NoRhino's Trading Journey

Week 2: Day 3 and 4

Didn't get time yesterday to blog, but it was my best day so far! I ran my profits 1 tick which really helped increase my profit for the day. Today was a more interesting day as always I was trading the TED spread, euribor - schatz spread., by early morning I was up 125 euros and then I went long on the low of the day, for a second time, this point had held many times before although it was making lower highs so even though I wasn't as convinced for some reason I got in and someone flipped the euribor and I got filled on the schatz and had to take the next price in the euribor. So I didn't get the price I wanted and I then averaged in when the market was highly volatile, moving between levels rapidly and I averaged in at the same price unfortunately.... I was kinda annoyed and a better price came on so I took that as well. I then was told to unwind my position because it was quite big, so I scratched the last average and took a half tick loss on my second average in. It wasn't really going my way, nor was it really going against me but at one point I was down 300 euros for the trade, so I decided to take a loss. I had infact legged out when I took a half tick loss,otherwise it would have been a whole tick and then I had realised the schatz was going up and down around the same place, so I bought it back at the low of this movement but soon as I did it broke through it and as I was leaning on the bid on the euribor and I hit it just before it vanished. So I took a 1.5 tick loss for my original trade, so 2 ticks overall, which wasn't bad especially considering it broke down further and I got a pretty good price for what was available. It did pop up briefly 1 hour later about 1 tick above where I went long but it didn't last and it soon tried to break through the low of the day.

I saw loads of selling in the euribor (a 5000 lot was sold) and I decided it was pretty weak and sold the low of the day and the schatz moved up 3 ticks and the euribor didn't move. Therefore I had so far sold the euribor and bought the schatz, so I could sell the schatz 3 ticks higher for 75 euros in profit but I would then have to go at market on the euribor otherwise I would be unhedged, going at market and closing the position would give 50 euro loss on the euribor and so 25 euros profit for the trade. Therefore as the offer on the euribor was 5000 (pretty big) I decided to sell the schatz before it retraced back down and I queued on the bid in the euribor, if I got filled I would make 75 euros otherwise if the offer started to go I would get ready to lift it and take just 25 euros. The schatz came back down and the euribor held steady so I decided to rebuy the schatz and it once again went back up and I sold it again and the euribor started to go bid and I lifted the offer and locked in a nice profit bringing me back up to where I was in the morning. This was the first time I had done something quite like that and it makes trading a lot more fun.
 
Thought I might as well update this thread as things are going well and I have now started my 4th month as a trader! I am upping my size and pushing for 300 euros a day gross rather than 150 and hope to increase my size again within august! Still a long road ahead and have found it so far challenging just to overcome the costs but making good progress, I still blog about it somewhat regularly too.
 
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