Just one trade today and then I was busy again. I really need to try to find a quieter time to trade.

This trade was a short at the end of down trend. It got hairy and I was up but as the market went against me I took a small profit and got out. Was good because I would have gotten run over.

+ $30, blah.

I like reversals in trends and I did not see any good places in the morning to get in, so I wandered off.

There were some trades later in the day I think, but I was not around.

Some days it is better to sit on your hands. For me anyway, trend follower guys probably had a field day.

These trades were in my smaller account on a different computer which is why the time setting is different. The first trade the price stalled on the downward move when it came bace to yesterdays high.

The trend was down, so short trades were preferred, so I waited for the reversal to fail. When it did , I rode it back down to the high of yesterday.’

Up $100 a contract today, which a good day in the mines.

The next trade was a similar one. there was a small inside bar around bar 68 that theee price stalled. I wanted to put a bracket around that price but didn’t and waited until it passed below the previous close attempting to ride it to the previous low.

On the DOM the trade petered out and I took another 5 ticks. After that, dealt with some family stuff.

The dangers of a limit order entry.

I normally enter on limit orders. I set my orders and the market jumped ( actually past my target ) and then back to take out my limit entry and straight to my stop loss order. That is a problem with limit orders in a fast market. I think I would get killed in CL.

It is not bad, but there is no way for Ninja ATM to cancel your order when it jumps.

I wish Ninja would give you a way to write ATM’s in for the DOM. Have a good weekend y’all.

I don’t trade on roll over days for good reason.

I tend to lose money on roll over days

So it is a goo time for me to take a day off. A very short week for me. Trade a day, take a day off and half day on Friday.

The first two trades were good. The third trade, the price sat on my limit price to get out of the trade. Reversed to hit my stop loss and then went well past my profit target.

I put my stop about the hit of the previous bar so it was an obviou point for stop running. That is trading.

I can’t draw conclusions yet from four trades, so I will probably stick with this for a week to get usefull metrics.

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.

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

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

AL BROOKS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING … BLOGSPHERE

Al Brooks is taking down his website. He states that “I would be distracted while I am trying to trade” if he tried to run a room or comment during the trading day. And since his “#1 goal is to make as much as possible as a trader” that is understandable. All Brooks is more of a trader than a trading guru ( the kind that runs a chat room ).

TRADING GURUS

Which brings me to the subject of trading gurus. I have never paid to be in a trading room. I did see one but as a guest, not a member. It has always seemed strange to me that some of these gurus who claim to trade, are teaching while trading.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I have seem some people who can trade, but it is more on the ‘I talk to myself during the day, I will just let other people hear it”. And the , we teach after the trading hours or just a couple of mornings a week.

I can see that.

However, I think a lot of them are full of shit. One trading guru who shall remain nameless stated that he only had ONE losing day in the month of July trading the ES ( He has a lot of months posted by the way) and posting really respectable gains.

This guy has apparently been trading for a few years but he still trades one lots. Maybe he likes trading small for the challenge of it. Or he has a meth habit that constantly drains his trading account so he only has enough margin for one contract.

Regardless of his success, he will coach you for a couple grand. A couple grand ? If I was putting up the numbers this guy had on his website, he should be doing institutional size. Throwing 50/100 lots he would be making 20~50K a day with one losing day a month. Why would someone who could make that much trading take your 2 grand to be his student? You are right, he wouldn’t.

It is not the money he would MAKE from teaching students, it is the amount of money he would LOSE by being distracted from trading.

AL BROOKS OUT THE DOOR

Al Brooks realized, that you can make more money trading than running a trading room if you are a good trader, and went back to trading. Score one for Al Brooks.

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

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

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 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 )


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


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