my journal

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Ok, slept another hour, got up, and immediately started pissing in my empty milk bottle just like Howard Hughes. Had another dream, for some reasons I have more when the weather is cold and I sleep with a blanket on. I was back in my college as an alumnus. I went to the "French House", where I lived for a couple of years. It had changed but it looked realistic to me, in the dream. So, I knew that I was dreaming while dreaming, so I decided to run up and down the house to make sure that the dream didn't trick me and that I wasn't building the house with my own imagination (kind of like in the movie "Stay" or even more in "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"). So I was going up and down the house, room after room, really fast and checking out every little detail and seeing if everything made sense. And everything did. But now that I'm awake the house I saw seems imaginary. Also. Attached to the house was this new structure, almost like a beauty center or shop, called "le bode et le corps", which doesn't mean anything: I just googled it. There was a beautiful asian lady who saw me and smiled. She looked like she knew exactly who I was. In the dream I thought "these people know who I am so it cannot be a dream, but it is reality". Then I woke up and actually made sure in the first few minutes that this place doesn't exist, and it doesn't. So it wasn't only a dream, but also a dream that had nothing to do with reality. Now I'll go to work, in my single room.

YouTube - Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Music Video

Change your heart
Look around you
Change your heart
It will astound you
I need your lovin'
Like the sunshine

Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime

Change your heart
Look around you
Change your heart
Will astound you
I need your lovin'
Like the sunshine

Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime

I need your lovin'
Like the sunshine

Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime

Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime

Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime
Everybody's gotta learn sometime


Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Beck - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Ok, I wouldn't want to not keep a record when the system doesn't do so well so here I am. Yesterday it didn't make any money. And today, which is usually the best day, the systems are losing 400 dollars so far, with 6 different positions open right now. Now, as usual, I feel like interfering, but less and less, as the weeks go by. Today as usual I'd feel like closing some of the trades and keeping the others open. But then I might close the wrong ones - most likely the winners (that's what I usually do). Also, with more margin available, I will feel like doubling up on the losers. This might work well, but if it doesn't work it will quickly blow out my account. I tend to focus on everything I do, and this applies to trading as well: I would get rid of all trades to try and keep just the best trade, and if that won't be a good choice I'll simply blow out my account. That's how it happened every time.

Instead, I won't do a thing, and thanks to your company and this journal, I will wait a few hours, see how it evolves, and tell you how it ended. It's changing continuously, for example when I started writing a few minutes ago it was at -400 and now it's at -350. Now I looked again and it's at -500. Now it's at -300.
 
Losing 200 now, but I see that it's quickly moving my way.

Not all positions are coherent, considering positive and negative correlation among the securities being traded, but I've learned that despite this the profit can be made: one would expect a break-even outcome, but it's rarely the case. Yesterday it was the case.

The GBL alone (LONG on it) is causing the whole loss: -300 dollars.
 
Losing only 140 from open positions and lost 130 from a position closed earlier today. EUR and GBP are turning positive (on and off), ZN and JPY were already positive a while ago. CL is going badly, but it will be closed soon.
 
Losing 70 dollars (from open positions). I'll be back in an hour. The CL will be closed then, and so will the EUR. I'll let you know how they did. Right now open positions at -200 and closed positions at -130.
 
Ok, back. Lost 100 dollars on the CL. Which is really nothing for a loss on the CL. Now -230 from closed positions and -90 from open positions. If the day ended like this, at -300, it would be a pleasure compared to what I lose on negative discretionary days: 50% of my capital. I just looked again and I am at 0 from all open positions. I'd be ok anytime for a week where one day I lose 230, the other day I break even, and the other three days I make about a thousand per day. Well, so far that's been my week.

Friday there'll be no power in the building from 9 to 10.30 AM, for maintenance. That's quite a problem, because it could screw up my whole trading day. My UPS doesn't last that long, and yet I have to start everything by 8 am. I need to buy a laptop so I can run everything from there on such days. Laptops will last without power for over 2 hours. Great invention.

Also, I have thought out a plan for my future. The first way to be rich is to have money. Which I don't have yet. So that will have to be my #1 step towards being rich. But that won't be enough to be able to quit my job. Money in one bank account is not very secure. Money spread out in 10 bank accounts all over the world and still enough capital to trade is step #2. Buying houses will need to be step #3 because only that way I will be almost positive that I will have enough to quit my job. Step #4 will be buying houses all over the world, in case of revolutions and so on. Step #5 if I am still alive by then, will be to quit my job, because then I will be pretty secure. By then I will most likely be 65, just like my mom always recommended "you can do trading, but only quit your job once you are 65". Thanks, mom. That's why I started trading, to be an employee like everyone else. But there's one thing that can make both my mom and me happy: part-time hours. For every few thousands more that I'll have in banks across the world, I will increase my part-time to one hour less. By the time I reach one million I will work 15 minutes per day. Hopefully they will be ok with it. I will get paid maybe 50 dollars a day, but I can always decide to cancel part-time and work as a regular employee again. Maybe I could work out a deal so I pay them to keep me as an employee on a 15 minutes part-time schedule. Or pay them to tell my mom that I am still an employee. Just like I used to skip classes. Since everyone is worried that I might skip work, too.

Anyway, I just looked again and something really pleasant has happened: +400 dollars for open positions and as I said before -230 for closed positions. So I guess I can take a week like this any time: making money every day, except one day when I break even. Of course there's a lot of things open and some have negative correlations (some are LONG and some are SHORT) so those that looked ugly a few hours ago now are making hundreds. Those that were making hundreds a few hours ago now are losing hundreds.

Yeah, again I am thinking that I would have been right in closing the ones making money and keeping the ones losing money, but guess what: sometimes what happens is that those making money keep on making more and more, and those losing keep on losing more and more, and in that case I would have closed the wrong ones, and yet there's no way to know ahead of time. So, as I mentioned yesterday, by nature I would have placed myself in a situation where I could not have afforded to be wrong. A win or bust situation, like all my discretionary trading situations. And that has lead me to blowing out my account already about 50 times in the past 12 years, so let me remind myself one more time by writing it here. Now making only 60 dollars from open positions: from +400 to +60 in just 5 minutes. That's why I can never let myself think I am a genius and invest everything on one thing.
 
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Ok, now the EUR has closed as well, and I am down 100 on closed trades and down 200 on open trades.
 
Ok, now the YM and the ES have entered LONG. It reminds me of those Hail Mary trades I was making. No more of those today. The systems can do whatever they want but I want get down on my knees and say "please, I beg you, go my way...". Now they're losing exactly 300 from open trades (100 from closed trades). The power of these systems right now is that they will close the losers as well as the winners, whereas I was never able to close the losers. Sometimes keeping them open, after doubling up, for up to a month, until the contracts expired.
 
Ok, right now everyone is making money except one guy, the evil GBL, that's losing more than everyone else combined: -360.
 
Basically today they're all screwing around and have been all screwing around all day long. But then, even today, there'll be one of them that will take off. The screwing guys won't weigh so much on profit, and will be outweighed by the one guy who will know where it's going and will keep going there. Too bad today that guy was the GBL, that screwed me. On the other hand, on half of the other days, almost everyone knows where they are going and don't waste time screwing around.
 
One of the last updates for today (not that too many people will care - I wouldn't if I were you). Closed trades at -100. I had to close manually the YM because of a margin call. First time I placed a manual trade in two weeks. I hope I won't relapse into discretionary trading (=compulsive gambling) because of it. I just had to do it, because the YM and ES were both open in the same direction so I decided to close one of them since the broker would have closed something anyway. But it was indeed one discretionary choice on my part. Which to me means danger, always. I hope I'll forget about it. Of course this means that in money management not everything is perfect. Otherwise I would not have had a margin call.

Well, anyway: -100 from closed trades (excluding the YM, which does not count). -300 from open trades. I will most likely close the day with -400 dollars. For a moment today, an hour ago, I thought I'd do much better. Had I done it myself, out of disappointment and greed, I would have blown out my account today. This is one of the days when I usually felt like doing revenge trading. Pretty bad mood from work, no money from the systems: revenge trading, "I gotta get my happiness from somewhere".

Actually I should be very happy from work. They put a very polite lady in my room. Quiet polite and everything. I felt bad for swearing by how polite she is. I actually apologized for swearing. I will now have to make sure I don't take advantage of this nice lady like the other animals took advantage of me. We're going to be all alone in a big room, because with the slut and the moron we were in three and now we are two. Some people have complained to the boss high up that we are just 2 in a big room and they are 3 in a smaller room, so we might get moved to their room, but it's still a very good deal. The moron with the radio right now is in a room with 5 other people, among which is the "small" intermediate boss, whom I thanked for getting the moron with the radio out of my sight and hearing. And he smiled. I told him "I don't know how to thank you...". Not that I ever asked him, because he already did me the favor of moving me out of the other room, where he took my place to be able to check on the slackers. Now all the slackers are in one room with the boss checking on them. That's what they deserve. No more coffee breaks or phone calls. Just work, and the boss checking on them. Me and other polite lady are left all alone to ourselves also because all our bosses know we will work even if they don't check on us (I have a lot of bosses, at different levels, and they all come to me to give me work).

The reason I never complained to the moron about his radio is this:
Nurse Ratched: "What you probably don't realize is that we have a lot of old men on this ward, who couldn't hear the music if we turned it lower: that music is all they have".
Click to expand...
AMAZING acting in this movie.

 
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you should be frikkin' glad you followed your system, a job well done mate!

just reading new market wizards, some of the best use mechanical systems, richard dennis uses those now after his days in the pit, plus william eckhardt made mils from them.

You have an edge- a unique ability to create great systems!

and i'm also glad because i just used volume to decide not to take a short on corn! ( even tho the trend was down, the recent bull surge had exponentially more volume than the whole time when price was riding down, even tho there was triple confluence to short on, i feel great !)
 
Thanks for sharing your own trading and the info about "new market wizards".

It was a good thing that today I followed my systems even though ultimately they lost for the day about 400 dollars. In these cases, with discretionary, I risk blowing out my account. Other than this, it was not a good thing that I spent the whole day writing here, but hey better than nothing. As I said, it could have been worse: I could have done disasters in the markets. Today is not over. There will be some overnight trades. I'll know tomorrow how well they went.

What's important about here is that by writing here, I expose to myself and everyone all my flaws and try to keep them under control. I documented live what happens to me when I engage in discretionary trading. I don't lose 400 like today, but more like ten times as much. Which means a total disaster for my small risk capital.

The next step is to get used to this life, and do it naturally, without having to check on the trades being made every half an hour. Just making sure there are no bugs and such technical problems. Good night to all. Thanks for your attention.
 
yeh you too.

even though you lost...well put it like this, would you rather you interfered, made +200 or just let your system run by itself :) the best thing is that you haven't interfered because that would just be repeating the cycle you've been going through for the past 12 years.

Trading systems, as far as i know ALWAYS have some form of drawdown, but, in the end they come out positive, as will you ;)
 
travis said:
TIt was a good thing that today I followed my systems even though ultimately they lost for the day about 400 dollars.
Click to expand...

Indeed, it was a good day. And by your actions you are proving to yourself that you can exercise discipline. Even people with automated trading systems need discipline, to not interfere, to ensure the systems are watched over, and, very rarely, help the system if it fails (e.g. as with your pending margin call.) You did good, keep doing it. The fact that you had a losing day means nothing. They will happen. As you said yourself, taking a small loss is a happy event -- you would've in many cases lost more had you not had the discipline to cut your loss short (in this case the discipline is of course enforced by your system, but it's also you as you now do not tamper with them, which is exercising discpline as well.) As an aside, you'll likely of course have losing weeks as well at some point. But, that should not faze you either...
 
TAjammy said:
yeh you too.

even though you lost...well put it like this, would you rather you interfered, made +200 or just let your system run by itself :) the best thing is that you haven't interfered because that would just be repeating the cycle you've been going through for the past 12 years.

Trading systems, as far as i know ALWAYS have some form of drawdown, but, in the end they come out positive, as will you ;)
Click to expand...


Yes. As I wrote many times, one interference may very well bring me money, but, being the way I am (unable to trade profitably if I engage in discretionary trading), one interference will lead to another, and sooner or later (sooner than later), I will make one of my usual mistakes and regret interfering at all. So I cannot allow myself to break the non-intervention principle. Ever. Usually what happens is that I interfere and for a whole week I benefit from it, but then the next week, I do something that makes me lose double the amount I made thanks to my interferences.
 
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