bakedbeans' learning journal

[Yirbu]

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.

Thanks for your answer!
I also recognize the fear. When my position goes into profit and I decide I want to keep it longer I am afraid my profits wil evaporate.
Currently I am working on that and trying to overcome this fear.

Looking at the " method" I also distinct between methods.
When I trade during London and want to anchor a trade I don't move my SL, at some point it gets to b.e. but that's it. Often it's an all or nothing trade.
London and early US sometimes bring price all the way back.

But when I trade a deadhorse I often trail my position on the lows of the candles.

I also really like Alias gearing concept and have tried it quite often.
My trading is (still) a bit wobbly so I can have a number of losing trades in a row. No problem because mostly I am able to make it up.
I find it very frustrating if I'm building up a buffer and risk that everything may be gone so fast.
Guess more practice is needed for me

[bb01100100]

Bulenox eval update:

Net +0.387% today, 4.54% cumulative, 6% target.

I had a good session this morning: got long and scaled out as we approached a zline. Got stopped out for a sweep of the zline high, then saw it for was it was and got short again and scaled out as we pushed lower. I left a runner thinking we might get a push to prior hourly lows, but that didn't play out, so that was a scratch. Got short again for a small scalp and left it at that.

Was open to the idea of price moving further, but didn't give away too much profit when proven wrong.

I looked for an obvious opportunity to position for a "push to liquidity" into the close.. there was a high volume area above the current price area and nothing below, so set a 1x lot long limit to ride that up but it wasn't triggered (I cancelled it once we pushed higher). Price actually tested the highs then retreated 8 points and we had a fairly quiet close.

[aliassmith]

Bulenox eval update:

Net +0.387% today, 4.54% cumulative, 6% target.

I had a good session this morning: got long and scaled out as we approached a zline. Got stopped out for a sweep of the zline high, then saw it for was it was and got short again and scaled out as we pushed lower. I left a runner thinking we might get a push to prior hourly lows, but that didn't play out, so that was a scratch. Got short again for a small scalp and left it at that.

Was open to the idea of price moving further, but didn't give away too much profit when proven wrong.

I looked for an obvious opportunity to position for a "push to liquidity" into the close.. there was a high volume area above the current price area and nothing below, so set a 1x lot long limit to ride that up but it wasn't triggered (I cancelled it once we pushed higher). Price actually tested the highs then retreated 8 points and we had a fairly quiet close.

Nice consistent growth. When did u start?

[bb01100100]

Bulenox eval update:

Net +0.387% today, 4.54% cumulative, 6% target.

I had a good session this morning: got long and scaled out as we approached a zline. Got stopped out for a sweep of the zline high, then saw it for was it was and got short again and scaled out as we pushed lower. I left a runner thinking we might get a push to prior hourly lows, but that didn't play out, so that was a scratch. Got short again for a small scalp and left it at that.

Was open to the idea of price moving further, but didn't give away too much profit when proven wrong.

I looked for an obvious opportunity to position for a "push to liquidity" into the close.. there was a high volume area above the current price area and nothing below, so set a 1x lot long limit to ride that up but it wasn't triggered (I cancelled it once we pushed higher). Price actually tested the highs then retreated 8 points and we had a fairly quiet close.

Nice consistent growth. When did u start?

I got the 250k account at the start of August on a 90% discount, and had two small profitable days (up 1k), then blew the account (down 5.5k) fighting a trend day. That made me sit on my hands the entire month and think about how to approach this in a long term way.

My account reset on 28th August and I resumed trading on 29th.

Since the reset I've been profitable 14 out of 15 trading days (I took two weeks out for holiday); several of those days were very hard won - persistence paid off.

2023-10-11-bulenox-progress.jpg (49.91 KiB) Viewed 1692 times

There are a couple of August 6J trades in the image above which don't have the correct commission rates applied - the balance shown in Rithmic is 261,351 making a total net profit of 11,351 not the 11,578 shown in the attachment from SierraChart.

Sierra tells me some very interesting stats:

• Profit factor on the account is 1.89
• Max drawdown has been -$2400 (that happened last week I think while I worked myself out of the red)
• Max trade loss as -$1200 (3 point loss on 8 lots, ouch)
• 69.23% profitable over 195 trades; this drops to 61% for flat-to-flat trades
• Average flat-to-flat winning trade is $540
• Average flat-to-flat losing trades is -$427
• Average flat-to-flat profit factor: 1.27
• Average time in a winning trade: 18:48
• Average time in a losing trade: 10:43
• I think my average trade size is 3.5 lots.. Sierra doesn't show this very well
• Average flat-to-flat points made: 3.25

I'm showing flat-to-flat values because I think they better reflect that I scale in and out.

As I said in a previous post, I'm not a very efficient trader by any means (my stats look quite ugly) - I can flip-flop between being green and red; but these better-than-before trade decisions are moving me forward to passing the eval.

My strategy has been to get used to running a "large" account: I can grow into it without changing my setup; I have margin available should I want to add several times to a trade, and it allows me to trade successively larger size over the same price ranges as before.

If I can pass the eval and then build a 5%+ profit cushion into the account, then I feel I'm in a good position to ease into some risk gearing - which is when I'll start using more of my available margin (25 lots max for the account).

I've got a very long journey ahead of me, so the thing I need to do most is not mess the whole thing up by blowing the account. The down days will come but my job is to survive them so that I can turn up again the next day!

[aliassmith]

Bulenox eval update:

Net +0.387% today, 4.54% cumulative, 6% target.

I had a good session this morning: got long and scaled out as we approached a zline. Got stopped out for a sweep of the zline high, then saw it for was it was and got short again and scaled out as we pushed lower. I left a runner thinking we might get a push to prior hourly lows, but that didn't play out, so that was a scratch. Got short again for a small scalp and left it at that.

Was open to the idea of price moving further, but didn't give away too much profit when proven wrong.

I looked for an obvious opportunity to position for a "push to liquidity" into the close.. there was a high volume area above the current price area and nothing below, so set a 1x lot long limit to ride that up but it wasn't triggered (I cancelled it once we pushed higher). Price actually tested the highs then retreated 8 points and we had a fairly quiet close.

Nice consistent growth. When did u start?

I checked, looks like about 1 month seriously with some messing around before that. 4% in a month might not seem like a lot but, if you have four $50k accounts thats $100k a year. Might not be retirement money. It however can be life changing to many.

Of course 10 accounts would be about a quarter million a year.

Putting $250k in your corn/ wheat business can for sure be incredible.

Edit made this exactly when u posted

[aliassmith]

Bulenox eval update:

Net +0.387% today, 4.54% cumulative, 6% target.

I had a good session this morning: got long and scaled out as we approached a zline. Got stopped out for a sweep of the zline high, then saw it for was it was and got short again and scaled out as we pushed lower. I left a runner thinking we might get a push to prior hourly lows, but that didn't play out, so that was a scratch. Got short again for a small scalp and left it at that.

Was open to the idea of price moving further, but didn't give away too much profit when proven wrong.

I looked for an obvious opportunity to position for a "push to liquidity" into the close.. there was a high volume area above the current price area and nothing below, so set a 1x lot long limit to ride that up but it wasn't triggered (I cancelled it once we pushed higher). Price actually tested the highs then retreated 8 points and we had a fairly quiet close.

Nice consistent growth. When did u start?

I got the 250k account at the start of August on a 90% discount, and had two small profitable days (up 1k), then blew the account (down 5.5k) fighting a trend day. That made me sit on my hands the entire month and think about how to approach this in a long term way.

My account reset on 28th August and I resumed trading on 29th.

Since the reset I've been profitable 14 out of 15 trading days (I took two weeks out for holiday); several of those days were very hard won - persistence paid off.

2023-10-11-bulenox-progress.jpg

There are a couple of August 6J trades in the image above which don't have the correct commission rates applied - the balance shown in Rithmic is 261,351 making a total net profit of 11,351 not the 11,578 shown in the attachment from SierraChart.

Sierra tells me some very interesting stats:

• Profit factor on the account is 1.89
• Max drawdown has been -$2400 (that happened last week I think while I worked myself out of the red)
• Max trade loss as -$1200 (3 point loss on 8 lots, ouch)
• 69.23% profitable over 195 trades; this drops to 61% for flat-to-flat trades
• Average flat-to-flat winning trade is $540
• Average flat-to-flat losing trades is -$427
• Average flat-to-flat profit factor: 1.27
• Average time in a winning trade: 18:48
• Average time in a losing trade: 10:43
• I think my average trade size is 3.5 lots.. Sierra doesn't show this very well
• Average flat-to-flat points made: 3.25

I'm showing flat-to-flat values because I think they better reflect that I scale in and out.

As I said in a previous post, I'm not a very efficient trader by any means (my stats look quite ugly) - I can flip-flop between being green and red; but these better-than-before trade decisions are moving me forward to passing the eval.

My strategy has been to get used to running a "large" account: I can grow into it without changing my setup; I have margin available should I want to add several times to a trade, and it allows me to trade successively larger size over the same price ranges as before.

If I can pass the eval and then build a 5%+ profit cushion into the account, then I feel I'm in a good position to ease into some risk gearing - which is when I'll start using more of my available margin (25 lots max for the account).

I've got a very long journey ahead of me, so the thing I need to do most is not mess the whole thing up by blowing the account. The down days will come but my job is to survive them so that I can turn up again the next day!

Does sierra have trade copy and will it work with 4 $250k accounts?

[bb01100100]

Does sierra have trade copy and will it work with 4 $250k accounts?

Yes - the one you mentioned a little while ago in your Dead Horse thread actually looks quite well done:

https://www.simplesystemtrading.com/local-trade-copier/

SierraChart lets you run multiple instances on the same machine and can leverage a client/server architecture where a "DTC Server" broadcasts price feed data to the other instances. I believe this gets around some of the market data subscription requirements by the exchanges.

Sitting within that would be Frederick's "Local Trade Copier v2" - you'd nominate one of your instance's charts to be the "sender" and then configure a chart on each of the other instances to be the "receiver" of trade actions.

Each "receiver" chart could operate differently:

• It could mirror completely the size, stops and targets from the "sender chart"
• It could mirror as above, but actually trade MES instead of main chart ES
• It could use its own size, stops and targets
• It could initiate a maximum size reverse position, lock up the PC and set it on fire before you can blink. Maybe.

That might help with trading different account sizes.. some with full lots, some with micros.

This setup requires using the same Windows PC because all the comms are done via inter-process communication (IPC, super fast since no network is involved) - I don't believe there is any remote networking feature available. Luckily SierraChart has a very small resource footprint, somewhat similar to MT4.

After much clicking about I finally found the price: $33 per month recurring - very reasonable for the value provided.

Bulenox rules are unclear about "master" accounts:
- "Trader could have up to 11 master accounts", and
- "Traders can manage up to three (3) Master Accounts simultaneously
(https://bulenox.com/help/master-account/#commitment)

If I get to the point of considering more accounts I'd probably look more seriously at Apex.. I was put off originally by the high monthly eval fees and more modest caps on max size for what I was looking for originally.

Other than marketing emails, Bulenox they are 100% silent.. for all I know there is nothing on the other side of my Rithmic user id... At least with Apex I've heard that people get paid out.

[bb01100100]

CFD account, corn swing trade update:

I've made 0.5% in financing (carry?) fees on my small swing trade - interesting.

Trade has retraced back to zline, which has been defended (so far), so I added another unit as price pushed up out of a pattern yesterday.. it has since pulled back, so we'll see what happens next.

2023-10-11-CORN-swing.jpg (106.65 KiB) Viewed 1642 times

I'm reading Elaine Kub's book "Mastering the Grain Markets" https://elainekub.com/mastering-the-grain-markets/ - an informative read so far about cash grain contracts and who the players are and the types of arbitrage they carry out.

I still have no sense of the fundamental drivers behind the Corn trade I have on - it's a technical chart trade still.

When I know what's going on with Corn I'd like to put a calendar spread trade on; but for now it's CFDs and simple charts.

[aliassmith]

Does sierra have trade copy and will it work with 4 $250k accounts?

Yes - the one you mentioned a little while ago in your Dead Horse thread actually looks quite well done:

https://www.simplesystemtrading.com/local-trade-copier/

SierraChart lets you run multiple instances on the same machine and can leverage a client/server architecture where a "DTC Server" broadcasts price feed data to the other instances. I believe this gets around some of the market data subscription requirements by the exchanges.

Sitting within that would be Frederick's "Local Trade Copier v2" - you'd nominate one of your instance's charts to be the "sender" and then configure a chart on each of the other instances to be the "receiver" of trade actions.

Each "receiver" chart could operate differently:

• It could mirror completely the size, stops and targets from the "sender chart"
• It could mirror as above, but actually trade MES instead of main chart ES
• It could use its own size, stops and targets
• It could initiate a maximum size reverse position, lock up the PC and set it on fire before you can blink. Maybe.

That might help with trading different account sizes.. some with full lots, some with micros.

This setup requires using the same Windows PC because all the comms are done via inter-process communication (IPC, super fast since no network is involved) - I don't believe there is any remote networking feature available. Luckily SierraChart has a very small resource footprint, somewhat similar to MT4.

After much clicking about I finally found the price: $33 per month recurring - very reasonable for the value provided.

Bulenox rules are unclear about "master" accounts:
- "Trader could have up to 11 master accounts", and
- "Traders can manage up to three (3) Master Accounts simultaneously
(https://bulenox.com/help/master-account/#commitment)

If I get to the point of considering more accounts I'd probably look more seriously at Apex.. I was put off originally by the high monthly eval fees and more modest caps on max size for what I was looking for originally.

Other than marketing emails, Bulenox they are 100% silent.. for all I know there is nothing on the other side of my Rithmic user id... At least with Apex I've heard that people get paid out.

The Bulenox 3 master accounts is a limit until they reach their profit cushion requirement.

You'll be able to run 11 accounts simultaneously at some point.

I was thinking 4 accounts for an even $1 million and about $500k a year. Doing no better or worse than you are currently doing.

Build corn, wheat, hogs, cattle business with the profits.

[bb01100100]

The Bulenox 3 master accounts is a limit until they reach their profit cushion requirement.

You'll be able to run 11 accounts simultaneously at some point.

I was thinking 4 accounts for an even $1 million and about $500k a year. Doing no better or worse than you are currently doing.

Build corn, wheat, hogs, cattle business with the profits.

Oh I see; that's excellent... there is a lot of head-room for running a larger operation.

Are you aware of any futures prop firm that supports swing trading (holding at least overnight, perhaps even over the weekend)? I've seen CFD places (e.g. FTMO Swing account) but no futures based accounts..