trading systems because one makes less money due to these (explained) differences. Furthermore, these differences won't cause a profitable system to become unprofitable.
When #2 is involved (always), the differences are smaller, more random (in the long run they'll cancel each other out), and totally acceptable.
Oh, and I forgot a third culprit but it's not a cause of major differences and it has the same effect as #2: together they could have the same effect as the range problem or maybe still a little less. Such culprit is the moving averages, which get calculated polling prices every 2 minutes rather than polling price every 15 minutes, because it works much better this way in my opinion (if I lose connection to IB, I'd much rather have the data polled every 2 minutes, because that way one bad cell will have much less effect).
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Yamato
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"begging trades" within the mas
Ok, as the "cool" people say now I will "chill out" and play some chart game and only take the trades that beg me. Let's see how it goes. I will post it here.
I like this song maybe because it represents 100% how i work: I never stop. And it helps me work. Because the song is repetitive like work is repetitive. And so while listening to this song over and over again, I keep on working forever... it has that workaholic pace that characterizes me. Just when you'd think I am done, I come up with some more ideas for work to do. Like the song, that seems to end, but then they come back and start singing some more.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKbPUzhWeeI
Ok, I've set up the chart game on two years, weekly candles. Now I am going through a bunch of charts and letting myself get used to skipping opportunities. Because that's my weakness: I don't want to miss a single opportunity, but this is just the opposite of only making the trades that beg you.
Ok, you see: this trade was begging me. It had gone up for months and now there was a hammer on top: a sign of weakness. It said: "i can go down a lot, but I barely went back up, just for you to go short from here".
This is what it looked like on the 2 years of weekly candles:
This is what it looked like when I switched to the daily candles:
Now i won't post every one of them, but you get my point. I made 16% on that trade that begged me and entered it with the confirmation of the moving average. My trade both begged me and took place within the moving average to avoid anticipating and denial in case I was wrong.
Let's see if I can make a lot of money with very few trades and with a high % of wins. I will post the link to the trades and a snapshot of all the trades.
I will make 20 of them, keeping in mind that I can miss opportunities.
Essentially, I have to teach myself that I can watch the markets without having to participate. Usually whenever I see the markets I feel the urge to participate. The good thing is that the chart game, despite being simulation, has the same attraction to me so if I can learn the feeling of refraining from participation here it may work in real trading, too.
After all that is what a "trading addiction" is: the inability to watch the markets without immediately participating, without feeling the urge to participate. And I definitely have that addiction.
After all this time, I have only made 1 trade, and that is only good. I am now switching to the 4 years view, because it shows a bigger period without hiding important details.
Wow. I have made about 5 trades by now (30 minutes later) and felt some strong emotions already. There was a stock which had dropped at 2 dollars and I didn't realize how dangerous even a "begging" trade could be. It did not go my way and in one or two candles I lost 40%. Then there was another signal below 1 dollar and I took it and it saved my curriculum.
I might want to avoid those trades with stocks that are at very low values.
Here's another trade that begged me:
Here's what it looked like on weekly candles:
Mind you - I am changing the ma length as i please and as I go. I went from 22 to 11. All that matters is that once I enter the trade I don't change it, and that I keep the trade within it. x < ma < x. I can enter after it gets crossed and I must exit by the time it gets re-crossed (with the entire candle lying on the other side of it).
So far 7 trades and a 27% return. Not bad at all. Only rules: the trade has to beg me and it has to be within the ma. The trade has to beg me. Not the market. Not the impatience. The trade has to beg me. There is a huge difference. It's not your frustration, your boredom begging you to trade. It has to be a call from the trade.
In both cases you feel an urge to enter the market. But you can easily tell when the urge is coming from the opportunity and when the urge is coming from boredom, restlessness, frustration, desire for money or escape. You can easily tell if you do focus on what you need to pay attention to: besides the market, you have to focus on yourself. This is discretionary trading. You need to focus on what the **** your discretion is doing.
Wow, check this out. As soon as I opened the new stock, the opportunity was right there, beggin me. But i was late, because I only got a chance to enter once the rise had begun, so I set the ma to a very reactive one, 7 periods, and I entered anyway, and made 27%, amazing. 8 trades and 61% return.
Begging trades within a moving average. This is it!
"Begging" really means "highly overstretched market". But it's easier to hear the trade begging you than to observe and identify a highly overstretched market.
Ok, test passed. In the last stock I got carried away and made 13 trades, but still traded within the ma and despite a bad start I ended up profitable.
http://chartgame.com/trackrecord.cgi?ew6cuy-18,12
Overall I made 21 trades with a 70% profit. Not bad at all. If I can always do it like this, this is awesome. Quite tiring obviously. I cannot do this more than once a day.
And throughout the game I've played this, over and over again:
I must remember how victorious I was with this discretionary trading today, because this means that I, too, can make money with it, if I overcome my need for action when I stare at a chart. The action has to happen only when a trade begs me.
Ok, as the "cool" people say now I will "chill out" and play some chart game and only take the trades that beg me. Let's see how it goes. I will post it here.
I like this song maybe because it represents 100% how i work: I never stop. And it helps me work. Because the song is repetitive like work is repetitive. And so while listening to this song over and over again, I keep on working forever... it has that workaholic pace that characterizes me. Just when you'd think I am done, I come up with some more ideas for work to do. Like the song, that seems to end, but then they come back and start singing some more.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKbPUzhWeeI
Ok, I've set up the chart game on two years, weekly candles. Now I am going through a bunch of charts and letting myself get used to skipping opportunities. Because that's my weakness: I don't want to miss a single opportunity, but this is just the opposite of only making the trades that beg you.
Ok, you see: this trade was begging me. It had gone up for months and now there was a hammer on top: a sign of weakness. It said: "i can go down a lot, but I barely went back up, just for you to go short from here".
This is what it looked like on the 2 years of weekly candles:
This is what it looked like when I switched to the daily candles:
Now i won't post every one of them, but you get my point. I made 16% on that trade that begged me and entered it with the confirmation of the moving average. My trade both begged me and took place within the moving average to avoid anticipating and denial in case I was wrong.
Let's see if I can make a lot of money with very few trades and with a high % of wins. I will post the link to the trades and a snapshot of all the trades.
I will make 20 of them, keeping in mind that I can miss opportunities.
Essentially, I have to teach myself that I can watch the markets without having to participate. Usually whenever I see the markets I feel the urge to participate. The good thing is that the chart game, despite being simulation, has the same attraction to me so if I can learn the feeling of refraining from participation here it may work in real trading, too.
After all that is what a "trading addiction" is: the inability to watch the markets without immediately participating, without feeling the urge to participate. And I definitely have that addiction.
After all this time, I have only made 1 trade, and that is only good. I am now switching to the 4 years view, because it shows a bigger period without hiding important details.
Wow. I have made about 5 trades by now (30 minutes later) and felt some strong emotions already. There was a stock which had dropped at 2 dollars and I didn't realize how dangerous even a "begging" trade could be. It did not go my way and in one or two candles I lost 40%. Then there was another signal below 1 dollar and I took it and it saved my curriculum.
I might want to avoid those trades with stocks that are at very low values.
Here's another trade that begged me:
Here's what it looked like on weekly candles:
Mind you - I am changing the ma length as i please and as I go. I went from 22 to 11. All that matters is that once I enter the trade I don't change it, and that I keep the trade within it. x < ma < x. I can enter after it gets crossed and I must exit by the time it gets re-crossed (with the entire candle lying on the other side of it).
So far 7 trades and a 27% return. Not bad at all. Only rules: the trade has to beg me and it has to be within the ma. The trade has to beg me. Not the market. Not the impatience. The trade has to beg me. There is a huge difference. It's not your frustration, your boredom begging you to trade. It has to be a call from the trade.
In both cases you feel an urge to enter the market. But you can easily tell when the urge is coming from the opportunity and when the urge is coming from boredom, restlessness, frustration, desire for money or escape. You can easily tell if you do focus on what you need to pay attention to: besides the market, you have to focus on yourself. This is discretionary trading. You need to focus on what the **** your discretion is doing.
Wow, check this out. As soon as I opened the new stock, the opportunity was right there, beggin me. But i was late, because I only got a chance to enter once the rise had begun, so I set the ma to a very reactive one, 7 periods, and I entered anyway, and made 27%, amazing. 8 trades and 61% return.
Begging trades within a moving average. This is it!
"Begging" really means "highly overstretched market". But it's easier to hear the trade begging you than to observe and identify a highly overstretched market.
Ok, test passed. In the last stock I got carried away and made 13 trades, but still traded within the ma and despite a bad start I ended up profitable.
http://chartgame.com/trackrecord.cgi?ew6cuy-18,12
Overall I made 21 trades with a 70% profit. Not bad at all. If I can always do it like this, this is awesome. Quite tiring obviously. I cannot do this more than once a day.
And throughout the game I've played this, over and over again:
I must remember how victorious I was with this discretionary trading today, because this means that I, too, can make money with it, if I overcome my need for action when I stare at a chart. The action has to happen only when a trade begs me.
Last edited:
Yamato
Legendary member
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Wow, fantastic discovery!!! (10 weekly candles)
I just came up with a fantastic method and discovery. I don't know how I did this, but this is even better than the previous one.
I don't even wait for "begging trades", method which once and for all does work.
I open up a chart, with the stock, and as soon as i open it I make myself start a trade in the most likely direction for the next ten weekly candles. Then after 10 weekly candles, I click exit, no matter what happens.
I've done it and I haven't lost once almost. I doubled the capital within just 8 trades. 151% actually, in 8 trades.
This is amazing. I am actually capable of taking any market and guessing right away the most likely direction for the next 10 weekly candles.
I suppose I could do this with any market provided that I am detached enough to be objective and to wait for ten candles, no matter what happens.
I'll now keep going until I make 20 trades, and post the results here.
I think I came up with this because I was thinking to myself "if I can make money with top and bottom picking it would be much easier to make money with trend-following" and "what if I did not have the option to wait forever and had to make a trade immediately: would I win such a competition?". And then I started playing such a competition: you have to start the trade immediately and keep it open for 10 candles. And yes: I can win this competition, too. Probably with real money, too.
Once i get used to this in the chart game, I can bring it to real trading immediately. Or even paper trade it for a while. Actually this method is total discretion and no rules, which might be an impediment. The only rule is the 10 candles after your entry and the fact that you have to enter immediately.
Yes, I make money, but i was just lucky in the first 8 stocks. The overall performance is 15% in 24 trades:
http://chartgame.com/trackrecord.cgi?ew6cuy-19,26
I will now try for another 20 trades to see if I can get the knack of it.
Did better now:
171% in 20 trades.
http://chartgame.com/trackrecord.cgi?ew6cuy-20,20
In a way the ma and the 10 candles do the same thing, in that they prevent us from our self-defeating tendency to cut wins short and let losses run. On top of it, the ma forces me to wait for an entry.
On the other hand, having to enter immediately forces to pick a direction, which in most cases is the trend, something I avoid doing when I do my own moving average entries. But it is something that is just as profitable if not more.
The "10 weekly candles" exercise is really good because it is forcing me to know and learn how the markets behave at all times, without letting me wait for the situations that I am most comfortable with (top and bottom picking). I think I am becoming so good at it that I can safely predict that out of every 20 stocks played I will always be profitable and even that I will make more than 100% return. This is an amazing discovery. Thanks, Chart game! Thanks, Matthias Wandel (host of the game)!
112%
http://chartgame.com/trackrecord.cgi?ew6cuy-21,20
-68%
http://chartgame.com/trackrecord.cgi?ew6cuy-22,20
For today it's enough practice. However, let's remember that these two methods are good stuff.
1) ma and begging trades
2) open trade from the beginning and keep it open for 10 weekly candles
The first method is much more tiring and time-consuming but it has the highest profitability. The second method produces money faster, but it's not as accurate. The first method will always be profitable. No doubts about this. The second method will have some unprofitable 20-trades set. I have tried 20 trades several times on both. Actually the first method I've tried only once, but it was enough.
The second method is very useful in that it teaches you... it forces you to understand and make predictions on all kinds of markets. And it's fun to trade the second method, because you don't have to think hard but just make a quick 5-seconds-long guess.
I just came up with a fantastic method and discovery. I don't know how I did this, but this is even better than the previous one.
I don't even wait for "begging trades", method which once and for all does work.
I open up a chart, with the stock, and as soon as i open it I make myself start a trade in the most likely direction for the next ten weekly candles. Then after 10 weekly candles, I click exit, no matter what happens.
I've done it and I haven't lost once almost. I doubled the capital within just 8 trades. 151% actually, in 8 trades.
This is amazing. I am actually capable of taking any market and guessing right away the most likely direction for the next 10 weekly candles.
I suppose I could do this with any market provided that I am detached enough to be objective and to wait for ten candles, no matter what happens.
I'll now keep going until I make 20 trades, and post the results here.
I think I came up with this because I was thinking to myself "if I can make money with top and bottom picking it would be much easier to make money with trend-following" and "what if I did not have the option to wait forever and had to make a trade immediately: would I win such a competition?". And then I started playing such a competition: you have to start the trade immediately and keep it open for 10 candles. And yes: I can win this competition, too. Probably with real money, too.
Once i get used to this in the chart game, I can bring it to real trading immediately. Or even paper trade it for a while. Actually this method is total discretion and no rules, which might be an impediment. The only rule is the 10 candles after your entry and the fact that you have to enter immediately.
Yes, I make money, but i was just lucky in the first 8 stocks. The overall performance is 15% in 24 trades:
http://chartgame.com/trackrecord.cgi?ew6cuy-19,26
I will now try for another 20 trades to see if I can get the knack of it.
Did better now:
171% in 20 trades.
http://chartgame.com/trackrecord.cgi?ew6cuy-20,20
In a way the ma and the 10 candles do the same thing, in that they prevent us from our self-defeating tendency to cut wins short and let losses run. On top of it, the ma forces me to wait for an entry.
On the other hand, having to enter immediately forces to pick a direction, which in most cases is the trend, something I avoid doing when I do my own moving average entries. But it is something that is just as profitable if not more.
The "10 weekly candles" exercise is really good because it is forcing me to know and learn how the markets behave at all times, without letting me wait for the situations that I am most comfortable with (top and bottom picking). I think I am becoming so good at it that I can safely predict that out of every 20 stocks played I will always be profitable and even that I will make more than 100% return. This is an amazing discovery. Thanks, Chart game! Thanks, Matthias Wandel (host of the game)!
112%
http://chartgame.com/trackrecord.cgi?ew6cuy-21,20
-68%
http://chartgame.com/trackrecord.cgi?ew6cuy-22,20
For today it's enough practice. However, let's remember that these two methods are good stuff.
1) ma and begging trades
2) open trade from the beginning and keep it open for 10 weekly candles
The first method is much more tiring and time-consuming but it has the highest profitability. The second method produces money faster, but it's not as accurate. The first method will always be profitable. No doubts about this. The second method will have some unprofitable 20-trades set. I have tried 20 trades several times on both. Actually the first method I've tried only once, but it was enough.
The second method is very useful in that it teaches you... it forces you to understand and make predictions on all kinds of markets. And it's fun to trade the second method, because you don't have to think hard but just make a quick 5-seconds-long guess.
Last edited:
Yamato
Legendary member
- Messages
- 9,840
- Likes
- 246
thinking out loud about crossing above
I am going to do this last effort and build my 61st system, after which I will retire. Here in Italy we retire at 65 but since I've worked so hard I am entitled to retire at 61.
Now, all my systems using a moving average use the concept of being above or below the average, but none used until now the concept of "crossing above".
This seems to be hard to automate on excel, so I am going to need to think about this out loud on the journal.
Being above the average is simple. You poll price from TWS every 2 minutes and use a function to calculate the average of all those 2-minute updates. Then you use another function saying "if (the last) price is above that average then this condition is satisfied".
I need something saying... "if price just crossed above that average (between 4 and 5 pm)...".
The average is all set up. How do i tell excel "if price JUST crossed..." that value?
I don't like using those Worksheet_Change and similar vba procedures because they tire my excel workbook a whole lot.
So what I prefer to do is observe how things are at a given time, and, since my systems are tested on 15 minute timeframe, I check how things are every 15 minutes.
Let's see if i can do this thing with the same method or if I have to use the Worksheet_Change method, which I don't like.
The reasoning seems to be this: Excel doesn't watch anything unless I tell it to.
So excel will not know if price has just crossed above the average, because it wasn't watching. It will only know if price is above the average, but that is no good because I want to catch that momentum.
So I can either poll that condition every 15 minutes between 4 and 5, so only 4 times... or... I could poll at quarter to 4 and ask "is price above the average?" But that...
Ok, I am getting there...
I place the usual function on cell 1, checking if price is above the average. If it's above it returns TRUE. So far nothing new.
3.45: a macro copies cell 1 to cell 2: "is price above average at 3.45?"
4.00: a macro checks if cell 2 = FALSE and if now cell 1 = TRUE: if that's the case the ma has been crossed (because 15 minutes ago price was below the average) and the trade is made. Otherwise the macro proceeds to copy cell 1 to cell 2 again. And so on until 5.15 PM. As soon as the trade it's made the macro exits.
This is a perfect implementation of my easylanguage back-tested code.
How tiring is this stuff to excel?
The functions do not count because that's nothing for excel. The macro checking if requirements are met doesn't count because i have one such macro for every system. The only extra work is the macro copying a cell to another cell 6 times, and I can plug that one inside the other macro, so everything is in one place. I think this is great.
I am going to do this last effort and build my 61st system, after which I will retire. Here in Italy we retire at 65 but since I've worked so hard I am entitled to retire at 61.
Now, all my systems using a moving average use the concept of being above or below the average, but none used until now the concept of "crossing above".
This seems to be hard to automate on excel, so I am going to need to think about this out loud on the journal.
Being above the average is simple. You poll price from TWS every 2 minutes and use a function to calculate the average of all those 2-minute updates. Then you use another function saying "if (the last) price is above that average then this condition is satisfied".
I need something saying... "if price just crossed above that average (between 4 and 5 pm)...".
The average is all set up. How do i tell excel "if price JUST crossed..." that value?
I don't like using those Worksheet_Change and similar vba procedures because they tire my excel workbook a whole lot.
So what I prefer to do is observe how things are at a given time, and, since my systems are tested on 15 minute timeframe, I check how things are every 15 minutes.
Let's see if i can do this thing with the same method or if I have to use the Worksheet_Change method, which I don't like.
The reasoning seems to be this: Excel doesn't watch anything unless I tell it to.
So excel will not know if price has just crossed above the average, because it wasn't watching. It will only know if price is above the average, but that is no good because I want to catch that momentum.
So I can either poll that condition every 15 minutes between 4 and 5, so only 4 times... or... I could poll at quarter to 4 and ask "is price above the average?" But that...
Ok, I am getting there...
I place the usual function on cell 1, checking if price is above the average. If it's above it returns TRUE. So far nothing new.
3.45: a macro copies cell 1 to cell 2: "is price above average at 3.45?"
4.00: a macro checks if cell 2 = FALSE and if now cell 1 = TRUE: if that's the case the ma has been crossed (because 15 minutes ago price was below the average) and the trade is made. Otherwise the macro proceeds to copy cell 1 to cell 2 again. And so on until 5.15 PM. As soon as the trade it's made the macro exits.
This is a perfect implementation of my easylanguage back-tested code.
How tiring is this stuff to excel?
The functions do not count because that's nothing for excel. The macro checking if requirements are met doesn't count because i have one such macro for every system. The only extra work is the macro copying a cell to another cell 6 times, and I can plug that one inside the other macro, so everything is in one place. I think this is great.
Last edited:
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