Keep Calm and Don't Move Your Stops.....

A little risk management saves a lot of fan cleaning!

The Purpose of Life is Joy!!

Thursday, July 23, 2020

A little something...+1.5%

Mortgage business has been CRAZY last few months not to mention covid-19...been trading a bit here and there. A couple of weeks ago I started looking at other markets besides crude. I did this because CL has been lazy after all the volatility at the beginning of covid and I need faster moving markets or I get bored and that is death for my account!!

I looked at gold, es, a couple of currencies and finally settled on NQ. I like the way it moves quickly at least so far, price per tick is only $5 which helps me control risk a bit better than CL and it tends to respect levels a bit better than CL or at least that is my perception.

Have done fairly well with it so far and at least for now, will stick with it.

I had a full blown computer crash a couple of weeks ago as well and did not have time to replace for a few days so I grabbed a 5 year old laptop from my daughters room she wasn't using, went through all kinds of Microsoft updates to get it ready and for the moment I am trading from that with a 27 inch monitor. It works but its a bit slow.

I made a quick video today using Jing which was also upgraded. I don't think this machine can handle much more in the way of video software so no embedded video today! The audio is awful as I just used the old laptop's mic and I was speaking pretty softly.

Today's trades


Sunday, March 15, 2020

Volatility

This week has been nuts in the mortgage business and shows no signs of letting up. I really didnt have time to trade this last week and the one day that I did, I realized I really couldn't afford the stop required so I traded with small ones and you know what happened to those!

So limited trading this week and perhaps for the next couple of weeks as well.

Cheers.

Saturday, March 7, 2020

Demons without, Demons within

There are trading demons everywhere, especially if you look for them. This week the twin demons of greed and fear became my constant companions but only because of the volatility. I wanted my piece and I was afraid I'd miss out if I didn't jump in. The only real saving grace is I have NEVER violated my daily stop loss. I refuse to act more stupidly than necessary although I came close this week. I might have lost more if I wasn't forced away from the charts Friday morning for a medical appointment at the precise moment the market opened.

The temptation is to blame volatility, the external demon. The truth is, there are no external demons, only internal.

Just an FYI, time change tomorrow, market opens an hour earlier for those of us moving to PST or GMT-8 for those of you outside the US.


Saturday, February 29, 2020

2/29/2020 Update

It was a crazy week. I didn't trade to much in terms of the number of trades each day. Lots of movement some of which I took advantage of and some of which took advantage of me.

I was on the wrong side twice and on the right side twice. Net result. Mostly break even. I did break above the zero line for the week so that's good but on Friday I was seriously distracted and I ignored the little voice that said best not trade today. That was the mistake for sure as I made a snap decision, was wrong and had a pretty decent size stop out that wiped out the prior gains.

I had the presence of mind to stand down at that point and just let it be. I knew if I had the focus time I could have recovered but I didn't so I let it go for the day and week.


Saturday, February 22, 2020

Time sure does fly

I noticed today I haven't posted in three months. A lot has happened in that time frame but for trading purposes, I didn't start trading again until around January 15th.

Over the holidays I did a lot of thinking about life, where I am and where I want to go. I came to the realization that in my remaining years, I only want to do what makes me happy. Life is to short to choose otherwise!

I decided that what I really want is complete freedom to do what I want, when I want and for my own reasons. Being tied to a job does not make that happen and so I decided to get serious about growing my trading account to the point where I can rely on it for income vs a job.

The plan was to grow the account to a certain size over the course of a month or so and then use that as the starting point for the plan. That happened and so this month about a week ago, I hit that goal and then began working toward freedom. First thing that happened was balances started going down nearly immediately. I sort of expected this but I don't really care. I am on a journey and delays and detours are to be expected.

I have about 90 minutes each morning to trade. I can realistically trade until around 7:30 AM my time most days. Since the market opens at 7 AM my time, that means I can get the open if needed. I find this 90 minutes is about all I really need if I am patient and allow the market to come to me. 30-50 ticks are generally available most mornings within the parameters of how I see the market so my daily goal is roughly 30 ticks on average. Some days there will be more and some days less but overall 25-30 ticks per contract is my rough goal.

I don't have time to post every day but I will try to post once a week either Friday night or Saturday morning. I want to document the journey and this is my only real place to do that.

So in the interest of small beginnings, here is the first weekly progress chart and a mark up from Friday's trades. The Journey to Freedom graph is simply a running balance starting from zero where zero represents my starting balance in the account as of a week ago. I don't trade every day so the Day axis represents days I actually trade, not calendar days.

Charts are from TradingView.com as I like their drawing tools very much. However, my broker no longer connects to their charts so its just for review mark ups these days.

On another note, my average time in trade used to be about 4 minutes. Now my average time in losing trades is about 10 minutes and my average time in winning trades is about 43 minutes. Same is true of my average win size and average losing size in terms of dollars. Average winning trade is three times as large as my losing trades. I'm pretty happy with these numbers and I think if I can maintain this over time, I should be good.

Initial size is always 1 or 2 lots for now. Will consider adding as balances grow. I have done fairly well with this over the last few months and I know adding to much size to quickly can mess with your head so for now, I am content in this range. I think adding a 3rd lot to a winning trade might be in the works within a few weeks but I will only do so when it seems the most obvious thing to do.

Have a great weekend!