my journal

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If i didn't have a stoploss, I would be praying right now. Instead I do, and so it's only a matter of accuracy: I am not as accurate as I thought I was.
 
-180

Or maybe the fact that all markets were so oversold should have kept me from entering.
 
I guess I'll have to watch out for oversold markets

Snap1.jpg

Trade went from 19.00sh CET to 20.20sh CET: stoploss. It sucks. Only warning against it: all markets were heavily oversold.

TRADES:
Here's my trades as of today and the time (CET) they took place:

20091130 17.20sh to 17.30sh: takeprofit
20091130 21.50sh to 01.00sh: takeprofit
20091201 17.50sh to 18.50sh: early exit with 1 tick profit
20091202 18.40sh to 00.15sh: stoploss
20091203 08.10sh to 08.30sh: takeprofit
20091204 10.40sh to 13.00sh: early exit with 5 ticks loss
20091207 16.10sh to 16.30sh: takeprofit
20091208 17.30sh to 19.00sh: takeprofit
20091209 18.40sh to 19.00sh: takeprofit
20091210 19.00sh to 20.20sh: stoploss
 
Pro-trend discretionary system

HOTKEYS
"B" for "buy 1 at market" with 20 ticks bracket order,
"S" for "sell 1 at market" with 20 ticks bracket order,
"C" for "close position".
----------------------
CHARTS
SET UP THESE CHARTS ON IB'S TWS:
3 MONTHS TO 1 HOUR OF ES, CL, GBP, ZN "line" mode
2 DAYS OF EUR.USD@IDEALPRO 15-minutes CANDLES WITH PIVOTS
4 HOURS OF EUR.USD@IDEALPRO 1-MINUTE CANDLES WITH 15-periods and 210-periods moving averages
----------------------
RULES
ENTRIES can be made if:
1) time is 15.00 to 20.00 CET
1) it's your first discretionary trade today (you can't trade discretionary outside this system)
2) your entry and your take profit are >=10 ticks away from any pivot lines
3) you've looked at "correlated" chart (3 months to 1 hour): no LONG/SHORT if you think markets as OVERBOUGHT/OVERSOLD
4) the 225-period ma is in favor by > 10 ticks
5) the 15-period ma gets crossed by price (in favor) after being on the other side >= 4 minutes
EXITS
Bracket order of 20 ticks.
----------------------
TRADES:
Here's my trades as of today and the time (CET) they took place:
20091130 17.20sh to 17.30sh: takeprofit
20091130 21.50sh to 01.00sh: takeprofit
20091201 17.50sh to 18.50sh: early exit +1
20091202 18.40sh to 00.15sh: stoploss
20091203 08.10sh to 08.30sh: takeprofit
20091204 10.40sh to 13.00sh: early exit -5
20091207 16.10sh to 16.30sh: takeprofit
20091208 17.30sh to 19.00sh: takeprofit
20091209 18.40sh to 19.00sh: takeprofit
20091210 19.00sh to 20.20sh: stoploss
----------------------
BRACKET ORDER:
Pictures of weapon and some shots.
 
I am sticking with it!

Ok, so I made 10 trades, so I can draw some early conclusions.

Two null.
Two stoplosses.
Six profitable.

6-2=4.

The system has been highly profitable so far. 75% profitable. So far better than any of my other (automated) systems. And definitely better than my discretionary trading, because that has showed me a loss of thousands almost every month in the past two years.

So I am sticking wih it! Despite today's loss. I'll keep away from highly oversold markets (like today's) in the future.
 
I back-tested early exits: they don't work

I was in the bath as usual and like archimedes I got more ideas. This is why I got out of the bath tub quickly as usual and went back to my computer and started back-testing all types of early exits, not discretionary but univocal. And they don't work, at least as far I tested them (time used is EST):

Code: 
Inputs: test(17), test2(0);
Variables: crossed_up(0), crossed_down(0);

If c crosses above AverageFC(c, 15) then crossed_up = time;
If c crosses below AverageFC(c, 15) then crossed_down = time;

If marketposition = 0 and time>0900 and time<1400 then begin 
If c crosses above AverageFC(c, 15) and c > AverageFC(c, 225)+0.0010 and time - crossed_down >= 4 Then Buy("Long") This Bar;
If c crosses below AverageFC(c, 15) and c < AverageFC(c, 225)-0.0010 and time - crossed_up >= 4 Then Sell("Short") This Bar;
end;

If Openpositionprofit > 0.0020 or Openpositionprofit < -0.0020 then ExitLong("X Long") This Bar;
If Openpositionprofit > 0.0020 or Openpositionprofit < -0.0020 then ExitShort("X Short") This Bar;

[COLOR="Red"]If c<AverageFC(c, 225) and c<AverageFC(c, 15) and barssinceentry>test [/COLOR]then ExitLong("time X Long") This Bar;
[COLOR="red"]If c>AverageFC(c, 225) and c>AverageFC(c, 15) and barssinceentry>test[/COLOR] then ExitShort("time X Short") This Bar;

The idea for backtesting was that if you enter with both averages on your side, and since trades either work immediately or do not work (I thought), then, exiting after x minutes once both averages were against you, should improve your profits, yet it does not. So I am keeping my bracket order in all situations, even when the trade has been lasting for hours and the trend seems to have changed.

Maybe my averages suck, maybe my testing sucks, but I keep things simple not to screw up, since I know how poor my skills are. I have friends who are engineers and are testing complicated averages, taking all precautions, seem to be aware of all potential problems... and they've been testing their first system for five years and still haven't implemented it with real money. And probably never will.

I want this thing to come together and work. I am not here to be a brilliant engineer. I just want to make money, that's the only objective. To hit my target. I want to put this thing together. Who put this thing together? Me, that's who! And **** Gaspar Gomez and the Diaz brothers. What did they ever do for us?


Anyway, here's the system as it is now - except pivots were not backtested and neither were correlations, because pivots I can't test (they could cause too many mistakes) and correlated is pretty much all discretionary and I use it to discard signals (like I could have today, but didn't and lost maybe because of it).

Code: 
Inputs: test(17), test2(0);
Variables: crossed_up(0), crossed_down(0);

If c crosses above AverageFC(c, 15) then crossed_up = time;
If c crosses below AverageFC(c, 15) then crossed_down = time;

If marketposition = 0 and time>0900 and time<1400 then begin 
If c crosses above AverageFC(c, 15) and c > AverageFC(c, 225)+0.0010 and time - crossed_down >= 4 Then Buy("Long") This Bar;
If c crosses below AverageFC(c, 15) and c < AverageFC(c, 225)-0.0010 and time - crossed_up >= 4 Then Sell("Short") This Bar;
end;

If Openpositionprofit > 0.0020 or Openpositionprofit < -0.0020 then ExitLong("X Long") This Bar;
If Openpositionprofit > 0.0020 or Openpositionprofit < -0.0020 then ExitShort("X Short") This Bar;
 
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A big difference is how you take a loss

With the sniper system, one trade a day and a fixed stoploss, I am not feeling vengeful even a few hours later. Because it forces me to spend hours between trades and i don't have to decide when to exit: no further stress on me after picking the entry. Sooner or later I'll also stop following the trade, like I'm watching a movie, once I've placed it, because it won't affect it whether I hope and pray or not (since I'm atheist and god won't listen to me).

With the compulsive gambling method, I was feeling stress only after entering, because I entered as I wished. After I was in, it was hell though. It's much better now. Only problem: I placed a few discretionary trades this week: hopefully it will cease to happen. Today, very amazingly, I exited a gambling trade after a few minutes since entering it - I don't even know why I displayed such a healthy behaviour as I don't know why I was so unhealthy as to enter the CL, after all the damage it's done to my account. Just like I entered, I exited.
 
Today I lost 500 dollars

today I took a pretty big loss considering my capital, but nothing compared to my usual losses of thousands at a time. For two reasons

1) automated systems have very strict money management and I am not having unexpected losses on those

2) my discretionary trading has a maximum fixed loss of 250, and that's what happened.

I lost 500 dollars today. I am slightly below 5500 now.

I count on catching up tomorrow. Automated systems most likely will not make any money because they won't even trade. I count on my 250 from discretionary trading. So to end the week closer to 6k than to 5k. I am counting on closing next week with 7k. By Christmas I should have no less than 10k.
 
They say "scared money never made any money". I agree. The reason is not that you make the wrong calls when you want money badly. The reason is that you don't stick by your calls. You exit too early even if you made the right call, because you're scared it will turn unprofitable. And if you're losing you stick with it, because you're afraid of taking a loss. You shouldn't even make a trade if you're scared of losing. It means you don't have enough accuracy to count on being profitable.

I am feeling confident now, and I could take that loss all right today. Even without any experience I am having accuracy as high as 75%. I will try to get as close as I can to 100%.

What I noticed about today was that there was very low range. But I didn't know that from the start. I found out later. So that can't help me much. But for sure, if there's been a high range all day, there will continue to be a high range.

So maybe range is something I should use in my systems, and even backtest, actually I'll do it right now. Then the "correlated" filter, but that I can't test. Maybe range will get rid of 10 losses out of 100 on the backtesting. If it works, I'll definitely follow that rule, strictly.
 
It doesn't work. Low range or high range or middle range don't seem to produce much better results. So I can't just get rid of a given range trades.

I'll have to go discretionary for a few months and then, once I get a feel for it, try to understand what it is that I am doing, and then backtest it. As I'll go along also test any ideas that sound good. Range didn't seem to work. I know what I am doing and how I am testing. If it doesn't seem to work it's because it doesn't work and not because i screwed up in my testing.

So the clear things are the bracket order, the pivots, the correlations (which I don't know how much actually help) and the moving averages.

As far as I can appraise and roughly evaluate, these things help my profitability in this descending order (from most useful to least useful):

1) moving averages (force me to go with the trend)
2) pivots (keep me from entering at the wrong time and area)
3) bracket order (keep my losses under control, and exit my trades when the move is over)
4) correlated markets (the EUR goes with them, and so I can't trade totally against them: however here the problem is whether I can really understand what they are doing)
 
I am not behind because I work

I can't sleep.

I woke up in the middle of the night as usual. It's not because of trading, because there are no positions open, no big losses behind me. It's probably because of work.

They forced me to fall behind because of giving me so much work, and I don't like to fall behind. The boss said it's ok to be behind, that they are all behind, and he doesn't keep up with mail, e-mail, phone calls... but it's not efficient and being forced to do things less than efficiently makes me uncomfortable, it gives me insomnia. I am behind, there's 50 envelopes on my desk waiting to be opened.

It seems as if he thought that if you're not behind it means you don't have enough work, so he kept on giving more and more until he finally got me to fall behind. He told me "until now you were privileged not be behind". You sonofabitch, I am not behind because I work my ass off, not because I don't have work. And the morons in your room are behind because they are deceiving you by leaving work on their tables in order to prevent you from giving them more work.

In 2005, in my first year at this bank, a few colleagues told me "you're crazy, why are you not keeping paper on your table - it looks like you're doing nothing all day...". They thought I should put any paper on my desk. Bull****. I never did. And now that I have paper on my desk I can't sleep because of it. The idiot doesn't care or doesn't realize that if mail doesn't get opened there might be mail for other offices on my desk for a week, that other people are making phone calls to get sent again.

Last year, they told me not to play videogames. **** them all. I don't keep paper on my desk, because it's orderly to do so. And I play videogames if I have no work to do. The boss must know that he has one employee who doesn't fool him and if he's not doing anything he will know. If he comes in and I am writing on this forum, I still keep on writing, and I told him that I need to slack off for about 15 minutes every hour. Because everyone else takes 45 minutes off every hour, and they're all just pretending to work all day long.

**** gaspar gomez and **** the ****ing diaz brothers. **** them all. I bury those cockroaches... what did they ever do for us?!

 
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Now what. Eyes are tired. Laptop on my lap...

Coughing.

Unable to sleep.

Need room...

Freedom.

Wasting space on this page.

Anything a teacher would tell me not to do. You can't write a comma before "and", and I do it, because I have the "poetic licence": who says you're the top expert on anything just because you're my teacher. That's how I always felt. Who gives you the right to judge me? To rank me?

Screw you all.

I can't sleep.

I... can't sleep.

I feel like skipping work. But my father will knock on my door to ask if anything is wrong. Not because he cares at all about how I'm doing. He just thinks that, unless I am dying, I should go to work. He's like that other mother ****er, the boss. If I am not dying, it means he didn't push me to the limit, so he has to whip me more.

**** them all.

What am I going to do to avoid work and my dad at once? I used to go to the park as a teenager or walk around my city, go to play video games or go to read books at a library. Yeah, I used to read books. Waste of time.

**** gaspar gomez and **** the ****ing diaz brokers. I bury those cockroaches. What did they ever do for us?!

I am not going to work (on time) tomorrow. I'll go late, if they want me.

I turned my alarm off, so, even my father comes to disturb me, I'll still have managed to sleep an extra hour.

That's why I so desperately wanted to make money. To be able to sleep normally, and wake up at 12.

Then I could quit my job and my dad wouldn't be able to come to bother me because I am not dying and I am not going to work.

I remember when I was at the hospital once, for some serious stuff, my dad told me "take it as a vacation". Like you can be on vacation only if you're dying basically. That's what I should tell that mother ****er if I see him dying.

That's what's given me this tremendous need to escape, to rebel: having around me a mother ****er like this guy who's always relentlessly pushed me to the limit, to get me to work more and more... obsessively, compulsively whipping me... "do more"... "you can do better"... "you could have done more"... "if you had done"... "you could have done"... "my friend's son has done"... "this guy has done"... "this other guy has achieved"... "look at my friend's children: they've worked non-stop ever since they were born"...

Certainly I know what hard work means... with this idiot in the house... and I even pushed myself, i've learned this obsession with hard work... but also at the same time... I want to tell myself what I need to do. It's enough pressure as it is: I can't stand other people telling what to do on top of all the pressure I already give myself.

That's why I told my boss to go pressure the slackers in his room, who are on coffee breaks all day long. But they got paper on their tables, right, so it looks like they're all busy.

I'm having to call 20 guys at the branches all day long... asking for work they didn't do, for documents they were required to send but didn't send. Today I had to call 3 people for their signatures were missing from the suspicious transaction reports they sent us. They typed their name, and didn't sign the box below their name, where it said "signature". I had the form modified just for the idiots. But the idiots were too lazy to read the boxes. So until today I had to call these guys and get them to send new envelopes with the same exact document only with their added signature. What a waste of work and time.

Today the boss allowed me to get faxes sent. So I got three faxes sent, with the morons' signatures.

These calls, interacting with all these lazy morons, gives me a lot of stress.

On top of this, my work does not get acknowledged. I'm having to listen to this guy calling me "privileged" because until today I wasn't behind.

It reminds me exactly of my father telling me "I could do more". He did that, relentlessly, since i was 8 years old. He bought extra exercises for me to do after school.

Eventually, by 14, I was sick of working extra, because he was never satisfied. I was close to being the best student in my class, but I felt like a slacker because he kept on telling me I could do more. I felt guilty. The best student, but he feels guilty. So at 14, or even a year earlier, I decided that I'd stop studying.

I am being called a slacker anyway, so why should I work? And it's almost like what might happen now even: "we're all behind"... I was privileged... I'll show you what it means if I don't work. Go ahead and fail me.

If you fail to acknowledge my work, like my father did, I might as well stop working and make you regret your words. Ungrateful *******.
 
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Now what.

My future is an empty page as they say. It's all to be written.

The cursor is blinking. Waiting for me to act.

It's asking me, "what do we do next?".

Like a timid question mark. Like one of my younger cousins, waiting for my inputs. What are we going to play?

No more games. I am tired. I will try to go back to sleep. But my alarm is off. So I'll wake up late. If the boss says anything, I'll say "go ahead and fire me" as usual.

Who knows. Maybe in a month I'll be here regretting my words. Or maybe I'll be happy that I've said it once too many and got fired.

The fact is clear though, at least to me. You don't appreciate my work. I break my back for you and you pretend to not see this. You're doing like my father, and you're gonna burn in hell like the rest of them.

 
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