Backtesting engines and some initial results

The end of year arrived with a idea flourishing in my head. That to put some of the market insights provided by my algorithms in to a automated trading strategy, as I wrote in one of my previous posts (a serious post, most are not, nevertheless I don`t suppose you mind and if you do its not really my business, I do one thing very well -money- so either you like it or not that's the situation - I`m not sure why I`ve just remembered I need something from Ebay...) For that idea to become reality I needed to be able to build a testing engine from the scratch so, given the fact that this period of the year is not very active most people are thinking at other things than trading, I had the time to put together and figure it out how the testing engine must be done in order to allow me to accomplish most of the tasks I use in my discretionary trading. While I was doing that I`ve stumbled upon some unexpected results shortly after I begun. I`ve started building the testing engine around the most simple buy/sell "rule" or indicator or market insight, call it whatever you want, provided by my algorithms and obviously after I was done and satisfied by my most basic creation I hit the "Backtest" button and find out the engine is working and now I can add some complexity to it. As a parenthesis here, I do not have enough historical data to be able to say that any back test I do now its relevant, I`m only testing on last 4 months of data on Crude Oil but the point is to have the back testing engine and the strategies to be back tested in place. The results of my most basic strategy were not very good, as expected, but since that was not what I was after in this phase I`ve continued to the phase 2, that of adding some more complexity to it. Still basic stuff and without using other complex trading rules I`ve unexpectedly stumbled upon a reasonable good strategy that could have been applied in the last 4 months and produced a good return even for my discretionary trading. I have to remind here that 4 months is irrelevant however since the result is quite good and I have not optimized anything I will leave this system as it is curious about how will it do in the future. Here are the results:

    First and foremost the backtest is not relevant with 4 months of data I have to repeat this over and over again and after that the results, while certainly not extraordinary, show a trend following strategy that (assuming the same results would be given after real robustness tests would be performed on a few years of data) most people would be quite happy to have I believe especially since no optimization or curve fitting was used, nothing at all, there is not a single parameter in this backtest that was optimized in any way.

 

Now, lets move on. After the above strategy (I`m already calling it strategy even if its just the basic testing engine), gave me these results I left it as is and went to the next phase of building the engine. Phase 3, where I copied the above engine and added some more complexity, the point being all this time not to create a trading strategy but to create the testing engine that I`ll be quickly adapting to whatever idea comes in to my mind. The results of phase 3 of the back test engine building can be seen bellow:

One commentary on the result, it shows a improvement of the previous results but the improvement comes from a few trades that achieved a large gain however you know or you should know that many successful trading strategies results are given by very few trades that hit the jackpot as is the case of the well known trend following strategy the Turtles used back in the `80s. Anyway, I`m done with the phase of actually trying to develop the back testing engine as I have everything required (at least for what comes in to my mind now)  at this point and now I should start to feed this back test engine with some of the data I use in my discretionary trading. I will do so and feed it with data crunched and combined in many different ways in time but for the moment I`m done with back testing this year. What I`m actually puzzled now is how would these two strategies perform if back tested on 10 years of data. I know how I build them and what they have under the hood and I would not be surprised if they would actually prove to be reasonably good even if for me are much to simple to think seriously about creating the robot that would place trades automatically based on them. And now that I`ve remembered that's another headache, a robot that would place trades automatically requires more coding and, as I said since I know I won`t actually use it my mood of doing it is at very low levels right now. But maybe in time, when the level of my greed of making money from the markets simply because I can will be reduced and I have already got enough I will leave a robot to do the job for me, until then I`ll continue to trade myself and show you results you did not believe are possible. The advice that I have is ride with me or stay out of my way :) 

 

Happy New Year!    

Correct me if I`m wrong

After winning the game of trading on the futures market (quite fast I would say, I`m new here), as I did on FX, all that is left to do is to think about the real scenario where real cash are involved. In which case one can not help thinking at the (very unfortunate I would say) other side that takes your trades hoping they will win and you will lose. Since I do not know what`s behind the scenes, nor do I care for that matter, I`m able to win a game that is supposed to be fair or at least on the surface pretend for world eyes to be fair, I have to assume that arithmetic's are real and the market really involves cash to move, cash that can be used to buy a house for example  (well, thousands of them but that is not the point here). So, in this case, how much cash is required to move the market? On a short term, not that much, and the market can be easily manipulated with a few millions however unless those millions are smarter than you those millions are lost. Why? Well, with Crude Oil for example the depth of market shows on average lets say 50 contracts/tick. That would be 5000 contracts for 100 ticks and 5000K to drive the market lets say one day (assuming nobody else is playing to provide more liquidity to rise your cost), not that much you would think. Trouble with driving the market is that unless you drive it in the right direction those 5 millions are lost because on a longer term the market will do what is supposed to do irrespective of the will of one or other particular group with enough cash to be able to drive and manipulate the short term price. So I would say that as a trader, you can be quite safe as long as you trade well no matter how small you are. Are 25K enough to play if the market can be manipulated against you? Absolutely, just be better than them for enough time and their cash are history and possible in your and other small trader`s pocket. That is why this game is beautiful....I`m not sure how things are with FX because in there I`m not even sure there are real money involved in moving the price so the theory might not apply there which kind of explains some things but then again I`m just someone who does not have a clue on how things work behind the scenes and as I said not care very much either. Anyway, I have an invitation open, if you got 250 mil and think ur wiser I invite you to trade against my demo meaning that when I`m selling, for example, you should use your cash to buy and drive the market up and of course keep it there whatever it takes otherwise I win (again and again) :))))), do it for enough time and I can quite assure you that soon you will find out how I feel trading on demo without cash. Of course the purpose of an exchange is to provide anonymity for all players and the above text is part of the fun after the trading day but nevertheless it is true. True in general I mean for any trader that is good enough.       

Last trading day of the year

Today was the last day of this year when one could actually enjoy making some money in the markets and normally what follows is 2 weeks of spending a part of the amount traders made in this year. If you ask me, these two weeks I would be able to spend everything I make in a year and not give a shit about it knowing that next year I would make it back. However since not a single one of you wise people seem officially interested in trading strategies I would have to do something else than spending during these two weeks when the markets are closed. The first thing that comes in to my head is to finish the mechanical strategy that I`ve started to create. I`m far from the finish and as I said its not something very appealing to me since I know I would not use it but it would be fun to see it in action. I`m currently in the phase of back testing and this phase is far from being done, actually I did not even start the real back test rather I`ve put some of the parts of my future back testing engine together. Working slowly , the software that I use (Amibroker) is capable of doing anything at the "cost" of not having something straightforward to follow -actually there is but its not useful for me. Which is a good thing, a straight forward path does not work in this business, you got to be creative and that takes time, time to think about ideas, time to think about coding the ideas and time to write the code and it all results in more work in verifying if the code is doing what you intended and so on so forth. For a good trading strategy to be developed, it would probably take months of testing, adjusting and double checking everything before real money could be put in to it and that only after you have algorithms that provide good market insights, which is also the explanation why an automated system that actually works is so hard to develop and so rare and I`m after the real thing just as in my discretionary trading so things are complicated enough. What I`m currently anxious to finish is the testing engine. The engine that can be quickly mold on any trading idea based on my trading algorithms and that is not so simple since the information provided by my trading algorithms and successfully interpreted in my discretionary trading is quite diverse and a lot and the machine needs more lines of code than I`m currently in the mood to write to properly interpret at least a part of it. After and if I manage to finish a testing engine that would at least partially satisfy me with its abilities I would have to feed it with information and do the actual back tests. The ideas of crunching the information`s are many and I do not expect to have the patience of testing and crunching more than a few of them before having a good automated strategy in place, as a matter a fact I was playing and testing some of the information in its most rudimentary form of trading and the results were quite good which makes me think that if I really put some work in to it the result would probably be an amazing automated trading system which I would not use. But having it does not hurt so the plan for this period of time its to do just that. In to what extent I would be able to finish it and what level of complexity it would have it remains to be seen. Other than that for now I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.       

And here we go again

The title of this post refers simply to my lack of motivation in trading demo accounts which in the end it always ends with a drawdown as is the case of this week when after first three days of the week being winners Thursday in the afternoon I started to play with fire because I was like up 50% anyway so, figure that, I could afford it. As a matter a fact, Thursday, the end of day was written somewhere at -10%, I was slightly profitable up until I thought its a good idea to just trade no matter what. I don`t know about you but for me 36.18% gain in 41 days of trading (this is where my performance including commissions is actually counted) isn`t exactly something to be proud of. However, given the fact that I`m new to futures trading and not only that but I`m also new to Crude Oil because I never traded the CFD on Oil available with some of my FX brokers, I have to say that I`m partially satisfied with the result. And yes, that drawdown is simply annoying and it should not be there but its the result of discretionary trading. As I was saying in one of my previous posts,  a discretionary trader can do much more than a mechanical system but it does come with a price, and that is that sometimes you can lose focus and forget what you're playing with. And contrary to popular opinion, its not the losing that its doing the damage its the winning. When you win and keep on winning its the time when you should take a break before you start feeling like asking "Jesse who?", btw the only book that I found useful about trading was "Reminiscences of a stock operator" and the only trader that I`ve ever heard of and admire is Jesse Livermore.
  Which lead me to this weekend work of having some fun in the attempt to put in place a completely mechanical strategy for the days when I`m not in the mood. Of course things aren`t that simple as to write a mechanical system that is able to get anywhere close to my discretionary trading  requires many work hours, more than I`m willing to dedicate, and given the fact that I know I will not use it anyway because I like to trade myself I do not consider it a task to be done but more close to lets see what do I get if I get some crunched numbers from my algos and put them in a mechanical system. Unfortunately for me I do not have enough futures historical data  and right now the test is made on 4 months of data which I use for my algos in my  Crude Oil charts. The coding is in progress and slowly advances as I am in the mood to write it, in truth being told I find myself enjoying more the part when I figure it out how to do it than actually writing the code for the whole thing, I seem to lack the motivation of doing so.

The warnings of professional players

As an investor if you are interested in the financial markets, lately, as I`m sure, you keep on hearing about bubbles, and overvalued markets either from people who`s professions directly involves financial markets and hence they must be always fully aware of what's happening in the industry either from professional market players who`s jobs are also to make a living from the markets hence they too are, and must be, fully aware of what`s happening with the financial markets they follow. The reason why these guys started to send warnings, either from a technical point of view either from a fundamental point of view when analyzing the financial markets, and from what it seems to me at the current levels the warnings come from both point of views which makes them so much more worth of being taken in to consideration, is because of the abnormalities they observe in the recent (or maybe not so recent) behaviour of the markets. Every each one of these guys have their own tools that they use to asses the condition of the markets and lately probably many of these "tools" they use warns them about the fact that certain outliers are in play and that the current market conditions are under no circumstance normal. From my point of view an investor should take in to the consideration these warnings very seriously as while the markets usually do not react immediately and actually nobody can anticipate or predict what the markets will do, the professionals of this industry are already in full alert mode and their "game" is currently to ensure that whatever happens their capital will not suffer to much damage even if the markets continue to go up or the crash takes place the very next moment. They have already hedged their positions, reassessed the risks, and adjusted their exposure, a thing that actually might be responsible for the snow ball that is the current growth, and the snowball is still growing. Nevertheless the warnings are valid, the markets will do what they always do, sooner or later the bubble will break and the bigger the bubble the bigger the explosion. Most likely the question for an investor is what to do? Getting out might seems a bad idea when the market is growing like it never grow before - at least on certain instruments, take for example bitcoin. The safest answer to that is probably to take your profits and run until you run out of luck. Many have already done that, perhaps in doing so they are currently regretting however it is certain that they can be sure of the fact that the regret of missing bigger profits is fall smaller when compared to the regret of losing all the profits or for that matter losing more than profits. As I was saying, professionals have no risk, they are...hmmm listening Verdi - March Triumphal if I may say that :)).           

Trading - a complicated and complex process

Every time when a buy or sell decision is made that decision might be wrong and right in the same time. You could be right on short term and wrong on long term or vice versa. Or you could be right on very short term and wrong on short term while being right on slightly longer term but not on long term and so on so forth, hopefully you get the point. That is why trading strategies - profitable trading strategies -  have little or nothing to do with opinions about where the market is heading next and/or market biases, profitable trading strategies are just that, buy or sell at a certain moment to make a profit irrespective of what the market is doing. Clearly defining your strategy edge is the most important thing in trading, nobody knows where the market is going in truth being told - nobody but those who have the tools to drive and direction it but that's insider trading and officially its a crime and its illegal - and such the first thing you need to do when trying to be profitable is to give up all your opinions and biases. While you could have them you should not base your trading on those. The trading decisions you make should have the trading edge behind them, that is the way, the only way to win this game on the long run. Professional traders are hardly millionaires overnight like for example the lucky bitcoin buyers as of now, what professional traders are able to do has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with trading models and statistical advantages which in the long run will be providing and advantage or edge. Of course having a trading edge or advantage is not a guarantee of winning the game unless the process is completely automatic because on the short term a trader might get emotional involved in the process of trading and such overcoming the edge.  As a discretionary trader you can win much more than a programmed robot is able to if based on the same edge. The edge executed mechanically will be far less profitable than the same edge executed by the trader but remember, discretionary trading is based on algorithms, statistics and the edge provided by those and not based on market opinions or hunches about where the market is going, which reminds me of my twitter posts -  they are only hunches and opinions of support and resistance levels and have almost nothing to do with the trading strategy I`m applying on the demo accounts you see in this blog.      

CL Morning Levels of S/R

Expectations on short term from now are that it should go to 57.69-57.79 area first

 

 

Monday

With no bulls appearing Friday after the jump up, Oil was supposed to find some bulls up until now today. The market went down, from this trader point of view is still prone for a jump up sooner rather than later. The pretty picture is bellow, it has broken a support/resistance area however its still in cards for a buy wit the next support at that nice dotted line you see on the chart.

How is it going?

Its going up and its going fast. While on a daily basis lately I`m not trying to shock anymore on a longer term the results add up fast due to the miracle of compound interest. See performance page.
      Trading might not seem a real business and that's because its very different from the usual stuff people do however precisely because of that reason it can be very rewarding. Its a zero sum game, a zero sum game with a lot of players and probably 90% of all players cash go to the 10% players that win. To be in that 10% of people on the long term its almost like having international monopole on a regular business - markets are international, most futures contracts are available on Globex which is available 24 hours a day around the globe. The best part of everything is that while very complicated to win, once you do, you pretty much don`t need anything else and the business its quite simple, of course with the mention that you need to trade in an real environment on an exchange that provides equal chances to all participants by providing order anonymity in an honest environment. Without employees, without a lot of paper stuff, approvals or other impediments that business owners face on a daily basis preventing them to focus on the actual business development, trading requires only one thing: to win. The actual business size (trading business) can be as large as the market is or as large as the winner trading strategy edge is not eaten up by lack of liquidity and with day trading you can only have a business with probably maximum 6 zeroes. However, if any of you reading this thinks he`s in that 10% do not despair, you can grow your trading business to a number with seven zeroes by switching from day trading to lets say month trading. Of course you will probably have a smaller growth percentage at that point but that`s life you will have to learn to live with it and perhaps the only way to expand your business at that point is by making your small one man trading company become a regular company with employers and stuff and investments outside of the trading world -you can spend a lot of money on useless stuff like buying a new car every week but it will become boring I guess and a trader will want more. Which makes me think that in the end money matters only up to a certain point and from there the trader will search for other motivations to advance. Where to advance, nobody knows but that is the force that pushed the trader to be a trader and to win the game and such he/she would search for another game to win.
     The performance of this trader is only 6 weeks old which is far from meaning anything however since things are going far better than you could expect should you be interested in investing in this trader trading business do not hesitate to drop me a mail as the only thing that is still missing from going from blogging about trading (which is under no circumstance a recommendation or invitation to trade, read the disclaimer and think of 10-90 numbers) to actually "business it".          

Traders be warned

After "fooling around" enough to question the continuation of the down move we had this week Oil decided to break the levels of support/resistance that have been formed this week and jumped back up almost to previous week high probably on some news of which I am currently not aware right now and quite frankly it does not matter either. What matters is if it will continue up or no. The answer to that question depends on the next move because as of this moment it is obvious that we will have some resistance at the current levels and maybe a little higher. That resistance, strong or weak as it is will most likely make some of the lucky bulls (yes insiders too - these one know what happens before everyone else and they are like flies)  that got early in to this up move to mark their profits just enough for the always late bulls to get on board. The sustained move after the range is on the upside and is this one even though its not made on lower volatility but in what seems to be specific for Oil - volatility breaks which leads to the title of this post - traders be aware, while you can "wake up" with a large gain out of nowhere if you do not really know what you are doing you can also have your cash depleted as soon as you can say "Oil" - so to speak. That being said the expectations are for a retracement followed by some late bulls and from there it remains to be seen. Support is between 57.75-57.90 and the late bulls will get on board only above that - be my guest if you like but read the disclaimer first. And, almost forgot currently a weaker resistance is formed at 57.65-57.68 probably subject of change soon as the price is being decided. Pretty image bellow

Risk On day

With Oil whipsawing all day today there have been very few trading opportunities without a lot of risk behind them (not for small accounts anyway) and such the day even though with a lot of movement could only have been a good day for traders that involve luck in their trading strategy. The day was dominated by OPEC possible news announcements uncertainty and on the immediate term any trend or direction could have been (and has been for that matter) annulated by an opposite action which lead to the many whipsaws we have seen. While yesterday it seemed that the direction is down and we will have a sustained move today Oil continued to fool around up and down at approximately the same levels as yesterday however that only adds more weight to the opinion according which we should and we will have a move that will be sustained and last longer. The expectations from this trader point of view is that the move will be on much lower volatility and the direction, for the moment, remains down (see the hourly chart bellow) as Oil is currently trading bellow the support resistance trading area of this week. All expectations, of course, are subject to change.
      

Extremes

Every now then then there is a day like today in the markets. A day that is out of the 2 standard deviations boundary, a day when charts are going off the grid or do some other strange things that are either supposed to not happen either have very small chances to happen. Oil acted strange from the first hours of the day from certain points of view, even when not moving at all as it was around 6AM this morning it was behaving odd according to some of my charts. The odd behaviour is not always a bad thing but it is certainly a dangerous thing, dangerous because of the unexpected ahead and almost all the moves Oil made today were in the unexpected area. After falling more than it was supposed to fall (the green arrow on the chart) it raised more than it has supposed to raise (the red arrow)  and those two moves were followed by a period of normality (the yellow rectangle) but that did not last long because as you can see after some news hit the wires it went off the grid. As I was saying the up trend is broken and Oil fooled around this week quite enough, meaning that a longer sustained move its expected. By the way it looks now that move is down and I would be surprised if it will not continue. The continuation could be less prominent in terms of points but it should last longer, however we can always expect the unexpected.         

All over the place

CL can be quite messy as you can see on the chart, today there were very few real trading opportunities most of the time chances were equal for both longs and shorts. Of course at the start of the day shorts were more appropriate and it went down, down to previous day low where it found support and started to trade messy around that level for a while, actually for a few hours. It did some stop hunting killing some longs that entered at the support just to get back slightly higher before the US session and then to continue higher in a messy short term uptrend. Given the current conditions both long trades and short trades can be winners as long as they are properly executed.
On a slightly longer view,  on the hourly chart, it could continue to go higher for a while however up until 58.80 it remains a shorts opportunity market.
     

CL today

Finishing Friday on the highs was not what I was expected from CL and, as I was thinking it would do Friday, it did today. CL started Monday session slightly bellow the high of Friday and continued down trough out the day but it was only after 1430 (GMT+2) when it was actually giving a hint of what followed. Up until then the session could have been considered a range. Volatility was normal most of the day with a surge at the start of US session.
We had a down start of this week with CL breaking the up trend of previous week - on a longer term the up trend is intact. I suppose we will not see a move above Friday highs tomorrow or if any, I bet on the fact that it will not be as sharp as today and not all at once which will mostly make speculators to favour short trades for a while today until the end of session and tomorrow morning. Looking at the hourly chart, the move down was big enough and most likely we should expect it to pause for a while given the fact that it has some support here formed in the previous 2 weeks. 

You really need to know what you`re doin`

CL can be the nightmare of day trading if you do not know what you are doing. It trades allover the place and it moves. Moving is good, you can not make money in any market if the market does not moves, but it certainly is not for beginners.
Today CL was in an up trend as it can be seen in the image from the left, the trend of today was a continuation from yesterday and at this point it suffers a breakdown which is a first sign of weakness on short term. Volatility was thin in the morning at the start of the session, at some point very thin just to gradually get closer to the average and a little above at some point in the afternoon.
It has been trading above the previous day high most of the day. On a longer term and a broadened view CL trades up and if it continues to go like this it might break 60 by the end of the year. Last days are mostly updays with sharp moves on the downside - which makes it so much more dangerous for daytraders.

Now of course since CL moves a lot more than ES (EP) I was having my attention with it most of the day which is why all my trades were placed in CL today.

Light Crude Oil trading or Light trading Crude Oil?

Whatever title you`d prefer today, for the first time in my life I`ve placed some trades on CL. Of course since its my second time when I actually open the CL chart not to speak of trading it, everything was done with caution and very light. At some point watching CL was like watching an interesting movie, I even got some popcorn as unlike ES (EP) which does not move or for that matter does not do anything in the European session most of the time, CL was providing me with permanently changing information's about what is it doing. It did not move much though but that's not the point the point is that its tradable in the EU session and most likely I could trade CL in the morning and ES (EP) in the afternoon during US session. What is even better is that I found a solution to trade whenever I`m in the mood. I can be lazy in the morning coz ES ~(EP) will provide the daily match in the afternoon or I can be lazy in the afternoon coz CL will provide that in the morning, for that matter  I could be lazy 6 days a week but, of course, that is not the point, the point is that the futures markets are providing the same thing as FX would have done if FX would have been a free market. Speaking of which if you are an profitable FX trader you should be careful to how many times the lighting struck you so to speak, if it happens to often its not a coincidence trust me. How would you observe that you ask? well by the time you know you have been defeated the market you will find out about the lighting also or it depends on the country? I`m not sure of that...whatever

Back in the game

After yesterday loss I`ve leaved some longs on because the session ended before me accepting that its a losing day. Could not make MT5 display just today PL correctly because of my yesterday position held overnight so I`m showing last 3 days which means the Net profit up to day this week. Obviously today I`ve recovered yesterday loss and make around 1% on top of it. Funny is that I could have made a lot more, and I mean a lot more yet I was not having the proper disposition for a long game. While I did recovered yesterday loss I did not recovered the $20K mistake so I`m still 15K in a drawdown. Like I told you with a little more mood for trading I could have recovered that today but...ES (EP) is not permanently active, the European session is many times very inactive and I find myself out of gas to trade heavily when it starts to move during US session. ES (EP) is yet to feel as comfortable as FX but then again I`ve watched that market for a much longer time than 2 months. Anyway, as comfortable or not, ES (EP) is providing a good game by itself but I`m thinking to trade some other contracts in the morning I need to find out what moves...maybe CL?   

Pouring money in to ES (EP)

Short on a longs trend, quite a day. The mini contract went more than 21 points straight up today after it broke 2584 somewhere around noon here. And it was fun, money never seemed to end for the bulls so ES (EP) ticked higher almost minute by minute and hour after hour. While it did not crossed my mind we will have such a day today and basically did not intend to trade at all I found myself in a short position sooner than I thought. Of course my position was wrong and, of course (again), by the time I`ve observed the trend which seemed like neverending my loss got a little bigger, acceptable nevertheless. As I was saying yesterday, the trend is your friend.
Some are either very convinced about the fact that ES (EP) will go higher either very stupid, time will tell. And I shall explain myself. Take a look at the picture bellow

The ladder is about 4 ES (EP) points, and the volume required to break one point is about 4K contracts which (for anyone investing on the long term) means 4K multiplied with the margin required to buy one contract, the result would be a few millions to move a point. Not a big deal, today it moved 20 points almost without breathing, not a big deal either however that's not the issue, the issue might be the chart bellow (the last bar is delayed it broke 2600 today as I was saying)

While I do not know if latest buyers are right or silly for buying, personally I never buy in such cases usually its required to breath more and I see buying now very dangerous for the reasons I`ve explained in the chart, ES (EP) is a contract based on a stock index after all and long is the way to go with stock indexes (short are big gamblers, many times the big winners though)   

 

One and Actually

Actually in my previous post my last statement was a bit to much. Its true, one step ahead but a tiny little small step ahead :)) and the market has the possibility sometimes over short term to get its pace ahead which of course translates in to loses on this side and, like Friday, in to large loses when I`m fighting it. In fact it all resumes to patience because even if on the short term the market might get ahead all that is required on this side is to wait for the tide to turn and it shall, most of the times sooner rather than later. Of course trying to make the water wet is a futile game, trading is all about hitting to kill at the right time with accuracy, scratching is useless (speaking of which - is the same in life also) and you should never ever ever hit just to scratch which is why patience for when you are prepared and in a position of power is a must because then and only then you will be able to change anything, speaking of changes reminds me of ONE. Sometimes one is more important than you could ever think, one rotten fruit is required to make all others the same, counting above nine was invented when one was put in front of a zero and one trade is enough to make the difference between winning and losing in this game so as long as you remember that all it takes is ONE, patience, which is my most ferocious adversary, will not become an issue in waiting for the proper time to trade.

After my 30 minute hard work this morning, as always, with nothing better to do anyway due to the demo nature of my 3K this morning, I was watching what ES is doing without the intention to trade at all - I could not help take a trade anyway so I got a few more bucks on top of those 3K in the morning - to observe its behaviour. We had a very nice up trend day until now and these days are the easiest to trade, all it takes is to wait for the pullback and get aboard. You can recognize a trend by using two moving averages and watching the volatility to be low. Trends move in one direction slow and on low volatility. Pullbacks are few and barely made and as long as you pay attention to any sort of small pullback you will get some bucks out of the trend and as  said sometimes one is enough, one trade is enough just be able to repeat it next time and you are a trader and not just any trader but one of a few - a profitable one. Here is the chart of a trend, a nice one I would say, sometimes I forgot the saying the trend is your friend and trade against it just because I think I can...and I do many times but many times I do not which is why patience is very important.

         

Friday, wtf!!! triggered

It was a hard working day today which lasted for about 30 minutes. Of course I could continue after all its only 10:30 in the morning but then again why would I do that? The result is actually triggered by - Friday, wtf!!! because Friday loss was due to my completely lack of care about cash and completely lack of  attention. Anyway it happens, the only thing that matters is the reason why it happens. And besides that, Friday I could have had a +5-10%day as easy as I went in the drawdown so lets say that it all resumes to how much you want to risk before becoming careful or should trading be careful from the start? I was careful from the start today but I did risk almost as much as Friday because...well lets say that some things are more likely to happen than others and the market is always 1 step behind so... 

It makes you think...

First of all the loss of yesterday was exactly -$19610 which, obviously makes this morning a very good morning after all I haven`t lost $20K in a day - real or demo it does not matter, the results would be approximately the same, I would have made 35K in 4 weeks and lost 20K in one day that's a fact. But why? Why did I lost 20K in a day? What`s the explanation? Well, while you could give the explanation that you are hunted and were hunted over the last 20 years and some want to kill you and that there was and is a plan and it was an attempt of set up not properly done and that you computer was hacked and algos were stolen and reverse engineered (in which case the stealing would be the only concern on my side) by some sort of criminal organization and you have figure it out their plan  - I`m a funny guy and that is a funny and amusing story which is supposed to make you laugh, trading job as any other job in the world can be very pleasant even in the worst situations if you love what you are doing... I`m not sure if losing $20K on a real account would have made me lose my sense of humor because actually I do tend to see the positive and the positive is that I`m still up 16% in 4 weeks which isn`t bad at all especially given the unfriendly environment that I was talking about yesterday - on a serious note the explanation is that I could have been avoiding such drawdown if I would have been able to stop fighting. Trouble with that is the fact that the information provided by my algorithms is giving me an advantage that over the long term it makes me feel invincible and such I am trading careless knowing that regardless of what the market is doing I will end up winning. And that is true all the time except when I`m careless for to long and choose to fight for to long. The question is what will I do about it? The answer is nothing, overconfidence is my weakness and I shall live with it winning is all about accepting that sometimes this will happen and drawdowns are inevitable and what matters is to win more than you lose - and now the cycle is complete. The largest winning day was 11.79% and the largest losing day was exactly -14.44%. I am trading with a $7.5/round turn/contract commission which is more than most brokers charge and I`m still up 16% in 4 weeks after the most dangerous weakness that I have got me. I`ve updated the performance chart and it looks pretty, trouble is that this weekend I would be kind of short of cash I mean yeah I could spend $390 which is what is left from making the loss round to $20K so I never forget about it but then who could live with only $390 in two days, in a day lets say its acceptable but two days!!!?? :)) ;) which again reminds me how worthless I am especially in a country like the one I`m living in.               

For that +10% here`s a -13% one

The result is quite round... that is how it shows after commissions. As for the way it was achieved we were trading in a contained and controlled market and all one can do in such cases is to smile. Of course ES is not FX because with FX you are dead meat when they start to control it. Usually one figures out that the market is out of free auction and completely controlled to late and at that time the only solution is to allow the day to continue without you by taking whatever result you have at the time you observe that there is not a free auction anymore but a controlled environment. This environment appears when all of the sudden the bears completely disappear - the price is showing that because nobody is selling anything price goes up slowly one tick at a time and you can not get out from the position or the bulls completely disappears and the same thing happens. Today we had both one after the other one which it only means one thing - control. Of course while the market was controlled and driven, at this side even though the drawdown was quite high the risk was also permanently controlled. This reminds me why one should have a larger pallet of trading instrument's just in case one of them becomes completely unresponsive. Personally I`m happy to see that there are times when everyone agrees that the market should go up or everyone agrees that the market should go down because while its not exactly the way of a free market its always a good thing to remember that the market is always right and bears or bulls are just words. With that said I`m also very happy that my algos allowed me to survive with only a -13% drawdown in this environment.  

Sometimes you win sometimes you lose...

And sometimes you win first then lose then get bored...
With that being said ES had a nice strong up trend all day today, trend that I`ve completely missed trying to short without to much success. But as always there is the full half side of the glass and the empty one, the empty one was about what ES did the full one I`ll let you figure it out by yourself.

Risk off trading days

 It did not work to bad to play with reduced risk. Not so much fun but who said that making money has to be (always) a fun.


 

ES is starting to look like it wants to correct a bit however it might continue sideways given the fact that it does seem to find many bulls for now bellow 2577. Nevertheless the risk on the upside is quite high  given the sharpness of the down moves when stops are being taken out. Which reminds me that it is also possible to have a continuation of this going nowhere by going up trend after all the stops are being taken out. The way I see it the panic would be more on the long side. The chart is bellow, not as coloured as I would like because I`m not good at drawing pretty charts.

I was thinking...

First of all I can trade careless as long as I become careful at the right time, of course that won`t provide outstanding returns on that particular trade because more than half of its duration I`m going to struggle to recover the careless part a thing that I did today with the last trade. The market its doing the unexpected sometimes and it does not forgive. I was also playing with Ninjatrader - buying and selling on hunch in the same time with doing it on this account and its only when I look at the result of that account - which is far worst than this one`s but its positive - when I realize that the precision of this particular trading strategy is very good, meaning that even without money management in Ninjatrader - or with a money management based on hunch - the signals part of the strategy allowed me to breakeven.

  A little talk about what ES is doing

Looking at the long term chart of ES with the help of Ninjatrader Kinetick free EOD data, I`m seeing a contract that is going up without going anywhere. ES is in the mood of doing the unexpected anytime. The current move its a move that I suppose can fall in to the out layers category from a certain point of view. Of course all oscillators show overbought levels and overbought might be or it might continue for a while to go up since its obviously in an up trend as it can be seen in the chart bellow.

As you can see I have the EOD charts of most futures contracts due to this platform which was a thing that I was missing (was I?), maybe not missing because its a to long timeframe to care very much.

A reminder

A day that remembered me of the difficulty of this game. In the same way as I did it yesterday, today it did not worked that well. Which was a thing to be expected actually and I`m not very surprised by the result. Of course, using the same logic I could have had a day like yesterday or better. I got myself in to a quite big drawdown during the first half of the day and become careful after trying to recover. The drawdown was a result of my overconfidence that the market should not and will not do certain things and my supersized bet on the fact I`m right, I was wrong. My game after the deed was done was not enough to get above water level today and more than that it reminded me of the dangers of approaching the market not fully concentrated and careless. As I was saying in a previous post starting careless and continuing careless can get you killed.

High performance vs safety

This particular trading strategy that I`m using here is capable of using whatever risk profile the trader desires. Now, since this is a demo account sometimes I`m pushing it to high risk and disregarding the safety in favor of a high return like I did yesterday. Yesterday it worked but it might not always work and then the drawdown could get quite high. How high? it depends, yesterday for example all of this moth profits were at risk and some more which means that instead of having a winning month I could have had a losing month if things would have went wrong. However, it should be noted that I was up 17% this month before yesterday (now I`m up 30% or somewhere around it I think) and even if yesterday I would have lost 20% the month would still be in play and the end of the month could have been a decent 4-6% return which is actually  a very good return for one month. So the way I`m playing is the more I win the more I push the month. Of course what I really have to avoid is blindly pushing it just because I can, that is a mistake. Pushing in search of higher returns should be made only when certain conditions are met, not every time and not on every trade. Now in regard with what can be considered a high return and a safe return things are quite relative and depends on the man and the strategy. What is more important than a single month return is the long term result, its actually all that matters in the end and because of that it all resumes to live to trade another day. With forex I found a way to satisfy my aversion to losing and in the same time to be able to always survive (of course until I decided the game is completely over what my algos can do to achieve 30-50% per month which is what I needed with small capital- another way stated until I`ve accepted I can not make money there - I can not make 30-50% per month I mean and because I would never risk more than penny money on that market anyway trading on that market was useless from my point of view so I`ve stopped trying to bet). With futures I do not have the same tools available to do it - there is a way but that way would require twice as much capital and two accounts.  So what a man can do? Being patient is the key here, being patient and controlling the risk. As a human I am prone to lose control due to emotions which is why I will try to implement a computerized part that will control or better said will reduce risk. The way I`m trading now is manually triggering the trades based on what the algorithms that analyze the market tell me which works well up until I`m starting to disregard the warnings. Yesterday was such a day, the 15th trading day of this account and after I got a 17% return in the safeties mode possible my human behaviour overwhelm the logic, maybe you are asking why am I complaining well its because I know better, I won but I could have lost and such large fluctuations are a big danger without a safety nest. I can think of many ways to implement a safety nest but the thing is that it should also fit my personality and I can not apply the same computerized safety nest like I had with fx because I do not have exactly the same tools. However like I did on fx I will find a way to implement it and feel comfortable and accept it. I shall try different safety nests and chose the one that provides the best experience. Today I have already coded one and I will know its usefulness at the time I use it and it will start to override my actions, for now I`m still after 50-60% for this month.  Of course if really required I can trade 2 accounts in the same time and unleash the power of covered positions.      

A 10% day

Unfortunately the contract that I trade now does not offer me many days like this one and when it does I`m far by feeling at home with it, maybe because I`m not used with the way it moves yet. Anyway I did traded heavy and I did the right things. At some point I almost thought I`m screwed because we will have a flash crash day but it seems that there was not enough panic, myself being only half panicked so perhaps most market participants were feeling the same.  I remember a flash crash day, it was in March 2010 (or 2011?) I was trading FX back then and having a nice day I was out of the market when I`ve started to see twitter feeds spreading panic then read on some blogs about it. Many traders had very large drawdowns then and if today would have been a flash crash I would have had quite a drawdown also. It wasn`t so I`ve got 10% up in a single day and since I`m up 10% from yesterday I will not stop here but continue Monday to trade heavy with the solely purpose of increasing this account with at least 50% this month. I think I`m 30% up already. Anyway here is the price action for today:

 As you can see the price was in a downtrend most of the day while I was initially long then switched to short somewhere in the middle just to switch back to long positions somewhere around the point of divergence between price and indicator. Then it looked like it will fall and like I told you I got half panicked but in the end it did what it was supposed to do in my view and sharply went up, I got the profits and ended the day.




As you know if you have read previous posts I`m not very accustomed with futures yet and I`ve chosen MT5 as platform because of my long history with MT4 and FX market. MT5 requires coding to make it work your way, its a little bit more complicated than other futures platform, meaning that if you have never traded you should not pick MT5 because it will be a pain, there are platforms that are far more easy to use than this one. Personally I like CQG and Ninjatrader. To make life a little bit easier I`ve added some coding to the way I place the orders in the market so now I`m clicking to trade which is the desirable way to do it. Here`s the trading chart (the trade that you see is from yesterday)

I also coded another button today to reverse the position, most trading platforms already have these and  many more but in this platform you got to do it your way and code everything. Of course this can give you an advantage because you can chose the way you send the order. The demo on this platform is not working correctly unless you code it to properly fill the orders.  

On a more serious note

Posting these results here might be boring for any readers of this blog which is why I`m going to change the blog post with something more attractive and colored like charts with nice lines and my view on what the market is doing..in general. As for my results I think once a month is enough after all its the end of the month/year that matters. Which reminds me of updating my excel sheet with the performance and... here it is

...a beautiful 17.99% in 14 days which translates in to a net of $17990 in about 14 days, that's not bad but of course one always wants a bigger account, bigger is always better. In theory I could stop this month here but more is more...Now that I`m looking at it I`m realizing that its not the best I`ve ever had, I got 2 losing days and only 6 consecutive winning days which is not something to remember, I remember so many consecutive winning days that I can`t remember the number. At this rate of return I`m afraid I can not fall in to the category of people that expect and consider 20%/year a good investment return. But the discussion is complicated here because its true that this kind of return is only possible with small capital at least from what I`m doing now.

    And on a more serious note than yesterday and because this blog has no information on what the markets are doing while maybe some readers might be interested more in that than in my personal achievements, I`m thinking to do something I never did before and that is to take positions in the markets with a much longer view than daytrading. So I will try to build a portfolio on a 10mil account, portfolio that will be composed of multiple positions held on different contracts as my algorithms dictate. To accomplish the deed I need to make some tests first and find the best  way to place resting orders in the markets because its obvious that I will need those. It does sound simpler than it actually is but this would be the next step in to the evolution of my trading. With daytrading I`m done, there is nothing more I can improve and nothing more left to do.
The portfolio trading might work or might not work, theoretically speaking it should work just the same as daytrading but it does require patience and somewhat a different approach than what I`m currently doing (mentally speaking) and its not that I can`t adapt but I`m so used with my current mental state where I seldom hold a position for more than a few hours that I can`t imagine how its to buy today and wait for more than a day. Daytrading is fun, exciting and it can make you lots of money, more than one needs actually, even though the strategy is currently working with 100K it would work the same with 1M so I do not feel like I must do this, its not required to build a portfolio up to a few million dollars because up to then daytrading works well enough but it would be fun at least and maybe useful for having a bigger picture on what the markets are doing, for the moment if someone would ask me what the markets are doing I would say I have no clue I`m in and out in the same day and I don`t care of the bigger picture.    

Since 2 PM

Then I got hungry and later sleepy so I got to settle somewhere at +1% which isn`t a kill so to speak but then to make a kill in the markets one has to find a good trading setup in a liquid market which is also volatile enough... since its day trading what I`m doing here. To many conditions to meet all at once and to much patience required to wait so I was taking what the market offers at the time I watched which was (and is most of the times) nothing.  Besides by the time this market moves my mood to trade is only at half of what it was in the morning because more than half of the day is gone here. I`m thinking I could trade other contracts also after all this account is of a merely 100K  which means I could trade the "light cavalry" as well the thing is that I`m interested in trading the..."heavy artillery" for gaining a little experience with it, and yes learning patience (which is by far much more difficult than anything else).

I`ve just realized that one needs a little luck though, no matter the trading algorithms, no matter the edge,  everything is useless unless the market moves, so you need to be around at the time it moves...now that is a really smart thing that I said here, it should be remembered as a quote :))))
And then there is more, you also need to be in the mood...actually is so complicated it makes me dizzy, there is a whole series of events that needs to be aligned for a good trade to take place. I think I`ve discovered the reason why people lose money in the markets, its because the events are not properly aligned. You have to, you just have to wait for the proper setups then graciously enter and exit. Today I did not, yesterday I was patient but not today. Actually as you can see today I`m more like in the mood to write intelligent things in this blog than to trade.

Contemplating about what it was, what it is and what it will be (there, again, I said it in the most intelligent way it could be said) I`m just having another revelation and that is that every time I lost money in the markets it was all my fault, all the market did was to stop moving and by stop moving it has triggered a series of wtf`k`s on this side which triggered a series of trades in a nonmoving market and such loaded the barrel to much for the time when the market actually started moving, obviously in the wrong direction and the barrel exploded. And that is all for my trading lessons today, as an conclusion you should not trade a market that is not moving (like this one) - unless you are very experienced and/or have very good trading algorithms that are able to take in consideration everything that moves, flies or crawls of course.

Good morning

At the time when the market closes, here its almost midnight and for that reason sometimes, especially when glued to the screen up to the end of the day, I`m writing here the next morning. Yesterday was one of these days when I was forced to watch a non moving market up to the end due to the fact that I simply were not able to make enough (or lose enough for that matter) to stop.

Friday stumble

Why stumble? because it took me 8 hours and was no fun at all. Actually the issue is that I would rather prefer high speed markets and ES is anything but that most of the time. Of course in reality it does not matter what I prefer as long as I can make money besides supposing that I would trade a fast moving market and make this cash in 30 min, the thing is that I like doing this so much that most likely I would lose them in the next 30 min and start over. This behaviour would result in days with profits way much larger than 1-2% but...the drawdowns, well they would be as large even larger. You see you got to decide what do you want from the markets and many times I think I`m after the thrill and in some cases sorry after, that is if I let myself emerged in the game. The point is that slow markets makes me sleepy.

No trading mood day

After the start of US session when the time here is almost 5 PM I`ve realized that I`m not really in the mood to trade anymore today even though I can`t say I`ve ripped of my clothes today trying to do something, I did not, I was just placing a few trades all day, in out then repeat a few times. So I decided to end it thinking that while I could do more its pointless to not listen to  the mood. The mood is very important  (real FX trading proven), even with all the algos poiting the direction of the market if I`m not in the mood to wait and push the buttons its useless and today I`m not. Its still not bad for a day is it? Aside from placing the trades you see today I was doing some research. Contracts are plenty most interesting that one could choose to trade are the following:

Light cavalierly: Crude Oil, DAX, Eminis Dow, Russell, Nasdaq 100

And then, my friends comes the heavy artillery: E-mini S&P 500, Bunds, Bobl, Schatz, Euro STOXX 50, 10yr Treasury Note, Corn...

Once upon a time I`ve read about some guy, his name was/is Paul Rotter. This individual was trading Euro Bunds, Bobl and Schatz from what I remember and he WAS really trading, I mean I show here days with profits of a few thousand dollars but this guy, this guy had DAYS with  PL showing 3 more  zeroes (I would also like to point out here the importance of zero :)))) ), I cant remember the story very precise but I`ve remember it while I was doing the research and found the heavy artillery. Anyhow we can have fun with small accounts and very large accounts. Fun is fun and making money is fun, the more money you make the more fun it is.  

What if... and a letter

That would do. Today while I was growing the demo with the amount you see in the image I was thinking about FX. I could not help it, in truth being told I was not beaten there, all I was is annoyed, annoyed by the manipulation, annoyed by the fact that despite that the FX market is so large some have such a level of control on it that you can not imagine, annoyed by the fact that such things are possible without most people realizing it. Annoyed by the fact that the FX market is simply a scheme made to rip off people of their money, that is all it is and you can not know that and obviously you won`t believe me, anyhow...
What if you would have a billion dollars? What would you do with a billion dollars? If I would have a billion dollars I would put aside 100K, and with the rest of them I would plunge directly in to the market of the morons (I would not do that with a million or 10 million or 100 millions but with a billion and a bank to hide my identity I would think I can get my vengeance :)) ) Let me tell you this, I had 500 bucks and they could not take them from me, I`ve hedged back and forth so much that the idiots got dizzy, I was able to recover a 60% drawdown in a few days, I traded knowing what happens and still they could not beat me. I was slowed down until I failed to see the purpose of it  but they did not beat me. Of course with a billion minus 100K ...
Now a letter, Dear Mr. Soros, please on behalf of all of us that traded or still do the FX market, on behalf of all the people ripped of by the thieves (I suppose that if I would say figuratively speaking I would be wrong, literally thieves) on behalf of all of those that believe that the FX market has anything to do with a fair business, on behalf of all traders in the world that are searching for a fair business,  teach the morons a lessons most of us are unable to,  if you are still able to, then please, repeat what you did back in the `90s if you can not, can you please borrow me a billion for a while?

That was the fun for today.

PS: take this post as a joke, aside from the performance of the account everything is a joke, still Mr. Soros, a little help? :))) (some know better)

A win win situation

Me 60 bucks, my broker 1110, now that's not a happy situation but then my current broker might feel even worst when he thinks the only reason he did not won $1110 today is because I`m short of 100K real cash. Anyway I can rest assure him that I`ll be the ideal client as long as he offers a fair game...with futures and zero conflict of interest I see no reason why my broker can`t have $1110 or a lot more in a day from my commissions. Speaking about ideal clients, they like to trade a lot, they do trade a lot, they permanently win and generate happiness wherever they go as they think about cash in a very different way from most of the people, I believe, at least I do. Of course speaking like this in some places might be very dangerous. But then it was always like that with the truth. Now, this week does look quite bad, I mean 300 bucks in 2 days on a 100K account!!!???? C`mon, if I would have a horse he would have traded better in my place, of course I have no horse so...I`m thinking that by the end of the week I have to, I really have to hit it hard, previous week was acceptable I mean $6K for the one weekend is acceptable for a start but 300 in 2 days means 750 in 5 days and that won`t do for one weekend, of course I`m short 100K but...anyone with me?

Monday Enhancements

Because half of the day I made some tests I got in a drawdown which later I`ve recovered. The test required to place a lot of 1 tick losing trades such as the profit is chopped by the commissions and the net its kind of low. I`ve wasted the energy for today. Its not bad considering the fact that most of the day I did not traded for the result but for the test. The test was successful which is more important than the result here now. Hopefully I won`t get any bright idea very soon test again. Actually the enhancement I added is required for futures and it was not possible to apply on the FX - I`ve lost some things when I switched to futures but everything can be even better actually and this improvement was necessary.

A losing Friday

  I was sitting on a healthy +$1200 profits up until 5PM when I decided its not enough and not even that I decided the market should go down even though  it was in an obvious up trend so I went short and I kept shorting up until my $1200 profits were nowhere to be seen and got what you see in the picture. The story is a happy one though because some things you just don`t do when trading but tell that to whom? me? nah I`m able to be so reckless that you can`t possible imagine just because I know that by being careful after being careless I`m going to repair everything. That is why the story of this losing day is a happy one with a slightly danger in it called overconfidence. That is actually the only thing that can do an irrecoverably damage. Of course I would not recommend to myself to do what I did today very often because starting carless and continuing with overconfidence is a deadly recipe, today I was careless regarding to what the market is doing but I was careful after. The story of the day.

PS: I don`t know why I hate losing days, most traders accept them I don`t, they are annoying.

Done with FX back to futures

Given the level of manipulation in that market I have decided to protest by giving up and throwing them the cash in disgust. I can not tell you here the reasons of doing so, not without the danger of appearing nuts, so I`ll skip the story and just forget about FX. What I`m currently doing is trading the futures market with my strategy. I did so in the past for a while and I suppose futures is the market to address if you want to invest your capital. At least I would not recommend you to place your capital on the FX.
I`ve started again with futures this week with a demo account of $100K and for the time being I`m up a little more than 6% after commissions. Not bad for a week and certainly with a little more confidence that this market is not manipulated or at least not in the disgusting mode the FX is. For the reason of having nothing better to do I will show you what a good trader, I was about to say professional but since its a demo account I will skip the term for now, can achieve and the money that can be made from the markets. I do have an offer to copy my trades but you would need $25K at least, should you be interested in making money contact me.
Bellow is the 100K account performance from the start of the week, net performance is calculated by subtracting $7.5/contract/round turn

Starting from Monday I will be presenting the performance every day in the same format.

Bad choice

As I was saying I`ve switched my FX broker now I trade with FX Open and in case you want to know this broker cheats or tries to do it in the worst way possible. While apparently everything is ok, spread ok (not very good but acceptable) order fills with little delay but acceptable and at the surface you think everything is ok ... they lower your margin level during the trading session without warning. Meaning if you for example have opted to trade with an 200:1 leverage and peacefully place trades thinking the leverage they give you is 0.5% you might find yourself in error. The procedure is one of the most dangerous way of scamming traders, I`m not sure if its legal. Of course I`ve closed the account. As a matter a fact the leverage was lowered to something I`ve never experienced in my life. It was something like 160-170:1, yes, and I say "something like" because I don`t know what leverage they set, I did not had the patience to precisely find it, my software calculates any leverage between 50:1 (2%) and 0.5% or 500:1 but only in 10 step increments, I could not find the precise leverage that I had on my positions with FX Open at that time it was something between 160:1 and 170:1 I`m not sure and for that matter it was not important what was important was that they did that. What happens in this industry especially if trading with non regulated brokers  is incredible.

Futures

For the moment I`m back at my futures demo which, btw, now is on a 1 million account. Even though without being a big issue, on a real million account I might experience some slippage every now and then from what I can say. Of course is hard to say unless you trade on a real account and gradually find out the slippage your strategy can incur and other factors that might affect your trading and in consequence find a way to solve the issues. In any case plunging in was a lot of fun and theoretically I`ve made like 100K in one day, theoretically because like I said unlike on the 100K account where given the big market depth slippage was out of the question on this one things might be a little different in real. By little different I mean that due to some slippage, I have to mention I have traded during the European session when MD was not so large as in the picture, I might not have achieved the same results, however the profit is big enough to mind not even if assuming that due to slippage it would have been cut in to half. My trading today was inspired by this post http://donmillereducation.com/journal/2017/08/30/my-fall-2017-goals-be-the-ball/ of the one and only Don Miller, of course I`m on demo and its different when it comes to emotions involved, but then I`m trading futures for about 1-2 weeks does this not compensate???..probably not but still :))? Oh if anyone reads this I am trading FX for 10 years so do not believe I just come to trade futures and I kick ass already after 2 weeks :D; And here is how profits look on the 2 accounts (demo accounts) of 500K each:

Yes,yes its not 100K but 95K or whatever I don`t have good math or trading skills I`m permanently lucky in the markets. I`ve struggled a lot to make it 100K but at the end of the day I must rise the white flag... I was defeated...or was I? So close, tomorrow I will not do this again even though if you want to bet on 100K real dollars I will do it again :)))

Starting with tomorrow I`ll be back on FX real account with what was one of the best brokers I have ever had in this industry, as I previously said in a post, and should it happen that you got 1 million  real cash and you want to keep 1 million real cash and still spend like a millionaire in the same time ask for help ;)

After a long and painful debate

...with myself, I`ve decided I can not trade futures on a real account yet because the cash would not do under no circumstance. Yesterday for a moment, just for a moment it has occurred to me that maybe, just maybe I could give it a try with some micro futures contracts but after a closer look I came to the conclusion that is not a good idea at all so here I am back with the dinosaurs  having zero trust in the FX market honesty or in the game fair play so to speak. I could go slow but I`ve payed 2.25% commissions on money transfer and such I need like 4 percent only to get it back. I used to make this kind of percents easy in a day but lately this market does not move. I mean is moving but so slow that most of the time I`m quite sure I could get a one hour nap after taking a position without even setting a way to protect my account because it does not go anywhere fast most of the time, its so boring that when I hit the close position button - as an example - my charts make me take a look at the account terminal to double check if they were closed because the chart is not updating due to the fact that there is no tick coming for seconds in row. The only danger that you could face in such a market is the danger of getting pissed off by the fact you can`t make a lot of money not because you can not make a lot of money but because the market is dead most of the times (and when its moving you are not around). At least I`m trading with a new broker, I`ve always planned and wanted to trade with this broker but somehow never got to do it until now. Hopefully its as good as I think it is.  

As for my futures accounts, one of them is dead for some reason (that`s the problem with demo accounts you don`t know when the broker has the bright idea to update something or close it for whatever reason) and I need to open a new one with history being lost half of it. Won`t matter to much though but it is nice to have it just in case someone mistrusts what you write on the blog. Anyway it was only like nine days or something and basically irrelevant. Problem would be now that with me paying attention to the FX I will be trading less on the futures account because that one is a demo this one is real and either I like it or not I am more interested in the real account than the demo,. However when it comes to playing with money not pennies that  demo is closer to the reality because that is where serious traders play and that is where I`ll be doing business also...as soon as...as soon as.

To just explain you how dead is the FX market right now when I`m looking at it the range of the day is 21 points on the pair I am following. 21 pips...you could make the pip value as large as you want but there`s a catch: this market can move 300 pips out of nowehere and all of the sudden in 10 minutes and then you are dead so you would be better of just waiting. Waiting isn`t that bad though, its not a hard job to basically stare at a monitor and do nothing at all however one is always in the danger of sleeping...omg I`ve just finished this text and the range is now 22 pips, amazing.