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.  

Back to the Dino`s

I`m thinking, somewhat horrified, that since Monday or Tuesday I have to go back at trading the FX with the dinosaurs. The game is far of  having fair rules still even if the FX market was opened to the public back in 1998 from what I know and while you would not think anyone can actually pay attention to you if you traded with pennies - after all there are so many idiots in the world why would anyone spot you among them all, you might be wrong as soon as you start to win... Well, even so the times when one can be "played" are limited there`s no doubt about it and such, while I would obviously prefer to be anonymous - I kind of like the term nobody when it comes about others seeing my orders, I am not worried I won`t be able to profit from it. The thing is that the market is to big with to many players to have a market worried about one so despite the dinosaurs second look and lack of order anonymity plus other outrageous rules of the game I believe you are not in danger of being hunted more than everyone else is even if you want to trade with millions. As I`ve always said most likely if you lose money in the markets is only your fault, not brokers fault not anyone`s else but your`s. Obviously anyone with enough capital and a little brain will go trade on an exchange where the rules are for everyone and most likely nobody has an unfair advantage, except if the advantage is given by your strategy which is perfectly legal and valid from what I know - that`s the point of the game isn`t it?
Trading on an exchange would be trading futures not FX but due to capital constraints, with real money, FX would have to do for a while. As for my futures demo I will still continue growing...
The best part of everything is that markets are to big, to big for anyone and anything whoever or whatever that "anyone" or "anything" is...

        

Order Types

Trading futures on demo and trading futures on a real account might not be the same thing in most cases. Not in this particular one though. Unless my sight is damaged the depth of the market available with ES will under no circumstance be a problem for instant fill market orders. If you are on demo and you use limit orders it might be an issue because as you expect limit orders in real are not instantly filled while on the demo at first touch of limit price order is filled. I do not use limit orders when trading, I seldom do in general actually. I`ve remembered the issue with limit orders on demo accounts today when out of nothing better to do I`ve placed one and was filled at touch - the price went trough that level so even if demo it was valid as in real.  

That being said, today I was in the mood to trade but as I am lately without plunging in with everything I have - which btw, after the precision I have I would have made 30K in a day but never mind because its enough to plunge in once and be precise the wrong time so forget about it - however after the fact I`m kind of having regrets, I mean why make 3K in a day when you can make 30K...risk/reward thats why, this thoughts permanently bother me, its like I`m always making to little to satisfy my ...I`m not sure what is it. Anyway I`m not giving up on those thoughts because I would hate to see my equity line drop 30% as I said its the maximum expected drawdown ever. Maybe I`ll do it when I`m up 100% but not sooner. I have to plunge in once I really have to do it its itchy I`m not sure you understand, but not now, not today, not tomorrow not until I have increased the account enough to not care anymore if I lose part of my demo cash. Real or demo I`m still me and I would think and do the same things, especially since there is no difference between this demo and the way it would be in real which is very important. Plunging in is not bad as long as you know that even the worst situation can be fixed and besides nobody could ever explain to you the feeling in case of victory. As it goes now its the same feel like fishing, you know when some people go to the river and drop the stick or whatever in the water and just sit there doing nothing, no thrill, no fun, no nothing...hmmm you know those serious guys that analyze the markets and provide information and "serious"  financial advice? Well, they`re not traders, trading is "putting on the lucky shoes" - I remember one particular movie with one particular trader now - thats trading. In a nutshell what I want to say is that I did not once have to put in "my lucky shoes" up to now, it goes like fishing, profits look good enough though...

Assuming you could do it also how would you go for it? I`m looking at this equity line and I`m realizing I made 12K in 8 days - yes its demo but only coz` I`m short of 100K and for that matter at this speed its really of no consequence if I`m delayed. And where do you put the fact that I told you I feel like fishing I mean I could really do so much more if I really want to...    

Related to https://hnwtrading.blogspot.ro/p/100k-futuresdemo.html, trading is easy but... you should be aware of all the risks associated with alternative investments, the risk of loss in alternative investments including commodities, futures, and foreign exchange, can be substantial. You should therefore carefully consider whether such trading is suitable for you in light of your financial condition. The high degree of leverage that is often obtainable in alternative investments including commodities, futures, and foreign exchange, can work against you as well as for you. The use of leverage can quickly lead to large losses as well as large gains. Only funds you can afford to lose should be placed at risk and anyone who does not have such funds should not participate in alternative investments including commodities, futures, and foreign exchange.  You have been warned...

Now,

Difference between trading FX and trading futures is small, there is some information that you have in first and its missing in the second but viceversa is true also. Like for example this:

Horizontal histogram representing volume at price is very nice to have, anyway for the moment aside from the obvious I have no clue what to do with it, don`t need it anyway but then again I`m looking at it with the hope that one day I will get some ideas.

Aside from that for the moment I find myself often making fat finger mistakes. I can fix or prevent some trough some coding, trying to find the most comfortable trading environment. Actually I`m doing what I`ve always done trying to trade with the smallest effort possible and without mistakes, its not working bad up to now. I`m almost satisfied...