Tradewinds Log and Performance Report

[Tradewinds 12]

Practice trading. Last 2 1/2 weeks. Net Profit $13,437 for that time period. Trading 1 to 4 ES Contracts. 75% win rate. 1172 total trades. It states $2,812 in commissions. Annual rate of return 347%. Attached is the performance report.

Perform June2011.xls

[MadMarketScientist 11]

Practice trading. Last 2 1/2 weeks. Net Profit $13,437 for that time period. Trading 1 to 4 ES Contracts. 75% win rate. 1172 total trades. It states $2,812 in commissions. Annual rate of return 347%. Attached is the performance report.

 

Good work! Practice account only?

 

MMS

[Tradewinds 12]

Good work! Practice account only?

 

MMS

 

Yes, fake money. I'm not a real trader. Hopefully that will happen. I've got a well defined strategy and I'm working on being consistent. I'm constantly learning. I probably could have gone live well before now, but it's just part of my personality. I'm refining my strategy to an almost scientific degree. But I think it takes very high proficiency to be a successful trader. I'm trying to get to a level of ability that's like a professional athlete.

 

Hopefully I'll be posting performance reports from my live account in the future. To boost my ego. :rofl: (If I make money that is)

 

I've got the very well defined strategy, that I know works, the last issue I need to tweak is making sure I'll get fills in live trading. Unfortunately TradeStation gives "touch fills" in SIM. Why do they do that!!?? Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

 

I'd like to record my screen while I'm practice trading, but that creates a really big file.

[Tradewinds 12]

Same old story. Practice trade forever. But I'm starting to become almost robotic in my trading. So that's good. Good in the sense that I'm making decisions consistently the same. Following my rules. I catch myself doubting that I made the right decision, then review the indicators, and tell myself that it's worked before and those are my rules, so be patient and wait. And then the price comes to me, and the order works. Not always, but I must trade the rules that I know work and not let the doubt sabotage my effort.

 

$3,141 Profit after commissions, trading 4 contracts. It may not be realistic, but if I can make half that in real trading, I'll be doing well.

 

[phantom 16]

looking at the time and price without consideration of volume in your analysis

is like ordering a hamburger, throws (throwing) out the meat and just eat (eating) the bun.

 

my 2c

 

Sorry TAMS, but 2 cents is about all that statement is worth, and I'm being generous.

 

I stopped looking at volume a LONG time ago. Ever heard of tick charts?

 

Also, volume spikes oftentimes lead to erroneous assumptions that a move is terminating soon, and after exiting a trade, one comes back later to find that he/she has left 75% of the profits on the table.

 

Volume is just another indicator, no more important than anything else (except price and volatility) as long as one is trading in liquid markets.

 

 

Phantom

Edited July 23, 2011 by phantom

[Tradewinds 12]

I stopped looking at volume a LONG time ago.

 

Phantom

 

I look at NYSE Up Volume and Down Volume as a indicator to the ES, but not ES volume. I'd like to break up the ES volume into Up and Down volume, but couldn't do that on my old platform. Haven't looked into it with TradeStation.

 

But as far as just the typical volume bars go, I think they are absolutely useless. I have never seen any correlation between a typical volume bar and price. I'm sure that volume plays a big role, but it probably needs to be processed down further than your typical volume bars.

 

My observation of the ES compared to the internals are that the NYSE $TICK leads, the Advancers/Decliners confirm, the Up Vol / Down Vol reacts LAST. That is not always the case, sometimes the Volume takes control, but that isn't the "norm".

[phantom 16]

Yes, fake money. I'm not a real trader.

 

I'm trying to get to a level of ability that's like a professional athlete.

 

Sounds like you've got a grip on the entry portion of your discipline.

 

Unfortunately, you haven't even begun to experience the reality of the emotional experience that awaits you once you go live.

 

And that cannot happen until you go live.

 

It's akin to hitting 10,000 tennis balls off of a wall, and then stepping onto the court against Raphael Nadal.

 

The emotional stress that live trading incurs, when your money is really on the line, will cause you to experience feelings you didn't even know existed inside your mind. You will begin a whole new avenue of discomfort and second guessing and "premature ejectulation" on trades that you couldn't have possibly foreseen during your tenure as a sim-trader.

 

You are going to have to take the leap, and this will require you to overcome your "type-A" thinking (if I am reading you correctly) and allow yourself to experience those feelings if you are ever to become a pro at this game.

 

1-4 contracts with a 342k account? You're also going to have to learn some money management techniques because this is WAY out of line.

 

You might try opening a modest account (say, $10k - $15 k) and trade 1 car at a time with tight risk stops (no more than $150 per car per trade) and get used to the real world of the psychology of trading.

 

You can do it TRADEWINDS, all it takes is the first step...

 

 

Luv,

Phantom

[Tradewinds 12]

I now have an indicator that incorporates all of my other indicators. It is mostly object oriented code in EasyLanguage. It will automatically exit and re-enter a trade with confirmation. A pop up comes up asking whether to send the trade or not. So if the program goes wild, it won't enter hundreds of orders a minute non-stop.

 

It's not fully automated. It's mostly for exiting from the direction I've chosen to trade. What I like about it is that it executes very fast, and catches my conditions faster than I might be able to detect them myself. Sometimes it actually reacts to fast and chooses a worse price than I could have otherwise gotten. But I'm more likely to get filled.

 

That indicator is now over 2000 lines long. Probably 80 percent of my effort was put into filtering out multiple orders and making sure the program would stop or abort before it went into an endless loop of entering non-stop orders.

 

Now I want to program my own confirmation dialog that will confirm an entry, but allow an automatic exit.

[Tradewinds 12]

I've been experimenting with Share Bar based charts for short term day trading, and have decided on a 2000 share bar. I'm using a 1 minute chart and a 2000 share bar chart. The price levels on the 2000 share bar chart are often more obvious than on the 1 minute chart. And sometimes the price levels are different, but I think they are more accurate on the 2000 share bar chart. The 2000 share bar chart will show price stalling at a certain previous level, forming multiple bars, then either continuing or reversing. But the point is, that it is clearly shown that more than the normal amount of bars are being formed at a price level, meaning that the market is hanging out at that level while orders accumulate in one direction or another before the next price move.

 

A 2000 share bar chart will make multiple bars in one minute if there is a lot of activity. A one minute chart will only show a bar every minute, regardless of how much volume there is in that minute. So a share bar chart will show the price constantly hitting a level, then moving away, and going back to exactly the same price on multiple bars within that minute time frame.

 

The chart shows price hitting a previous level right at a peak signal. The net volume is higher compared to the last price level.

 

The price continues through the previous level and goes higher. The big red dots on the indicator show possible price peaks. The other dots show pre-peak signals, or a signal that price is going to move up from a bottom. It depends on the circumstances. A pre-peak signal occurring when the price low is sitting on support means that price is going to go up, not that it is peaking.

 

A peak signal occurring when the high is right at a previous resistance, is tricky because the price could surge to another level. So there are 3 basic situations.

 

1) Peak signal when price is over last resistance. Good place to exit.

2) Peak signal when price low is sitting on previous support. Wait for price to go up.

3) Peak signal when price is hitting previous resistance, look for divergences and info from other indicators to determine trend strength.