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Because tomorrow is a holiday, here is my report for the week.
I ended up will a net loss of ~$200 total profit for the week. However, I did pull $1000 out of the account on Monday, and I have added a "withdrawals" column on the spreadsheet.
I spent a lot of time this week losing $200! What happened? I did my best, but I wasn't able to overcome the (1) flatness of the market on Monday and Tuesday, and (2) the insane down and up of yesterday and today.
Today I was actually up $400, but ended back down close to $0. Crazy. I kept getting faked out in a market that looked like it wanted to break down, but kept rising higher and higher. LESSONS? (1) Take your money and walk away!!! (2) Markets are more erratic before a holiday/weekend. (3) Just because a market has a big down day doesn't mean it can't regain close to 100% of that move the next day. Crazy indeed.
However, I AM STILL ALIVE to trade on Monday. In the past, I might have taken too much risk on a day like today and blown my account.
Once again, I attribute my longevity to MES Capital and the forced $1,250 daily loss (on the $50k account). Yes, I am not ashamed to say this on FIO. I know I am in very understanding company.
I had a decent week this week according to ticks won but cheated like crazy when I got under pressure and broke my size rules, moved my stops, and proved that I still have a hard head.
Here' a good article by Linda Raschke, "Who Are You".
“The major work of the world is not done by geniuses. It is done by ordinary people, with balance in their lives, who have learned to work in an extraordinary manner.”
― Gordon B. Hinckley
Hey Steve. I am running Ninja Trader and the analytics are standard. MAE, MFE, and ETD is default and you can have your metrics listed in currency, ticks, pips, points, or percentages. Too much to list here but here are a few of the screens I use every day to see how I have been doing. Of course this is only profiling 1 day but you can select a range of days as well a hours of the day and a bunch of other options..... and on and on.
“The major work of the world is not done by geniuses. It is done by ordinary people, with balance in their lives, who have learned to work in an extraordinary manner.”
― Gordon B. Hinckley
Never used Multicharts so can't say. But depending on the number of trades you are taking each day, if your charting package prints the entry and exit points on a chart it can be fairly quick to just scan through the chart and enter the number of ticks in to your own spreadsheet.
Or subscribe to/trial a service like Tradervue - https://www.tradervue.com:443/plans . The Silver service has MAE/MFE, and as an Elite member of this forum you can get a 20% monthly discount so it would cost less than $25.
They have MAE/MFE by tick distance or by Dollar amount (useful if scaling in and out during a trade. They do calculate MAE/MFE based on one minute charts though starting the bar after the entry minute bar, good enough most of the time but might be less accurate on very thin instruments like the Nasdaq or for very short duration trades.
You do not win as a trader, you just get to play again the next day. If that game doesn’t appeal to you then you should not trade. Gary Norden
I had my second negative week in a row. I am not quite yet the "SuperTrader" I hope to become some day. But I did NOT blow my account like I have in the past.
What happened? I didn't navigate the crazy ups and downs well at all last week.
Here is the NQ for the week. chop, chop, chop, ZOOM, chop, chop, chop.
But the YM went sideways to down. chop chop chop chop. And when the two indicies are not in sync, I need to be much more careful, which I was not.
On the bright side, our new MES Capital LIVE trader Slack.com chat room is working great. We have about 8 participants and most are doing great. It is really exhilarating seeing some guys trading with 8 contracts on a $250k account who have been with MES for 2 full years.
I only see benefits being in the Slack chat room. The main benefit for me is watching others post trades they see and having them run into profit - trades I never considered. More socializing in this solitary business of trading. More eyes on the charts. Motivation and accountability.
I am still very optimistic I can get back up to the $5k mark and either make withdrawal #2 or get up to $8k and try two contracts.
Thank you as always for sharing, @sstheo. I really enjoy reading your journal. I was wondering if you had any feedback to give on a couple of the rules, I may ask OneUp support about some of these rules on their site as well.
a) this rule seems weird to me: "Traders must have any 3 trading days' net profits total summed up to equal 80% of the largest day net profit." It is taken from this paragraph on the OneUp site, where they do not give an example of a rule-violation:
I don't even know how someone would sustain that condition over a meaningful period of time, unless I'm misunderstanding the rule. People have losing days, breakeven days, etc. this is the one rule that seems like carnival games, again, unless I'm mistaken. How does this play out in your experience?
b) Regarding your quote above, as I understand it from this page on the OneUp website...
...once your account balance has risen from breakeven and beyond the trailing drawdown threshhold, all that surplus accumulates to build a bigger and bigger drawdown cushion. I understand the potential need to take profits for personal expenses, taxes, etc. But apart from those items:
Are there any deterrents in the funded trader rules to simply growing the account as much as possible and building a very stable account with very little drawdown risk?
I hope these questions aren't too annoying and I wish you great trading luck!