sappjason

I posted this on the wrong thread earlier in the day. Sorry. +$271, but a very choppy, churn day for me. Jason

+271 A crappy churn day for me. Jason

-$340. A pretty good day, considering I was down over $1K earlier in the day. +$5874 for the week, so I'm ticked pink with that. Attached is my 2010 P/L graph, just to show (like Thales mentioned) that you can certainly have long stretches of miserable trading. The entire last 3 weeks of Jan were wretched for me..... I also attached my 2010 (per trade) stats just for fun..... Jason

This is just a fantastic post. In all respects (including laughing with your daughter during the trading day). I love it! Jason

+$1361. Not a bad day, but one hell of a fight. Was down like crazy in the morning and then got a huge run up in my profitability later in the day, only to give half of it back again.... I hate these kind-a days.... I've attached my daily profitability graph, so you can see my times of sadness and elation (all in a nice little 4 hour stretch)....... Jason

Yes. You are right on the money with that quote.... And..... You are most welcome. Jason

+$1244. Another nice day. Man, I could really get use to this. But, every time I do, WHAM!!!!! Back in the gutter I go. Jason

+$2868. Another very nice day for me. Jason

+$761. Not a bad day, considering the chop.... Jason

LOL.... Yes... They were! Thanks again. Jason

+$2435 Another nice day for me. Oh shoot. Almost forgot to mention my best news. I finally broke out of my hellish month long DD and popped through a new equity high today. 'Bout time..... Jason

+$1895. 'bout time for a decent day.

$-390. Uggg.... Need I say more..... Jason

-$990. I keep getting my "!@(*&(&^$#" handed to me. I'm now over 1 month of being in the same darned DD and it's driving me insane..... Today, I had an issue with IB (that I've seen before) that caused me to screw up one of my trades and I ended up loosing $43.38 on that particular trade. However, if I had fixed the damned issue 6 months ago (the last time I saw it), this particular trade would have been +$1200 and I would have (at least) been on the profit side of the house today. So pisses me off..... Jason

I'm an automated system trader. My best day was +$6978 and my worst day was -$5164. Jason

+331. Not the best day in the world as that big reversal (shortly before 2:00) blew out a lot of my stops. Jason

Kind-of a bothersome day.... I made money (+$602), but my account was up over $1400 at one point. After doing this for almost 2 years, I really hesitate messing with anything during the day (in a discretionary manner). Many times, I wish I would, but I just can't bring myself to do so. I just let the math play out and over the long run, I strongly believe that this brings in more profit for me. Jason

Wow. Thanks....... I appreciate it..... Jason

Oh trust me, I still yell at myself on down days (lol)..... There have been a few times throughout the last couple years where I've had months that end flat or down. I'm still in the midst of a DD that I was really hoping to pop out of today, but that didn't happen (you can see the attached graph for my YTD Net P/L). My worst DD has been 8%. Without divulging too much of the specifics of what I do, my software basically looks to get into stocks that are trading on abnormally large volume and ride the momentum. I have done thousands of backtests and simulations to try and determine the best type of exit, but I have never found anything that beats a simple 1:1 trailing stop after I've been in a trade for over 1 hour. I still have a "take profit" limit order at 8X my stop size, but as you might guess, that rarely gets hit. It got hit a hell of a lot more in 2008 than it has in the past year. As far as money management is concerned, my position sizes are based on my stop size and I always try and size my position at .25% of my equity (a little over $500 per trade at this point). Now, on days where there are lots of stocks moving, my software will scale that size down until I run out of buying power. Basically, I try and max out my buying power every day, but I also don't want to miss trades. This balance took a lot of work and I came up with a rather complicated algorithm that simply ratchets my risk size downward as my buying power decreases. But I only ratchet down after I get to certain points. Another thing that I do is I have a "slippage estimation" algorithm that attempts to estimate slippage for a given position size (before entry) and then down-sizes my initial position until my total slippage cost doesn't exceed 5% of my risk size. So (often times) on lower ave vol stocks, my max risk is considerably less than .25% of account equity. If you want to talk more, please feel free to PM anytime you'd like. Jason

Another crappy day. Down $1616.

Looks like I pulled some cash back in the front door today. I always hope to have a profitable week, but day to day, it's always up-in-the-air. Along side of my normal blotter, I'm going to also include a screen shot of a piece of monitor software that I wrote. My automated trading system is pretty wired as far as monitoring is concerned. I co-locate the server in a local co-location facility near my home and it sends my phone (via text messages) an update every 20 minutes (throughout the trading day) and also texts me when problems arise. I'm also usually connected to my system via remote desktop, but in case I'm somewhere else, I have a web server running on my box that hosts a nice little monitoring application that I've written as well. This second screen shot is from my remote monitoring application. Sometimes (because of the way Interactive Brokers reports unrealized and realized P&L), my worst case line makes a few weird pops and hickups (as you can see in the attached screen shot). Anyway, I love always having a known worst-case throughout the day. It helps me breathe a little easier knowing that "this is as bad as it can get"....... Jason

Welp. My day is done and I wiped out my gains on Friday. I've learned over the past two years that a good risk size for me (with what I'm doing) is a max of .25% of equity. So, being that I'm trading with about $210K, my max risk size (which includes commission and estimated slippage) is $525 per position. Sometimes (unfortunately), my slippage causes me to even loose more than $525, but that's because I estimate slippage before entry. Anyway, today just happened to be one of those horrific days when almost every one of my system's trades was a looser... I hate starting the week off having to dig myself out of the hole. But that's unfortunately just sometimes the way the old ball bounces for me..... Jason

Wow. Thanks for the compliment. I appreciate it. I'll certainly continue to share as this seems a good way to meet other traders (which I surely haven't been able to in a software development job). I'm just dreading when I enter into one of my drawdown phases and still continuing to post day-in/day-out. But, hey, just for the embarrassment factor alone (despite being in a DD), it should help me continue to seek further enhancements and optimizations..... Thanks Again, Jason

Done for the day.... Jason

Never posted here in my life, but I've decided to go for it. I'm a software engineer and spent several years attempting to teach myself how to trade. Finally became profitable back in 2008 and ended up (as any truly geeky software engineer would do) automating my strategy over the past 2 years. I'm finally 100% automated (have been now for most of 2009). My system trades only stocks and averages around 3300 trades per year. I'm in cash every night. This year started out great for me and then turned quickly "sucky". It's been coming back a bit lately though. Anyway, as I'm just now hopping on board, I'm going to provide a graph of my current 2010 profitability and then I'll post my p/l every night along with the rest of the gang. Posting those bad days is going to suck for me....... Jason PS-I started the year with about $196K.....