my journal

[Yamato]

LONG 4 ZN, with stop below today's low.

 

[Yamato]

Long 5 ZN.

 

[Yamato]

After I bought ES, CL, GC started rising very fast. However, the ZN and the GBL are holding quite well. Even though of course my LONG is being unprofitable by a few hundreds.

I don't think and I don't hope that this rise in ES and the rest will last very long. I'll go away for one hour, and when I'll come back they should all be in the red by a lot.

The two extreme contracts in reactivity were the CL and GC, which gained 2000 dollars in the 2 hours, by rising 2 points and 20 points, which is 200 ticks in both cases, and the GBL and the ZN that in the meanwhile went the other way by a few ticks and lost each one about 100 dollars. These four contracts are inversely correlated and it is very unusual that two rise this much and the other two do not move.

 

[Yamato]

Now ES, GC, CL look like they're about to start falling and go back to where they came from.

 

[Yamato]

Oh man, it was terrible. All predictions were wrong. The difference was there all right, and then the GBL and ZN caught up and i was down as much as 2000 dollars. Then about there, one of the 5 LONG on the ZN got closed for insufficient margin. I started praying much earlier than that. Oh, and I removed the stoploss when price got too close to it.

I guess I did it all wrong once again, not as far as my predictions, which could have been ok. The problem was opening 5 contracts. It's too much of a loss to take, and that's why I wasn't willing to take it. I guess I might have to make shorter trades or else I fall in love with my position and stop reasoning like today. Now I'll just pray because I can't close with -1600.

 

[Yamato]

If I'm lucky, I'll end the day with a capital of 5k. If I am unlucky I should close the day at about 4k.

 

[j2a_aj]

I guess the concept of riding A lottery ticket and NOT buying MORE lotteries just because the first lottery seems profitable is something thats going into rule book.

 

[Yamato]

Yeah, besides, once I removed the stoploss, those lottery tickets potentially cost my whole capital. I guess you now see clearly what I mean when I keep mentioning "for the past 12 years I've been unprofitable": I think i have plenty of good ideas, but something is still missing. Whatever is missing (self-control or other psychological problem), it makes me either overtrade like yesterday, or overleverage like today. Sooner or later I am wrong, and I bring my account back to almost zero.

Right now it's at 3500. I am hoping that before I get margin call (for the end of intraday half-margin), my balance will be 4k and I can sleep ok tonight. 4k is acceptable, since a week ago I was at 2700. Sure, I've been a total idiot for not being at 5400, as I was earlier. On the other hand, I got to 5400 by both overtrading and overleveraging in the first place, so I guess that if I deserved the gain of yesterday, I also deserved the loss of today.

 

[Yamato]

I just keep on going back and forth from calling myself a genius and calling myself an idiot, because of either not using the stoploss or overleveraging (and not using the stoploss): on the other hand, the good traders take small wins and smaller losses, and don't even call themselves geniuses. It sucks. I still have some stuff to learn obviously, and it's always the same stuff, and I never seem to learn it.

 

[Yamato]

Ok, margin call happened, and it closed 2 contracts. So I guess I'll have to live with having 3500 in my account for today. I am keeping the other two ZN contracts open, because we're on support and at the low of the day, and even according to my 10 CET - 22 CET reversal rule, it makes sense to stay LONG now. I'll go to my neighbouress for a while, so I can go to work tomorrow thanks to having been distracted by her. Otherwise tonight I wouldn't be able to sleep.

Oddly I feel ok, even though I have 2000 dollars less than 4 hours ago. Winning stresses me out more than losing. I feel like a responsibility to win more. If I lose, things cannot be worse, so I feel relaxed. All problems coming from my dad, who always pushed me harder after I did well at something. Failing was a way to get him off my back. I failed a whole year in highschool because he was pushing me too hard and went from being the top of my class to not going to class. Because that mother ****er kept on asking for better grades. In elementary school, he went to my teachers and told them they were no good because they weren't giving me enough homework. So I guess since those times, failing has always been a good method to keep myself from stressing too much about performance. If I succeed, I have to worry about being number one (that's the imprinting I got from my father). If I fail, I am a failure, so I am not competing with anyone. As of now I am again a failure as a trader, so I can relax.

The same happened at work today. When I am behind by a few hours of work, I stress out like crazy because I feel like I must catch up. But, after two days away from work, I am so behind that I was quite relaxed because no matter how hard I tried, I could never catch by the end of the day nor the end of the week.

So maybe it is indeed an issue of self-sabotage. Maybe I'd rather fail as a trader than succeed and have to try and get the highest return per day. Or maybe it's rather like this: I succeed, and then I try to succeed even more (as my dad taught me to never stop pushing myself), and then push myself too hard, take too much risk, and then fail as a consequence. Or something similar. I don't know how much, but it certainly plays a part in my failure. The part played in my failure by my lack of knowledge about the markets is almost zero at this point, after 12 years of observation, statistics, backtesting... I mean even the systems I created make money. So I do know what works. I just don't do it. Why? Go figure.

 

[j2a_aj]

hey t,

true. but doesnt it make sense for you to cut your losses a.k.a take your profits on the zn trade?

I think you are on the right track. Stick to your final set of rules. Stick to the stop loss - maybe make it a little wider/smaller on a case to case basis. But trust me. Following your rules and those Seiden videos, I am up a 100% on my paper trades today. Gonna be away for a couple of days on a long weekend here. But looking to get onto the real market in a couple of weeks with forex / futures.

 

[Yamato]

Hmm, awesome. Thanks for letting me know.

If you can control yourself and use your stoplosses, you can surely start immediately with real money. Personally, if I were to talk to someone who could be in the least similar to me, I would tell them to paper trade for 10 years, because that's for how long I lost money.

I am proud and not even surprised to hear you say that I gave you ideas that made you profitable, and I mean I am not surprised at the same time to not be profitable myself. Because I tell people to use the stoploss and I don't use it. I tell people to paper trade, and I don't do it...

Have a good weekend.

 

[Triggerfish]

less is more & keep it simple.

 

[wprins]

It is this twisted concept of never using a stop loss. IF for example you short the dow @ 10650 and dow goes up to 10750, you open a second short @ 10750 . You keep doing this to eventually win every single trade of yours(even if it takes a few years!). The only deal is that your trades will have to be small and your portfolio will have to be comparatively large to accommodate the one single draw down.

On a different note, what stop losses do you intend to standardize for your trades?

If I may be so bold as to comment:

1.) This sounds like a basic Martingaling technique. Remember the addage "Losers add to losers" Do not add to losing positions, that way lies account blowup, sooner or later. (Note, there's a difference between scaling into a position, and already having your intended position size and then adding to it in order to average down, hoping the market will turn around. The former is not adding to a loser but building a position. The latter is adding to a losing position, increasing your risk etc. and A Bad Move (TM). )

2.) Proper stop placement is not based on risk % but rather technicals (e.g below a suitable swingpoint, above/below one or 2 major support/Resistance levels etc. and possibly also taking into account current market volatility/trading range (ATR or deviation or such). Once you have your stop position, you then determine the risk distance current price (risk per share/contract/unit), and consequently from that, your position size (number shares/units/contracts) to trade, based on the % risk you want to take per trade. You do NOT determine your stop position based on your % risk. (You should also estimate target/target distance and reward size, so that you can estimate your reward:risk ratio. Trades with low reward:risk ratio should ideally not be taken unless you have a system that actually uses them legitimately.

 

[Yamato]

I've been saying the same things in the past hundreds of posts. Of course that doesn't mean I've been doing them.



I've restated the system in my profile:

Trading tip: in an uptrend, overstretched price bounces off support at 10sh CET, reaches resistance during the next 12 hours, breaks through it within the next 24 hours, reverses at 22sh CET, then, in the next 12 hours, goes back down to the resistance it broke, which has now become support, and starts all over again, with varying 12/24 hours cycles. Occasionally price may reschedule such appointments and change trend, so only bet on it reaching resistance and not breaking through it, and ensure a risk/reward of at least 1 to 3 via a stoploss below support and takeprofit below resistance. Viceversa for a downtrend.

And what have I done yesterday? Something that I could draw (but didn't) on the chart I have posted above. On the chart above I've detailed in writing and drawing what I should have done at 22sh CET. In reality, I made another trade: I have gone LONG 5 contracts right below resistance. The opposite of my method. Why? Go figure. What I know is that after doubling my capital in less than a week, I felt positive that ZN would break through resistance, so I said to myself: why not go long on it with everything I have even before it breaks through it? That way, i felt, I buy cheaper. I did, and instead it went back to support.

Yes, that explains the paradox: while preaching a profitable method, I am totally unprofitable since I don't follow it. Which is not impossible if you think about it. If you were to ask me about being rested, I would say: sleep at night. Yet am I sleeping at night while I have to go to work tomorrow? Nope. It's 4 am, and I am up, writing on my journal. So it's not that unusual for someone to know what's best and to not do it. In both trading and sleeping, something in my compulsive mind keeps me from doing the optimal thing.

I don't do this in every field. I don't get run over by cars. I don't get drunk. I don't smoke. I don't hurt myself out of compulsiveness (or whatever the cause is) in every area of my life. I definitely do as far as trading and sleeping. What do they have in common?

Maybe the pleasure of now, regardless of the pain of later. I enjoy being up now and writing on the journal, so I do it. Tomorrow I'll be tired at work. I enjoy making a trade now and hoping to make a lot of money, later I'll regret it because I took too many risks. Maybe sometimes even drinking (I am not an alcoholic though): I enjoy drinking two beers, but later I will regret it. I think I've been taught too many rules and regulations, and even though I've learned to follow many of them, with so many rules, every once in a while I feel a great urge to break some rules. Maybe my problem has something to do with an urge to break the rules. Or maybe not. Who knows. I've written far too many times "this is the answer", "this is the cause", and it sounded right, but each time I wrote a different things, so I have been wrong a majority of times. And therefore I no longer am writing "this is it", "this is the final explanation of my problems". Certainly it has to do with my father, just like it's the case with everyone of us. You are what you are because of the life you lived. No doubts about this.

 

[Yamato]

Maybe it has to do with being imposed too many rules and becoming a rebel or maybe it has to do with the habit of being unhappy, and never turning profitable, because such happiness would be unbearable for me, and I'd rather stay unahappy.

Or maybe it has to do with, as I said in another post, the fact that if I am profitable I compulsively try to push myself harder, to strive at being the best, and eventually I push myself too hard and make a mistake. Yeah, just like writing here. I push myself to write as much and as intelligent stuff as possible, but when I get tired here, I just stop writing for a while. In trading, you lose money.

Or maybe it has to do with not having a profitable method. Maybe I don't even trust my method, and so I don't follow it. If that were the case, it would be the healthiest reason. You don't follow your method, because you actually don't trust it.

Or maybe it has to do with the fact that I cannot be told by the market that I am wrong, after being wronged and told I was wrong once too many by my dad.

Or maybe it has to do with the fact that I have no life, and boredom makes me overtrade.

 

[Yamato]

So far this seems to have been the pattern of this journal. I think of something wise: I come here and write it. People will compliment me and sometimes even take my advice. Then, when I am off here, or even as I write (many posts written during gambling binges, up to a month ago), I will think of something not wise and immediately do it. Then I'll come here and write about what I have done, and by now dozens of people have written to me messages (here or privately) telling me: follow your rules, follow your discipline, follow what you say.

So people first tell me: very wise. Then they see I don't do it and say "please do it", because they care for me, which is unusual to me, since my father seems to be happy when he sees me fail. He even used to be the first to point it out when I failed. You see how one can become a sick person with a sick father like that. Your dad should be encouraging you, and not taking pleasure in noticing that you failed.

Anyway, I come here, write wise things, get complimented, don't do them, get told to do them... and now there's even a fellow reader who tells me he has doubled his (paper trading) account thanks to my advice.

I guess at this point, by post 30 thousand, or by post 60 thousand, I am going to achieve this: dozens of readers become profitable thanks to things I say, and they force me to do the same. I hope it will happen.

Actually what is happening is not even that strange and it's more or less as follows. I do the wrong things and warn everyone: hey, guys, do not do this because it hurts. So people come and say: thanks for the advice. And many posts that have been written here are on that tone. "Hey guys, I was eating dinner... and all of a sudden i took a fork and stuck in my leg: it hurts, don't do it". "Oops, I did it again". That's my journal, pretty much.

Or like this: recipe for such and such meal. I tell everyone the ingredients. I tell everyone how to cook it. The dish is ready to be served. And then... "oops, guys, I threw everything out the window".

And then, all these people, will take what's good in my posts, except the final part of throwing everything out the window, because they don't have that self-harming inclination.

But maybe it's different. Maybe I did not have the recipe for a good meal, and I have developed it thanks to writing and being read on this journal. Maybe the tests are not being made by me, but by the readers, who are trying my trading methods. Maybe to be safe I use my crap methods, but at the same time, I tell everyone "try this, I think it works", and hopefully as they tell me "yes, it works", I will embrace those methods I suggested.

Yeah, this could be the case. Think about it: when I started this journal, I ignored any possible way to implement a stoploss. I ignored the trend. I ignored support and resistance. I ignored pivots (suggested by a reader). I ignored the wise australian trading educators. I ignored seiden... all these things I explored because I wanted to report them on the journal.

The journal and the readers have motivated me to go on with my quest. Even my quest for good movies. Until now I felt that no one cared about me: not my parents, not my colleagues... but with this journal I have found people who cared about me, who even worried about me more than I did. This has motivated me to worry about myself as well. Having a father who despised me all my life - and I'll always resent him for doing that - has somehow made me do the same thing.

Now instead I don't know why, but thanks to this journal I feel different. I care more about myself. I care to not hurt myself. At least to not disappoint the readers. The few readers I have left, who haven't lost hope.

 

[Benton D Struckcheon]

So far this seems to have been the pattern of this journal. I think of something wise: I come here and write it. People will compliment me and sometimes even take my advice. Then, when I am off here, or even as I write (many posts written during gambling binges, up to a month ago), I will think of something not wise and immediately do it. Then I'll come here and write about what I have done, and by now dozens of people have written to me messages (here or privately) telling me: follow your rules, follow your discipline, follow what you say.

So people first tell me: very wise. Then they see I don't do it and say "please do it", because they care for me, which is unusual to me, since my father seems to be happy when he sees me fail. He even used to be the first to point it out when I failed. You see how one can become a sick person with a sick father like that. Your dad should be encouraging you, and not taking pleasure in noticing that you failed.

Anyway, I come here, write wise things, get complimented, don't do them, get told to do them... and now there's even a fellow reader who tells me he has doubled his (paper trading) account thanks to my advice.

I guess at this point, by post 30 thousand, or by post 60 thousand, I am going to achieve this: dozens of readers become profitable thanks to things I say, and they force me to do the same. I hope it will happen.

Actually what is happening is not even that strange and it's more or less as follows. I do the wrong things and warn everyone: hey, guys, do not do this because it hurts. So people come and say: thanks for the advice. And many posts that have been written here are on that tone. "Hey guys, I was eating dinner... and all of a sudden i took a fork and stuck in my leg: it hurts, don't do it". "Oops, I did it again". That's my journal, pretty much.

Or like this: recipe for such and such meal. I tell everyone the ingredients. I tell everyone how to cook it. The dish is ready to be served. And then... "oops, guys, I threw everything out the window".

And then, all these people, will take what's good in my posts, except the final part of throwing everything out the window, because they don't have that self-harming inclination.

But maybe it's different. Maybe I did not have the recipe for a good meal, and I have developed it thanks to writing and being read on this journal. Maybe the tests are not being made by me, but by the readers, who are trying my trading methods. Maybe to be safe I use my crap methods, but at the same time, I tell everyone "try this, I think it works", and hopefully as they tell me "yes, it works", I will embrace those methods I suggested.

Boils down to: limit your risk. If you can do that, you'll relax, and once you're relaxed, you'll find yourself making better decisions.
A nervous trader, which is the same thing as saying a trader who's taken too big a risk, is a losing trader.

 

[Yamato]

Boils down to: limit your risk. If you can do that, you'll relax, and once you're relaxed, you'll find yourself making better decisions.
A nervous trader, which is the same thing as saying a trader who's taken too big a risk, is a losing trader.

Yeah, thanks. I hope I'll be capable of following your advice, even though it's similar to things I've written before on this journal. So, of course I understand it, but understanding it is not a guarantee that I'll do it. Just like I understand that I should be sleeping because in a few hours I'll have to go to work. And yet I am up, writing on this journal.

 

[Yamato]

**** it. I am going to turn my alarm off. I'll go late. I want to sleep well. Screw them all.

Screw them all.