my journal 3

[D70]

Hi Jazeonli,

Thanks for getting involved in this chat.

What would be your advice for me?
I can look through code and figure out what it is doing but (at this moment in time) I am in no position to attempt to write it from scratch myself (unless it was the simplest of strategies).

I see many 'developers' out there offering coding services. Should I use one to make the bare bones? Or do you think one should keep it all 'in-house' and learn to code by oneself?

Do you have issues with TradeStation? I am not too worried about being their prisoner. My main concern is getting a working platform to execute automated strategies through. Plus, 'easy language' is probably my best place to start as they have many templates to work from and reference.

I doubt my skills could approach that of Travis, hence why I was planning to follow in his footsteps.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Yamato]

Here is one of my strategies that is similar to your approach: Increasing/Decreasing Peak/Trough Volume with Normalized Momentum


Idea:

• We observe the peak/trough volume. When volume at this points is increasing/decreasing, the direction change is probably to hapen.
• We observe 30 minutes bars to determine increasing peak/trough volume.
• 30 minutes bars should have at least 10K in volume (aproximately 5% of a long term daily volume).
• Track momentum of the new lowest low/highest high bars.
• Direction changes when there is opposite direction momentum greater than the last momentum of the new lowest low/highest high bar.
• Track current total daily volume in relation to the average daily volume.

Enter/Exit Rules (descriptions are for long/short positions):

• After minimum volume has been traded for the day (30%), wait for an extreme volume bar:
• - If the price direction reverses, enter in the direction opposite to the last price move.
• - If there is no significant move or daily price change, enter in the direction of the previous day move.
  
• After maximum volume has been traded for the day (100%), wait for an extreme volume bar after which the price direction reverses and close the position.
• If position is still open at the end of the New York session (22:00 CEST), close it before rollover time (23:00 CEST).
• Allow for three up waves and two down waves before entering/exiting a position.
• Wait for a failed breakdown (breakout) through the well known resistance area where many retail stop orders are waiting.
• Wait for the price to pierce through a well known trading area:
• - previous peaks/troughs
• - daily open price
• - simple moving averages (50, 200 days)
• - price doesn't continue in the current direction when the volume increases
• - volume decreases while price continues in the same direction but is beginning to slow down
• - significant peak in volume after a clear trend
• - major market moving events (wait after the event is over and the price settles down)
  
• Wait for the total number of trades to quiet down before executing entry/exit trade. Be patient.
• If it is a large move down with three waves, enter long on the blow-off bottom of the third wave.
• Wait for an opposite direction normalized momentum greater than the last normalized momentum of the new lowest low/highest high bar.

I believe you agree this is too much for Excel and not a good idea to test it on one platform and then execute it on another one (like Tradestation + Excel). It is complicated enough as it is and I don't want to search for bugs in two different languages.

Here's more feedback for jazeonli, but please spend your first energies focusing on the more important question from D70, in the previous post.

Yes, I agree that this is too complex for excel. My 120 systems range from "go short on monday morning and close your position at the end of the day" to something maybe just three times as complex as that.

So yes, I am very far from this system you're talking about, and yes, I would by all means not even try automating it with my modest means.

All the concepts are reasonable although I haven't found them all to be true through back-testing (for example, I could never test volume to be useful), but then again, I might note have the sensitive tools needed for this kind of analysis (I am very good at simplifying things, but in this case it might not be enough).

Other ideas. Concepts such as "previous peaks/troughs" are not implementable in my back-testing on tradestation, let alone automation on excel, because as you can imagine, it is too complex for me to tell these two platforms what a trendline is in their language, or tell them about a given shape on a chart.

I'll keep it short for reciprocal attention spans.

 

[jazeonli]

Please stop praising me Travis

Yes I am a programmer and I like to program. Especialy trading systems. The problem is that once the systems are trading live you have nothing more to do

I have to keep myself busy with many other projects to not get bored and tinker with the systems.

If you weren't so afraid about somebody stealing your strategies I would be glad to backtest your strategies and check that the worse performance relative to the back-tested one is not due to Tradestation.

Hint: backtest a strategy in Tradestatin and some other platform. I bet the results will not be the same.

Regarding sharing the strategies. I have more than 130 strategies and I believe if I would explain them somewhere online, nobody would trust them to trade them in their live accounts.

What would be your advice for me?
I can look through code and figure out what it is doing but (at this moment in time) I am in no position to attempt to write it from scratch myself (unless it was the simplest of strategies).

I see many 'developers' out there offering coding services. Should I use one to make the bare bones? Or do you think one should keep it all 'in-house' and learn to code by oneself?

I believe you should have full control over your automated trading platform. Since I don't know how the Tradestation is working internaly I cannot use it. With Tradestation my control stops at the easy language code.

You don't need to hire developers to get your bare bones platform. There are many open source projects available. I picked JBookTrader but I reviewed 5 others (originaly I started with JSystemTrader and then merged it with JBookTrader).

I would sugest to pick an open source trading platform and try to program a simple strategy. It might be too much at once since you would also have to get acquainted with the basic platform. If so you may ask somebody else to guide you through or to program the first strategy for you.

The important thing is that you have the source code of your automated trading system. Through time you will learn how to modify your strategy and even how to write a new one.

 

[Yamato]

I compliment you because I know how rare it is to come across people like you, me, D70, and the other two or three readers of this journal who are doing the same thing we are doing. We should always be complimenting each other, because it's so hard to keep going, and so basically by complimenting you, I am also complimenting myself.

It's close to being a conspiracy theorist, because no one believes you and everyone tells you that... "it's not possible to make money with trading". Let alone doing it with automation: "if it were possible, everyone would be doing it". You know what I mean, I am sure.

Regarding your offer, it's not the first time, and, once again, as before, I'll think about your offer of collaboration. However, I've been burned each time before.

Each time except with the present guy running my server, who's actually not even interested in my systems. He even helped me code the systems on tradestation (a lot of help, I wouldn't be here without him), but he's not a trader at the moment and never has been an automated trader. Great and precious person. I met him playing online risk. We never met in person either.

But I don't want to take the attention away from the interesting advice and questions between you and D70, so please ignore my comments for now.

By the way, I closed some currency trades and I am pretty light now. Long overnight on NG. Capital at 21k. I can finally sleep.

 

[D70]

Hi Jazeonli & of course Travis,

I think JBookTrader is a step too far for me at this stage. It even says within the first few sentences that if you dont know java you best jog on.

I think I need to stick with TS and IB for now. They appear to be 'my only hope'.

Travis, I also had a 'coder' when I was working at a fund. All was going swimmingly (I wrote the strategies, he coded) until he decided to move back to Australia and take a job working for a mobile phone company coding their platform (he had no interest in trading, just coding, so our relationship was perfect). I was left high and dry with no way of working the code (he had written front and back end systems).

While I was on my break. I was thinking of a potential problem with automation. Currently, to work out the risk for my next trade I have a calculation that requires knowledge of my previous trades as well as account balance and so on. Is that possible to code in TradeStation? As far as I'm aware it isnt. Whereas if I were to execute through excel, I'm pretty sure i could tie in the order logic with my existing risk algorithm.

What's your (both jazeonli and Travis) approach on this?

Ps. Travis. I thought you handled your jpy martingale pretty well considering. You didnt panic. The only thing I was hoping you would do, but didnt want to suggest it (there is nothing more annoying than back seat traders) was to close 1 or 2 contracts Friday night to lighten the load.

 

[Yamato]

To keep the messaging frequent and practical, I will answer quickly.

I think it can be done, but I've discarded it both on excel and tradestation because 1) I can't do it and 2), even more important, I am very simplicity-oriented so I always strip everything down to the barest. The more parameters, the more something could go wrong, and be a cause of over-optimization. As I said, I have a system that says "enter at this time and exit at this other time on x day of the week" and it makes money. Actually several of them.

 

[Yamato]

Very few trades open left and all of them losing.

JPY, losing hundreds relative to yesterday.

GBP, losing hundreds relative to yesterday.

GBL, losing hundreds relative to yesterday.

I am probably at a capital of 20k right now.

...

Now below 20k, because JPY is losing a lot more.

Had I kept my contracts open, remember? My exits were at 60, 70, 80, 90... I'd still have at least 3 contracts open (if not 5, because I can't even remember where I had placed the exits anymore) and I'd be losing 4000 dollars, and my capital would be at 15k. And it would be impossible to close at that point, given that I could not close with a loss of 200, imagine how hard it would be to close with a loss of 9000.

So, I should be celebrating that I exited all those contracts. And that I haven't blown out my account. Oh, and there would have been a margin call, that would have been followed by a liquidation of probably 1 contract by now.

...

Going home in 20 minutes, at 14.32.

I am seeing a lot of struggles today and uncertainty:
1) GBP doesn't know whether to rise or to fall
2) JPY doesn't want to fall any lower, but its rise, that's been lasting for 4 hours, has been lacking power
3) NQ in my opinion is about to show us a big big fall, like 2%, but at the moment it is still
4) GBL is about to show us a big rise, but at the moment it is slightly negative
5) I have no idea where NG wants to go, that's why I exited it. I think that by tomorrow it will fall a low lower, all the way to 3.1. But it is also too oversold to go short on it.

I believe that in a few hours everything will change for the above-mentioned markets.

I am expecting a 200 ticks rise for JPY, to begin at any time and take place in the span of 24 hours.

Today my boss has had one of those... fits of anger, but he didn't exactly know what to yell at me for, so he stopped very early in his yelling, almost didn't start yelling even, but I could see all the anger in his face and tone. And now he came to apologize, not by saying "sorry" but by asking a very stupid question, which showed me that he wanted to either apologize in his way or make sure I wasn't angry.

I've been learning a couple of things. Whatever goes against my desires, from now on, is just a way to train me for trading. Losses are unexpected unwelcome annoyances, just like life's, and if I don't learn to accept, and even welcome, daily annoyances, then I am screwed when I incur losses, because I do the martingale thing on them.

Another thing I am learning is to stop perceiving my trades as "made money" vs "lost money" and "missed profit" vs "made all possible profit" (what's worse, with unusable hindsight), and to start perceiving trades in terms of "was the risk worth it?" and "did it make sense at the time I decided it?". Things totally change then. You don't reproach yourself as much, and you reward yourself for taking the right risks, rather than blaming yourself for... basically not having known the future.

idea2develop

...

Back home. Eating sushi and drinking lots of japanese beer, sapporo and asahi, to help the JPY go higher:

Dueling Banjos (HD) - YouTube

 

[jazeonli]

I think JBookTrader is a step too far for me at this stage.

I didn't recommend to take on JBookTrader (or any other) by yourself. I know it is complex. I recommend to have somebody by your side (a programmer) who will take care of the generic trading application (the hard stuff in Java) which connects to the broker, subsribes to a data feed, calculates indicators,...

This generic part of the application is similar to what Tradestation does. At some point Tradestation calls a function where you put your strategy logic. I will include a java code of such a function for one of my strategies. I'm sure you will be able to understand what it does even if you don't know java. I'm also sure you could modify this code or even write from scratch a new strategy.

This way you leave the hard stuff to a programmer and also keep your strategy logic to yourself.

You also free yourself from questions like 'Is that possible to code in TradeStation?' You ask your programmer to write you a functions that will return 'previous trades as well as account balance and so on'. These are generic functions that will not reveal your secrets to the programmer.

private PriceSizeBar calculateSignal(PriceSizeBar priceSizeBar, boolean isCompletedPriceSizeBar) {
	int direction = priceSizeBar.getDirection();
	double lastPrice = priceSizeBar.getLastPrice();

	// Profit/Loss for the position.
	int lastSignalDirection = lastSignal.getDirection();
	double buyProfitLoss = lastSignalDirection > 0 ? lastPrice - lastSignalPrice : 0;
	double sellProfitLoss = lastSignalDirection < 0 ? lastSignalPrice - lastPrice : 0;
	double profitLoss = (buyProfitLoss + sellProfitLoss) / getTickSize();
	boolean isLoss = (profitLoss < 0);

	Signal signal = priceSizeBar.getSignal();
	if (signal == Signal.Undefined && isCompletedPriceSizeBar) {
		double currentHistoricalDailyBasePrice = priceSizeBar.getDailyVWAP();
		double currentHistoricalFixedVolumeBasePrice = priceSizeBar.getFixedVolumeVWAP();
		boolean isFixedVolumeVWAPAboveDailyVWAP = (currentHistoricalFixedVolumeBasePrice > currentHistoricalDailyBasePrice);
		boolean isFixedVolumeVWAPBelowDailyVWAP = (currentHistoricalFixedVolumeBasePrice < currentHistoricalDailyBasePrice);
		if (currentHistoricalFixedVolumeBasePrice > 0) {
			int directionPoints = priceSizeBar.getDirectionPoints();
			int directionPointsAbs = Math.abs(directionPoints);
			String directionPointsAsString = priceSizeBar.getDirectionPointsAsString();
			String directionPointsRules = priceSizeBar.getDirectionPointsRules();

			// Check for signal where price returned to the base price.
			if (directionPointsAbs == directionPointsSignalConfirmed) {
				// New signal.
				signal = (direction > 0 ? Signal.Buy : (direction < 0 ? Signal.Sell : Signal.Undefined));
				priceSizeBar.setSignal(signal);
			}

			// Check for signal where price didn't return to the base price.
			if (directionPointsAbs >= directionPointsSignalRunaway) {
				// New runaway signal.
				signal = (direction > 0 ? Signal.Buy : (direction < 0 ? Signal.Sell : Signal.Undefined));
				priceSizeBar.setSignal(signal);
			}

			// Check for profit target.
			if (profitLoss > PROFIT_TARGET_PIPS) {
				signal = (direction > 0 ? Signal.Buy : (direction < 0 ? Signal.Sell : Signal.Undefined));
				priceSizeBar.setSignal(signal);
			}
		}
	}

	lastSignalDirection = lastSignal.getDirection();
	boolean isMaxTotalVolume = (getTotalVolumePercent(priceSizeBar) > MAX_DAILY_VOLUME_PERCENT);
	if (isMaxTotalVolume && STRATEGY_RULE_USE_NO_NEW_POSITIONS_AFTER_MAX_DAILY_VOLUME) {
		if (lastSignal != Signal.Undefined) {
			// Only close current position.
			signal = (lastSignalDirection> 0 ? Signal.CloseSell : (lastSignalDirection < 0 ? Signal.CloseBuy : Signal.Undefined));
			priceSizeBar.setSignal(signal);
		} else if (signal != Signal.Undefined) {
			// Cancel new position.
			signal = Signal.Undefined;
			priceSizeBar.setSignal(signal);
		}
	}
	
	if (currentMainTradingDataPeriod.isCompleted() && STRATEGY_RULE_USE_NO_NEW_POSITIONS_AFTER_MAIN_TRADING_PERIOD) {
		if (lastSignal != Signal.Undefined) {
			// Only close current position.
			signal = (lastSignalDirection> 0 ? Signal.CloseSell : (lastSignalDirection < 0 ? Signal.CloseBuy : Signal.Undefined));
			priceSizeBar.setSignal(signal);
		} else if (signal != Signal.Undefined) {
			// Cancel new position.
			signal = Signal.Undefined;
			priceSizeBar.setSignal(signal);
		}
	}
	return priceSizeBar;
}

 

[jazeonli]

D70, are you looking for autotrading software that will execute trades for you or are you sitting next to the computer while trading and are willing to execute trades yourself? How many trades do you execute per day/week?

All this discussion made me revisit some of the backtesting solutions I used in the past. The one I liked the most is ProRealTime.com however they don't connect their (your) system to any broker. They will just notify you about the signals (on your computer, mobile or via SMS).

Their programming language is simple but I was able to squize a lot out of it. It alowed me to program many complex indicators and strategies.

According to what Travis wrote about his strategies, he could use such a platform as his systems don't trade often. He would need to execute signals via his mobile TWS while at work. It would alow him to backtest and live-trade using the same code.

Since we are sharing our code today, here is a sample strategy in ProBuilder language:

// Parameters.
// ..Channel.
cChannelTrueRangePeriodl = 20
cChannelPeriod = 200
cChannelLineDistanceMultiplicator = 0.618
// ..Conditions.
cEntryTolerancePeriod = 30

// Distance between the channel lines.
channelATR = AverageTrueRange[ cChannelTrueRangePeriodl ]( close )
channelStdDev = STD[ cChannelTrueRangePeriodl ]( close )
channelLineDistance = ( channelATR + channelStdDev ) * cChannelLineDistanceMultiplicator

// Channel lines.
middleChannel = LinearRegression[ cChannelPeriod ]( close )

// ATR stop.
atrStop = CALL AtrStop

REM Buy

enterConditionCross = (Close CROSSES OVER atrStop)
maxEntryChannelPreviousValue = middleChannel + channelLineDistance * cMaxEntryChannelPrevious
maxEntryChannelCurrentValue = middleChannel + channelLineDistance * cMaxEntryChannelCurrent
enterConditionChannel = ( Close[1] < maxEntryChannelPreviousValue AND atrStop < maxEntryChannelCurrentValue )
enterConditionDummy = channelLineDistance > 0

IF enterConditionCross AND enterConditionChannel AND enterConditionDummy THEN
   IF SHORTONMARKET THEN
      EXITSHORT AT MARKET
   ENDIF
   BUY 100000 CASH ROUNDEDUP AT MARKET
ENDIF

entryBarsAgo = BarIndex - TradeIndex
entryATRStop = atrStop[ entryBarsAgo ]

REM Sell

exitConditionCross = (Close CROSSES UNDER atrStop)
exitConditionBelowATR = (Close < entryATRStop)
exitConditionEntryTolerance = (BarIndex - TradeIndex < cEntryTolerancePeriod)

IF (exitConditionEntryTolerance AND exitConditionBelowATR) OR ((NOT exitConditionEntryTolerance) AND ( exitConditionCross OR exitConditionBelowATR )) THEN
   IF LONGONMARKET THEN
      SELL  AT MARKET
   ENDIF
   SELLSHORT 100000 CASH AT MARKET THISBARONCLOSE
ENDIF

 

[Yamato]

I don't want to get your discussion with D70 sidetracked, so I'll write a quick remark about the frequency of trading by my systems. Out of 120 of them, the average system trade 2.7 times per month. The most frequent trading system trades 10.6 times per month (every other day). The least frequent one trades 0.1 times per month (about once a year).

If you put them all together, you get 2.7 trades per month times 120 systems (324 trades per month), which, divided by the days of a month, gives about 15 trades per day and 75 trades per week, which is what I am getting indeed.

The average duration of a trade is about 5 hours. The shorest trades last 1 hour and the longest ones last 48 hours (but those are rare, so the average trade is about 5 hours).

 

[jazeonli]

Since Travis is into conspiracy theories I must mention that all the code for ProRealTime is stored on their servers.

There is a possibility that somebody could program their servers to alert them whenever there is a successful strategy backtested through their solution.

From the amount of effort they have put into their solution I don't think they are willing to risk their monthly subscriptions on doing something stupid. But we never know.

 

[D70]

D70, are you looking for autotrading software that will execute trades for you or are you sitting next to the computer while trading and are willing to execute trades yourself? How many trades do you execute per day/week?

All this discussion made me revisit some of the backtesting solutions I used in the past. The one I liked the most is ProRealTime.com however they don't connect their (your) system to any broker. They will just notify you about the signals (on your computer, mobile or via SMS).

Their programming language is simple but I was able to squize a lot out of it. It alowed me to program many complex indicators and strategies.

According to what Travis wrote about his strategies, he could use such a platform as his systems don't trade often. He would need to execute signals via his mobile TWS while at work. It would alow him to backtest and live-trade using the same code.

Since we are sharing our code today, here is a sample strategy in ProBuilder language:

Hi jazeonli,

Thanks for your 2 replies.
If I understand you. You place your trade logic (and any other logic that is privy) outside the platform, then get the platform to look up that code. Good idea.

To answer your questions. I am looking for the code to trade my strategy so that I can work on others. At present I manually trade 2 'systems' but have others I want to add (as is the way with system traders it would appear). I manually trade up to 20 times per day but if I got it coded, I'd expect to put it across more timeframes and more products (assuming the rigorous backtesting echoed my results).

I have used ProRealTime for charting and even used the code builder to test basic concepts. I think you can link it into IGIndex and set automatic trades, linked to signals but it's somewhat crude.

Thanks for all your advice. It's very much appreciated.

If I may ask. How many trades do your systems generate per day and how many systems do you have running across how many products?

I've seen some of the tradestation guys like Dr Clayburg and he has 30 or so systems running constantly that seem to do alright for him.

 

[D70]

I don't want to get your discussion with D70 sidetracked, so I'll write a quick remark about the frequency of trading by my systems. Out of 120 of them, the average system trade 2.7 times per month. The most frequent trading system trades 10.6 times per month (every other day). The least frequent one trades 0.1 times per month (about once a year).

If you put them all together, you get 2.7 trades per month times 120 systems (324 trades per month), which, divided by the days of a month, gives about 15 trades per day and 75 trades per week, which is what I am getting indeed.

Hi Travis,

Is the 120 systems, 20 different systems across 6 products?

 

[jazeonli]

How many trades do your systems generate per day and how many systems do you have running across how many products?

My intraday systems generate 16-28 trades per week (or 3-6 per day). My longest term systems generate only 2 trades per three months.

I don't have that many systems running at the same time (usualy less than 5). My theory is that more systems there are worse they can be since they compensate for each other. By running less systems each one must be better as it is responsible for larger part of the total results.

Each system only trades one product. I don't trade/track more than 5 products. I want to know how these are behaving in detail.

If you think about a classroom of 30 children, there are 5 good ones, 10 realy bad ones and 15 average ones. I want to focus only on the 5 good ones. I can't handle all 30 of them.

 

[Yamato]

120 systems across 16 products:

AUD_ID_01
AUD_ID_02
AUD_ID_03
AUD_ON_01
CAD_ID_01
CAD_ID_02
CAD_ID_03
CAD_ID_04
CHF_ID_01
CHF_ID_02
CHF_ID_03
CHF_ID_04
CHF_ID_05
CL_ID_01
CL_ID_02
CL_ID_03
CL_ID_04
CL_ID_05
CL_ON_01
CL_ON_02
CL_ON_03
CL_ON_04
CL_ON_05
ES_ID_01
ES_ID_02
ES_ID_03
ES_ID_04
ES_ID_05
ES_ID_06
ES_ID_07
ES_ON_01
ES_ON_02
EUR_ID_01
EUR_ID_02
EUR_ID_03
EUR_ID_04
EUR_ID_05
EUR_ID_06
EUR_ID_07
EUR_ID_08
EUR_ID_09
EUR_ID_10
EUR_ON_01
GBL_ID_01
GBL_ID_02
GBL_ON_01
GBP_ID_01
GBP_ID_02
GBP_ID_03
GBP_ID_04
GBP_ID_05
GBP_ID_06
GBP_ID_07
GBP_ID_08
GBP_ON_01
GC_ID_01
GC_ID_02
GC_ID_03
GC_ID_04
GC_ID_05
GC_ID_06
GC_ID_07
GC_ON_01
GC_ON_02
GC_ON_03
HG_ID_01
HG_ID_02
HG_ID_03
HG_ID_04
HG_ID_05
HG_ID_06
HG_ID_07
HG_ON_01
HG_ON_02
JPY_ID_01
JPY_ID_02
JPY_ID_03
JPY_ID_04
JPY_ID_05
JPY_ON_01
JPY_ON_02
NG_ID_01
NG_ID_02
NG_ID_03
NG_ID_04
NG_ON_01
NG_ON_02
NG_ON_03
NG_ON_04
NQ_ID_01
NQ_ID_02
NQ_ID_03
NQ_ON_01
NQ_ON_02
SI_ID_01
SI_ID_02
SI_ID_03
SI_ID_04
SI_ID_05
SI_ID_06
SI_ID_07
SI_ON_01
SI_ON_02
YM_ID_01
YM_ID_02
YM_ID_03
YM_ID_04
YM_ID_05
YM_ID_06
YM_ON_01
YM_ON_02
ZN_ID_01
ZN_ID_02
ZN_ID_03
ZN_ID_04
ZN_ID_05
ZN_ID_06
ZN_ON_01
ZN_ON_02
ZN_ON_03

But I should mention that the ones worth trading at the moment are just 40 of the 120 systems.

Oh, good point. Yes, the reasoning behind many systems is the same. But I would not group the reasoning of my systems as just 6 principles.

Yes, 6 principles or 7 or 5, but they're mixed, so very few systems are exactly the same one applied across different futures (but some are exactly the same system, maybe 33% of them are exact duplicates).

The principles of my 120 systems can be grouped as follows:

ON bounce
Opening Gap
overstretched
Range Breakout
Volat.Breakout
WeekDay Bias
WITH ID trend
WITH ON trend

 

[Yamato]

Capital above 21k.

I am going to bed. I am seeing a good opportunity, a series of them:

long on aud
short on chf
long on jpy
long on gbl

 

[Yamato]

Capital above 22k.

Still in the same trades as above.

 

[Yamato]

Ok, I am at work and here's my reasoning of today, similar to yesterday's.

I just looked and JPY and NG, which were very favorable a few hours ago, are now much less favorable. Instinctively I felt like saying to myself: damn, I should have closed it when I pondered about it, earlier this morning. But guess what? I thought about it, for a few minutes, and decided, given all the acquired knowledge in all these years, that it was wise to keep them both open. So, am I to blame myself for not knowing the future?

Nope. It was the right choice even though it cost me money. My estimate is based on statistics. I cannot blame myself for reasoning based on the past, because that's all I have. I cannot reason based on the future.

I believe that this was a major point to learn in my discretionary trading: I cannot blame myself for not knowing the future. I always must remember what I was thinking when I made the decision, and what knowledge I had. The same applies to life's experiences. But trading makes the learning so immediate and costly, that you realize things that you wouldn't otherwise ever realize, namely that hindsight is useless.

And blaming is useless, too: you made the best choice given the circumstances. Also, because we can safely assume that we do not mean to lose money. Yes, our judgment may be clouded by hope and fear. But that also has to be taken into account. That's part of the equation, and it's a reasonable ingredient.

 

[Yamato]

Capital above 23k.

Still in the same trades as above, which are evolving for the better. Also, the systems placed a few good trades on NG and CL. Some are ongoing and I felt tempted to close them, and grab those hundreds of dollars of profit, but overall, by closing them, I might forgo more profit than I keep.

It looks like tomorrow I'll post my equity line again.

This time I won't brag as much, because I remember what happened after that (JPY martingale and a hellish week), but I have that feeling of discomfort, like I am in uncharted territory and there could be an ambush. I feel like Columbus crossing the ocean and sailing to america.

uncharted or unchartered?

Uncharted means it's not on the chart, particularly an island that's not on the map (chart) of the area. If you ventured into uncharted territory, no one knows what it looks like because no one has ever made a map of the area. It can be used metaphorically to mean doing something no one has done before.

Yeah, that's exactly how I feel.

 

[Yamato]

Oh, god.

Not again. Just after getting away with JPY, i incurred the same exact mechanism and now I am in martingale on NG, with 4 contracts.

capital back at 22k.

...

capital back at 21k. It's amazing how fast it goes against you when all you've done is to keep placing a series of trades that seemed increasingly favorable (martingale).

As they say, trading is counter-intuitive in many aspects

...

Ok, martingale travis didn't produce any damage this time. All 4 contracts got closed without damage.

Capital again at 23k.

Tough one.

Now i'll have to take a break, or I'll fall for it again.

Chicago - Hard To Say I'm Sorry (stereo sound) - YouTube

Yeah, I remember this song. I wrote it years ago when I did my first martingale trade. This part is where I am talking to my trading account, after taking it from 4k to 24k and then back to 4k:

After all that we've been through,
I will make it up to you,
I promise to.