swansjr

Day 40 July 24, 2009 One trade. One winner. The EC market broke it's multi-day range to the downside overnight. But it was a fake as it strongly reversed upwards. I awoke and did a quick scalp before calling it a day. I'm off work today and was not even going to trade. But I gave it an hour and a nice pullback on the 445 tick chart allowed me to enter long. Below is the attached video of today's trade: Live_Trade_2009-07-24_0605.swf Below is the screen shot of today's trade. Notice my entry signal is on my larger timeframe (445 tick). P&L: $100

Day 39 July 23, 2009 One trade. One winner. The EC market was still in range bound since yesterday. Attached is the video of the trade and you'll see I realize the range bound nature of the market and enter long at a valid entry on the 445-tick chart instead of my usual-89 tick in hopes of capturing a larger move. Well, it was not a huge move but it was larger than my standard scalp. Here is the attached video capture of todays trade: Live_Trading_2009-07-23_0800.swf P&L: $150

Day 38 July 22, 2009 The EC market was choppy today but I did manage to squeeze a scalp in this morning. Price moved above my moving averages then came down to test a consolidation area which consisted of both the 89 sma and 50 sma. I took the first signal near these averages. P&L: $100

I don't know the system in question. I do not have the system or PDF. However, if you know your entry price before the open then you must be taking into account; 1) price action in the overnight session or 2) price action of the previous day or 3) both. One could easily set up a price range two hours before the market's 8:30 central open and use that as the "range" for a range-breakout. I just looked at his videos and I would bet he is using a portion of the overnight session to establish the range. He then looks for a breakout above/below that range and enters in the direction of the breakout on a pullback. Hope that helps.

I need help! I'm going back to my simulator for more training. Why? While it's true I'm muddling along making a little money with my live trading, I'm not happy with my inability to take every signal. The way to overcome this is to build more confidence in my trading skill and trusting with my system. So, starting Tuesday I'm going to take every valid signal without fear or hesitation on the simulator. I will track my progress as always and I hope this will demonstrate that by just following my system money will follow. By the end of the week if I feel more confident then I will revert back to trading with real money on the following week. It's important for me to accept that I can always revert back to sim trading if I feel my performance is lacking.This is not failure but simply acknowledging my weakness and attempting to fix it without losing too much cash.

Thanks for writing. I've not given up. The last few weeks I've been busy, distracted and generally unable to focus on trading. For example, I design web pages as a side job - been doing that for years. Well, I had a project that needed some work for a demo that was coming up this past weekend. During the morning I would switch between working on my web page and trading the EC. Not a good idea. After suffering three losses in a row last week during market conditions which should have been easy for me I decided I need to stop trading to clear my plate. My complete and total intention is to clear my plate of non-trading obligations and get back to focusing on the markets. This will be the last web page for me as I truly wish to focus my energies on trading. It's so much better than web design. No customers is one big plus. Anyway, I'm still around and sorry for not updating. I've been so busy I really had to cut back on posting. As for the Watts system, I like it. It's the only purchased system I've made money at. Is it worth the effort? I thinks so. Time will tell. For such a low cost I would recommend it to anyone who wishes to day trade. It's a small price to pay for such massive potential rewards. It may not be for everyone but you won't know unless you try. Lord knows I have trouble executing trades but that's a psychological issue that can occur with any trading system. I thought about trying to code up the system as well. I made a half-baked attempt months ago but like with many profitable discretionary systems there are always elements that prove very difficult to quantify in computer code. In the end I decided I need to learn to trade. I series of tools that could highlight price bars or somehow alert me to possible setups would be more useful. I might attempt to create a tools set in the future. But in my opinion the biggest obstacle is me and if the Watts system could be coded up someone much smarter than me would have done it already.

Day 38 July 9, 2009 Another day of no trades. I've been distracted this week with non-trading obligations and it's really showing. This should last just through this week so, one more day.

Day 37 July 8, 2009 One trade. One winner. Today's, action was much more choppy as apposed to yesterdays trending market. I was getting conflicting signals on my timeframes and thus, I was cautious. I did record several videos but the bulk of them never materialized into a trade. But I did manage to capture one quick scalp before my session was over. I won't bore you with the video but you can find a screenshot below. The price just moved below the fast SMA and I took the first valid signal. Very clean entry and the market moved quickly to my target. I recorded my trade today. Is it no wonder my trade was a winner? P&L: $100

Day 36 July 7, 2009 Two Trades. Two Losers. Today I traded like a complete fool. I watched an entire uptrend and did not take any signals until the very end and was stopped out - twice! Granted I was distracted with other non-trading obligations I know better. This is exactly what I'm talking about in my review from yesterday. You may be asking why I did not video record my trade. Well, yesterdays post about my review occurred after today's stupid trades. I've been slow at getting these updates out. Wednesday will be the day I start recording what I do. Today typified all that is wrong. The market was throwing money my direction, but I was to frightened to grab it. When I did grab it, my hand was bitten. P&L: ($150)

Attached are my statistics for trading the EC from May 27, 2009 to June 29, 2009. In short, I managed to keep my head above water. However, my performance has been horrible. Most notably, 1) not taking signals 2) and in a more general sense, not following my plan. While I think I'm narrowing down "when" or "when not" to trade I still often hesitate to act. Furthermore, I need to only take signals that I'm trained to take which at this time are trend continuation patterns. I have yet to practice or fully define the entry and execution of trend reversals patters. Thus, I should not attempt those, yet. Here come the gory details... So, sticking to my plan and execution without hesitation appear to be my biggest flaws. My risk management seems to prevent me from pole-axing my account into oblivion. In fact, I'm making money. Just imagine if I could trade well! The money will just pour into my account. heheh, To fix my deficiencies I will start to record each trade via screen capture software. I actually think recording my trading process while talking out loud about my setups and what I'm observing with the price action will help in my performance. I will need to add this to my trading plan. These videos will also provide a great library of failed and well executed trades. Onward I march.

Day 35 July 6, 2009 No trades today. I find myself distracted with other non-trading obligations and the price was not grabbing me.

Day 34 July 2, 2009 No trades today. Just before the Holiday and I've got other stuff to do.

That's true. A lot of systems don't include slippage or commissions. The above stats do have commissions, but not slippage. More than half the transactions in my tests are limit orders and the rest are market orders.

Here is the first update containing trades from May 29, 2009 through July 2, 2009. First is an image of a good trading day. If there is a trend for the a given day this system rides most of it. It seems these 5-minute charts do well for trending days but will get chopped up on non-trending days. System Trades on a Trending Market On with the results... Summary Equity Curve The following is a more detailed look at each trading day.

For a few weeks now I've been tracking a 5-minute setup on the YM market. The settings are listed below. The test simply consists of create a chart with the proper settings (see below) and allowing it to "trade" on live market data. I hope to track the performance over a series of weeks and/or months. This thread is the third in a series of charts I'm following to get a better idea on the Universal trading system. The two other charts are: YM on 89-Tick Chart ES on 5-Minute Chart Settings on YM 5-Minute Chart

Here are the latest stats through July 2, 2009. Equity Curve: This attachments is the trade details:

Here is an update through July 2, 2009. Please note, around June 2nd I changed the maximum day loss from $600 to $500. Summary These attachments contain more detail.

Glad to help. I’m relatively new as well. I started writing EL code for automated systems on January of 2008. Since then I’ve developed and tested dozens of ideas. To this day I have one system that has excellent results. I’m confident with it and I have no problem trading my money with it. My word of advice is this: My successful system is basic, so keep your ideas simple. At its core it’s only a few lines of code. I don’t think it’s a mistake that my best system is simple. I’m also finding value in my discretionary day trading. I’m starting to form an opinion that to develop good automated trading systems you must also understand discretionary trading. That may be an overstatement, but I found my discretionary trading to help a lot. In short, if I spend a year testing ideas I might get one good system.

My best system has losses like any other trading method. I would say it's regular small losses. My other system I stopped trading recently because the results for the past year have been more-or-less a wash. I would like to refine it more or move on to another concept.

Day 33 July 1, 2009 No trades today. While I did not trade the Watts System today, I have an automated system that took a nice profit in YM as it anticipated a up move in the overnight session. I was pleased with that. Furthermore, there was a lot of stuff that I needed to get done around the home office. So I spent my morning taking care of non-trading obligations. I'm also debating about trading tomorrow morning since it's just before the long holiday weekend. I guess I'll know if i should be trading or not when I see the price action in the morning. Looking forward to reviewing my first full month of trading the Watts System.

Day 32 June 30, 2009 One trade. One Winner. Again, not much action in EC this morning but I did manage to get one scalp trade in. P&L: $100

Day 31 June 29, 2009 One trade. One Winner. Not much action in EC this morning but I did manage to get one scalp trade in. it did not take much heat but it sure advanced slowly. It was a long 8 ticks. Anyway, I really hope to review my lousy performance soon. Looking forward to the review so I can improve! P&L: $100

Day 30 June 26, 2009 No trades today as most of my morning was busy with other obligations. The little time in front of the screen I did have resulted in nothing catching my eye. Hope to post a review this weekend.

I agree. I stopped updating every week because it was too time consuming. I want to do it once a month or at most, twice a month. I'm also working on some spreadsheets to help quantify the results.

Day 29 June 25, 2009 Three Trades. Two winners and one loser. I recorded two out of three trades today. The loser was the one I did not record. It was also my first trade of the day. I can't say much about today other than I feel I followed the rules well. Attached is a recording of my second trade which was a good Long scalp. Then I used my higher timeframe to keep me out of a market which was now Bearish. Live_Trading_2009-06-25_1.swf On the second video I Shorted and captured a nice $200/contract runner. However being an idiot, I accidentally deleted the video. :doh: Oh, well. Here is a picture of the runner. I used a higher timeframe to help time the entry on both my successful trades. Using the higher timeframe has helped me a lot over the last two days. The only time it seems not to help is during a strong trend - which is not most of the time. Solid Runner P&L: $180