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No trades. Got up a little early to trade the 5:30 news. Had a chance on 6E that I passed on that would have started to day off nicely. Also passed on a CL trade at around 6:05 that was really good. Saw and felt it, but chickened out.
Marker activity good: 3 winners (2R), 2 losers, 3 BE. Max draw down would have been one loss.
Objectives recap:
-Write out goals and affirmations before market open: Done
-Take minimum two live trades per day: no trades. Had a few chances but passed
-Be mindful of TL breakout failures. Yes
-Be mindful of Opening Swing retests. Yes
-Be mindful of significant CD events. Yes
-Journal real time marker placement and why I passed on the trade. Track Total Reasonable Movement (TRM) of price from each marker: placed 8, 5 went at least 1R, 2 went -1R, 1 went nowhere.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
I can understand why, at this point you are hesitant to take live trades. What is puzzling though..is why you go several days without even taking a SIM trade. I think you would be well served to have a minimum SIM weekly tick goal that you are shooting for. Prove for 1 month that you can follow your system..and hit your tick goal. This should give you the confidence to start taking live trades. You need to develop positive expectancy.
But if you can't prove it works on SIM, then there's no point wasting your money going live yet. That was a huge mistake I made early on. I had a couple of good sim weeks here and there and thought I was ready.. Bad idea!!
But you need to follow a system and at least take SIM trades...But don't be on SIM part of the session and then switch to live. Pick one or the other..(I suggest SIM until you have a track record.) When your entry criteria is met, you must fire off your trade. Looking back each day and saying..well these would have worked out is counterproductive.
2 live trades, one accidental, one deliberate. Out of town trading on laptop and did not set my right click to button to a two step order entry. Accidentally entered 6E short. Exited immediately for a $30 loss. Would have been a spectacular trade if I stayed in, but you just cant count on that.
Deliberate trade 1: ZN. Total reasonable movement, +10, -3. Exited at +4t.
Real time marker activity was mixed: 3 wins, 6 losses, 5 BE
Difficult to follow 6 instruments on a single laptop screen, especially when markets are going off. Was ok once the markets died down after the 5:30 news.
The thin colored arrows are my proxy for sim trading so I don't have to switch back and forth from live. They are placed in real time and I keep a spreadsheet with the results. (The thick colored arrows are hindsight analysis). It's not perfect in so far as I don't actually hit the button but it is useful in proving out my system and building confidence.
I was in sim for a very long time and was able to build the account until I would start experimenting again. At the first of the year I decided it was time to wean off sim, stop experimenting, making the decision to go live and stay live. If I go back to sim it will be because I blew out this small account, and I would probably do it through Top Step so that at least I would be working toward something.
For the most part your points are well taken and would normally be good advice. The one thing I would disagree with is the notion that what I am doing is counter productive. I am both building history and gradually transitioning from seeing in hindsight to seeing in real time. The look backs are very useful for this in my opinion. This represents the "ideal". It is sort of like a golfer looking back on his round and counting the strokes he could save with improvement.
I figure I have 30 more years in my trading career (as long as the government doesn't screw up the markets), so taking my time now, building with patience, getting more comfortable seeing my account number on the trade window is not that big a deal. I understand though how it can make for very boring, and maybe frustrating, reading.
Weekly Summary 5/4/15 to 5/8/15
Live Trades: 2, 1 winner, 1 loser
Week’s P/L: $29.60
Starting balance for the week: $2742.70
Withdrawals for the week: $0
Deposits for the week: $0
Ending balance for the week: $2772.30
Beginning account balance from first live trade on 3/10/15: $3000.00
Total Withdrawals: $0
Total Deposits: $0
Total Gains/losses from 3/10/15: -$227.70
Only two live trades. Lots of passed trades due to lack of conviction on individual trades. Not much to analyze.
Placed a lot of markers (thin colored arrows) in real time. The markers are in lieu of sim trading so that I do not have to switch the platform back and forth. The results were recorded on a spreadsheet for analysis. It is important to do things like this in order to have something to evaluate judgement against when not taking live trades. Otherwise there is a lot of idle time.
In evaluating marker activity there are three result possibilities: win, loss, BE. A win is generally when price gets to 2R from the marker. A loss is -1R from the marker. BE is generally when price reaches +1R and comes back to the marker (entry). The simplicity of the three result choices gives me a general idea of the potential if I were to take all trades. Of course, actual trade management would vary based on a variety of factors.
The marker activity stats for the four trading days were as follows:
11 wins
14 losses
15 BE
With 26 markers getting to +1R vs 14 markers to -1R, it generally indicates that my edge was much better than than 50-50, a good sign of improvement.
5/11/15 Monday
Live Trades: 1 loser
Day’s P/L: -$4.02
Still out of town on laptop.
1 Live trade, NQ. Good entry, bad management. Failed TL BO reversal set-up. Total Reasonable movement, -1, +36. Exit on minor retracement back to entry. 0t
Marker and trade results:
4 winners of 2R
5 losers of 1R
2 BE
All in all not a bad day of analysis. Only problem was that the first 4 marked trades were losers which would have been mentally hard to deal with if they were taken live.