Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Are there 9 of you? Or are there even less looking twice?

Well well...

we made it to the end of the year. I am sure each one of us has learned at least one thing about life and ourselves this year.

You know, I am not one to really give a shit about most holidays, especially not my birthday because those are just illusions and gimmicks anymore that ring people into spending money and feeling guilt and lack.

And although it's all just one grand illusion, I think it's important for us to have the end of something and the beginning of something else. Seasons change and bring about times and feelings we may have forgotten. Memories. Just like drinking or doing a psychedelic drug and remind you (or show you for the first time) that what you thought was reality, is and only ever was or will be a tiny slice of the big picture.

I've learned things about myself this year. Like a child growing into an adult in some ways, I look back and say to myself "How could I not see that". I say that in respect to trading and in respect to the developments that have become aware to my consciousness as a human.

Throughout this last year I have become aware of more bullshit inside me than I have in a long time. And at the same time, none of it changes what I have known all along about the world itself.

I've taken the extra effort and time to practice seeing other people and myself as more than the visual image my brain sees. To see the skeleton below... all the muscles moving, the programs and code firing away to produce what seems to be a person. I've felt for a long time now that when I am talking to someone all I am doing is witnessing mechanisms at play. Like the roll of a dice they simple fall as they do and I am witnessing the outcome. I feel like I am no different, and it doesn't burden me at all. I don't feel special, but I do feel a little different and I suspect that is only because each individual entity can not help but witness individually because it is not yet capable of sharing a consciousness.

I look at the market some days and go "This looks so easy". I look at it other days and feel a deep anxiety about how on earth I could possibly keep this up successfully and when in the first place I will actually if ever feel "Successful" at it.

I mean, how much? How much time, money or action will it take before I say to myself "I can do this and I know it".

So far I have only seen "Results" but nothing that feels like a pattern I can place absolute faith in. And then that immediately reminds me that there isn't a single thing in existence I can place absolute faith in, why should trading be any different?

Learning to be at peace in the unknown and the discomfort has been my lifes work.

Not so dedicated all the time, as I like to forget quite often what it is that I know that motivates me to be so uncomfortable.

There are a few base things I see about myself.

#1. I am a sexual being. I am in love with sex, with women and the image feel sound and taste of them. The way they move... I often notice that I literally imagine them as objects of my will, simply because so many of them disappoint me in real life. I spend ample time wandering in my imagination of them as if they were any other thing I enjoy in life. I imagine to most, especially to a woman, I sound like a total dick... and I suppose that is okay with me and I find that completely understandable. At face value it seems like I am discrediting them. But, I am not. What is really going on is that I am simply being honest about the way I practice the freedom of my own imagination. Freedom is so important, and the beauty of it is, I think I do a pretty good job of not letting my imaginations of things like that pour over into my real life interactions with people. I honestly think I am way more genuine and honest with people than most, but it's because I can separate imagination from everyday real life.

I suppose I have just painted a picture that I spend vast amounts of my time drooling over daydreamed scenarios of women in my head, but that is far from what actually goes on.

My attention, as I assume is similar to most peoples, is rather short sighted and easily caught on the next thought.

I think what it really comes down to, is that I am a pretty fucking passionate person. Whatever it is I am feeling, I allow myself to dive down deep into it. When I am envisioning something happening, whether it is a woman, a car, a lifestyle or event... in my head it might as well be real.

I have long realized that I seem to be contrary to a lot of people in terms of remembering a childhood. I seriously have very few memories of my youth. It's almost as if my life started happening when I was 15 or so. It's always made me notice that I can't recall my childhood when others remember and tell of theirs. It makes me wonder, am I blocking out terrible shit?

But then again, I can be in control of an 80,000 lb truck and suddenly realize I couldn't tell you how the hell I've even stayed on the road for the last 15 minutes. I get so caught up in imagination that I am on autopilot. It amazes me. So it makes me wonder if I have just had such a gravitational imagination all my life to the point I never actively paid much attention to my childhood or not...

#2. I want what I want and if it's not worth it for me to compromise I tend not to do it. That leads me to be rather impulsive about things. People in my life have played the largest factor in this regard. I used to have an enormous amount of patience with people as a child, but I am now coming to suppose that it was because I had no concrete value system in place because I had not yet learned to think critically yet.

I was often the tool of others, giving in to their will because I was too busy feeling confused about what was going on and had no instincts to pause and question many things. Now, I am much better at that.


#3. I am certain that I am uncertain.

I don't mean that to sound stupid and comical at all. I guess what I am noticing about myself is that the more time goes on, the less energy I find myself having to invest in anything... or most things. I certainly don't feel like joining the debate about right or wrong, true or untrue much anymore because I've spent years realizing I simply don't know. And in my observation it has become what I think is the single most honest thing any person who is truly paying attention can say to themselves and therefor to anyone else.

I've spent years now, feeling this way, yet also seeing that context is indeed the basis for all so called fact. So to me in the grand scheme of things I see no facts, but in any single minuscule focused context, truth is pretty easy to derive a fact from. The issue I have, is that this grander part of me often overrides the tinier "contextual allowance of fact" part of me.

If I knew people understood where I was coming from, I might have more energy to engage in conversations about things, but I've met less than a handful of people that would get it enough to make it worth it.

so in that regard I am easily viewable as a person who is wasting his life not doing anything about the problems in his world. And yet the people who see what I see ultimately arrive at the conclusion that if all things are relative, problems and solutions are moot, even if they so acutely bother the person who suspects so.

I've come to establish a coined phrase in my head this year... that "Depression is simply seeing what is true". and by true I don't mean absolutely, verifiably true, just a word to mean something like any other word. Life is all about perspective it seems. That is why one man's trash is another man's treasure. It is not the thing itself, but our perception of the thing.

So...

What if I died tonight? And I don't ask this to induce emotion, but, would it matter?

What does it mean that something matters? Does it mean that another thing perceiving it is affected? The meaning of life is that universal question. I've come to, at least for now, stand on the notion that all is all. That sounds fucking stupid doesn't it?

"Goddammit guy, just get over yourself already and shut the fuck up!" right? haha.

What I mean, is that if you are a thing. and you can see other things that arises the question of separateness doesn't it? Consciousness is a real bitch because the thing is the only thing feeling what the thing feels, and yet we see other things that are simply extrapolations of the same stuff that all the other things are derived from. If you can't see the edge of the universe, how can you live your life supposing that there is an edge? And yet so many do it. And I don't find fault in that, because if we all sat around trying to find the edge there would be no time to hunt food and thus we would cease to exist. And yet we do exist and now have more time than we've ever had (if we really wanted to use it) to think about that edge that none of us have seen yet.

To break it down somewhat, I guess I am for the moment simply a thing that hasn't seen the edge, realizes it hasn't seen the edge and yet has an overpowering notion that nothing is absolutely what it is without finding that fixed point. And at the same time supposes that fixed point will never be found while he is alive and concludes that immediate context is necessary to a enacting and sustaining what would be necessary to survive.

All the while, observing thing after thing assume that context is the whole and absolute, finding little interest in conversing with what seems to be a crazy person.

And yet here I am, posting on an Internet to them... Just more of the same undefinable, yet defined jargon we ingest to keep progressing through nothingness.

All the while holding both an understanding of why I keep doing it, and not knowing why the hell I keep doing it. It all just is what it is and I haven't yet found a clearer more genuine way to feel about it.

Happy new year to all of you. I wish you as much trial as it takes to feel accomplished. I wish you as much disease as it takes to feel grateful for your health when it returns. I wish you as much confusion as it takes to give up, yet keep going. I wish you the love and physical affection as your body desires from whom you desire it from.

------------------------------------------------------
As for the new year, I think my only real goal right now is to be ready when it is time for whatever it is time for. I am a little scared, a little anxious, a little excited and a quite a bit curious as to how and what will all pan out.

-Francisco D'anconia

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Martingale Update for Tuesday




Herro Preeze,

I realized there are 31 days in this month and actually calmed down a bit because that means I don't have to bust as much ass as I thought I did to get to my delivery. So, I had some time to log in to Metatrader and manually add things to the chart to help visually show you the trades that have taken place so far.

In the last update I mentioned that following the martingale risk profile would have actually made a 6.4% profit and ended up with the account balance being $11,432.00, so we will continue adding to our hypothetical numbers :)

If you look at the chart and the account history, you will see the accurate trade entries and exits and you will see in a note the adjusted amounts based on the Martingale risk implementation.

It's pretty easy to adjust because all I have to do is take the profit or loss that the robot had and multiply it by whatever size I would have been trading correctly.
Te results produced a $112.70 profit (+.98%) which would raise the total account to $11,544.70

Although I am sure some big losses will eventually take place, this is still rather entertaining data to acquire. Every single post or video I come across swears Martingale strategies are the worst idea ever. I tend to think that relying on any one thing ever is a terrible idea. I think it is dangerous to rely on any one person to heavily, or any one idea or rule. Life is in constant flux and the ability to adapt and be robust is where lasting success seems to lie the most. If anything this data will help me decide if I want to include Martingale risk management into my trading and when. Data is so damn important and I think far too few traders even think about it, but it should be the very basis for what we do. We should research our markets and develop business strategies based on the information we find.

Let's keep on keeping on and see how this pans out.

-Francisco




Monday, December 29, 2014

Long day in the biting winter night

Been up since early morning. Was under the impression I was going to do local work for the entire day, but alas after 2pm I am told the last load I am picking up is my own... which of course leads to me driving all fucking night in -9 degree weather on icy snowing roads... fuck I am tired.

Much to my regret, I spent nearly 5 hours trying to get my remote connection configured so I could adjust the Robot while I am on the road... Port forwarding does not seem to be working as non of the ports even show up as open... Tight VNC has given me shitloads of trouble in the past and I am sick of that fucking program...

Anyways, I don't have the energy to post any pics right now, but the robot had a few losers and a couple winners. I'll be hauling ass and probably still be late to my delivery, but if I have time and energy I'll keep you posted with shit.

Sleep well whoever you are

-Francisco

Sunday, December 28, 2014

Sunday night fight

heh, I'm just trying to lure people in with a catchy post title did it work?

Anyways, I set the robot up and set the take profit for 1.5 times risk. As I mentioned before the robot doesn't have the ability to adjust risk for a martingale strategy, so I will just have to let it take the trades and figure out the results later. At least things will be more accurate this time with actual entries and exits so there will be no guessing this time.

I have no idea how this will work out, maybe it will go bust when I apply the martingale to it, maybe it will have mixed results. Either way, I am trying to gather important data and I am so happy I have this robot to do it for me. It would be practically impossible for me to manually trade this on the road. This tool really helps me out so very much!

Here is a chart of the robots setup.

















It occurred to me the other day that my upcoming post called "Making it all back, the worst idea ever" is basically contradictory to the martingale approach in the first place. It kinda makes me laugh, but contradiction and paradox is life itself. Stay tuned :)

Thursday, December 25, 2014

Promised update

During the last time I was out the robot lost 35 times in a row to bring a drawdown of  about 3.7%.

This dramatic string of losses came as a result of my choice to simply not take profits the entire time I was out. It was difficult, as there were plenty of chances to take a good amount of profits, but I stuck it out and the market ended up going down and reaching the profit ratio of 20:1 that I had entered into the robot long ago. I would leave it empty, but the parameters require a number.

Anyways, I said when I got the time I would go back and look at all the profits I could have accumulated during that week out so I took the time today. It was far too difficult for me to look at the charts and feel comfortable saying "I would have taken profit here and here and here." The truth is, that would be what we call "Hindsight Trading" and it's basically bullshit. So, what I decided to do instead is go over a scenario where I left the trading zone exactly where it actually was the whole time and simply take profits that where 1.5 times the risk.

The zone is 10 pips wide, so I would take profit at +15 pips. I also decided to see what it would look like with the martingale risk profile in place, meaning I double my position size (risk) for every loss.

Here is a chart of the all the action.






For you, it will be difficult to see all the entries and exits so you will simply have to trust my data. this chart is a 5min chart, but to get the entries I looked at a 1min chart and the actual account history. Now I did have to estimate some entries that the account simply did not have, but that is because IF the account were actually taking profit at 1.5 times risk, it would have entered a new position and therefor had a new loss in some instances. Below is chart I made with all the data on the right.






















As you can see, the drawdown is sharp, but only dipped below the starting equity 3 times. The final result was that instead of losing 3.4% I would have gained 6.7%  $11,432.00

So, with that in mind here is what I want to do to help me acquire more data: Instead of leaving the profit ratio at 20:1 I'll simply set the robot to take profit at 1.5:1 so that I can get realistic results on my entries and exits instead of having to look at charts and guess what they would be. Since the robot does not have the ability to implement the martingale risk on it's own it will stay at one size and then i will have to add that in manually during the week.

It will be difficult to watch the account balance continue to diminish because who wouldn't want to see it go up, but I'll have to accept that while this fake account will more than likely be losing money, I am gathering important data in an effort to be profitable in real life.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

I hope all of you have a wonderful holiday!

It's snowing and I am having a wonderful Christmas breakfast and going to stoke up a fire afterwards at the park :) That and watching a few Christmas movies all day.

I am proud to say that my savings goal this year of 18k has been met and surpassed! And my watch collection has been added to :) Hopefully will put this money to good use in the market next year!


Monday, December 22, 2014

Holiday vacation

Hello all!

I wanted to give a quick update.



Market is less volatile it seems so I will not be turning the robot on at least until after Christmas. I'll be home for Christmas eve, Christmas and the following 2 days at least, so IF I happen to spot opportunity then something might happen.

Also, last night I went ahead and purchased Tim Sykes' brand new dvd set "How to Make Millions". It's not even complete yet but I got it at 70% off and all preorders go to charity so that's awesome. It's supposed to contain over 22 hours of video so I figure there's got to be something in all that worth the money. I'll keep you posted!

I plan on posting updated charts on the oil and OJ trades, plus a blog about losing and revenge trading while at home.

Have a great Monday!

Friday, December 19, 2014

Weekend update

Hey just wanted to let you know I might not post this weekend, I am going to be super busy driving... well, more like super tired.

I have to get up @3am Saturday and then 12am Sunday so my sleep schedule will be way off.

The interesting news is that the robot took a profit of $200 this morning and I woke up to watch it happen within seconds of me checking in on it. The reason the profit was taken is because I set the risk to reward ratio on the robot to 20:1.

I certainly didn't assume it would hit that level but it did. I'll update this post with a chart of it tomorrow.

I'll have a few other posts about losing money coming out pretty soon. They are basically already written I just need to proof read them before they are ready.



Take care and have a wonderful weekend!

-Francisco

Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Losing to Win, or just plain losing?




There are cycles to every aspect of existence that I know of.

I started taking notice those cycles in middle and high school, but specifically my personal cycles of emotional highs and lows.

Our schools would hand out these planner books each year and I actually loved them. They were a nice size with rounded edges and that spiral plastic spline holding everything together. I would doodle in the little calendar days, but I also started making some notes about how I would feel or what I would do that day. I wanted to go back and look years down the road and recall those moments. I began to notice that if I felt great at school I would tend to feel shitty and depressed at home. Likewise if I felt depressed at school I tended to feel better at home.

It's not anything I took serious study with, but it was just enough of a pattern to become noticeable to me. I think those were the formative times of me starting to analyze myself and life in a serious way.

Well, fast forward 16 years and here I am noticing different things about myself that I have never noticed before. Much of which I won't be writing about in this post or even perhaps this blog, but what I did want to mention is that I have been in a pretty shit place for awhile now.

One thing I can say, is that being in a shit place makes it an emotional challenge to even look at the trading progress right now. Losing basically 25 times in a row is pretty stressing in a way I haven't felt since 2008-2009; the last time I was actually in the market. I was trading real money back then and like I mentioned in a previous post, my risk per trade was 10 times the percentage it has been on this blog.

Here, with a $10,000 account a $10 loss is only 1/10th of a percent. 25 losses basically puts me down 2.5% but back in the day that would have been a 25% draw down.It's bugging me and it's still only a demo!

I know I keep saying that I have to remind myself that I am letting this robot just do whatever its going to do because I am gathering data, but damn is it difficult to watch 7% gains get eaten away by a market I know I shouldn't even be trading in.

What kind of data am I gathering you ask? Sometimes I am unsure. At first is was really just to see how the robot responds to live data instead of a historical backtest. It seems to do alright honestly as long as there isn't any crazy volatility from news releases coming into the market.

I suppose part of this data, is actually about me and how I psychologically handle a string of losses. It's also a curiosity of the unknown. As simple "What if I just let the fucker go?".

For those of you who have been keeping up with my posts and paying attention, you'll recall that the market has been doing pretty much what I have estimated it would do. I am thankful for that because it means I am not totally inept at reading the market, yet my actions and losses seem to reflect otherwise haha.

I have said a few times now that I expect the market to be choppy and for me to wake up to losses. That has happened.

An issue rising up in my consciousness is a question that says "If you suspect all of that rubbish why do you even have the robot running?"

Again I think curiosity is the best answer I can thoughtfully give. I think when I set out to test this concept, I wanted to just really put it through its paces. I want to discover just how bad it can get... I guess I want to see the worst it can get now with fake money rather than real money.

So far, even in my 25 sequential losses I have had several opportunities to take profits that would have the account well above the $700 in gains that were there before it started losing so much. When I get home, I plan to take a good look at the performance and document charts showing all the obvious profit that there was to take that I simply didn't.

There is a part of me that has evolved as a trader that makes this process pretty stressing to go through. You see, when I first started out trading I thought to myself "Well, everyone seems to lose money because they can't cut losses and they can't hold winners, so I'll just learn to do both."

Well, the key to doing that successfully as I have learned and am still learning, is to do it in a balanced way. And more specifically in a way that your approach requires based on expectancy and market conditions.

Back in the day I had much less of a problem taking 10 losers in a row because in 2008 when the US markets were crashing there was enough movement in a day that my 10 losses could be made back pretty easily. In the years since, directional volatility and daily ranges have died down considerably. This recent downtrend in the Euro (strengthening of the Dollar) is bringing back some of that large daily range again, but I don't think anyone can or should expect it to last. It feels to me like it is simply a result of the market struggling over whether or not this is the bottom of that drop or not. Very wide swings show a big fight between buyers and sellers. I think once the battle is over those daily ranges will decrease substantially back down to how they were on the downtrend to begin with.

When I had learned to hold winners, my problem became that I learned to hold them so long they became losers.

(I have a whole post about "Making it all back" coming up that will make a lot of sense to you so stay tuned for it. Very relevant to this situation.)

In short though, because I was down 10 losses already for the day, when I was  finally under a winner I would want to hold onto it until it caught me up from all those losses and then some. In a market that's moving, that is possible depending on how many losses you've actually taken, but on a slow, choppy, unsure market day... The market will likely only have so much to give you and it won't be all you are asking or hoping for.

So when I say this has been hard for me to go through, it's because I feel like I am watching the same shit happen to me that happened back in the day; where I have a decent profit and I am just not taking it. But this time I actually want to take it.

I'm looking at these charts and where reversal points are likely to be and I am like "I should totally take this profit, but I'm not because of this stupid curiosity to see what the hell happens."

I'ts kinda making me feel like a fool, which is why I have to constantly remind myself that I am choosing to stay disciplined to that curiosity because it's what I set out to do.

Let me explain something though, because it's crucial to this situation: I can't physically be in front of the charts to monitor them.

I feel like if I had the control and the time to trade this robot the way I actually saw fit, I wouldn't even have it trading as much as I do. I would wait until the market where likely to be alive with movement and I would carefully choose to place the robot at key reversal areas.

If price got to that area and didn't immediately reverse I would like to be present enough to gauge whether or not it would be wise to implement my martingale risk profile into the mix. (Martingale by the way is usually a deadly stupid way to trade, but I have no data as to how it pertains to what I am currently doing with this robot.)

Not only that, I would really love to see how I can implement this robot during news trades with the martingale side of it. If price is just really directional and going to pop but I will take a few losses before it decides where to go I think that might really be useful.

But because I am driving all day and don't have the remote control I'd like to have... my only options are to watch it do whatever it's going to do, or take all the profit on any particular position, with no ability to relocate the robot yet.

The following sentence is something I think is a good question for all people to ask themselves:

If the flow of opportunity is never ending, what good does it do anyone to become obsessed with picking exact tops, exact bottoms or capturing the entire move?

I honestly think that as long as trading exists and volatility is tradeable, we should keep that question in our minds because it can help us cut losers quickly and take profits when the market makes them available.



But besides that, at the end of the day... there is still the serious risk that my broker's live execution will kill this strategy altogether and I'll need to keep looking. I have had problems with them before while trading live money and if those issues still exist, putting tens of thousands of dollars at the risk of a shady brokerage is not worth it. I'll have to be extra careful just to try and not get taken advantage of.

Thank you for taking the time to read this if you indeed did.
-Francisco

P.S. By the way, if Orange Juice hits $1.55 again I am selling. I wasn't watching and it totally hit it... I'm just calling it out now so no one can say it's hindsight trading ;P

Monday, December 15, 2014

Good morning

Hello again!

Lots of losses haha! A main reason for this is because I'm in the market when I really shouldn't be, at levels that don't make sense to do this at. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm doing this to see how bad it can get and if it's able to be recovered in the long run but I'm not able to control position sizing or the location of the zone while I'm gone.

At least not yet. I need to setup a remote connection and then I'll be able to.

Realistically what I should be doing is taking partial profits on most of these trades, but I can't do it for some reason. I'll have to try when I am home on my computer, but I know it will only let me exit a trade completely from my phone, not sell part of it... I have a sneaking suspicion it is because of the FIFO (First In First Out) rule implemented years back... really dumb. It's just the government treating adults like kids further and further.

Btw, I've gotten in contact with the programmer of the robot to see if we can get more features implemented into it. I'm still waiting on a response about that. Here are some charts.












On a side note oil is still taking and OJ has been as high as $1.55. I'll get charts up soon I've been quite busy with some things. Have a great day!
























































Still looking like a lot of room for the downside on this last chart.










On another note, I have told you I have become interested in Timothy Sykes and his stock trading style. He has a website called Profit.ly and I took a look yesterday where he said this he expected this stock HGSH to rise today and it totally did. I think I have a demo account with one of the brokers he recommends and by golly I should have taken a long position!

I am not sure if I want to spend $400 each on his courses, but he does have a "Tim Alerts" service for a little over $300 a year.

If you are interested in anything you can go to his website timothysykes.com and see his entry and exit prices on the stocks he is trading. It is a great way to get an idea of his trading approach. The real bread and butter though, is how he figures out which stocks are likely to move... Put all that together and you got something pretty powerful. I find it quite amazing how little of the moves he is actually taking part in.

Until next time! 

Friday, December 12, 2014

Friday afternoon chop

Established a zone that I intend to hold a good portion of next week.

Sideways chop gave me like 12 losers so that's a bummer. It's crazy to think that puts me down only 1.1% from equity highs of this morning... it feels like a lot of money but I guess it's not. That must mean my risk aversion and desire not to lose a lot of money is pretty large.







Back in the day I was trading with 10 times the risk I am now. Crazy. Have a great weekend!

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Well fuck

Well, it's time for bed. I placed a new trade zone at the start of the new daily bar and then realized I am still trading at a 40k position size, which is 4 times larger than my usual size hehe, sooooo..... I guess I am just going to see where things are at when I wake up. This could get messy.

In real life, the best thing for me to do with a mistake like this is to exit the trade and start again with the intended position size. But, this is all an experiment until I am off the road. Here is the chart!












Well, just woke up. Here in one image you can see where the old zone was, where the new zone is and the Transaction history. At the time of this chart equity was back up to $10,707.16.

This new zone might stay where it is for awhile. We'll see!

Thursday Morning Trading update

Trading zone was reset last night. I expected to wake up to several losses for some reason and I sure did. Before bed, I turned the trade size from 10k (the usual starting point) up to 20k. As I woke up to the last position I turned the trade size up to 40k, but my short position (A sell) kept going down and I took profit at an obvious point of support.

A trade fired off before the start of the new trading day. it went into the money pretty well, but I did not take the profit.
 The whipsaw action while sleeping and the last move that I took profit on.
Here is the transaction history for this chart since the new day.









In this chart I have highlighted an area of chop that gives you a visual to understand why I am not really interested in establishing a new trading zone at this level.

All that previous chop hasn't given the market a finely defined area of support, but a rang of potential support instead. As you can see on the very last red candle down, that it did not respect the support very well and went into the trading range area that I've highlighted. If I established my robots trading zone here a lot of losses wouldn't surprise me. So, with that said, I have to realize that the point of all this experimentation before I get off the road, is to test this robot under all circumstances I can. I am going to place the zone anyway so I can build data. There still seems to be a lot of downside potential as well as upside potential if the market decides to break that trendline and head up. Lets see what happens.

Here is the new zone, already in a short position.
















**UPDATE**

 Placed a temporary trade zone later in the morning.

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Technical reasons for my decisions

Woke up to new equity highs this morning and was like "I should definitely take this profit." It was another example of a one trade night. Here are some charts for ya.

 Here is last nights zone. I placed this at support because I felt it likely that price would be more likely to reverse. I made 58 pips
 Here is a look at the 4hr chart. taking profit in the short term makes sense because of the resistance of the trend line.
I replaced the zone at a higher resistance level, hoping once again that if price enters the zone it will rebound quickly without a lot of choppy action that would normally result in a string of losses.



COMMODITY TRADING UPDATE

OJ closed yesterday @149.65 for a profit so far of $1,050.00
Crude oil is currently trading @ 60.65 for a loss so far of $6,160.00

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Tuesday profits

The market has been trading perfectly today. Wonderful structure.










I feel like this might be too good to be true..

You know, shit just feels too good to be true. New Account highs from last nights resetting the box. Look at this beautiful shit.

The first two arrows are from the previous day when I tried setting up the robot. For some reason the first trade opened up in the middle of the box instead of the outside and took a 15 pip loss, while the second trade opened up and made 20 pips profit. At that point I moved the trading zone for the new trading day. If you look at the daily chart you can see that resistance was hit and price is likely to return downward now for awhile, so I just now reset the trading zone, so we'll see what happens.













Some of the thoughts that have been entering my mind are that although I love trading Forex and am in love with the idea of trading Futures, I have recently been reintroduced to a guy named Timothy Sykes. The first video of his I came across lately was this one:


I first saw Tim way back in the day on an internet show called WallStrip and then on a documentary called Wall Street Warriors where he was running a hedge fund. The Documentary followed him during a kinda shitty portion of his performance and made him look kinda dumb or immature, but I really liked him anyway. Tim Sykes is famous for turning around $12,000 into over a million dollars in 2 years, but he has now gained over 4 million dollars in profit and it is all verifiable. He has every trade documented supposedly on the internet, which is pretty cool. The problem is, I have always really dislikes Stocks for some reason so I've never really paid attention to what he does as a result of that.

The point is, I feel like this guy is totally legit and I have really been watching his videos on YouTube such as this


This shit is highly motivating and it is causing me to ask myself "Do you hate the idea of trading stocks more than you would love making a shitload of money by trading them? Are you willing to do the work and reap the rewards?" Well... I am considering it quite a bit as I am watching his videos.

I know the title of this post is "I feel like this might be too good to be true", but I am only talking about my trading results so far with my robot. I truly feel like Tim is a great guy and that he has a winning strategy. I don't feel like he is full of shit like pretty much every one else out there selling the dream. Listen to him. Listen to the tone of his voice and every word he says... He is on my side and your side.

The way I figure is, I should at least try this. One of his students as the video above mentions, has turned $1,500 into over a million dollars in 3 years. He has 4 millionaire students as of now and several of his students are making 5 and 6 figures per year. I am not new to trading and I have always felt comfortable trading the kind of price action that he trades so I think I could do well. Perhaps far better than I would do trading Forex with my robot or commodities. So... those are some of the thoughts I am mulling over.

Monday, December 8, 2014

MEHday

Boring Monday. Robot is running again, I've been thinking about lots of things lately, a few of which I'll post about soon.

I'm starving so I'm off to eat something. Hope you are well, and no I haven't really been eating cheese.

Friday, December 5, 2014

Done trading for a bit

I took a few losses last night and then had a good winner today. The market is creeping right now and I don't have the ability to reset the robot if time runs out again so I decided to just take the profit.




I'll update at the end of the trading day where the commodity trades are at as well so stay tuned. Booyakasha!

**UPODATO**

It's late, I have a fucking headache from hours ago still, and I am constipated.. OJ is @ 146.00 and Crude Oil is @ 65.84. I have a lot of work to do the next few days and the markets are closed tomorrow so I don't know if I will have anything to say. Goodnight!

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Trading Commodities

In the meantime, since the Ninja Trader program I downloaded shows Commodity prices I decided to put two simulated trades on.

The first trade is in Crude oil, which is seeing nice lows. Contracts of crude oil trade in 1,000 barrels each and the minimum increment of movement is one cent. That means that each cent crude raises or lowers in price equals a $10.00 gain or loss per contract traded. Now, I don't have the capital to trade even one futures contract, but I love the idea of trading futures because they are real goods and will never go to zero. They will always have real lasting value.

 Here are some charts of Crude oil. I decided to buy a contract at $66.81 simply because prices have not been this low since about January of 2009. The value of just one contract at this price is a staggering $66,810 dollars, but even if prices go back to $80 a barrel that would be a profit of $13,190. As you can see be the monthly chart, it would not have to go very far to reach that price point and I am fully confident that it will...













The other trade that I can't resist is Orange juice.

 OJ has a minimum movement of 5/100 of a cent and a contract size of 15,000 lbs of "orange juice solids". So for every tick up or down, the position will gain or lose $7.50 per contract traded. Every one cent movement in the price of Orange Juice equals $150.  So at the time of this post, with OJ at a cost of $1.46/lb the value of an entire contract would be $21,900. Far cheaper than the Crude oil.

Now if you look at this monthly chart OJ is basically in the middle of the highs and lows. As a trader of anything else I would not want to buy at these levels, but since I am trading something that will always be worth something, I am far less afraid of price drops. You see, in the stock market when the price of a stock falls some people look to add to their losing position and "Average in". But that stock can always go to zero. In commodities, the lower the price goes, the less likely it is to continue going down because it is a real physical and valuable asset.

Back in May 25th of 2012, I took a simulated trade of one contract @ 109.25. I took that trade because I knew that was relatively cheap and even if it moved against me it would only present better buying opportunities. I literally waited until he price hit 158.00 to get out. I felt it was high enough and I had waited long enough. It was about two years to make $7,312.50. That was a 44.6% return on the initial value of the position. THAT, was an investment. If that is not something that makes you start wondering about doing this, your head is not on straight. I have wanted to do that for a long time now, but I do not have the capital.

Here is one point to think about though. Even if the value of one contract right now is worth $21,900 Orange Juice is not going to go to zero. The lowest its been in almost 10 years is just above 60 cents. If OJ went to .60 from todays price, that would be a drawdown of only $12,900. You could open an account with $15k and still be alright. Not only that, but by the time OJ actually reached that price odds are you would have had plenty of time to add more capital to your account. I just love that we have the opportunity to grow wealth from a real asset.



WTF

for some reason the robot is not trading again...




Turns out the box is just that short, so price went outside the tradeable range again... Oh well... We are back trading again, down about $100 today total. Nothing much to report. I have been sitting all day basically sleeping and fucking around. 

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Tuesday luck

Damn I keep getting really lucky it seems on the entry. First position still open last night and we are making new lows in the daily, so any smart trends follower is going to stay short. If this is going to go on to continue trend the only way to catch out is to be in it.












This could go a good long way still...






Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Solved

Turns out the robot stopped placing trades because the length of the actual box was to short. Time ran out! It is reactivated now in a new trading zone.


Problems

For some reason my robot is not in a trade right now and it totally should be... I might just have to wait till I get home to figure out what's going on. the orange lines on this chart represent the buy and sell zones and as you can see the trade should clearly be a short right now





Took a small manual trade fire some profit.








Monday, December 1, 2014

Mundane

Not a lot to report today. I'm feeling pretty bored. 5 losses so far since the new zone was setup. See how it is tomorrow.

Hope all are well. Suck my dick I'm a shark!










I did find and interesting trading doc from way back, but I can only find 2 of the 3 parts. If you're interested it's called "bull and bear" . If you want something complete, here's a more recent one called "Floored"



 Every little documentary and movie I've seen so far has at least one interesting worthwhile difference to it. Have a great night.

-Francisco