Joining the CME gang

This will be my final thread on this forum. This will be 100% focused on trading (unlike my previous journal). I will document my journey towards acquiring the Chicago Mercantile Exchange leasing membership (B3 level)

The reason for acquiring this membership is for significant cost advantage when trading futures. This also provides an end goal for this journal.

Membership types
https://www.cmegroup.com/company/mem...idual/cme.html

Buyout and Leasing prices
https://www.cmegroup.com/company/mem...e.html#pricing

Steps to become a member
https://www.cmegroup.com/company/mem...#becomeAMember

Forms
https://www.cmegroup.com/company/mem...cme.html#forms

Equity index roll dates for trading contracts
https://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equ...rolldates.html

The Format

I will post daily trading session results (mainly asian and US) beginning June 2019
Weekly posting of daily results
https://www.forexfactory.com/showthr...6#post12298046

Will post either sierra or trading view charts with executions
Will post weekly PnL/commission with occasional livestream trading

The youtube channel is here
https://www.forexfactory.com/showthr...5#post12331185

Please limit your posting on this thread. As much as I enjoy reading the suggested articles/videos/comments, I want to keep the thread clean for easier reference/quoting later on. If I notice my posts are getting drowned, I'll have to start blocking.

The Goal

So to acquire the membership, I want to make sure the goal account size and the planned contract size would be worth the savings in commissions. Based on my plan, the account size has to be around $150,000 with size of 6-12 contracts to make the membership worthwhile.

The How

The market that I will be trading is CME's Nasdaq 100 futures (NQ)

Strategy wise, I use volume weighted average price (vwap) as my foundation for setups. I also use high/low and Open price as reference levels. Size wise, I am going at it pretty conservatively. I learned the hard way that you have to keep the trade size under control because when volatility picks up on NQ; it will kill you if you're not careful.

I started trading futures late 2017. I was able to withdraw my deposit within a few months. The rest of the time I've had good and bad runs. Add to that withdrawals I had to make, what I have left of the house money is around $5000.

What I refuse to do is add back my original deposit because I do not want to get into the cycle of deposit/withdrawal anymore.

Trading is a very difficult endeavor. I've had limited success with forex. I stopped forex when I found futures and also at the time when my profits from forex was dwindling. I'll do the same in futures as well. If things don't work out in futures, I want to say that I walked away profitable or breakeven.

I just don't want to waste any more of my efforts and endless deposits on this speculation game. I dont' want to neglect my solid career to have the very off chance of becoming the top % who makes it (although I have never personally seen this group of people posting their results consistently).

I just turned 36, and I don't want to look back at this at 40,50, or 60 years of age and still struggling and having regrets.

The journey is tough..but I can see the destination


I plan to not trade this week so I can reset mentally and move forward next month.

See you in June

Current tally of pnl and account size

Couple of changes after the initial post. These changes would help me maintain this thread more consistently due to my work schedule:

1. weekly posting of daily results to include daily screenshots and spreadsheet of trade results

2. I am not going to use sierra journal format due to limitations I have mentioned in previous journal. I will create my own spreadsheet documenting the results of each setup with corresponding mae/mfe, and actual net ticks. This manual process will take a bit more time but the idea is that I can vouch for the integrity and accuracy of the data.

Had to trade today when I saw the 300 tick drop in asian. Plus it's the last day.

This also gives me a chance to show how i plan to report progress.

Every week, I will show the daily screenshot of the platform with executions (sierra or tradingview/cqg). These are my visual records of patterns and structure

I will also keep track of individual trade setups. Each setup will include the net ticks, mae/mfe. This is done through reviewing sierra's data and also manually calculating the ticks for each trade. Sierra lacks the accuracy when reporting mae/mfe.

And finally the daily PnL. The progress in PnL (thus in account size), will dictate when I will update size. Currently, the plan is:

0-50k = 1-4 contracts
50k-150k = 2-8 contracts
150K = 3-12 contracts.

Along they way I do plan to withdraw 2.5-5k. I believe in paying yourself along the way as you're working towards a goal. Once 150k is hit and trading the new 3-12 contracts size for 3 months (adaptation period), then I'll apply for CME membership. This will allow me to compare 3 months worth of broker commission before and after membership to see if it's worth it.

Doing the weekly update is actually a good idea given the work needed to analyze the trade results.

I'm using UTC time to better align the sessions start times within the daily bar

So for today, this is how it would look like:

Reporting update

Streamlining the spreadsheet instead of maintaining separate sheets for daily and trades.

Added time in/out (for hourly $ calc)
price in and out (for traceability)
Ticks is calculated per trade on the whole position (fade setups can have up to two trades in the setup)



Also want to highlight why i need to track mae/mfe manually cause sierra just like journlytix is inaccurate. I really don't understand what fucking method they use. it's a simple track of high/low price from entry to exit.





the blue line shows the maximum adverse price against my entry=48 ticks...





Anyway, this takes bit of time to do..so will post weekly as planned.

it's useless. this is for open positions i believe

what i need is for sierra trades spreadsheet to be correct per trade..which i shown above to be otherwise..

just realizing that avg price execution makes manual tick calculation a major pain in the ass, especially when trying to tie that to the NAV value progression.






It's like i have to go by how much i made/lose first and work backwards to find out the tick value.

Tradingview doesn't break position by execution price, but Sierra does keep track of this part pretty accurately.

just can't have anything perfect.

I think i can still keep it all in 1 spreadsheet but have to disconnect NAV from tick calc altogether..I can just use tradingview's execution price so i can still track how well each setup performs..

just stupid technicalities that i think i put too much emphasis on...

you don't want to see me tilt haha. My previous journal in the bin now can show you what tilt really means.

I'll respond to you and hopefully enough people will read before i delete it.

first of all, if you bother to read the first post, you understand what i'm trying to do here.

I wanted to make one last thread that is pure trading/stats related. No bullshit conversation about forums, life, family, health, religion, etc etc, no praises, no disses, preferably no interaction. Yea, that would be nice. Just don't post in here..leave me to my dark thoughts while i trade. That would be most ideal.

I haven't even post my first week yet, and there's conversation about forums...

you might ask, why even bother starting a thread in a public forum. Cause i fucking can...any other questions?

Been here over 10 years, and frankly i pretty much have seen and heard everything. It's all about execution and discipline now.

It's just me executing this last plan that I have. If i fail, this thread is done. If i succeed, this thread is done. Nothing else but to share this one last effort.

i have absolutely no discipline to track my trades manually. I tried, but i gave up after 2 days. Also i lost friday's execution arrows on sierra..so i was like what the fuck is the point of this now. Tried to use tradingview charts..but the arrows are just so damn small, plus no lines or prices attached to it.

Paying $39/month for journalytix doens't sound too bad compared to the time it takes to look over the trades individually. Its even harder when it's a on weekly basis cause you have all these damn trades you gotta look over. I guess that's the reason i did daily results, it was so much easier to track and capture on the spot.

i know i have stated i never want to share broker statements..but i feel like this is safe enough just to show traceability as to how i want to proceed this week going forward.

So the weekly analysis is, 4 contracts is A LOT of size for $5000 at the start. Plus the crazy volatility i was able to gain pnl quickly

the +2700 last friday is not due to tilt..here are the executions..just 4 contracts on breakout/trend..more grind

Reporting format update:

Due to the challenges I have with providing good chart screenshots throughout the week, I decided that I will be providing a livestream trading videos from time to time like I have done in the past. I'm thinking 1 livestream every 2 weeks would be doable due to my work schedule (can't stream at work or hotel---too slow).

This couple with the PnL spreadsheet that I'm sharing (with added column for commission) would meet the goals I have for this journal; a tally of account/commission size and a focus on trading with the streams.

I have cleaned up my channel to remove all non trading related videos. I'm still gaming, I'm still working out like a wanna weightlifting champion, i'm still experimenting with vacation video creativity. But those are all aside from trading so there's no need to be part of this journal/forum.

The past couple of weeks i have been traveling for work so no video. But I got a small gap in my schedule Monday, so will do a stream monday.

I'm going to link my youtube channel on 1st page with all the current reporting updates.
http://www.youtube.com/hiitsprint

Anyway, moving to last week performance