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So here I am, 2 years later, tried my hand at prop trading, and learned a lot. I mainly traded CGB futures on the Montreal exchange, very illiquid and stale market. I ran out of money since desk fees were $2500 and the split 50/50, odds were not in my favor unless I traded major size but I was a beginner at the start or in the midst of the financial crisis.
Now I have a plan, now it's going to be different. I give myself 2 years to amass 40-50K and off I go live to fulfill my dream of making a living as a trader. I know it'll be tough, filled with sacrifice but I know I can do it. In this journal I will document my planning, thoughts, setup and basically everything that runs through my mind.
I hope you follow, and I invite anyone to help me in my journey. If I help some of you along the way then even better.
So first things first, I need to know what I'm going to trade.
Criterion looked for: high liquidity, medium-high volatility, high profit margins.
I chose two possible markets that I am FAMILIAR with: ES and ZN
According to my trading strategy (scalping), I want to know what my profit margins are for those two products on a winning tick basis. Mirus Futures quotes me ZN 3.26RT and ES 4.42RT all-in.
Clearly the more volatile the instrument, the less the profit margin! I used to trade for 10+ ticks but now I think it's best to have a higher %+ wins with less profit/win then to try to guess the market and get slaughtered. Next threads is entry and exit.
To determine Entry is to determine Exit first, this is what I was taught by my first mentor. If you know how much you are willing to lose (the forever evasive answer) then it's a matter of price action as to where you exit.
MAX LOSS = 2% of equity per day (not per trade, but if it happens then oh well, live to trade another day)
SL = stop loss
TGT = profit target
TV = tick value
LS = Lot size
AS = Account size
Max Loss = .02 = (SL*TV*LS)/AS
Max Position Size (if strong conviction) = LS = ((.02*AS)/(SL*TV))/2
*I divide by two because I don't want to stop trading if I get stopped out after being convinced on a trade.
The 2% max loss per day is subject to change, actually I would like input on this. Also the TGT and SL are subject to change, I would like to know how you guys do it? As you can see I need input on my risk management.
Up until recently I used to pack my charts with indicators, trying to find the holy grail of trading as they say...I'm not smart enough for that. I need to answer these basic questions;
OK there is a thread on this somewhere here but it's 4 pages long and has practically no information. I stumbled on another thread that addresses 3 types of strategies:
INSIDE BAR
OUTSIDE BAR
REVERSAL
I've been thinking of using the reversal one for a long time now, I used to trade strictly price action through market depth on XTrader. I still believe that the most important factors in trading are PRICE AND VOLUME (besides psychological stability and risk management). I don't care much about technical analysis yet because my level of knowledge is at best a novice.
In the beginnings I traded strictly with a DOM...no charts. Results were better than with charts because I wasn't prone to over-trading and I was paying attention to VOLUME AT PRICE, the order book and time and sales. However I do think that you can benefit from charts and in the the case of Ninja Trader, you don't have Volume at Price on the order book (DOM).
Is there a chart type that indicate volume at each specific price? If so, combined with pivots and significant S/R levels, wouldn't we be able to determine countless amounts of trading strategies? This is to investigate definitely.
I don't know much about market delta, but I have a feeling it could be useful as well for price action reading.
To go back to the subject, REVERSAL strategies are essentially levels of high volume where buyer/sellers intervene to stop a trend (taking profits or going short), it is a distribution point no? So we can conclude that a reversal is directly related to volume and accumulation and distribution at specific levels. Ok I'm rambling now.
What I need is a way to identify supply/demand at specific prices, as dumb as it may sound, it's probably all I need.
I have yet to figure out which data provider to use, as I am not fully knowledgeable about the requirements for my purpose.
My whole view on trading is that it's an auction process, people (or machines) will buy and sell until the market decides it's over/under valued. What are the tangibles?
Many before me have established that Volume, supply and demand and also emotions dictate price action. Having said that my methodology for trading has to be based on these factors and I think using Market Delta is the way to go for me.
I've been reading a lot for the past couple of days (and I will continue to do so) about the subject matter and the more I read, the more it makes sense to me. I used to read charts with candlesticks and couldn't figure out what was missing and when I stumbled on market delta it all clicked.
The problem is I have NO PROGRAMMING SKILLS so...it's going to be a long road. I know we have the GOMVolumeladder on this site, which seems to be an excellent tool, but what I'm afraid of is tweaking requirements and whether I can tweak it myself or have someone do it (if something goes wrong). It's like I know how to drive a car but if something happens I have no idea on how to repair it.
That's my main worry unfortunately. If it's something that can be addressed easily then I will feel better. I think it's pretty obvious that I'm a beginner when it comes to setups. I have pretty good money management skills and discipline though, so I'm not all that stuck..
I've been looking into this for a while and I've finally decided to delve into market profile. Downloading the GOMI volume ladder packages and installing them wasn't hard but now I actually have to figure out how to input data into them. I am only running a demo account with live feed and it seems like the charting is stopping at 430PM everyday even though my instrument (ES) is still trading pretty much 24h.
Here are some images of settings I have on the GOM indicators, I have no clue what I'm doing so far so any advice would be appreciated.