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This journal is going to be quiet for a couple of months from now on after this post.
I had a good day yesterday and hoping to leave on a high note. It is not to be. I have a history of mediocre to terrible day after a spectacular day and this is likely because of my expectation of another trend day after a big trend day. i.e. recency bias.
Stats were bullish and I was long but I couldn't execute my bias well. This was mostly due to my attempt to scale-in without booking my partial profits. My hard-stop, which I don't use very often, cost me yesterday with wild swings. It's a messy looking entries & exits as it's just ONE big trade.
Though I lost less than half of what I made the previous day, the pain is equal to the pleasure of gain.
I have been working on this pet project of mine for quite sometime now and it's ready for execution.
It's a simple strategy. Too simple actually but very effective.
I enter my trade @ market close and cover it @ RTH open. Essentially, I am holding position overnight and literally paying for the gap risk (or payoffs).
I have done extensive backtesting and it's clearly a profitable strategy in the past but forward testing is going to be a different beast. Let's see. I think Linda Raschke mentioned something similar to this strategy but I couldn't find any info in the web.
I am planning to test this strategy in the next 5 weeks when I'm a busy with my regular job. It literally takes less than 2 mins just before RTH close to check the criteria for long/short trade. I place the trade in my phone and that's it. My goal is to NOT check the market even once after I enter the trade. Since I'm executing this with SPY and not MES, I stay out of the trade during ETH
Mark Douglas' famous quote 'There is nothing to think about. Just place the trade'.
Anyone who is skeptical, just think about this. S&P500 gained more than 24% in 2024. If you were long only during the RTH, you would have lost 4%. Overnight moves were the main reason for a stellar 2024.
Still trading and making progress. Profitable start for this year and volatility has been a friend, so far.
My trading style and strategy remains the same but with half my usual size to accommodate volatility.
1. SPY trading is very mechanical. Usually from RTH start to close with the option of going flat by EU close. Max risk 500/day.
2. MES trading is discretionary with max risk of 500/day. Still risk averse but much better at pushing my limits to max risk/reward lately.
I have decided to keep my journey and journal private, for now. This seems to align with my core personality and I also noticed better discipline and performance. However, I will regularly visit this site and will also post periodically with updates.
So funny, I just sat down today thinking "I'm gonna check in on that guy" and here you are! Glad to hear you are doing well and that hi vol is not hurting you. I'm still up/down/up/ down...better than down/down I suppose but...
Anyway..good to see the update and if you are every on this side of the globe I think you have my contact.
Take care,
Craig
When the end is unknown and the distance is unknown...That's when you find out who you are.
My profits were bigger early this year due to higher volatility but gone down recently. That's mainly because of risk management and reducing my size to cope with higher vix. I have to size up (to my normal levels) soon to hit my profit goals.
Tradervue stats for 2025 is encouraging. My win rate hovers around 60% for a while but my profit factor is well over 2 this year. That gives me confidence in sizing up.
Will keep my journal alive by intermittent updates. Good luck everyone.
My trading process is well established now and it's all about execution.
I have been trading SPY in a 100% mechanical way for a while with entry from RTH open and mandatory closure @ EOD. MES is for my discretionary execution to assess my market reading skills and see whether my entries and exits are better. As I have better discipline now in taking my losses, I am beginning to see the results with MES.
In the battle between the machine vs me, we have a clear winner for last month. It's me.
I had a stellar start for this month but gave up some of the profit back this week. Still a very good month. More importantly, my confidence in my system is unshakable now. I religiously journal my actual trades and compare that against the hypothetical trades as per my signals. June 2025 would have resulted in 245 points compared to my actual performance of 190. Not bad but I was beating my system until last week. It reflects my fallacy or bias that a new all time high was unlikely. I just need to follow the signals. Like Mark Douglas said 'There is nothing to think about'.
Summer holiday is generally a difficult time to trade but we were fortunate to have a reasonably volatile June. Now that we have a new all time high (ATH), I expect volatility to reduce in July and hence it's going to be challenging to trade. However, I am armoured now with good quality data about ATH market conditions. I will also modify my trading style and size to accomodate to the new reality. My current focus is making my trading less discretionary and improving my discipline. Will post again in a month with update.
This is a somewhat unique skill I wanted to have and probably not relevant for most of the traders out there.
I trade 2 timeframes intra-day, simultaneosly. SPY is all day hold, usally from start to finish i.e 6.5 hours. This is heavily data driven and almost systematic. MES is discretionary and also smaller timeframe of upto 1 hour hold, aiming to catch 20 - 50% of daily ATR.
I struggled for atleast 2 years in holding opposite directional trades (Long SPY short MES and vice versa) even with high probability setups. I overcame that barrier yesterday. I was long SPY from start to finish but took 2 short MES trades and grabbed 20 and 5 points respectively. I missed the 3rd opportunity as it was late in the day (midnight where i am). The circled trades are actual SPY entry & exit and arrowed one represent shorter term MES trades.
1
I am realising now that the key is to pick the right market conditions. First of all, I prefer not to counter-trade SPY vs MES. However, based on my research, strong bullish markets with frequent all time highs are difficult to day-trade. Though they have a strong long bias, the downswings are quicker and can be vicious (presumably to shake off weak longs). Win rate is high for bulls, bears have bigger profit factor. Narrowing of ATR and 'rangey' movements make it more difficult to day-trade for my style.
I don't expect to deploy this technique of opposing intra day trades very often but quite glad that I have it in my arsenal now
1. I managed to complete my tradingview strategy coding. I'm quite proud of this as I don't have any coding or technical background. I started this early this year and the learning curve was steep but the final hurdle was much easier than I expected.
2. This means I have more control over my entry and exit timing. So far, I was quite restricted with my subscription based quant data which was providing only RTH entry and End of Day (EOD) exit strategy. Now I can have flexible entry and exit times, using the same parameters and variables.
This may seem trival but it's a massive boost for me. I don't have to hold my trades EOD. Since my trading timezone changes from Asia to Pacific time several times a year, this flexibiity allows better control of my trading hours and improvement in sleep hygiene. I aim to trade the opening 2.5 hours only and will finish trading by EU close. I will be trading MES only. Since I am not holding any unmonitored positions, I can finally push my risk limit to 1000 USD a day. I have been too risk averse for too long.
I may start posting more frequently from next week for a month as my work assignment is finishing this week.
