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I'm not sure how much publicly journaling really helps me at this point. It doesn't hinder my trading, but I feel like I've taken it as far as it can go. After a while it feels like the same thing over and over. That is why I'm so inconsistent with it. I'll journal here for a few months, then suddenly quit for a few months, then come back like I have recently. It's nice to post the winners, but I try to post losers too.
I journal privately, in a notebook where I write things down and also I screenshot many of my trades, winners and losers, and I'll mark them up with lines and arrows and notes. I keep them in a file with folders named for most of the common types of setups in the PAT system--second entries, failures, triple tests, failed breaks, higher lows and lower highs. I have hundreds. I'll study these on the weekend and at night.
It's ok to realize you don't need to journal publicly anymore, or just take a break. That's kind of the goal, to get to where you don't have to come on here every time. But it is good to check in with yourself.
Like anything else there is no right or wrong way to do this thing. If journaling is hindering your mindset then certainly pay attention to that. One of my main things around journaling is that I'm a community guy...and I have learned soooo much from people on here who have found their way to profitability that I am committed to at least journaling about the things that I have found that work. Those traders I learned from didn't necessarily show me a method that I use (other than Pa Dax) but they showed me that it is possible and that if I NEVER give up it is possible for me. Hard as it is to believe some days i know there are MANY traders just starting out that are way behind me on the path and I want them to find their way to the next step.
I too have adjusted my own journaling to meet my current needs as I have learned some interesting things lately like, as you mentioned, when I am letting pride (ego) affect my trading. I actually caught myself at times so concerned with grabbing a screenshot (so I could post about it) that I missed signs that told me I should take action. Even though It only takes 3-4 seconds...they can make the difference and I learned, as you did, that if I want to make money here I need to focus with that purpose.
That exact realization and embarrassing awareness has actually led me to the next piece of my own puzzle. That being, that if I want to make money here I need to have more courage to act...that it's NOT going to just fall into my lap. That old saying "seize the day" came into my mind. I actually looked up the exact definition of seize:“take hold of suddenly and forcibly”…”take (an opportunity) eagerly and decisively”.
It has become part of my morning Mindset reading and I can feel more willingness to take what I want when I see an opportunity.
Anyway, I hope this change works well for you. And if it does I hope that you will pop in once in a while, when the market pressure is off, to share what you have learned along the way. To inspire those behind on the path.
Look forward to meeting and chatting in the Spring.
Craig
When the end is unknown and the distance is unknown...That's when you find out who you are.
2024 has been an interesting but profitable year for my day trading business. Not spectacular but sufficient to prove that trading can become a career for me and worth my time in the future.
The only disappointment is my inability to size up and take on more risk. I wanted to increase my daily loss limit to >1000 USD but still very conservatinve and below 200. This means, my profit potential is also very restricted to a max 400. I have accepted my slow pace as my emotional dysregulation spikes higher beyond 500. However, my confidence in my system / methodology is growing in leaps and bounds and hence I should be able to achieve that in 2025.
I traditionally traded MES with a preference to SPY at times. Early this year, I decided to dabble with DAX and it looks like a success on most metrics except the holding period. I'm still holding my losers longer @ 3 hrs compared to my winners @ 2 hrs. Need to work on that. My win rate is pretty good @ 60/40. My profit factor is a healthy +2. DAX
MES results are also similar to DAX. My long term win rate hovers around 60% and my achilles tendon has always been letting losers getting bigger. My discipline seemed to have improved this year.
MES
The most disappointing and somewhat surprising results are from my beloved SPY. I love the simplicity of order execution and 'end of the day' holding with emotionless trading. Win rate actually reversed here! Not sure why. May be my system is not great in 'All time High' environments.
SPY
I also tried NIkkei micro and mini futures this year with inconsistent results. Though 2024 is likely to be an anomoly due to the BOJ pivot with higher volatility, I also noticed high volume and big moves out of hours, which is not ideal for me. Hence decided to skip that one.
I will be focusing only on ES and DAX futures in 2025 and aiming to size up and hoping to graduate from micros to minis.
Tradervue is a very valuable tool for someone like me who is not excel savvy but keen to know the trading metrics.
I particularly like their MAE MFE metrics to decide on my stop loss and sacle out profit locations. The bubble diagram makes it easy to interpret the results as the bigger sizes are more profitable ones.
MAE - Max Adverse excursion data is crucial in knowing how much room to give a trade. aka. stop loss. You focus on your winners, green bubbles here. I was surprised to learn that many of my big winning trades go down by 100 dollars before they hit their profit target which is usually $200 - 300. MAE helps us in setting stop loss but for me it also indicates that I'm 'too early' in my entries. This is likely secondary to my FOMO and can be a good metric to measure to assess my patience in 2025.
MAE
MFE - Max favorable excursion data is useful in knowing 'scale out targets'. i.e how much price move in your favor before turning into a loser. You focus on your red dots here. I don't see any particular level standing out. This indicates that I'm generally 'very wrong' from the very beginning in my losing trades. However, I'm pleasantly surprised that many of my losers with >100$ are very small bubbles and this means I covered my big losing trades at a better price. In other words, I turned many of my big paper losers into smaller actual losers. Tom Hougaard, the author of 'Best loser wins' will be proud of me'
1. My goal is to hold winners for several hours and my losers for less than 30 minutes. Currently they both are more or less equal at 2 hrs on average. In the following diagram of 340 trades this year, you can see the big red losers in the 6 - 8 hrs early on. It gets better as we move forward in time with more green bubbles with longer holding period. My goal for 2025 is to see more big green bubbles in the 6 to 8 hrs area.
Duration
2. Opening gap is a huge determinant of my trading system and always had a big impact on my P&L (and my psychology). I do particularly well with small gap down days and not so much in a small gap up days. I think it's due to my trading preference for shorts (>60%). However, I have been working hard on this bias and lately my long trades are lot more frequent than my shorts. However, I would like to keep an eye on this metric in 2025 and prefer to be a well adjusted player for all market conditions.
Awesome work. Glad things are proceeding well and I believe the sizing up in dollars will come with time and experience. It is tough to train our minds to focus only on "process" when we know that the money is on the line (and our hopes and dreams) but as in other issues we can learn that too.
I read other traders write about a 'tipping point' where they suddenly realized that they are in fact a profitable trader and their self perception began more and more to reflect that. I'm sure you are on that track.
2025...gonna be a good one!
When the end is unknown and the distance is unknown...That's when you find out who you are.
It actually feels like climbing a rounded mound rather than a steep hill. After a long and hard grind, gradually you feel that less effort is needed to move the same distance. Then you realise that the peak is behind you!
After having a couple of profitable years, I was really hoping to push the pedal to the metal and size up in 2024 but it's not to be. I'm in no hurry though as my regular job is keeping things steady.
My 2025 goal is to continue to focus on process and to keep thinking in terms of ticks and points rather the dollars.
Really great stat breakdown! Something we should all do.
Does Tradervue give you this opening gap statistic natively? If so, that's very impressive, I wouldn't have thought that they would do that. If so, are they using the cash opening price (9:30am ET) for instruments like ES? Often these services don't break down futures that way but I'm impressed if they do.
They certainly do. Infact, you get so many other parameters as well and plotting any 2 of them in x and y axis is actually real fun. However, their monthly price of 30 to 50 USD is not. They do give some discount for nexusfi members. I tend to use them once every 4 months or so to reduce my overhead costs.
1. Never hold positions overnight.
2. Majority (>70%) of my trades should be aligned with the trend (defined by 34/50 EMA cloud).
3. Counter-trend trade are allowed only when the stats favor it by a profit factor of >1.5 or win ratio of >60%. Must use hard stop here.
Yesterday was a good day and a nice reminder that I can get away with sloppy entries if I make trend as my friend. All my 4 short trades worked. More importantly, they were aligned with the down-trend and the thought of bottom fishing never occured to me even once. Could have been more aggressive with scaling in but haven't mastered that skill yet. That has to wait for 2026.
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My methodology remains the same but I am very pleased that I was (finally) able to code pinescript strategy for Tradingview. I had lot's of help from chatgpt and finalised my code last week. I haven't automated it yet but that wasn't my main intention. It was mainly to get more granular data independently and not rely on service providers. Job done. May be automation next year.
My trading will be interrupted from next week for a month due to my regular job. However, I will be free to trade for most of 2025 and quite excited about that.
