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If you could convince everyone chasing a different strategy every day that these 4 rules above are all you need to get anywhere in trading , there would be a ton of successful traders out there . Thanks for the journal and I look forward to seeing updates . BTW are you going to trade live with a $3000 futures account ? I betcha it can be done but I havent heard of someone doing it ( for long anyway ) but I hope you can .
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
Well, for starters let me finish the Journal for today. The US session kicked my a33. I was not clear on my strategy, took a risky bet and got two shots to the stomach on that tremendous rise in the Euro today. I'm to disgusted to even post here the final results. So, I'm calling today a false start.
Have to be honest. I'm not really trusting the bid/ask volume I'm seeing from ZenFire. That and really need to stop mucking with the edge and just start trading it. OK, so, it was a scratch, and freebie, just kicking it on SIM.
Tomorrow is a new day.
Tomorrow I will start today over again and we'll take it from there. Everybody is allowed to go home early on their first day of work right? Scotty needs a break today... thanks...
Eric, not sure if I will roll the die and go on a full lot on a 3-5k account or try out the micro futures... I know the risks and I know how to win, so, the question is am I ready. I certainly wouldn't advise anybody doing this on their first account....
Going into NY morning, I am on hold. Too much uncertainty and drama in the world today. PM Hatoyama of Japan resigned, Germany outlawing all naked short selling, Central Banks getting covert on the Euro... And my model is not speaking to me. In fact, I am retooling and rethinking to be sure I have the right edge to take live. So, it looks like yet another long day of experimentation ahead....
1) Post your charts and trades. You need the accountability. If you don't post it publicly then at the very least you MUST email them to a trading buddy who will hold you responsible for following your own plan. Accountability is key.
2) Don't change stuff. I have a 2 for 2 rule. Lock your charts for two weeks. This means colors, settings, indicators, size of chart, everything. Record what you like and dislike about the chart at the end of every day for 2 weeks (10 trading days, not the end of the world). At the end of 2 weeks, you are allowed to make two and only two changes. Repeat process.
You can't hit a moving target.
There is no such thing as a false start in trading.
Like, BigMike, others and myself keep telling you - You must show your work. It will force you to focus.
This is another reason I am championing Journal Clubs. Standing up in front of your peers and defending you trading decision is a positive experience that can do nothing less than improve your trading.
R.I.P. Andy Zektzer (ZTR), 1960-2010.
Please visit this thread for more information.
This is a reprint of another post but want to keep it in my journal here as well.
OK, so some evidence as to liquidity and pricing for 6E vs M6E. In the two charts you can see the best bid and ask in each 1minuter period. Chart one has bids in the upper panel and asks in the lower. Chart two overlays all four data series.
One minute was as far as I could drill down. Ninja wouldn't load bid/ask data under a one minute time frame. As you can see the M6E follows 6E fairly closely. Lowest bids and highest offers tend to be around max 3 pips away from the bigs, close to one during active sessions, and averaging about 2.
What does this mean. It means if you are using market orders you can expect to lose say 3 pips per round trip, assuming you are not always executing when the max difference is available. I have watched the prices about a year ago and often they are the same. So, say for market orders your cost is average 3 pips per trade.
It also means, and this might be interesting if you are a programmer, that the people making liquidity are taking on aveage 1.5 pips off every buy and sell made in this market. M6E is averaging about 11,000 contracts per day, so if somebody is arbing them in HF against the bigs, that's 1650 free full size lot pips somebody is making every day. If you want to compete maybe you can tighten up the prices and get inside theirs and make yourself 1500pips. Note to self. Time to become a programmer and get into HFT.
What does this mean for my trading. Perhaps it means being more patient on entries by using limit entries. My T1 is 20 pips, so that's a limit order, no worries there. And I may have to a little quicker getting my runner out.
Ok, so I'm convinced that I can execute M6E and have better chances than running through some online broker.
Looking at the comparison of 6e vs m6e bid/ask data over 50 days I found about 10 bad spikes ranging from 20 to 50 fifty pips. Most of them occur during the Asian session. There is also a huge spike everyday at the rollerover so you won't want to hold these positions over the Globex reset hour.
I'm going to contact CME FX group and ask them about the spikes. It looks like they are generally micro second blips, stop hunting or fat fingers or just liquidity dries up for a split second as HFT guys can't match up a profitable 6E M6E arb, news?
So, every five days or so you can expect a 20-50 spike at some moment during the day as prices diverge from underlying market by 20-80%? I don't like it one bit. I think it means no trading prior to news and staying in the more liquid session times. That and using more advanced order types should do the trick and keep me safe.
I am going to run this on X Trader. As I will average trading 50 micro lots rt's per day, at 2.5/rt approximately through most brokers, the commission is 2500/month whereas the license to XTrader is 675$ month for unlimited trading. There is no question that the XTrader license is the most cost effective way to trade microlots.
X is professional level software used by investment banks and hedge funds, hence it does come with highly stable and effective ordering options. As a protection against those rare little spikes I will use order types such as limit if touched, etc... no stop limit orders, no market orders, this might be beneficial in creating good habits as well... Although, I much prefer market orders, always impatient, always hate to miss a move, but most of the time they don't get you in at the best price, it's that one time where a move gets off and goes and goes and you missed over a limit order 3 pips away that drive you mad.... but, gotta start seeing the forest for the trees...
Where u found X_Trader without commission for 675$ month?
I looked at Velocity Futures and they have commission of 1.54$ rt on micro, with X_trader subscription for 625$(plus tax) month for one exchange, for NT 1.84$ rt, for TT fix adapter 1.64$ rt.