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Not sure if today was a good or bad day. It was another trading day!
I didn't trade my "sane trading" Apex accounts at all today, which tells you something. I was up late, didn't have a full night's sleep, didn't have MES only risk management (or any for that matter) and I am definitely in another mode with these Leeloo 5 account, $11 apiece bundles. It's not bringing out the most emotionally sober trader in me. @snax used the term "hyper scalp mode" today. I guess that about describes it
So, I have 5 combo packages, and each one only allows 1 funded PA. It's like packs of baby turtles racing to the sea to get the survivors. I trade them in groups of 5, one from each set. So I have 5 chances for each set. One already got to profit earlier this week and I'm nursing that one ($2.50 profit yesterday, -$1.44 loss today). Of the 4 remaining sets, today 2 from each set"expired," leaving 3 accounts alive for each set. Of those, 1 from each bundle is about 2/3 to profit (+/- $2,000 each). It's the first day trading these, so I will put them into a saner program to get them to $3,000 needed to pass. The two other sets were traded more conservatively, both of those got +/- $350 per account yesterday and today.
My goal today and tomorrow is to cool off a bit and try to rest.
Last night I tried a Globex trade in my Apex accounts but my engines were not all running and I hit my DLL. I normally switch off my Rithmic DLL to trade Globex and forgot to do that (I trade ES at night so $300 DLL doesn't leave any room). Net result: Hit my DLL and was locked out (via Cold Turkey). I'm still locked out! I have a 1 hour window from 2 PM PST to 3 PM PST to make any changes I need. But it's just as well it happened. I was shorting off a level at 4187, where I expected at least a 2-tick reaction but instead, it broke out and I took a $300 loss. If I hadn't had that DLL in place it would have taken me for minimum $900 and if I had tried to hold it anywhere from that to $1,600. So my daytime DLL saved me. My Apex account this month is really not about making money. But it hasn't lost any, it saved me all the usual resets, and has allowed for great risk management progress. I'll go over it this weekend when I wrap up. In hindsight, I would be better off just adding the Apex set to my Open 15 trade and may do that going forward (the one outlined last weekend). I haven't so far because it involves setting up my second Replikanto copier on another computer (given that I'm trading Leeloo daily as well right now).
On the Leeloo bundles (5 combo packages, each one only allows 1 funded PA, with one at $3K profit so far): After yesterday's session I calculated my daily profit needed per my days left to get to profit on the subscription, and I have trading days to May 24th, which makes about $50 per day on the ones with the highest profit from each set. So if I aim for $150, settle for an average of $100, minimum $50 I'm good. At that rate, I decided the best is to put them on my Open 15 algo at 1/4 of the size I tested for over the weekend, so 2 ES lots, 2 ticks per trade. With this one, I can also manage it slightly differently, with a tighter stop on one of the contracts and scale in if necessary. I am on the right side of order flow when it triggers so the strategy, which normally has a 92% win rate, is even better like this. So that's what I did today. I didn't quite get to where I needed in the first 15 minutes, so in addition to the 3 auto tigggered trades I took one more manually for a couple of points (today was kind of a no-brainer as it was squeezing up off the open -- with a couple of landmines to be sure, just par for the course).
Done for today. Moved everything forward so the week ends on a good note.
My "sane" Apex accounts I traded last night in Globex and did not trade them in RTH. I got to my profit in Globex and with the Leeloo ones I have been doing in RTH, I have to get some things together before I can think of trading both sets of accounts. In any case, my approach to trading these is so different that in some ways they are better kept apart until I get into the funded PAs on the Leeloo ones and subject them to all of my risk management as I do the Apex accounts. I will recap my month of April in the Apex accounts tomorrow. What I did and what I'm striving for there.
I had planned to only trade my Open 15 setup for the first 15 minutes on the Leeloo accounts today and going forward. However, I wasn't getting any signals from my algo trigger and so I went short at the open, thinking we'd at least get a retest of something below. That put me in the hole and I spent the rest of the session digging myself out of it. I was down over -$1,000 on these as it was a bit wild and even when I decided to get long I was getting killed. At one point I caught myself and stopped and realized I was trading all of them together when there is absolutely no reason for that since there are 5 bundles and I can trade them any way I want, even in opposite directions, as only 1 account from each set of 5 can qualify to be funded at any rate. At that point I said "screw it!" and launched two sets with 2 lots in both directions and took my daughter to school, leaving the rest alone for now. On the way back I was looking at my phone and figured I had probably blown both sets of accounts as it went from 74 down to 54 and back up and I had already been down on these when I launched it. No such luck! Lol, when I got back one set was up by $400 and the other one set down by that much. So I got out of everything and just started trading each set separately again, taking them all back to positive. I blew one along the way, but that one is in the set of 5 from which one already got to profit a few days ago, and today is the final day for that one to be approved as a PA, so the one that blew would have expired anyway as only one of those gets funded. As of now I stil have 3 chances left in 4 bundles to get these funded.
Over the last few days, I've been hyper-focused on those Leeloo 5 account bundles I've been trading in RTH. I haven't spoken much about my three Apex evaluation accounts as I didn't trade them simultaneously. I traded those in Globex while this Leeloo thing has been going on during the day. April is over and for the first time this year, I can take stock of what transpired in the Apex accounts this month. I mean, there is something worth talking about besides multiple resets.
The Leeloo bundles and how I traded them provide a stark contrast to what I've been trying to do this month in my Apex evals, and also of my "normal" trading vs what I have been trying to get to now for some time (a year? Two? I guess about a year or so in concrete terms). The Leeloo bundles have $2,500 trailing drawdowns and I am trading them with anywhere from 1 to 8 (!) ES contracts per trade. The sizing is ridiculous and bears no relationship to any kind of long-term trading plan. That said, these are 5 account bundles with a 30-day limit, of which only one account per bundle can survive to become a funded PA account and so the risk math is somewhat different and it changes quickly as one of the accounts approaches the required profit amount to pass the evaluation. Thus, on one of them, I got to $3k in one day and then traded 1 micro, 1 trade daily since (actually 2 micros because my copier can produce even ratios only, but you get the picture), so as to get the number of days required to pass. Likewise, I have some that only need from $400 to $700 now and those will get a different treatment, with max 2 ES lots traded on them (if that, I am actually thinking of going to Mircos), even though this is still egregiously large by any measure meant to create a lasting account for a $2,500 drawdown limit, nevermind a trailing drawdown. In sum, the Leeloo bundles are bundles of risk and here the goal is just to go all in for a cost of $11 each.
Where I really struggled up to now is how to rein it all in for long-term results. I had an idea that the P&L volatility had to be reduced but really didn't know how to do it, either conceptually or in practice. Conceptually, I had an epiphany whilst watching a Youtube video on Six Sigma and the goal of keeping any process results within one standard deviation in order to maintain process consistency. The Leeloo combines are the exact opposite of that. Yesterday, for example, I got around $150 profit per account over 34 trades, and had intraday drawdowns within single digits of my trailing drawdown, whereas the day before I got the same results in 4 trades with a 100% win rate. This is exactly what I realized I must stop doing for any type of long-term success. I mean, we all know we shouldn't have wildly erratic trade performance, but the extent to which simply focusing on doing whatever is necessary to keep the results within one standard deviation as an end in itself really hit me. As far as the combines, another aspect of all this is to stop focusing on the passing stage, then the second stage, etc. While it is useful in terms of de-risking as you progress (as just described for the Leeloo bundles), it also fosters a kind of attitude where you put all of your efforts in to pass and then collapse at the end, kind of like finishing a Marathon, where your body just gives way at the end and everything implodes (and you blow up n the first day of the funded PA).
On my Apex accounts, I have taken a totally different approach and the truth is I have no hope of passing anytime soon. But all I am trying to do with these is manage myself and my process, and see where it goes. The trade sizing is correct for the trailing drawdown size, with my sizing ranging between 1 and 4 micros per trade with a $5,000 trailing drawdown and now a $250 daily loss limit (set in GAT, but $300 in Rithmic). I do trade larger in Globex, but only when the volatility is next to nothing and on high-probability trades when it's moving at the rate of a couple of points every 15 minutes if that. In other words, with these Apex accounts my only goal is to trade these accounts the only way that they can mathematically survive long term. The goal is not the passing stages. It's not even to think of them as combines, but just to figure out a way to trade successfully long term.
This month I had no resets, which is not like making money, but it is not losing money either. The accounts made an average of $950 each for the month. I had 11 win days (61%) vs 7 loss days (which only becomes meaningful if loss days are kept small). Across the 3 accounts I have now that's $2,850 for the month (Apex allows up to 20 accounts if I am not mistaken). Annually that would be $34K on only 3 accounts. It's not the $10K day I had on FOMC last month, then again, I blew up that combine the same week. More importantly, by really enforcing my risk management, I was able to keep my P&L mostly within 1 standard deviation of the mean, with the only result that had greater than 2 standard deviations and that was on the profit side. This tells me that my trading was almost completely sane for these accounts. These results also include loss days much greater than the DLL I worked down to over the course of the month, as I went from a DLL max of $750, down to $500, then $250 over the first 2 weeks.
The risk management was incredibly painful. The loss limit meant that if I ventured north of 2 micros I could easily get to half of my daily loss limit, which would also get me to a mandatory 1/2 hour break (at $150 loss). At that point, I had very little room to manage to get back to even, unlike what I do with the Leeloo bundles (go all in). If I get taken out my systems are such that no matter what I cannot undo my NT8 platform risk management addons or access Rithmic to trade there. This involves a lot of layers of security between me and undoing the risk management settings (hiding passwords for the session, having Rithmic locked via Cold Turkey, an app lock on my phone for mobile Rithmic, all of this set on all computers, Notezilla minders on what to turn on and off for RTH vs Globex, when to turn things on and off, etc. It's a lot more than I even outlined in the thread we have on Discipline in the Psychology section.
I have come to the realization all of this does not mean I am some type of insane addict who has to hide bottles from myself not to drink. Technically speaking, I am a recovering alcoholic, to be sure, sober since 2006 (6904 days today), so I know a bit about that. But I don't think I have gambling problems, that was never a part of my story (I do think trading is a form of professional gambling, but that's not what I'm talking about). That said, I do understand very well that for alcoholics, it's the first drink that gets us in trouble. And I do know that similarly, in day trading futures, it's the first line you cross that takes you out of your risk management system that will set your mind and body off down a track where you lose control and blow up sooner or later. This doesn't mean we are addicts. Over the years I have come to realize that either all futures traders are addicts or we are all just human and it means that just as computers have certain parts of the OS off limits to the rest of the system because those parts are too important for the overall computer operation to subject them to the main system, our brains are partitioned such that we simply cannot access or control certain survival impulses that run contrary to everything we must do to survive in day trading futures. For my part, I know the feeling in my body very well when I cross that line and my whole day feels like it has gone down the toilet, whether I came out on the plus or minus side. I haven't felt much that way with the Leeloo bundles because I know what I am doing here very well, and I have $11 per bundle at stake, but clearly, it's not great habit formation. I have to be very mindful of the approach being a staggered full-on risk to be dialed down fast as the accounts show any promise of passing the evaluations.
In my Apex accounts, in April, as I figured out my trade sizing and overall system requirements, I realized that I didn't really need to be in a combine with a $20K profit requirement,so I changed to the "$150K" combine with a $9K profit requirement and $5K drawdown limit one week in (and kept track of the gains and losses as if it was continuous over the month, even though my $150K combines ended the month with more profit overall). I keep my DLL to 6% of the drawdown and my trades sizing to allow about 6 losses to get to my DLL and stop at roughly 3 wins. As I go on at length above, the tiny DLL trading halt seems very counterintuitive on any given day. It runs against everything inside me, but as the month has gone, I see it works. I can have 3 losing days in a row equal to what I considered an aggressive DLL just at the top of April. The trading results also do not impress me on a day-to-day basis, but I see they would work over the long term. I also see that this is just a beginning (I am not holding this up as tremendously winning P&L month). It's doing what it's supposed to. So it's working. Seeing this, having this reference materialize in reality, really helps me to see the possibility of success, versus the gnawing uncertainty that would eat at me and lead me to always put off abiding by my risk management rules when push came to shover ("I'll just get even this time, risk everything to get it back to square one so I can start implementing my rules and then trade carefully"). So this helps diffuse the power of my subconscious self-annihilation bent in the face of "knowing" that it never works long term no matter what. This is the part of the OS that will lead me to self-destruct no matter what because it wants to get on to things that will get the bills paid. Likewise, I can trade the Leeloo bundles with a bit of humor and fun, understanding well what I am doing there. As long as I come back to this, as I am doing now, and know this is the way.
Now, having said all this, the question is, can I keep it up? More importantly, if I fall, to understand how far I have come and simply get up and continue to do better in this vein. Thus I must do.
Another day of seat-of-the-pants trading on those five Leeloo 5-account bundles from which 1 account per bundle can qualify for funded PA. Actually, four bundles, as one of them passed last Friday and three as of tomorrow, as another one crossed the finish line today on the minimum required 5 days of trading per the Leeloo special.
So two go to funded PA, and I have two more that are each just under $300 from the required $3,000 profit target, and two(of which one can qualify) that are further behind, not even quite halfway to profit. That is two for the same bundle.
So to sum up, two passed and it still possible to get 5 funded for 5 bundles. To get it done I have one chance each for two of the bundles (4 accounts blow per) with about $280 remaining on those two accounts, and two chances left for the fifth bundle (3 blown), with each of those requiring over $1,500 profit. I have until May 24th. I have to move to a different way of trading the remainder, as my burn rate so far has been high, as one could expect with massively oversized positions and over trading.
I didn't trade my Apex accounts at all today.
Hope everyone had some decent trading today, or good learning experiences if not!
Got 4 of the 5 bundles over the eval profit requirement finish line. (5 acct bundles, only 1 can qualify for PA, one is already a PA)
Should be all done as these all fall under the 5-day qualification special that ends today. One of them didn't make it. I traded it really crazy last night and today to try and get it caught up, but that one imploded. Oh well (I can live with 80% ).
Gonna stop here for the day. I have to pause and reset as these evals took me completely out of my normal trading.
Happy trading for the rest of this fast-moving day!
I don't really trade FOMC (when trading sane), although I did end up putting on a couple of micros very early, then locking out until 11:45 AM PST (2:45). I tried again late in the day. Ended up with -2 ticks on the day. That's a successful FOMC day in my book!
I got the other 3 Leeloo PAs today (4 total) and I have to configure them. Also, set up the second copier to trade my prior Apex evals and these Leeloo PAs. Then my bios updated and now my machine ID changed and I have to deal with all the indicators that will have to be updated. So my platform issues are not done yet today.
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