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Thanks for starting this 'experimental' journal, and good luck with your experiment!
I'm really looking forward to the result of which 'side' wins...
"If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much." - Jim Rohn
Last night looking at the chart I thought I had a chance for an entry on the swing side of things....so I initiated a 1 lot trade, put in the stops and targets and went to bed.
So far MFE is +75 and it pulled back to around +15 or so before heading back up. I will leave it open over the weekend. Since its sim, the stops and targets are locally hosted so if price goes against me more than 250 ticks I think I'm toast. With a live account, orders are at the exchange so don't have to worry about that with live trading.
I'm tracking this manually on paper so if for some reason this happens, I'll mark it as a -250 tick loss even though ninja might have it as a much larger one due to filling orders on monday and a large gap down opening. At least thats the way I think it will work....not done this before so no idea really how it will record the trades.
Scalping I passed on a short trade which would have netted me +20 ticks and waited for the next trade which ended up being a short in the hole which I moved to BE pretty quick as the order flow was not really confirming. Once it closed up I basically reversed and took my 20 ticks on the long. The scalping was with half size at 3 lots so +$600 on the day with an open swing trade.
See what happens.....
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
Since this is my first swing trade, I'm treating it like a new born baby....taking pictures a bit to often....but I promise, this will be the last update until I either add to it or close it out.
Current state of the swing trade:
If I close it now, I will have made more money on the swing trade with one lot than I did on the scalp with 3 lots.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
I want to let you and all your readers know that in October nexusfi.com (formerly BMT) has a Trading Journal contest w/prizes. The contest runs October 1 to October 31, and the three best journals (as decided by nexusfi.com (formerly BMT) members) will receive a 150K combine from TopstepTrader.
Continuing in the tradition of encouraging journals on futures.io (formerly BMT), I am announcing a new Journal contest for October 2014.
The rules are extremely simple:
a) The contest begins October 1 and ends October 31. All decisions made …
That thread will be open for posting starting Wednesday, October 1. As the author of your journal, you need to make a post in that thread linking to your journal, and then ask users to press the "Thanks" button on that post if they want to vote for your journal to win the contest.
Members can vote for as many different journals as they want. Votes are cast in the Contest thread only, and only on the first post made by the author of the journal that contains a link to their journal. This is done so I can easily count the "Thanks Received" by author/journal, and award the three prizes.
This puts me at +$500 profit per contract and time to add another lot to initial entry on the scalp trades. This delta might be to aggressive but I'm gonna test it out here.
EDIT: I closed the swing trade out at BE because I don't really know what the real entry price is anymore. I am going to start over after talking to NT again about separating the two different styles in the same account....
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
I believe You need to enable hedging for your account - unfortunately I don't recall whether you do that with your broker or if NT can do that for SIM/ in general...
Sorry that I can't be more specific..
EDIT
Searched for it b/c I could not remember where I had that info from. Seems that I've been mistaken there - hedging within Ninjatrader is only possible through using multiple accounts.
At least that's all I found in terms of statements from ninjatrader (or anyone else, for that matter)
Because of the limitations of NT using SIM to manage both long and short term trades in the same account, I've decided to simulate the swing trades only. Basically post the entry price along with the time along with the stop and target numbers. Then track this in real time as the trade develops.
To that end, here is a chart with the first and second entries noted.
Entry price for first trade is 92.55 and 93.24. Combined entry price is now 92.89. Stops for both positions now moved up to 91.98. Target remains at 97.80 which was the original target price.
The second entry happened today while I was live in the market but by then I had determined I had a calculation issue with the swing trade and no way to fix it. I closed the trade rather than add to it. I had hoped I had a box checked wrong and I could resume doing both swing and scalp trading.
Since that is not to be, please accept the simulation. I'll keep it up on an as needed basis.
Current open profit is $2900+/- with current price at 94.30 as I type.
Closed profit for scalping is $1700 after commissions.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris
Reversal signals today....but had a break out long at the opening bell....way to much risk after the fact so let it go....took the break of the ledge short once price couldn't break out from the ORH and sustain it.
I felt price would make it back to the ORL which was enough for a scalp and I left some on to see what would happen. I set my final target at yesterday's 50% level and let it ride.
I had also decided to take the swing trade off today if it could not break out of 94.80 area with some authority but to let it have room to breathe as well just in case. So once price broke below the up trend line, I marked it as closed. Net profit of around $3300 after commissions.
Today's trading produced $1980 after commissions.
Total for the experiment so far, $7,000 since Thursday night. With slightly less than half coming from a single trade held since Thursday night and missing almost all of yesterday's move.
Since I made more than $500 per contract today, I am adding another one tomorrow. And while my personal limit is 5, I am going to use the TST limits for this experiment which is 15 so I have a ways to go.
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication, Leonardo da Vinci
Most people chose unhappiness over uncertainty, Tim Ferris