Looking for a mentor ;)

[NetTecture]

Hello folks

I am a not yet again active person on the markets that has learned futures trading after school around 18 years ago. Been inactive, pursuing a career in IT, for the last 10 years.

I now plan moving back, combining my IT knowledge and infrastructure with trading.

I do not want doing that if possible without some guidance If anyone here does day / short term trading in the US futures markets (preferably energy / oil, currencies, stock futures)... I would really love to get in touch with someone to help me for some weeks to get back into the "proper mood". I HAVE been thinking about signing up for some of the trader programs that some arcades run

My plan is manual / systematic discretionary trading, based on technical analysis. I plan to develop some automatic systems on the side.

I do have the infrastructure in place for video conferencing and application sharing. No historical data, but I will start collecting some feeds before going real.

I will start trading with Mirus Futures and use NinjaTrader as platform for some time. Not too long, though - I rather plan developing my own order management system.

What I am looking for:
* Experienced trader, calm person to help me getting into the proper mood.
* Ability to proove track record. Sorry - I know all the confidentiality reasons, but fact is that 95% of the people make no money, and I rather look for an experience mentor
* Trading by price action & support / resistance.

Some interest in system development would be nice, to share more than just "enter trade here". I have created an extensive IT knowledge in the past Would be nice if that could somehow help giving something back

Trading is probably starting mid of May, though that may delay - there are some legal setups still in the work, and I need to finish my current final contract

Anyone willing? It would really be nice

 

[rathcoole_exile]

mate, you don't need a mentor.

success as a trader is not about entries, it's not even about exits.
it's certainly not about indicators and to a lesser degree not about timeframes.

the only true path to success as a trader lies in correctly managing a trade

more than half the time I don't even have my charts on screen. but i know in advance what i'm going to do at a certain price and i know what i'm going to do
a) if I'm wrong
b) if I'm correct
c) if the market flatlines

example-
pick a trigger price at random (a pivot or round number for example)

your plan is to buy/sell whenever price hits the trigger

your automatic safety stop is lets say 1 unit, your minimum profit target is say 2 units

if you accept that the markets are truly random and that price could move in any one of 3 directions, the split second you initiate your trade then in theory you should be correct 50% of the time.
Even if the law of averages decides to screw you and you're only correct 1 in 3 trades, you would still breakeven (not allowing here for comms, fees etc)

if your plan allows you to move your stop to 1.75 as it approaches 2 points profit, sometimes you'll get stopped out for 1.75 profit. other times your trade will take flight and earn you 5,10, 20 units......and that is where the real money is earned, where you become financially successful as a trader

what does this illustrate ?
money management is key
having a plan is key
sticking to your plan is key
fundamentals, indicators, timeframes and trend are irrelevant and redundant

Ok, I exaggerate, you could use fundies, trend etc to determine what your plan will be at any particular trigger, ie to go long or short, but once the plan is in place, they all become unnecessary to you.

imho, the willingness to commit to a plan, the willingness to take losses and the strength to keep repeating those trade set-ups are what will make you a successful trader.

if you can't accept that only 2 or 3 trades out of 10 will be small winners, and that 2 or 3 will be scratched for even and that 3 or 4, even 5 will be losers, with possibly only 1 in 10 trades being "payday" then you shouldn't even consider trading

finally,
if you have decided on a trade and it goes against you, don't be afraid to get stuck back in if you get stopped out early.
i've no time for babies who whine that they got the direction right but the market noise or the devils disguised as market-makers deliberately hunted out there stops, only to see the market zoom off in the anticipated direction but leaving them behind.

have respect for your own judgement and get back in ! and again and again and again ....


good luck, hope it helps,
r_e

 

[NetTecture]

I fully agree. Heck, I was working with futures when I was 21 And around 30 I was living from trading for years And not living bad Stopped all when my second wife and me - well Lets say I was in no mood to trade then, and decided to do something else.

That is what I mostly want from a mentor setup - some reflection. I live not exactly in an area with arcades etc., and I know that my main problem is going to be psychological Sticking to a plan. The theory is there. The psychological aspect.... I would like to be able to reflect.

 

[anley]

The word 'mentor' has been successfully hijacked by the marketers.

So if you want one, get your credit card out it's as simple as that........

 

[NetTecture]

I would prefer not to, but if someone can proove that he has a positive track record and a good mentor personality, seriously, I am more than willing to.

Contrary to some people I am going to put more than a couple of hundred dollars into the market.

 

[Adamus]

Net,

put your credit card away, you'd be wasting your money. There's no-one out there who'll mentor you in the way that you want.

You've got this forum, all the posters here will read whatever you post and give you more feedback than you can ever get from a paid-for so-called mentor. Of course lots of the back-chat will be rubbish, but you should be able to spot that.

Here, I'll start.

My plan is manual / systematic discretionary trading, based on technical analysis.

What's that all about? Surely "systematic discretionary" is an oxymoron?

 

[NetTecture]

Net,

put your credit card away, you'd be wasting your money. There's no-one out there who'll mentor you in the way that you want.

You've got this forum, all the posters here will read whatever you post and give you more feedback than you can ever get from a paid-for so-called mentor. Of course lots of the back-chat will be rubbish, but you should be able to spot that.

Here, I'll start.



What's that all about? Surely "systematic discretionary" is an oxymoron?

Call it programmer talk I am working on getting the discretionary parts out. When I was trading 10 years ago, automatisms were not that available easily Never went to TradeStatsion. I have a systematic approach, but it is not good enough for me yet to call it systematic, because it has elements where I make decisions myself (whether to take the trade or not). I am currently trying to get those out. It also works not really with indicators, but with resistances, supports etc. - which I thing a little hard to describe without human factor. I would not call it systematic unless I can basically describe it in a programmatic way (though programming it may be harder - some things are just harder to express for a computer). It definitly is an oxymoron

 

[karl6666]

mate, you don't need a mentor.

success as a trader is not about entries, it's not even about exits.
it's certainly not about indicators and to a lesser degree not about timeframes.

the only true path to success as a trader lies in correctly managing a trade

more than half the time I don't even have my charts on screen. but i know in advance what i'm going to do at a certain price and i know what i'm going to do
a) if I'm wrong
b) if I'm correct
c) if the market flatlines

example-
pick a trigger price at random (a pivot or round number for example)

your plan is to buy/sell whenever price hits the trigger

your automatic safety stop is lets say 1 unit, your minimum profit target is say 2 units

if you accept that the markets are truly random and that price could move in any one of 3 directions, the split second you initiate your trade then in theory you should be correct 50% of the time.
Even if the law of averages decides to screw you and you're only correct 1 in 3 trades, you would still breakeven (not allowing here for comms, fees etc)

if your plan allows you to move your stop to 1.75 as it approaches 2 points profit, sometimes you'll get stopped out for 1.75 profit. other times your trade will take flight and earn you 5,10, 20 units......and that is where the real money is earned, where you become financially successful as a trader

what does this illustrate ?
money management is key
having a plan is key
sticking to your plan is key
fundamentals, indicators, timeframes and trend are irrelevant and redundant

Ok, I exaggerate, you could use fundies, trend etc to determine what your plan will be at any particular trigger, ie to go long or short, but once the plan is in place, they all become unnecessary to you.

imho, the willingness to commit to a plan, the willingness to take losses and the strength to keep repeating those trade set-ups are what will make you a successful trader.

if you can't accept that only 2 or 3 trades out of 10 will be small winners, and that 2 or 3 will be scratched for even and that 3 or 4, even 5 will be losers, with possibly only 1 in 10 trades being "payday" then you shouldn't even consider trading

finally,
if you have decided on a trade and it goes against you, don't be afraid to get stuck back in if you get stopped out early.
i've no time for babies who whine that they got the direction right but the market noise or the devils disguised as market-makers deliberately hunted out there stops, only to see the market zoom off in the anticipated direction but leaving them behind.

have respect for your own judgement and get back in ! and again and again and again ....


good luck, hope it helps,
r_e

nice.

 

[jaygo]

mate, you don't need a mentor.

success as a trader is not about entries, it's not even about exits.
it's certainly not about indicators and to a lesser degree not about timeframes.

the only true path to success as a trader lies in correctly managing a trade

more than half the time I don't even have my charts on screen. but i know in advance what i'm going to do at a certain price and i know what i'm going to do
a) if I'm wrong
b) if I'm correct
c) if the market flatlines

example-
pick a trigger price at random (a pivot or round number for example)

your plan is to buy/sell whenever price hits the trigger

your automatic safety stop is lets say 1 unit, your minimum profit target is say 2 units

if you accept that the markets are truly random and that price could move in any one of 3 directions, the split second you initiate your trade then in theory you should be correct 50% of the time.
Even if the law of averages decides to screw you and you're only correct 1 in 3 trades, you would still breakeven (not allowing here for comms, fees etc)

if your plan allows you to move your stop to 1.75 as it approaches 2 points profit, sometimes you'll get stopped out for 1.75 profit. other times your trade will take flight and earn you 5,10, 20 units......and that is where the real money is earned, where you become financially successful as a trader

what does this illustrate ?
money management is key
having a plan is key
sticking to your plan is key
fundamentals, indicators, timeframes and trend are irrelevant and redundant

Ok, I exaggerate, you could use fundies, trend etc to determine what your plan will be at any particular trigger, ie to go long or short, but once the plan is in place, they all become unnecessary to you.

imho, the willingness to commit to a plan, the willingness to take losses and the strength to keep repeating those trade set-ups are what will make you a successful trader.

if you can't accept that only 2 or 3 trades out of 10 will be small winners, and that 2 or 3 will be scratched for even and that 3 or 4, even 5 will be losers, with possibly only 1 in 10 trades being "payday" then you shouldn't even consider trading

finally,
if you have decided on a trade and it goes against you, don't be afraid to get stuck back in if you get stopped out early.
i've no time for babies who whine that they got the direction right but the market noise or the devils disguised as market-makers deliberately hunted out there stops, only to see the market zoom off in the anticipated direction but leaving them behind.

have respect for your own judgement and get back in ! and again and again and again ....


good luck, hope it helps,
r_e

rathcoole,
your post just got cut and pasted into my best-ever-t2wposts folder.
well done:cheesy:

 

[rathcoole_exile]

rathcoole,
your post just got cut and pasted into my best-ever-t2wposts folder.
well done:cheesy:

thanks, that's a very nice thing to say

cheers,
r_e

 

[Adamus]

I would not call it systematic unless I can basically describe it in a programmatic way (though programming it may be harder - some things are just harder to express for a computer). It definitly is an oxymoron

Sure, I know that feeling. So that's what you're working on mainly? Trying to program your discretionary decision-making?

So does it work? Are you getting anywhere with it?

 

[NetTecture]

Actually I am right now working on getting an IT team of 27 people fired Contrat with a customer, wtotally outsourcing his IT department. Leaves me a little time to read on forums, and start doing some basic work, but besides that not too much. And I am getting the accounts opened, which just is a little complicated (expat, usines, need to provide all kinds of papers in translated form).

Besides that I am actually working on a database for exchange information, mostly price. Downloaded more or less the whole eoddata.com overnight andwill prepare it for insertion into my database the next days, then start collecting real time feeds from some other sources soon. I have some trading ideas, but I need some proper tools to test them, and I am not really satisfied with what I get so far Ninja-Trader is not exactly a piece of program I have respect from

Systematically I have some systems here that I worked and with on a long time ago. Mostly breakout systems, mechanical in nature but not using statisticsal indices, together with some statistical index (even as low as a moving average) to find out what diretion the market has been moving lately (because I trade counter-trend a lot more carefull than trend).

Backtesting them so far has been a desaster. I tried for some days with Ninja, the results were crazy bad - and then following even the most simple of them, I could clearly see that it did not enver where it should, but givene that Ninja has zero support for a debugger I had real problems even finding out WHY. The code looked fine. The main issue was that aftrer being stopped out, in a strong counter-move (and going through an easy reversal level), Ninja backtesting would still not open the counter-trade for another 30 or so bars. Must be something wrong with my state engine, but I rather prefer working with something - the level of Visual Stsudio So I am gettting into developing my own little database and testing framework. I can only learn from a deeper exposure to the market I Hope to have some things readywithin a month. Indicendally I can not really trade another 2 months about, because that is when my current commitment runs out

 

[Adamus]

Besides that I am actually working on a database for exchange information, mostly price. Downloaded more or less the whole eoddata.com overnight andwill prepare it for insertion into my database the next days, then start collecting real time feeds from some other sources soon. I have some trading ideas, but I need some proper tools to test them, and I am not really satisfied with what I get so far Ninja-Trader is not exactly a piece of program I have respect from

Systematically I have some systems here that I worked and with on a long time ago. Mostly breakout systems, mechanical in nature but not using statisticsal indices, together with some statistical index (even as low as a moving average) to find out what diretion the market has been moving lately (because I trade counter-trend a lot more carefull than trend).

Building your own price database should be fun. At least it will keep you off the streets. Interesting view about Ninja Trader. I always meant to check it out to replace the antiquated TradeStation I use for developing my system algorithms, but never got around to it. I think I'll do the same as you, probably based on JSystemTrader, although that doesn't seem too fantastic at first glance. It's really targetted at a different way of doing things from what I want to do.

So what do you mean by "statistical indices" and "as low as a moving avg"?

 

[NetTecture]

Well, i think ninja may be ok for most, but my problem is that I am USED to visual studio, and I see no reason not to use things like unit tests, asserts, performance optimization on something as critical as a trading system

Statisticsl Indices means statistical indicator - and a moving average is one, because it forms a statistical view on the past pricing THough most say they are useless for system development, they can be of use, for example, to identify trending direction (within a given timeframe) I Still try to tacke how to actually technically get a clear indication of a trend - the problem seems simple, but is a little harder once you get into the details.

OPtherwise I mostly like to work with price action, support and resistance etc., all things that normal indicators mostly ignore.

 

[Adamus]

Good luck. I spent weeks trying to refine an algorithm for support and resistance but couldn't make it simple or elegant enough for my liking. I figured the S & R you see on a screen is only programmable if you are ready to code in a hundred exceptions to the general rule.

 

[NetTecture]

I know, One reason I want my own framework. I am not sure how well that will work, but in general - non-barcharts in correlation with barcharts may work. I think of using point and figure charts to identify resistances (a LOT easier than on barcharts, visually), with the granularity determined by volatility. Not exactly like bollinger bands, but basically putting some volatility in so that one gets not too fine grained points and figures.

Otherwise the classical "lowest low, highest high" may help, together with some other stuff around It definitly is not as easy as using things like moving averages Plus frameworks seem to focus on the later type, so... one is a little left with nothing.

What platform are you using?

 

[Adamus]

TradeStation 4 - the one that was the first to be Y2K compliant! It's good enough and I know how to use it (or how to accommodate it) so I'll carry on using it until I've got my java IB TWS-API-based system to the point where I can start programming algorithms.

That is a few months away though.

One advantage to programming with "Easy Language" is the visual aspect, seeing my entries and exits on the chart, which I'm sure I'll miss when using java.

re S & R: your idea is the same as mine, but I'm sure you can take it further with C++.

by the way I don't normally reply this quickly - I just came back here to check what someone else in another thread wrote again. Being on this forum destroys my focus

 

[NetTecture]

Yeah. No reason you ahve to, though

I will possibly but a programmer on some UI aspects for some months I definitly do not plan to work without proper user interface and visualization.

I will use C# - not a fan for C++ for that. And being a C# guru sorts of makes that my langauge of choice anyway. The good thing is that - in any real language that is general purpose, comapred to easy langauge - one has some more powerfull tools at hand. I am not even sure I will program S&R as "S&R", but mostly as congestion areas. Areas the price may "stick or reverse". I really do not care about support or resistance - that depends mostly on where the price comes from.

Give me some months and then we will see what ideas I have and how they work out Right now I am on getting my historical database up and automate the download of that data. Next step then is starting collecting intraday from zen-fire

Nice to have you here, though Always nice to speak with fellow people and throw ideas around.

 

[Adamus]

Why are you putting the effort into building your own tick database? Surely that's something which companies like tickdata.com have already done, and they manage the data errors too.

Obviously it's expensive, I figured I'd need to spend around $20K to get the data I want, but I know I'd rather spend that money than do it myself.

The other disadvantage is that it's only windows-based, but I guess I could live with that.

There also more reliable, more powerful and more expensive data services out there like NxCore, which intrigues me - it must have the most minimal website I've ever seen, yet it claims to be the Holy Grail of data services.

 

[NetTecture]

The problem with companies like tickdata is that they do not sell you the DATABASE, but the DATA. As I work on my own framework for alogos and backtesting I need a way to get the data fast, and here my DATABASE comes into play. It is actually right now getting filled with eoddata.com data, and I will soon start filling in intraday data. Tickdata.com (and some others) are on the list of possibly suppliers.

I also will fed in live streams from my broker, simply because - I can AND that is then needed for visualization and live trading. The idea is then, at the end of the day, to replace it with the "historical" data of the day from a provider, so I can see the difference in ticks (filtering, bad ticks).

As you can see, the term "database" is really meant for a database. I simply need a way to get part of the data fast. It is not meant as "I collect all that in real time" at this point.

That said, I take great fun out of that, and I am a database specialist by person, so - this is just nice to see, due to the a little unusual nature of the data (small data records, extremely long tables).

Now if you ask why my own framework - because I Just love C#, and all I have seen in purchasable frameworks so far is extremely weak for complex trading systems. Note that I do not say "complex indicators". THe main problem if that if I draw up an algoryhtm to define support / resittance areas, I please need proper testing mechanisms, and the algorythm will be complex in code, not just some mathematical formula. No platform I have seen yet comes even close to VIsual Studio for development, and no platform I had a look at (ninja, right edge etc.) support development in visual studio