bakedbeans' learning journal

[IgazI]

CFD account updates:

EUR/USD closed out circa +6.2% - close enough to target zone at the end of the session.
EUR/JPY closed out circa +3.5%- call me nervous with the lack of follow-through.
CORN - pulled back and then pushed higher, with floating profit of circa 4.6%. Will move the stop below swing low during market hours.

Net banked pnl: 9.78%.

It's ok if profits are small; you can work with profits, you cannot work with loss

[bb01100100]

It's ok if profits are small; you can work with profits, you cannot work with loss

So true! Those recent FX scalping profits will help fund any additional entry I make on Corn if the opportunity arises.

[aliassmith]

CFD account updates:

EUR/USD closed out circa +6.2% - close enough to target zone at the end of the session.
EUR/JPY closed out circa +3.5%- call me nervous with the lack of follow-through.
CORN - pulled back and then pushed higher, with floating profit of circa 4.6%. Will move the stop below swing low during market hours.

Net banked pnl: 9.78%.

Looking good.

[aliassmith]

Bulenox eval account update:

Net +0.31% for the day, 3.4% cumulative, 6% target. Hitting singles has got me half way to target.

I was wary today given yesterday's performance, so I traded at half size; good trading and careful approach to risk.

Today with some pnl in the bank I ran a 1 lot short on the expectation that as we went into the close price would push lower to prior high volume prices.. this worked out well with price coming off circa 6pts into the close. I netted 5.25points on my one lot.

I like how you are managing this account. Steady gains and losses don't tear your account up. People should take notice to this novel concept.

[bb01100100]

Bulenox eval account update:

Net +0.31% for the day, 3.4% cumulative, 6% target. Hitting singles has got me half way to target.

I was wary today given yesterday's performance, so I traded at half size; good trading and careful approach to risk.

Today with some pnl in the bank I ran a 1 lot short on the expectation that as we went into the close price would push lower to prior high volume prices.. this worked out well with price coming off circa 6pts into the close. I netted 5.25points on my one lot.

I like how you are managing this account. Steady gains and losses don't tear your account up. People should take notice to this novel concept.

Thanks Alias; I think there are a mixture of things at play that are helping with this:

• Being comfortable "doing less" - less desire to jump in at every opportunity and improved levels of patience (for entries at least, still difficult to hold scalps)
• I currently only trade the last hour of the session (5-6am my time) so in the back of my mind there are fewer opportunities to get flat/green if I make a mess of things
• I've started to know my part of the day fairly well; Igazi's suggestions of framing my M1 trades within the higher timeframes has provided ideas that play out quite consistently; the first quarter, middle half and last quarter of the hour all have different characteristics.
• Your posts in the Dead Horse thread demonstrated that "boring" monthly returns are in fact stellar outcomes when consistency is present and the returns are annualised. This was the impetus for me to use a large (eval) prop account.
• Being in the red for day the tends to galvanise me to find grind out the trades needed to get me green again.. I might best describe it as "patient, reluctant execution"

[bb01100100]

Bulenox eval update:

Net +0.34% for the day, 3.75% cumulative, 6% target.

Good trades this afternoon (ET) post NFP. I missed several entries because I was too conservative, but made some good trades and stopped fairly early because I lost a sense of direction.. In hindsight: lots of nice turns of 2pts+.

I had an execution mistake which was disappointing: I was short 4 lots and added another 4 lot so I could scale out as price pushed down towards a zline... I didn't realise I'd left my DOM size at 4 lots so exited all 4 lots instead of just 1 lot, gah. Got 3 points on the first clip, so disappointing, not a total washout.

I watched the close, not sure whether we'd push lower or not since it was a trend up day. Price did push down 10pts, and interestingly it pushed down through a prior "buy wall".. the attached chart shows a level at circa 4348.. in the DOM there was heavy buying there, so I wasn't sure whether the last couple of minutes of the session would spike up from there or not.

2023-10-07-ES-buy-wall.jpg (111.54 KiB) Viewed 1385 times

2023-10-07-ES-session-close.jpg (60.53 KiB) Viewed 1385 times

[bb01100100]

Bulenox eval account update:

Net +0.366% for the day, 4.13% cumulative, 6% target.

Was long mid US afternoon session and got stopped out on a spike lower; took a breath and looked at what was happening post-spike then positioned short when I saw a range forming; added aggressively and took a series of partial exits to get me back in the green. I then reduced my size and traded short after we saw a retrace back into the congestion zone.

I get a trade idea that I trade with my normal size, then I reduce my size to trade the idea's continuation. This is fairly suboptimal, since I'm often early - trading the breakout and stall, but don't take advantage of the pullback to add / enter again.
Today I managed to do that with a one lot.. small steps.

[Yirbu]

Bulenox eval account update:

Net +0.366% for the day, 4.13% cumulative, 6% target.

Was long mid US afternoon session and got stopped out on a spike lower; took a breath and looked at what was happening post-spike then positioned short when I saw a range forming; added aggressively and took a series of partial exits to get me back in the green. I then reduced my size and traded short after we saw a retrace back into the congestion zone.

I get a trade idea that I trade with my normal size, then I reduce my size to trade the idea's continuation. This is fairly suboptimal, since I'm often early - trading the breakout and stall, but don't take advantage of the pullback to add / enter again.
Today I managed to do that with a one lot.. small steps.

Why do you reduce your size when price goes in your favor?

[bb01100100]

Why do you reduce your size when price goes in your favor?

That's a great question!

I'd say there are three main reasons:

1. Fear - I am "risk on" for the initial breakout, but after it stalls I don't have the same level of confidence in whether it will continue or trap me. It's less clear to me where I should place stops for those post-pullback trades... so I tend to drop my size right down and use a larger stop (often placed at the same place as my original trade).
2. Attachment - having made a profit I'm more "risk off"; I don't want to risk most/all of that profit on the same trade idea again. Time and time again I've pushed too hard and finished the day regretting not stopping while I was ahead.
3. Method/statistics - I trade the last hour of the US session; often only the first 35 mins of that last hour. Price is somewhat less likely to be making new highs/lows at that time and some analysis I did a while back showed swing to swing price differences of circa 3-6 points; so when I can net 2.5-4 pts I'm happy, even if the movement over the hour might be 10+ points.

I'm not an efficient trader by any means - but one of things that I'm very excited about is that as I address some of these inefficiencies I can reduce my risk and ideally become more profitable.

One of the interesting outcomes of having an eval account with a trailing drawdown limit is that any retrace reduces my buffer - so my "small increments" scalping style fits that constraint fairly well. When I get live and build a profit buffer, I intend to build in some form of risk gearing (like Alias has posted in the DeadHorse thread)... but I can't do that without being consistent first and overcoming my discomfort with pressing a trade idea.

[aliassmith]

Why do you reduce your size when price goes in your favor?

That's a great question!

I'd say there are three main reasons:

1. Fear - I am "risk on" for the initial breakout, but after it stalls I don't have the same level of confidence in whether it will continue or trap me. It's less clear to me where I should place stops for those post-pullback trades... so I tend to drop my size right down and use a larger stop (often placed at the same place as my original trade).
2. Attachment - having made a profit I'm more "risk off"; I don't want to risk most/all of that profit on the same trade idea again. Time and time again I've pushed too hard and finished the day regretting not stopping while I was ahead.
3. Method/statistics - I trade the last hour of the US session; often only the first 35 mins of that last hour. Price is somewhat less likely to be making new highs/lows at that time and some analysis I did a while back showed swing to swing price differences of circa 3-6 points; so when I can net 2.5-4 pts I'm happy, even if the movement over the hour might be 10+ points.

I'm not an efficient trader by any means - but one of things that I'm very excited about is that as I address some of these inefficiencies I can reduce my risk and ideally become more profitable.

One of the interesting outcomes of having an eval account with a trailing drawdown limit is that any retrace reduces my buffer - so my "small increments" scalping style fits that constraint fairly well. When I get live and build a profit buffer, I intend to build in some form of risk gearing (like Alias has posted in the DeadHorse thread)... but I can't do that without being consistent first and overcoming my discomfort with pressing a trade idea.

There are some damn fine traders out there that cut size. Small increments in a trailing DD account is a good way to manage it.