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Yamato
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Hopefully it will be over in less than 30 minutes like my best trades so far, instead of a few hours like the worst trades (the longest one was 5 hours, the shortest one 14 minutes).
Yamato
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Ok. I have not found a way to fix it and customize charts on TWS that have multiple symbols. However now I'll know the purple one is the CL, the white line is the ES, and the GBP is blue.
Also, in the meanwhile, correlated ones have been rising for the past 10 minutes, but the EUR is still showing a profit of 60. This means that the fact that it had risen much more than the GBP for the day is now paying off. But for how long more will it help me? Or will they all resume the fall?
Also, in the meanwhile, correlated ones have been rising for the past 10 minutes, but the EUR is still showing a profit of 60. This means that the fact that it had risen much more than the GBP for the day is now paying off. But for how long more will it help me? Or will they all resume the fall?
Yamato
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Pretty good: thanks, moving averages. Thanks, pivots. Thanks, reader who told me about pivots. Thanks, everyone (to all the readers who helped me get disciplined, simply by caring). And thanks to all the sniper movies that I've watched.
The trade lasted 21 minutes in total. I was confident about it from the start. No uncertainties today (I've felt the same before 2000 dollars losses though).
Here's my trades as of today:
TRADES:
20091130: takeprofit
20091130: takeprofit
20091201: early exit with 1 tick profit
20091202: stoploss
20091203: takeprofit
20091204: early exit with 5 ticks loss
20091207: takeprofit
20091208: takeprofit
20091209: takeprofit
The trade lasted 21 minutes in total. I was confident about it from the start. No uncertainties today (I've felt the same before 2000 dollars losses though).
Here's my trades as of today:
TRADES:
20091130: takeprofit
20091130: takeprofit
20091201: early exit with 1 tick profit
20091202: stoploss
20091203: takeprofit
20091204: early exit with 5 ticks loss
20091207: takeprofit
20091208: takeprofit
20091209: takeprofit
Yamato
Legendary member
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Yamato
Legendary member
- Messages
- 9,840
- Likes
- 246
How could I ever get from 10k to 5k?
Hey... I did all these amazing sniper trades and I am still at less than 6k... by the way, how did I get from 10k to less than 5k in the first place? It happened so quickly that I don't remember.
Right... I vaguely remember I made a trade on the CL and maybe one on the EUR. Each one must have caused me a loss of 2000 dollars or something like that. Do you realize that to recover from that 4000 dollars loss, I'd have to win 20 sniper trades in a row? Was it worth it to be wrong twice and lose an amount equivalent to being wrong 20 times?
How did I ever get to trade so badly?
WRONG ENTRIES
Simple. First of all, I was doing the opposite of what I am doing now. Since I wanted to pick the exact tops and bottoms, I ignored the moving averages, and when I entered a position both of them were against me rather than in favor of the trade. Can you believe this? It's all true.
WRONG EXITS WHEN LOSING
Also, I ignored pivots. But this only explains why I was wrong more often than now. Now why did I lose so much when I was wrong? Not only did I not have a stoploss, but I doubled up when I saw my position was losing.
WRONG EXITS WHEN WINNING
Another question is: why did I make so little (200 dollars or so) when I was right? Simple: when the trade was going against me and I was doubling up my positions I would get so scared that when it turned profitable I wouldn't miss the opportunity of getting out of it at a profit, having experienced thousands of dollars in the red.
Hey... I did all these amazing sniper trades and I am still at less than 6k... by the way, how did I get from 10k to less than 5k in the first place? It happened so quickly that I don't remember.
Right... I vaguely remember I made a trade on the CL and maybe one on the EUR. Each one must have caused me a loss of 2000 dollars or something like that. Do you realize that to recover from that 4000 dollars loss, I'd have to win 20 sniper trades in a row? Was it worth it to be wrong twice and lose an amount equivalent to being wrong 20 times?
How did I ever get to trade so badly?
WRONG ENTRIES
Simple. First of all, I was doing the opposite of what I am doing now. Since I wanted to pick the exact tops and bottoms, I ignored the moving averages, and when I entered a position both of them were against me rather than in favor of the trade. Can you believe this? It's all true.
WRONG EXITS WHEN LOSING
Also, I ignored pivots. But this only explains why I was wrong more often than now. Now why did I lose so much when I was wrong? Not only did I not have a stoploss, but I doubled up when I saw my position was losing.
WRONG EXITS WHEN WINNING
Another question is: why did I make so little (200 dollars or so) when I was right? Simple: when the trade was going against me and I was doubling up my positions I would get so scared that when it turned profitable I wouldn't miss the opportunity of getting out of it at a profit, having experienced thousands of dollars in the red.
Yamato
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Here's my trades as of today and the time (CET) they took place:
TRADES:
20091130 17.20sh to 17.30sh: takeprofit
20091130 21.50sh to 01.00sh: takeprofit
20091201 17.50sh to 18.50sh: early exit with 1 tick profit
20091202 18.40sh to 00.15sh: stoploss
20091203 08.10sh to 08.30sh: takeprofit
20091204 10.40sh to 13.00sh: early exit with 5 ticks loss
20091207 16.10sh to 16.30sh: takeprofit
20091208 17.30sh to 19.00sh: takeprofit
20091209 18.40sh to 19.00sh: takeprofit
No conclusions can be drawn from these trades (but it's good to keep track of the hours), except maybe that one should not start a trade at around 22.00 CET, but this i knew from before and not from my 3 hours long profitable trade.
I'LL KEEP THE LONG LASTING TRADES, BECAUSE OVERALL STILL PROFITABLE
I consider any trade lasting longer than half an hour a bad trade, even though it may be profitable. So far, 4trades out of 9 lasted less than half an hour and they were all profitable. It could make sense to implement a rule that exits after 30 minutes, but since even longer trades may have a profitable bias, I don't feel like getting rid of them: even if the long lasting trades are just a bit more than 50%, I shouldn't discard the longer lasting trades, because overall they will be profitable. Also, the only way to really find out (easily) is to keep them, and so far they're overall profitable, so I am keeping them.
THE POWER OF THIS SYSTEM: LIMITED LOSSES AND GREAT ACCURACY
Now you understand that with such accuracy, I'll be able to increase my contracts as much as I feel like. Also, what will allow me to increase my contracts, is that I know exactly how much I will lose at the most. So, with everything taken care of, I just have to focus on my accuracy.
INCREASE YOUR ACCURACY AND THEN INCREASE YOUR CONTRACTS
Why would you care about having a 75% chance of making 100 ticks and a 25% chance of losing 100 ticks, when you can have a 95% percent chance of making 20 ticks and a 5% chance of losing 20 ticks. This is what I had missed, one of the many things I didn't understand until now. What matters is that you increase your accuracy. Once you do that, you can increase the number of contracts and that will do the rest. Why should you look for hard 100 ticks, when you have very easy 20 ticks? You just increase your accuracy and then you can increase the number of contracts, and not have to worry about anything else. One trade per day.
RISK/REWARD IS CRAP
As I said before, all this insisting, by everyone, on "risk/reward" as the major concept is crap: the major concept is accuracy, % of wins. The risk/reward talk, risk/reward babble, is misleading at best. You'll never learn crap if you think about that... maybe people tell you in order to make it harder for you to understand. The accuracy talk is simple and straightforward: how many do you get right? Less than half? Think of doing the opposite. But most of all: get a gun (a bracket order of any size you like) and keep using that same exact gun (after you've decided which size a gun you want) and your accuracy can't but improve over time. You will be the one fixing your trading so that your accuracy improves. But people instead tell you "always know your risk/reward" so these jerks make you waste 10 years trying to figure out what the hell this risk/reward is, while all they'd have to say: practice shooting at the markets with the same bracket order. But hell no... they are idiots. Don't know how to explain, don't care to explain... all because they're stupid and didn't care to understand in the first place. **** Gaspar Gomez! And **** the ****in' Diaz brothers! **** 'em all! I bury those cockroaches!
TRADES:
20091130 17.20sh to 17.30sh: takeprofit
20091130 21.50sh to 01.00sh: takeprofit
20091201 17.50sh to 18.50sh: early exit with 1 tick profit
20091202 18.40sh to 00.15sh: stoploss
20091203 08.10sh to 08.30sh: takeprofit
20091204 10.40sh to 13.00sh: early exit with 5 ticks loss
20091207 16.10sh to 16.30sh: takeprofit
20091208 17.30sh to 19.00sh: takeprofit
20091209 18.40sh to 19.00sh: takeprofit
No conclusions can be drawn from these trades (but it's good to keep track of the hours), except maybe that one should not start a trade at around 22.00 CET, but this i knew from before and not from my 3 hours long profitable trade.
I'LL KEEP THE LONG LASTING TRADES, BECAUSE OVERALL STILL PROFITABLE
I consider any trade lasting longer than half an hour a bad trade, even though it may be profitable. So far, 4trades out of 9 lasted less than half an hour and they were all profitable. It could make sense to implement a rule that exits after 30 minutes, but since even longer trades may have a profitable bias, I don't feel like getting rid of them: even if the long lasting trades are just a bit more than 50%, I shouldn't discard the longer lasting trades, because overall they will be profitable. Also, the only way to really find out (easily) is to keep them, and so far they're overall profitable, so I am keeping them.
THE POWER OF THIS SYSTEM: LIMITED LOSSES AND GREAT ACCURACY
Now you understand that with such accuracy, I'll be able to increase my contracts as much as I feel like. Also, what will allow me to increase my contracts, is that I know exactly how much I will lose at the most. So, with everything taken care of, I just have to focus on my accuracy.
INCREASE YOUR ACCURACY AND THEN INCREASE YOUR CONTRACTS
Why would you care about having a 75% chance of making 100 ticks and a 25% chance of losing 100 ticks, when you can have a 95% percent chance of making 20 ticks and a 5% chance of losing 20 ticks. This is what I had missed, one of the many things I didn't understand until now. What matters is that you increase your accuracy. Once you do that, you can increase the number of contracts and that will do the rest. Why should you look for hard 100 ticks, when you have very easy 20 ticks? You just increase your accuracy and then you can increase the number of contracts, and not have to worry about anything else. One trade per day.
RISK/REWARD IS CRAP
As I said before, all this insisting, by everyone, on "risk/reward" as the major concept is crap: the major concept is accuracy, % of wins. The risk/reward talk, risk/reward babble, is misleading at best. You'll never learn crap if you think about that... maybe people tell you in order to make it harder for you to understand. The accuracy talk is simple and straightforward: how many do you get right? Less than half? Think of doing the opposite. But most of all: get a gun (a bracket order of any size you like) and keep using that same exact gun (after you've decided which size a gun you want) and your accuracy can't but improve over time. You will be the one fixing your trading so that your accuracy improves. But people instead tell you "always know your risk/reward" so these jerks make you waste 10 years trying to figure out what the hell this risk/reward is, while all they'd have to say: practice shooting at the markets with the same bracket order. But hell no... they are idiots. Don't know how to explain, don't care to explain... all because they're stupid and didn't care to understand in the first place. **** Gaspar Gomez! And **** the ****in' Diaz brothers! **** 'em all! I bury those cockroaches!
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Yamato
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Taking it to the next level: 2 contracts
Taking it to the next level a bit earlier than I had planned, and tomorrow I'll start trading 2 contracts.
Counting on 75% of wins from now on
Essentially, from what I've seen so far, I am counting on getting at least a 75% of wins from now on, if not better. With 2 contracts, I feel that I can take as many as 3 hits (3 losses) before giving up, for lack of margin, and going back to 1 contract. The risk of having 3 straight losses is minimal. I will go for it, because I can't take my job anymore, nor this crappy mood I am in ever since my automated systems didn't have enough capital to trade anymore.
With the sniper system, you scale up quickly, because you won't lose control
With 2 contracts, I'll make 500 dollars per shot. Counting on about 4 good shots out of 5, that leaves me with 1500 dollars per week. By the end of the month, that puts me at 4500 more than now, which is over 10k. That's enough to trade many of my systems again (the best ones). Then, from there, if things go as planned, I'll trade 3 contracts, and make 2250 per week, plus trade my systems on top of that. I should be able to reach about 30k within the next 2 months, also because at 20k I'll switch to 4 contracts on the sniper system. I should have enough to quit my job by the summer.
Discretionary trading got me to rock bottom, and got me out of it
I can't believe I got out of this mess just with the same tools that got me into it: discretionary trading. But this is mostly a system and has little to do with the typical discretionary trading. I owe a lot to the reader of this journal who suggested me to use pivots. He's the same person who told me not to give up on discretionary trading and that I could learn to be profitable: he turned out to be right. Initially, when he was telling me so, I kept telling him "do not tempt me: I best stay away from it, because I'll never learn how to do it".
The last student to graduate, just like in college
As I leave the world of compulsive gambling and join the world of profitable discretionary trading, I feel sad because it took me so long to do it. Just like in college I was the last student to graduate, and even then I felt sad, graduating after almost 8 years, due to those two math requirements. This time I graduated late because of the two bracket requirement: stoploss and takeprofit. Eventually I had to give in and accept what everyone else had already accepted: "predetermined maximum loss". Just like in college some students dropped out of trading, but among the ones who graduated I am probably the last student of my class.
Taking it to the next level a bit earlier than I had planned, and tomorrow I'll start trading 2 contracts.
Counting on 75% of wins from now on
Essentially, from what I've seen so far, I am counting on getting at least a 75% of wins from now on, if not better. With 2 contracts, I feel that I can take as many as 3 hits (3 losses) before giving up, for lack of margin, and going back to 1 contract. The risk of having 3 straight losses is minimal. I will go for it, because I can't take my job anymore, nor this crappy mood I am in ever since my automated systems didn't have enough capital to trade anymore.
With the sniper system, you scale up quickly, because you won't lose control
With 2 contracts, I'll make 500 dollars per shot. Counting on about 4 good shots out of 5, that leaves me with 1500 dollars per week. By the end of the month, that puts me at 4500 more than now, which is over 10k. That's enough to trade many of my systems again (the best ones). Then, from there, if things go as planned, I'll trade 3 contracts, and make 2250 per week, plus trade my systems on top of that. I should be able to reach about 30k within the next 2 months, also because at 20k I'll switch to 4 contracts on the sniper system. I should have enough to quit my job by the summer.
Discretionary trading got me to rock bottom, and got me out of it
I can't believe I got out of this mess just with the same tools that got me into it: discretionary trading. But this is mostly a system and has little to do with the typical discretionary trading. I owe a lot to the reader of this journal who suggested me to use pivots. He's the same person who told me not to give up on discretionary trading and that I could learn to be profitable: he turned out to be right. Initially, when he was telling me so, I kept telling him "do not tempt me: I best stay away from it, because I'll never learn how to do it".
The last student to graduate, just like in college
As I leave the world of compulsive gambling and join the world of profitable discretionary trading, I feel sad because it took me so long to do it. Just like in college I was the last student to graduate, and even then I felt sad, graduating after almost 8 years, due to those two math requirements. This time I graduated late because of the two bracket requirement: stoploss and takeprofit. Eventually I had to give in and accept what everyone else had already accepted: "predetermined maximum loss". Just like in college some students dropped out of trading, but among the ones who graduated I am probably the last student of my class.
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Just catching up with some of the posts I've missed.
A lesson I've learned/am still learning: "It's better to not be in the market when you would've liked to be, than to be in the market when you don't want to be." Being in the market when you'd rather not be is hell (particularly if you're overleveraged and/or without a stoploss or some sort of exit plan...)
Yamato
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One gun, one shot, one kill. That's going to be my motto from now on. Always practice with the same gun. Accuracy. Accuracy. Accuracy.
You're right, wprins. The sniper doesn't care about not shooting at a potential target: what matters is that when he shoots he'll hit the target. However, I wouldn't go as far as saying that there are some days when I would be ok with not making my one shot, because the opportunities for 20 ticks during the day are many, and you should definitely be able to find a good enough opportunity to make your shot. I mean: I am actually limiting myself to just one shot, to counter my previous gambling tendencies, and not because there is just one good 20 ticks opportunity per day. I would say there are about 4 of them per day.
Anyway, today I am going for big leverage, the highest I can afford: but mind you, always with a predetermined maximum loss, which is what makes the difference. You can use as much leverage as you wish, as long as you're not out of control, like I've been in the past. Or you could use no leverage but trade even worse and be one of those investors who buy a stock and if it goes the other way, say "I can't sell now because I'd be losing too much". That's the typical non-trader investor (most my relatives talk like that). Funny that I talk about them like Martians, but I did just the same thing for 12 years, without even realizing it.
You're right, wprins. The sniper doesn't care about not shooting at a potential target: what matters is that when he shoots he'll hit the target. However, I wouldn't go as far as saying that there are some days when I would be ok with not making my one shot, because the opportunities for 20 ticks during the day are many, and you should definitely be able to find a good enough opportunity to make your shot. I mean: I am actually limiting myself to just one shot, to counter my previous gambling tendencies, and not because there is just one good 20 ticks opportunity per day. I would say there are about 4 of them per day.
Anyway, today I am going for big leverage, the highest I can afford: but mind you, always with a predetermined maximum loss, which is what makes the difference. You can use as much leverage as you wish, as long as you're not out of control, like I've been in the past. Or you could use no leverage but trade even worse and be one of those investors who buy a stock and if it goes the other way, say "I can't sell now because I'd be losing too much". That's the typical non-trader investor (most my relatives talk like that). Funny that I talk about them like Martians, but I did just the same thing for 12 years, without even realizing it.
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