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Starting a journal here on my day trading. I normally trade SPY and SPX options (usually 0dte), along side ES, MES, NQ, and MNQ.
I'll keep this journal to just my futures adventures.
I have a few sim prop accounts with Apex trading solely in Tradovate, and some few personal accounts spread across different brokerages (IronBeam, Tradovate, etc.)
I like Tradovate for my apex accounts since the builtin trade copier works great for my style, and it works while on the go on my ipad (just request desktop mode in the browser to get the copier back)
I like Tradovate so far for my personal accounts, since I am familiar with it, and it has lower cost commissions.
My current setup
- 5 min chart
- 1 min chart (Sometimes switched to 30 sec during high volatility)
- DOM
Indicators (both charts)
- 9ema, 20ema, 50ema, 200ema
- ATF Keltner Channels
- VWAP with +/- 2 standard deviation bands
Usual plays
- 5min ema play: enter when extended beyond the 9/20ema on the 5 min, entering into a position to touch the 9ema. Generally I treat the 5min 9ema and the trend and breaking the 20 and closing after the break is the trend break signal.
- After hours play: Wait for the chart to extend beyond the vwap 2 std dev band, and enter for a reversal. Scale out 50% at the 9ema, but generally hold for other vwap band. Sell on candle setup on the 1 min not looking great or the 1 min keltner channel break
There are more and I will try to document as I come across them
Bought heavily at the bottom of a volume rush for a long scalp entry. Scaled out 99% at a 4 point avg gain. Left 2 runners on trailing stop to see if the play continues.
Entered 50 MES, avg 4329.85. Total profit with open amount $648 in two accounts
Overall happy with the trade. It could be better if I held a bit more for the continuation, but in the moment it felt like we were reversing off the 20 to the downside. Happy I left at least a few cons for the continuation.
10/20 Euro PPI overnight caused an interesting drop. Caught the wave on a scalp for a few points on MES. Went to bed and didnt get to trading until mid day.
Caught the vol rush midday, but didnt hold for continuation, even though target was reached. Target was looking for arounda a 50% retracement from prev highs before open.
daily spread, i played almost all the zones, but looks like i avoided the 60s for sells
Overall it was a decent day. Played in the apex 150k sim evals only and didnt touch my PAs today.
Well I have certainly grown since my first post. I am still using Tradovate for my prop firms and personal accounts, but have switch my prop firms around a bit and looking to expand my personal account coverage to reduce risk of service disruptions preventing me from trading.
Prop Firms I currently have
- TopStep (aka Top Step Trader, TST or TS) in Tradovate
- TopStep in their new TopStepX platform (skin of white label product Sim2Funded)
- MyFundedFutures (aka MFF or MFFU) in Tradovate
- Personal in Tradovate
- Personal in TradeStation
Companies I no longer use
- Apex (aka Apex Trader Funding, AFT) in Tradovate or NinjaTrader or Rithmic
- TakeProfitTrader (aka Take Profit Trader, TPT) in Tradovate
I had the Apex accounts because they were cheap, but their payout schedule really was a bear to deal with and honestly was just taking too much mental capital to manage. I traded well in them for over a year, took a lot of decent payouts, and then gambled on FOMC perfectly fine with letting them go as I move on to a different company.
For TPT, they were a newer company and I was trying out their promo, but their daily loss breaches the account, and I honestly didn't want to deal with that. There are better online sim prop firms that offer better trading parameters.
Like I mentioned above, I'm currently only funded with TopStep and MFF. I like TopStep due to the payout rules and during the evaluations, they are very generous with free resets, which when I have I allowed myself to be a little more reckless in the evaluation stage. MFF has an almost better payout schedule where its every 14 calendar days, regardless if you trade, which is really nice in my opinion.
As far as trading and journalling goes, I'll probably just share my personal account info going forward as it best reflects my actual trading strategy and consistency. I often use the prop firms on the low confidence or high volatility plays, so I'm not risking real capital.
5/7 trading recap Took only a few scalps in NQ, total profit $142. Each time I didn't like the reaction in the DOM and risk starting to increase, so I entered a trailing stop of each of the 3 individual trades and took the green profit.
I made a major shift in my trading back in February. I noticed that my short-term day trading and scalping was really just not conducive to the micros. So I switch to the minis, and noticed a drastic increase in profit, nearly 100% attributable to the ratio of fees and commissions as a percentage of profit - I was just getting eaten alive in my personal accounts with the micro fees
In the last 12 months, I've kept up a decent winning trade ratio, but I really need to watch my losses with it in the 60's. Fees and commissions as a % of profits (across all contracts) are 30%
Looking at just my NQM4 trading, I really proud to show improve and gotten that up to 80%. Fees and commissions as a % of profits (across only minis) are 10%
I tried to get a daily chart showing all my executions, but I guess tradovate no longer stores your trade history on the chart for prior days, so I cant capture that anymore
Didnt really feel like trading today, and took a trades in my topstep evaluation combines in TopStepX (TSX). There was a major outage which didn't allow me to exit the position, but they did remove any negative trades from those affected which was nice.
In the personal account tried to play MOC, but took a loss thinking the previous support would hold. Entry at 18183
Decided to give MOC a try as well, and scalped for $200 profit in the personal account. Took a $400 loss yesterday, so almost back to even. I felt stupid about that loss yesterday and just closed my platform before taking a screenshot of entry and exit. Looking back at it now I could have taken small profit but wanted to wait to see if it would turn around and I just happened to long at the top before a knife
