I am taking time off from blogging. Things are going well. My life has been very busy lately so I also took time off from trading for a while.
Anyway, I am trading again, but I am doing well. Just nice boring trading. And thus, not much to blog about.
SO check out Dt233’s blog. Tell him I sent ya.
I think a lot of people decided to make a three day weekend into a four day weekend. I am looking at the volume on the ZS contract and it seems it die this last week.
Here are my results after commissions PER CONTRACT. I always use per contract, not the amount traded. In the future , I won’t be able to look at the per contract, but I will have to look at an average. I plan to incorporate different multiple exit points and I would like to see the average per contract.
I did decent this week, the results should have been higher, except for that one mistake this week. That loss was also my greatest drawdown this week. I did a point a day on average ( on 4 days ) which is right where I should be.
I trade small, I work on making consistent profits, with tight risk management and then just scale larger instead of trading more.
The volume reported by the CME seems to have dropped a LOT in the last for days. The 11-09 contract is still the most active contract, so I am not sure what this means. I am not a grain trader after all.
The last two days I have been executing well, I made one mistake, but in setup , not execution that cost me a couple of points which sucks.
I had my settings saved in a NinjaTrader template, and they were messed up. I entered the first trade of the day and I knew it wasn’t right.
+0.50 ZS point ( Thur )
+0.25 ZS point ( Wed )
Trading days like this are eaten up by commissions.
The object is not to lose money on the bad days and make money on the good days.
Photo By A Godless Communist
First trade of the date slammed me for a three point loss. My average loss is much smaller, but I had one of those one tick failures. Hit my entry stop by one tick, then reverse to my ‘OMG’ stop. Three trades later, I was down a tick.
I did execute well, so I am happy. Just sometimes trades like that happen. We will see what happens tomorrow.
-0.25 ZS point
Nice Monday. I had a profitable week last week, I just did not have enough time to blog last week. I was working on automating my system and getting my results automated.
Today was a decent day, 3.5 points in two trades in Soybeans. I was trading the Corn and the Soybean last week, but this week, I will just stick to the Soybeans to concentrate on just one instrument. I think my results will not be as consistent, but such is life.
I am not sure I will stop trading the beans when the emini’s come back in September.
+3.5 ZS points
Laughing Squid
I am still here everyday, and I have been working on automating my grain strategy ( which apparently works on bonds also ).
Earlier this week, I was really pissed off at myself. I was on the phone and was distracted when I took the trade. A trade that I clearly should not have taken. It wasn’t even an entry signal.
Crap.
I had always planned on getting someone to do a Ninja trader auto strat to backtest my trading methodology. This just pushed that forward.
Having your strategy back test-able does a couple of things that are really good for your trading.
The first is that is forces you to write clear rules. You cannot be vague with a computer. This really forces clarity and if you look at your trading rules with an eye to having it made into and auto trading strategy, it WILL improve clarity and focus.
Second, you can see how your auto strat trades alongside you. In effect showing you what is wrong with your trading or if there is a bug in the code of your autostrat.
Anyway, in the black today with one trade.
+1.75 ZS Points ( same as emini )
image by drp
For some reason, in my own mind, I think I did worse than below. Then when I added it up at the end of the week, I did not do as bad as I thought. I think Mon & Wed clouded my memory for the other three days.
Trading the grains has been fun. I will back test some things I learned this week.
Friday I was up by 2.5 points by noon central , and I decided not to risk it on a Friday.
So 5.75 ES points ( ZS/ZC points are the same size as the ES points ) for the week.
FRI +2.50 ZS/ZC points
THU +2 ZC points ( 8 ticks )
WED +0.50 points ( ZS & ZC )
TUE +2.00 ZS points
MON -1.25 ES points ( 5 ticks )
Going into the end of the week, I was really lazy. The morning had bupkis ( also know as nothing ) in the way of trades. Then mid afternoon , three setups right in a row.
And I missed the first two.
I wasn’t paying attention and it was my own fault for not watching the chart closer.
I did get the third trade which was good for two points, so it was a profitable day trading but counts as a poor day in terms of my execution.
+2 ZC points ( 8 ticks )
photo by gilesclement
Had a scratch day today. +2 ticks , but only $8 after comms. Did well in Corn surprisingly, and one bad trade in Soybeans.
I know I will lose half of the people following the blog because I started trading grains during summer trading ( I will be back to the emini in a few weeks when volatility comes back more ). I am a city boy after all , so trading grains is weird for me also.
If I saw a field of soybeans and a field of corn, I would not know the difference. Trading is trading.
I will have to adjust my style a bit for the grains. The grains do not have as much ‘back and fill’ as the S&P emini does, so I have to adjust for that.
+0.50 points ( ZS & ZC )
Photo By TurtleMom4Bacon
Well, I switched over to the grains for a day. I wanted to see if they still had volatility during the summer. I back tested a setup and it looked pretty good, so I gave it a try.
The setup is similar to my normal setup, but works better on non indexes.
The grains have a few big differences. The first big difference with the grains is that they can go up or down limit. That is , a price can go so high, the futures stop trading and you are caught in a position. So always have a stop loss order IN the market well inside the limit up/down prices.
The second is the trading hours. Grains trade from 9:30 CENTRAL to a little after 1 pm, a much shorter trading day.
The tick size is the same as the ES ( Emini S&P ) , $12.50
So I traded the Nov ZS (Soybeans ) and did two trades for a point each. I bailed at noon. There was another winner but I was gone by then. The big thing is I worry about limit up / down moves.
+2.00 ZS points
Photo By Kevin H
I haven’t seen one of these days in a while. As in never, but I haven’t been trading that long. Took a loss today and that was my own stupid fault.
I wasn’t patient enough and forced a trade. Then I got out and did not take the next entry which would not have been forced and a winner.
I did manage my risk well, and that contained the losses. 1/3 for the day.
Summer trading can be a pain. I am not even sure I want to try again this Friday.
-1.25 ES points ( 5 ticks )
Friday trading in August is usually slow. Today was no exception. I guess too many people take off early for the Hamptons.
No trades, a morning of watching paint dry.
For the week 2.75 ES points
FRI 0.00 ES points
THU +1.00 ES Point
WED 0.00 ES points - Fed day
TUE -0.25 ES points
MON +2.00 ES points
Two setups, one trade. Today was a decent day until about 10 am central time. I didn’t catch the early reversal, but I did catch the top around 10 am.
The the market started to grind and I watched until the end of lunch, but did not get another trade for the day.
+1 ES point
One of my rules is “Just don’t scalp on Fed days“. Which was today, so a day off.
FOMC Meeting Announcement 2:15 PM ET
The next Fed days are
September 23 November 4 December 16
in case you are wondering.
Tuesday was one of those downdraft from the open kind of days. I had an early setup to go long right when the gap closed. It didn’t , and I lost 1.25 ES points on that one.
The second trade was an easy one. On a strongly trending down day, it is much easier to short ‘popup’ trades like that.
Not one of my best days. Not too many reversals and grinding lower most of the day. A good day for trend followers, but not for me.
+1.00 ES point
-1.25 ES points
-0.25 ES points NET
Boring days are good days for me. Everything works as expected with a minimum of mistakes.
I had two trades, almost three, but the setup came too close to the end of lunch hour to take it. The first trade today alost turned into a loser for me but sometimes luck is in your favor ( or should I say odds since luck based trading does not work long term )
The end of lunch seem to be Kryptonite to my trading. Always lots of reversals around that time of day, so I just leave it for now. Maybe when I am a better trader…. I ended up with two trades for one point each.
+2.0 ES points
I tried to export the NinjaTrader performance window in an image, but that is not supported, so I added a screen grab instead.
Had three trade setups today, but only one was with the trend. All three worked which would have been three points, but oh well. Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda.
Just +1 ES point on one trade.
I am trading better. I want to concentrate on executing my trading plan and strive for consistency, consistency, consistency. I am trying to constantly trying to hit singles and not constantly going for the home run.
For the week, net 3.5 ES points.
Mon +1.0
Tue -0.5
Wed +0.0
Thu +2.0
Fri +1.0
Finally had a day that fit my style ( After the mid-morning anyway ) I don’t trade strong trends so the morning was on the sidelines, as the ES fell out of bed.
I tried the ZN today. I was sitting around waiting for the ES to start and I saw a good setup, and made four ticks. I did not follow it for the rest of the day, but maybe I will come back to the ZN later.
Had two trades today for two points in the ES. The first trade was a little bit hairy because I was not really sure of the trend had reversed or not. It worked, but I need to do more study on when trendlines break. Esp. after that huge downdraft from the open.
+2 points ES
The second trade was much easier. Stopped trading by 12. A good day at the office IMHO.
I really need to look into my rules for what to do in the face of a strong trend. I usually only take trades in the direction of the trend EXCEPT in the first hour when on some days, there are a lot of reversals.
Is the first hour arbitrary? Yes, but I do have to have some rules. If I start making arbitrary rules, I think that is a slippery slope.
I had what was clearly a counter trend trade 4 min before the end of the first. hour. I really did not want to take the trade, but I did.
-1 ES point ( Early Counter trend trade ) +1 ES point Net 0.0 ES points
Today was definately bull day. Blah. The first hour was noisy, and then went into a trend day.
Sort of a noisy->trend day. today These type of days are very hard. I like ranging days, because my setup fades. I get caught , like most faders, in the transition from ranging to trending days.
My first trade I missed my entry by two ticks, which sucked. The trade still worked out for a point.
The second entry, was a hard one for me. Shorting bull trend, I really did not like shorting into support at 999. Took it for a 6 tick loss.
End of the day for a 2 tick loss.
+1.0 ES point
-1.5 ES point
Net -0.5 ES point
