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My Journal Purpose:
To have a record of my trading so I can see my strengths and weaknesses better so I can learn how to maximize them and trade well with who I am and who the market is.
Products:
CL, ES, ZC, ZS
Style:
Short time frame setups via, momentum, range reversion, orderflow - watching the book for signals of position building, position defense, position stop exits
Tools:
Charting for Big picture price structure - Thinkorswim with 1-15 minute, Daily, and 100-400 tick charts
Studies - Volume Profile, VWAP, Open Range Levels, others will be added and subtracted as I adjust and grow.
Depth of Market order book - Jigsaw Trading's Rapid Trader Pro (this is where my focus is primarily during trades)
Understood weaknesses of my past that I am working on:
1) Over Trading (not defined by number of trades but by my FOMO or my desire to achieve more right now, which results in trading poor setups or sometimes no setups at all and almost always ends in a losing day)
2) Rushing to book small profits when the setup or orderflow has not sent a signal to do so. I do take many small profits as that is really my trading plan as a scalper but many times I give up the big wins for a small one out of fear.
Understood strengths of my past that I am working on:
1) Patience pays and I have seen that many times in entries and exits
2) My value of keeping losses small
-As in my ah ha moment, NEVER TAKE A BIG LOSS Keeping Risk proportionate from entry to exit has truly been a game changer for me. Many times I could have several good days in a row and then one day give it all back as I would change risk allowances on the fly because of faulty reasoning. So simple to say and yet it was quite a hurdle for me to get over
Disclaimer: In the beginning this journal will be about my trading in a topstep trader combine. Once that is completed and if I have passed FTP I will continue to journal as a funded trader. Thanks for visiting my journal.
First Day of a new 15 lot combine at Topstep Trader. Slowly I am building a small library of setups and scenarios to trade. I come in each day with a structure that I view the market with and look for setups to trade.
The Grey box is how Rapidtraderpro parses the trades and the white box at the bottom of the image is how Topstep parses the trades.
In the white topstep box the numbers are from left to right as follows
Net P&L - High P&L - Low P&L - Total Contracts - Total Commissions - Total Trades - Avg Win - Avg Loss - Win% - Max Consecutive W/L Trades - Average W/L duration
One thing that has gotten better for me with experience but still needs much work (comes with experience I believe) is how I feel after a good day or good week. Either I get sloppy or really hesitant and neither of those responses result in good trading. I fear that the longer a win streak goes on the more I struggle with it.
Hey Jokertrader,
Good question, in the grey boxes the commissions and fees are not figured in, but in the smaller white box at the bottom the commissions are preset and calculated into the P&L. The total commissions and fees are listed for each day of trading.
While I agree that I would like to be able to stay in winning trades longer and capture larger wins I have not arrived at a way to do that. I am not advocating that others "scalp" or trade very short term, it is just that as I have traded off and on for a while that style most fits my allowable risk. It is my hope and goal that as I gain more experience I will be able to stretch out my winning trades and find a consistent method for doing that profitably. For now as part of my trading a portion of my trades that look like really small winners were actually losers that I was able to get out just above scratch. This can look really bad in some ways, I however see it as my willingness to take a small loss or very small win when the trade entry reason is broken, instead of taking a loss at my initial risk.
Sorry for my rambling, thanks for the question
Otto
Sadly today I showed just how unprofessional I can be. Without launching into a long discussion and "rant" about all that is involved, I would say that everything boils down to proportionate risk. When I allow the market to take more from me than I should I have failed at my duties. That is what I did today.
1 Sometimes that's out of fear of taking a small loss.
2 Sometimes that's out of greed in putting on too much risk in the initial position (ie larger size or poor entry meaning my stop has to be to far away).
3 Sometimes it's from trading angry at a loss so #2
4 Sometimes it's from trading scared that I'm going to break a win streak so I trade with hesitancy which produces poor entries and smaller than usual winning trades.
Anyway I will learn from my error and re up with topstep. I am committed to pushing through this obstacle.
Nice work, Otto. As a fellow scalper, I get a lot of commission questions. I see why people ask, but it still makes me laugh. Commissions are the cost of doing business. I run my business on scalps, and I factor in the costs of doing that, just like any other business person. If I try to trade for big targets, I have low commissions and small profits. If I scalp, I have high commissions but also high profits. So, I go for the latter. I'd rather make 1000 bucks and pay $200 in commissions than make $320 with $8 in commissions.
You gotta do what works for you, so good on you for doing it.