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I just had a talk with my American-based accountant, who told me it was a mistake to open the account with Interactive Brokers and to close it and stay away from American banks, to go Singapore or Hong Kong.
I feel like I just got smacked win the face with a shovel.
Gotta pick myself up and move right along to the next task.
I really need a gumption-fix to keep going with this process.
Well, I don't have the LLP set up right, it's too complicated, it's going to end up costing me a lot more in taxes, etc., etc.
"Plus you will have to pay me a lot, and that's unnecessary if you are in Hong Kong or Singapore."
Having slept on it, I think I will get a second opinion on the tax accounting, or just ignore this advice. I have a tendency to let the tax tail wag the dog in my life. I think it's a much better approach to just go all out to make the money and then deal with the taxes.
Investment capital -- trend trading with "adaptive hedging" of ETFs on monthly rotation aiming at max. volatility of 20, max drawdown of 20%, Sharpe ratio of 1.4 (90% of capital)
Trading capital -- educational/experimental $500 accounts in Forex, microcap, options, etc.
We are going to trade according to the trading plan and follow the rules strictly. Results will be logged and journaled (here). I tried to use the Excel journaling spreadsheet I found here on futures.io (formerly BMT), but I think it's too fancy for my needs (maybe someday I will figure out what it all means). So for the time being, I am using a Mac App I got in the Appstore called "Alesco Trade Journal." I don't like it all that much, but it's pretty simple.
The investment for this month I made at ILF at $43.07 and this is hedged 50/50 with EDV at $110.98. Both positions are losing, but I am going to follow the rules and hold until Oct 1, then follow what the algorithm tells me to do. I am mentally prepared for a 20% drawdown.
I am going to follow Big Mike's advice and just stick with this one approach for a period of time, a year, and not switch around to other strategies and approaches.
A distinction that I should append to the first post in this thread, but it's taken me a year to understand this.
In my lexicon:
Trading journal is record of the subjective thoughts about the trade, trading, markets, money, psychology -- words
Trading log is a record of the objective facts of the trade, the charts, PL, etc. -- numbers
You must have both of these, and they may overlap in the presentation, but they are distinct.
This journal of mine is intended to be mostly words, in other words a subjective journal. I do also include some objective log info, but not all of it.
I posted that excerpt about gumption traps above, and I wonder how many people identified the origin of it.
Journal software. The reason why I came to futures.io (formerly BMT) a year ago is that I did a google search on "free trading journal software."
Turned out to be the absolutely best kind of serendipity.
It's like I came to an AA meeting as a homeless wino off the streets because I heard they had free coffee and cookies. Then I sat down and the message started slowly to penetrate my foggy brain.
So I have been stuck in a gumption trap with the journaling software here on futures.io (formerly BMT).
The first part was that I found myself stuck in a thread with about 1000 posts. I just wanted the software and for it to just work. But first I have to struggle with this monster thread.
I finally get the version 4.5, unpacked on my machine, and then Mac Excel chokes on it. Debugger is throwing up tons of little screens. I shrug it off. Then I get the spreadsheet itself open at last.
Nirvana.
#1 Gumption trap: Except I cannot understand most of the Journal spreadsheet 4.5. Cannot figure out why the hell I would want to know all of this analytical information about my trades, even if I could understand what it's about.
#2 And then there's the further gumption trap that I cannot understand Excel well enough to understand what is going wrong, or why. Except that it's probably a version problem to begin with, and Mac-related.
#3 So there's a third gumption trap, that I need to be running this on Windows. And I need a decent working installation of Windows, anyway. Excel needs to run on Windows.
OK, I have identified these three issues. They are all doable if I break it down into small steps and just keep plugging away at it. Nothing outlandishly difficult here. It'll take no time at all if I just get my ass off Facebook, TV, and all my other time-wasting distractions and knuckle down with a little grit and determination. Sheesh, this is nothing.
And meanwhile I have found a couple of workarounds, including Panda Warrior's much simpler spreadsheet. All Praise Panda warrior!