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Well, I've decided to give OneUpTrader a try. The current offer is better than TST's so why not? And I got 50% off my monthly fee, so that was a bonus. But the real reason 1up is so much more attractive than TST is because there is no FTP. If you pass the eval, you get funded, provided your trading is consistent. I certainly understand that.
So today was my first day, and I was actually nervous. Almost as if I was trading live. But my nerves soon calmed down and I got on with my trading. I didn't do that well however. I only made 4 trades and only made $40 after commissions. The market was a little slow for me today and I kept bailing out of trades. Well, at least I didn't lose money.
I guess I'll start a real journal although I have two already. I'll probably just cut and paste from my personal journal.
Thanks to all for your feedback. The conclusion I came to was what I thought all along. Trading scared because you are under capitalized is a non starter. Forget about it!
Hey man, don't sell yourself short(if and when I get funded ) for what it's worth I've read this entire topic. And given that you've blown up once, and are still persistent enough to dust yourself off and go back to square one(sim trading). Shows that you are pretty much in this game for life. Because you truly respect and enjoy trading markets. Some people just know once they experience trading that it's something they will never put down. A lot have people have gone down the same path as you and given up. On to pursue another expensive hobby. Although most if not all of them didn't expect it to be so time consuming. Anyways you seem like you are making significant progress with your trading, be it a sim account or not. That still doesn't change the fact that your getting better, whether you know it or not. And that's pretty much what it boils down to. Your confidence level and attitude towards your own skills as a trader. If I could recommend anything to you it would be to read Steenbargers "trading psychology 2.0" There's a lot of good points he makes about changing ones habits and attitudes in that book. I've read it twice, and from time to time I put my iPhone on voiceover and just listen to random chapters from it. Don't second guess yourself, you will get funded one day if you make that your goal.
Impressive results. I am new to this forum and looking for a platform that just does not freeze.I am using Ninja trader and afraid to trade in real money.Any suggestions?
Thanks
Hundreds of us here trade live on Ninja 7 every day. I've never had a freeze. If you're experiencing a lot of freezes, you need to be in touch with Ninja support, or your computer has a problem. Ninja 7 is pretty dang stable, but so are other platforms, like Sierra Chart, TradeStation, etc.
Be prepared for unexpected and bizarre things when you trade live. I have recently been trading with Tradestation which normally runs with no issues on my computer. However, I have had a couple instances when I've placed a live trade for the entire program to freeze. And, it is not possible to re-open the program without logging off the desktop and logging back on which can obviously take several minutes.
The reality is there is a fairly good chance you will lose several hundred to thousands of dollars due to software or other technicalities when you go live. This is why I always enter my trade with the stop loss. However, that is assuming you remember to set it in the DOM. There are a lot of opportunities to forget to set it. One should always be diligent to make sure that no stop orders are left in the market either, that can be very costly.
Sorry for the delayed response. I've been struggling trying to get funded with OneUpTrader. But it hasn't happened yet. I've blown up twice. Why? The only thing I can trace it to is the reduced contracts and the tighter loss limits. I made the mistake of signing up for the "Beginner" account which limits you to 6 contracts and a $1250 daily loss limit instead of going with the "Professional" plan that allows you to trade up to 15 contracts and a $4000 daily loss limit. Now I know that there are going to be those that say "if you can't make money with 1 contract you can't make money with 10". But I have proof to the contrary. In reviewing my trading history in Tradervue, I lost money overall on most trades under 5 lots, but results improved exponentially from 5 lots up. And I'm taking about per contract returns, not just overall returns. I'll post screenshots below.
The problem I've been having is I'm being too cautious and tightening my stops too quickly, missing out on many good trades. I believe this is because there's a consequence to losing and because of the tighter loss limits. And the reduce ability to comfortably scale in and out of trades because of reduced contract availability doesn't help either.
Now I may be able to adapt to this tighter restriction but I don't want to. I'm just going to upgrade my account. Then I can trade comfortably with a lower percentage of my account size, loss limits and contract availability. Yes, it will take me longer to reach my profit target but at least I'll be trading in a way that has shown me positive results in the past. I need wiggle room. That's what works for me.
I'm sure there are those out there who will have something negative to say. But this is what works for me. That's all that matters. What you do is your business. More power to you. I probably could adapt to the tighter restrictions if I was happy making $50 - $100 per day. But that's not the results I'm use to so I find myself going for bigger targets when trading smaller size. I guess that's a consequence of having your P&L visible while trading instead of just watching ticks. My bad. But whats done is done. I have switched to ticks however. Hasn't helped yet.
But to be completely transparent, the main reason I blew up each time was because I refused to take another "small" loss, and ran out of room and contracts. I could have traded my way out of every big loss I had, if I had more room and more contracts to improve my cost basis. I'm use to scaling in as a trade goes against me, just like Big Mike, InletCap, and FT71 does. FT71 calls it campaigning. It works for me too when I have enough room and enough contracts. If you think it doesn't, just review Big Mikes trading journal. Check out how he trades. He scales in...averaging down in the process. Imagine what you could do with unlimited funds. You'd never have to take a loss. Just keep improving your cost basis. But you don't need unlimited funds. You just need enough.
But please...don't listen to me. I've only been profitable on sim and trading with money on the line is completely different, because you'll respond completely different. Even when it's just a reset fee on the line.
Here are my result by lot size. See how things improve on a per lot basis as my trading volume increased? It's not a coincidence.
Thanks for sharing. I thought I'd add my thoughts on this for anyone who cares. First, I think you are probably going down the wrong path with the scaling into trades particularly when you combine that with the requirement to be out before EOD. Typically you will need both a longer time frame and a much larger account size to profit from scaling into trades and your leverage will need to be lower, as well. A somewhat technical explanation would probably factor in the half-life for the mean reversion period.
However, I agree with you that it is much more difficult to make money trading a single lot. But, the reason I've found that to be true is because I can't add size on my better trades. If you can trade at least 2 lots (maybe 3) then having extra contracts won't necessarily help you. They only become useful if you are trying to take a very small profit, say $50, consistently from the market each day and turn that $50 into $500. Even two lots would give you a second shot to lower your cost basis on a trade, if you wanted to do that.
I can see how averaging into trades, if you have a specific goal of collecting the spread, might work but I think probably you'd want to do that at a very low leverage if it were to be sustainable.
What method are you using to judge the probability of your trades? The basic strategy I use is to identify areas of low volume, wait for the auction to reach these areas and begin scaling into a position aimed back towards the middle of the volume distribution. I find that if one of these low volume areas is reached during the middle of the trading session, it is generally met with swift rejection and the trade pays out fairly quickly. Take today in the CL market as an example. The second those first few thousand contracts traded at the new monthly high of 48.87, price rotated for a full 100 tick swing within 20 minutes.
Hey next time you are up during the EU session, open up the DOM for CL, study the order flow for a good five minutes. Then as soon as you see a shift in balance from offers to bids or bids to offers(more participants on one side of the book than the other, a significant shift, 200 contracts or more of imbalance at a minimum) place a limit order to either buy on the bid or sell on the offer depending on which side of the book is more populated. With your trades direction facing towards the more populated side of the book. (facing into the crowd) Place limit orders to take you out of the trade at a three tick profit. This sounds counterintuitive, trying to scalp three ticks trading into the crowd, but it works. The second you spot the auction shift in balance, place the limit orders facing towards the more populated side of the book. It's usually not hard to get filled because of the more dominant other side of the book, and for some reason the after that initial 1-2 ticks from the imbalance point. The large orders sitting on the other side of the book act like a magnet for price for at least 3 ticks. Try it on sim at first, once you get the hang of it you will be able to scalp at least 300 every night towards your combine. I usually run 3 contracts, so it's 90 each successful attempt. Some times I end up moving the limit orders to get out of the trade at 60$(2 ticks). After 6:00 am EST this technique usually dissolves, and if you continue to do this you will definitely get run over when the rest of the market wakes up.
when you say "it works", can you please elaborate? For example, have you calculated expectancy on this, or have you run it successfully for x no. of trades, days, etc.? Have you traded it live? Does it work in all market conditions?
Thanks