I live traded this morning and it was more of the same. Right at the open I shorted the high of the day (against price strength) 4 times, even moved my stop once. I lost 4 in a row and was close enough to my loss limit that I quit live trading for the day.

I went against my only real trading rule: Don't trade against the slope of the longer term EMA. I also might want to trade with a larger stop. I think I need some kind of time out rule when I lose a trade too.

I am not putting in enough screen time. My work ethic was pretty good for a week or so last winter but I have really slacked off since then. I foolishly convinced myself I was ready. I traded the YM contract this morning and lost almost $500. Will go back to paper trading for the time being and then next time I trade live it will be with the micro.

Super disappointed. There is a lot I can fix but a lot of the same fundamental problems remain.

Edit: I just looked at the trade log. It was utter lunacy. It only took about 15 minutes to lose those 4 trades. I want to quit so bad. I am convinced that I didn't do enough paper trading with the new system (which leans heavily on market internals). One of the things I leaned early on is that price can diverge from the market internals, especially the NVOL. I forgot that quite readily today.

This is directly tied to a lack of effort and work ethic, which led to a faulty process. Starting with the big contract was overly optimistic too.

I have decided to try and develop an automated trading system. I think my rules can be easily defined and backtested. Over the next 12 months I will have near unlimited time to work on this

True to my username I spent the summer on a tugboat in Alaska. It was my first time working up North and pretty interesting. I have saved all the money I made and intend on concentrating on my trading during a long sabbatical.

I am looking for advice as I begin learning about backtesting and automated trading. Here is my plan at the moment.


1. Decide if Sierra Chart is the best platform to use while I backtest and forward test my system.

2. Develop a plan to maximize the time I spend learning how to do this.

3. Develop a system using 3 correlated charts and 2 or 3 indicators.

If anyone has advice I am open to it. I would describe my computer skills as rudimentary. Certainly no C++ programming experience.

I think that even if I get lucky and hit on somehing that works, I will need to optimize it. Looking for advice on this, with all of the above in mind.

Thanks in advance, and thanks for all the help that site members have given me over the years. Perhaps I should try to help others in this regard but at the moment it would have to be rudimentary, morale building type advice as I am still in the weeds.