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In regards to my worries: yes, winning a larger chunk of remaining profit objective gave a nice feeling. Another boost came from a validated super-low risk approach. However, the worry came from the fact I have chosen to trade Combine with a very strict system based on just two setups and decided not to trade any other way I used to. I think it gave me a huge advantage in terms of stability and consistency, however it posed a risk of market not giving me enough opportunities to trade within Combine timeframe. Something similar that happened to Kevin's Combine. I have been experiencing very slow period started with disastrous Friday 10th May and continued well into the week until a last Friday market exploded with moves and opportunities (although I missed almost all of them, but that not market's fault). In a hindsight it probably took a week of relative calm to cook this sort of intervention/manipulation and to orchestrate this sell-off (I do believe in a conspiracy behind market manipulations, especially in Gold and Silver, just check out of fixing probes and scandals in Libor, Electricity and now Oil price manipulation!). Anyway, now with just about 1500 of USD to go, I think I can manage it next week even on slow market, with the very small profit targets and micro stops, that I have been working on and testing.
In regards to TST evaluation and reaction: well I am interested how it will go as well, there is no guarantee they will even chose me for funding giving my "unorthodox" trading method and possible questions about what effect slippage will play, etc. In any case I have just made a major step in my personal trading journey and development as a trader. I have many other variations of order flow trading approach, including fading levels, rejections, barriers, all they work on most instruments, especially on currencies and indices where large options are being traded. But these approaches cannot yield anywhere large risk reward as the method I am trading, even if the hit rate is well above 60%. In any case, I am trading market during the liquid hours, most of my trades have nothing to do with news, and in no single situation I was bracketing the market for the news even in near proximity to the price. I took advantage of news release moving the price to my level in few cases, but again it was a level defined well before the release and not in immediate proximity. If TST/PTP will not like my approach I am confident to go live with it myself. I was trading similar way on Forex exchange (LMAX) two years ago and know that it works. Of course live market will give some slippage on large orders and R:R might get smaller, but this to be tested and adjusted. I truly believe it to be very profitable way to trade even larger positions live.
Well this day arrived. I have done the profit target, and maintained two out of three required metrics. I have explained earlier why my losing holding time is larger, I screwed it up a couple of time with experiments and leaving trade alone.
Today is a slow day with some markets closed but Gold had a nice volume for this early hours and produced somewhat a reversal with possible long setups. I planned 10 ticks of the first one but it moved only 5 so I closed it at +4. A second setup for, I put only 7 ticks to be more realistic as this did not look as good as first one, but quite passable still, it moved 30 ticks, one of those wonder trades I had in the beginning when operating just 1 contract. Now with 15 it would be go figure.
I am very happy about putting this to the end, at least for the moment. I have a high emotional drain (even if I kept it away from my trading it did express in my other endeavors) and just physically tired sitting so much hours at screen each and every day for over the month, as I had waiting and fishing for those opportunities that became rare as time went. During the first week or two I was done in a couple of hours, and went for a bike ride, gym or something else. Now I had to forego gym, bycicle, running, etc in name of finishing it in time. I need back some of my life, finally.
It will be a shame if TST/PTP will turn their noses on my results, or ask me to do a lengthy LivePrep (short one is ok, I can just repeat what I did, I can't see any benefits it will deliver though after I did the same for 25 days). Worse still if they will put some restraints like minimum holding time for a winner. It will mean going back to the drawing board, testing, etc.
I had been testing other approaches during this ride, today I have a trade on Ninja Sim netting 31 ticks with 8 tick risk. But I wanted to keep Combine as clean as possible with just one system and two (and later restricted to just one) entry setup.
Very happy to finish so early today as I need to visit my wife in hospital and I was worried how trading Combine will go next days because the hospital permits visits that time pit opens and combining these two would be difficult. Giving that we expect our daughter to be born sometimes between 2 weeks and 4 weeks, or possibly earlier now, I did wanted to finish with Combine before this all will take my time, my mind and I could not concentrate until it is all over.
Thanks for all your support, it was an invaluable help and an accountability as I could not hide my trades and explain why I did step out of my plan. Thanks for being tough judges too
I will keep this thread updated on how TST process goes and how it all will end, or maybe begins.
Great job. Well done. Thanks for keeping us posted: has been really good to see your success and detailed journalling.
Now you have set a target to aspire to..
Best wishes for the upcoming birth of your daughter