Made it back yesterday afternoon. I didn't take my good camera on this trip because I didn't want to deal with carrying it around everywhere, but I wish I had taken it. Chicago was pretty awesome. Frankenmuth (Michigan) was pretty nice as well, and I just would have taken some grand pictures as usual.
Remember how I said the number 7 seems to like me? Well, I was in row 7 again on the flight home, and during a White Elephant ornament exchange my number was 7 as well. I laughed pretty hard when I unraveled the folded up scrap to see that number! By the way I got a purple stiletto ornament, which is fine by me!
On the flight home I watched a documentary called Billions In Change. I had downloaded it from YouTube months ago and was glad to finally watch it! Another great one, no depressing stuff at all so I highly recommend it!
Anyways, I have some news to announce. After months of effort and researching and emailing, I finally got a portfolio of robots. I have a funded TradeStation account to run them on as well. The offer being made is 5-9 robots for $3,000... So when I was emailed one file of code which had only one file to attach to a chart, I was a bit confused and feeling a little aggravated. Turns out the code is actually just one robot that has tweakable variables. You attach that same robot to every chart and tweak it into profitability. What you are really paying for is one robot and the hundreds (Reportedly) of hours Scott has spent tweaking these setting per each individual currency pair so you don't have to do it yourself. The good news out of all of this is, is that if you have the one File (Robot) you can attach it to any chart you want and tweak away until you discover a way to make it profitable at no further cost! That is something I may do in the future, but for now I have other problems.
So, let me explain TradeStation to you a bit. It's a relatively sophisticated trading platform designed to robotic trading, but also has in depth features outside of that as well. It is very complex and I think I will be trying to get used to it for awhile. The good news so far, is that my dedicated computer that is already running 3 instances of MetaTrader 4 can also run TradeStation with the 10 robots as well. It has no problem so far. My main issue is that with all the the charts set up and trading, there seems to be a problem I can't figure out yet. The Strategy is taking analyzing the markets and all that correctly, but it's not actually executing trades in the simulated account for some reason. I'll need to fix that for sure.
One other problem, or issue I'll need to address, is that my backtesting results aren't lining up with the results I was given. Naturally the thought arises that I got scammed somehow, but I haven't been convinced of that just yet. I think there may be some setting that got lost along the way...
Either way, to keep this short I'll say this: My goal is to get everything running smoothly and lining up with the info I was given, and then run the portfolio on the simulated account for at least a month or more, and see profitability. Then, I will go live with small position sizes to see if live trades execute in a manner that lines up with the simulated account. I will keep you posted on all of that as it happens, but I plan to be pretty busy with it and may not be posting about anything else for awhile. We'll see.
Made it back home yesterday from a 872 mile door to door drive. Besides getting up at 4 a.m. it really wasn't all that bad, and what was really great was to come home to a totally clean and organized home. I loved it.
Had some drama with people, which I spoke up about and ended up being kinda the hero. Annoying and unwanted person decided to go back home, simultaneously showing that their own comfort was more important than being there for their son and grand daughter to be.
Basically, my brother-in-law's dad came up to Washington to be there for the new baby that was due December 1st. (She didn't come until the 9th though, just after I left) Well, I was there mainly to be the buffer between the in laws and my Sister in Law, as she isn't comfortable with her husbands dad. He is after all, a self proclaimed "Dick". The second day of their visit I was awoken and told I needed to diffuse a situation, as the Dad had pulled her and her husband outside alone, and proceeded to scream at them about their finances. By the time I made it to the living room my sister-in-law had thrown up and peed on herself due to the stress of it all. I spent 20 mins doing dished deciding what the hell to say. In the end, I told him that whatever the conversation was about was none of my business, but the results of that conversation where, meaning: Don't give my sister-in-law that kind of stress while you're here.
I was extremely surprised that this abrasive redneck asshole didn't get all riled up and get in my face. On the contrary, he barely made eye contact with me. Long story short, a few hours later he was walking his bags out to the truck to leave for home. A 2,500 mile drive back to Kentucky, because he "Wasn't going to stay somewhere he felt he wasn't wanted". Of course, he couldn't say that to me, I had to hear it from his son, who was super pissed at me because his parents where now leaving because of me. I did what was in my heart and I stood up for someone who needed it. She was very relieved to see them go.
Had some drama with the car, which scared the crap out of me because I was seriously sure it was not going to make it back home. Thank God it turned out to simply be a seriously clogged EGR valve and I had brought all my tools and took care of it! I also took a look at the spark plugs and they were disgusting so I bought new ones and replaced them.
Had some drama trying to help a close friend of the family change the breaks and rear rotors of his Cadillac. He was supposed to meet me at the on base auto shop at 8 a.m. because that is when they open, and they fill up fast. He had been up working till 1 a.m. that morning and had a girl over as well, so I was pretty sure he wouldn't be awake. Problem is, I missed my 7:10 a.m. alarm somehow.... I woke up with enough time to get to the shop @ 7:51. When he finally answered my 10th call, he said he wanted his friend to come a long so he would meet me back at the house. By the time we made it back to the shop, all the lift bays were taken and I had been telling him since the day before "We don't need a lift bay to change brakes and rotors", but he responded saying "My dad broke the frame of his Cadillac lifting it up on a jack". Yeah... because cars aren't made to handle their own weight...
Anyways, because he was determined to use a lift bay, we drove to another shop about 15 mins away. I called on the way and out of the 10 bays they had, 8 were already gone, and when we arrived all of them were taken. We had to drive back to the original place and start the job 2 hours late. It was kinda frustrating, but getting the job done (With only a jack and stands btw) was satisfying. He had also purchased new calipers because some tire shop told him that his were ceased when they inspected them. Turns out they were perfectly fine. When shops suspect that you know nothing about cars they will try their best to take advantage of that! Luckily, he returned the calipers (Which were the wrong ones anyhow) and by a stroke of luck he had bought them on sale and the store made a mistake and gave him back twice what he had paid for them... Pretty funny.
Had some drama with my trading, due mainly to trying to trade on my laptop, and lost about 4%. What's worse, is that I entered a trade that would have made all my losses up plus a profit. It was the last trade I took and it went nearly to the profit target I had set, and came all the way back down to break even. Had I just held my stoploss and accepted the risk, I would have made a profit that day (EUR Rate decision). BUT, and I call attention to this for all of you traders reading, I do not regret moving my stop to break even. It was my decision and my plan and I followed it, which is what matters.
You can see by the chart below that the move was huge and took place over a few hours instead of mere minutes like usual. Part of the reason I lost so much money was because the buy and sell order windows kept disappearing on me, so I had to go down to the task bar and find them again. It really screwed up my timing.
Nothing else to report at the moment.
Made it to Tacoma on the 29th. The car was working wonderfully the entire trip, except for the fact that it was burning about a 1/2 quart of oil every 200 miles. Every time I pulled over I would check it and add. On the last leg of the trip, in literally the last 3 miles, the car started acting weird with very struggled idling and clunking noises...
This sucks. So, I have to try and figure out what is wrong. My biggest fear is that the oil got so low that some sever engine damage has occurred... I've got the oil level taken care of, but it's still acting very poorly. I'm about to go and try to clean the throttle body out again to see if that solves the problem. If not I may not be able to get home...
That would suck horribly. Anyways, here are some pics I took.
