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A bit, but not enough to stop me from doing it. The main reasons:
- the reaction from other traders. I wasn't sure what to expect on futures.io (formerly BMT), since the journal started my posting here. I can vouch this is a very friendly community and the traders here are awesome.
- lack of time. Doing the journal took valuable time and focus from my work on my code. I can say it was time well spent, for the benefits I listed in an earlier post.
I can't think of any negative aspect. I am not sure there is any benefit from reading for whoever stumbles upon my journal, but it works well for me. Making a journal public adds some zest to it, some honesty, order, self applied objectivity. All in all, a very good experience.
It would be presumptuous for me to advise on starting a trading journal specifically on futures.io (formerly BMT), but journaling every trading day is a must if you are working on becoming profitable and are serious about trading at all. Start a journal no matter what and do it on futures.io (formerly BMT) for the obvious benefits, but that is to each her/his own.
The next best thing is to keep reading other people's journals. If you are not learning from your own mistakes, you should learn from others'. I have too many things I want to work on and very limited time right now, but just browsing and learning from what others are doing is experience that comes at no cost to you and may save you big bucks, frustration, and time in the future.
When I know it will reach a level, I can't stand knowing I may get drawdown, so I place the order exactly on the level. It works well in sim/replay, but I don't get filled in real trading.
I was waiting on ES at 1416.5 and my order did not get filled... Maybe it's for the best.
Going up, I like 1428.25, but not sure when that will happen, if it will happen.
As I am working off-site and am involved in all day meetings, not much trading is going on, so I don't have much to update here.
Yesterday, I got stopped out three times in the morning, for a total of -$120 or so, and the automated strategy did not get me in again because of the small ATR. Obviously, the decision to base the entries on ATR did not work nicely on a day like yesterday, where the move up was strong and continuous.
One of the stopped trades in the morning was caused by a flaw in my code, which did not include the last bar when figuring out if a measured move was reached. I will check and fix.
I started the strategy only a few minutes before 2pm, during a meeting break. It looked like 1402 would be a good reversal point and I placed an order to buy there, real money. After a few seconds, I get an email from the strategy about the upcoming FOMC minutes notes at 2pm, so I quickly removed the order. It would have been an order placed there with a tight ATM and left unattended. The thought I had was that, no matter how my sim works and how much I have to struggle to become profitable, the helper part of my indicator provides value right now and helps the discretionary manual trading. Got a bit of my motivation back right there.
One of the issues I noticed during March was that I put code in to keep me out a number of minutes before news, but nothing after the exact time of the news, so I was very exposed once the news was out. That included today and you can see three entries (blue triangles) against the large bar down at 2pm. Just sat down and fixed that issue, so I do not enter for a configurable number of minutes after the news, 5 for now.
Here is the chart, which is missing values for the indicators before 13:40, since I started late.
I am happy with the fixes for preventing trades a number of minutes after the news and with for the measured move target miscalculation. In the process, I noticed another issue with the news dates, so good work last night.