Staying In My Lane - A Read-Only Journ(al/ey)

Actually my focus is 100% of the time on strategy that doesn't end positively. That is my only focus. I have said this before.... I don't care what journey my account takes during the intraday session, how much I have realized profits/losses or floating profit/losses as long as I end the session in profit, as long as I end the week and then the month in profits.... with no more 3 consecutive days and 3 consecutive weeks in losses and with no more than 10% of DD on initial capital. I will even willing to go up to 25% for positive expectancy but that is insane imo. I realize all this is fucking speculation and no amount of test is going to prevent losses but atleast I should have some decent validation in backtesting first. That's my whole idea. I am also introducing some more controls in terms of number of positions, consecutive losses, first loss within OC to stop trading etc. There are just too many ways to slice and dice the SL/TP/BE (or RealizedP, RealizedL, FloatingP, FloatingL) but within the context of OC theorem, I automatically know when to stop trading (loss of opportunity) and when to grow (increase of opportunity). That underlying model is in itself a risk/reward model.
Example: Talking in ranges as that is what the retail crowd understands.... if the current range at entry is only 50 ticks, and you have already had a realized loss of 2x25 ticks, 3rd trade regardless of the setup is a far more increased risk than the first two... unless it is a breakout trade with increasing range. This principle is pivotal to have the market structure take risk out of the equation just by setting a x% of range as risk to make y% of range... just as one example. Ofc I am oversimplifying this but for someone as impulsive as I am with aggressive stacking, such a underlying framework helps me in being disciplined. I force exit on the next tick every new trade manually or auto when any such "out-of-bounds' conditions are met.

I can take a pause in my journey and try the RR route you are proposing. I got no problems with that but I would prefer to get the entire recipe scripted item by item in sequence from start to finish listing all the necessary actions required per strategy. Before starting, I like to define the end point in actual and concrete numbers to validate against what would constitute a "positive outcome strategy with a concrete and quantifiable edge" ? Makes sense? Worst case, our readers will learn from this interaction :-)

Thus far, I have been avoiding the temptation of aggressive stacking (my real or only skillset of manual trading acquired from the millipede days) on NQ. I think I now know enough to introduce position management into my automation as a way of rapid scalping/profiting from short moves. It sure is, as we know, a double edge sword but it would be a good add to the strategy I have chosen to go live with (or atleast zeroing in on it with all my might lol)..

There is a way to "add multiple entries in the same direction" setting in the alert study. I will start with 1contract + 2 adds of 1 contract each so total of 3 trades and 3 contracts in one direction. Later on, if proven merit, I will start with 4 contract with 2 more add of 3 contracts each making a total of 10 contracts per stacking episode. This will then lead me into my MM module of making 100T per contract or 1000T per 10contract stacking episode per OC.

1000T per OC = $5000/OC = $1M per year

Alternative plan if first OC does not met the 100T goal or goes into loss

Introduce 2 or max 3 OCs per day to meet the daily goal of 1000T or 100T/10contract = $5000/day

Since I only have a $10K capital allocation towards NQ, it will have to be a forked decision later on whether to go with 100K capital entirely on NQ or spread across other indices or gold or oil. Most likely I will go with NQ > Gold > Oil > YM > Euro/asian index and then ES as part of my race towards $1M / year goal. ( I just shared too much about my plan to make a mockery of myself :-(

EDIT: Would I add to losses in the name of aggressive stacking or Scale-in... I am not sure yet. I have done this in spot FX but only by spanning my additions across related pairs based on currency strength. With NQ, there is only one strength and no correlation analysis... should be fun to see where I go with all this.... time will tell

I think I am going to pause on my decision to add/stack (as it is a little ahead of my stated plan). My plan as part of strategy development was to NOT proceed unless positive expectancy criteria is met. Because of tick-based testing challenges, I need to first focus on regular market replay to generate test results of my chosen algo. I could go that route but results won't be accurate or reliable. I feel I am at the crossroads here. First my coastline navigation algo looked promising (it still works perfectly well at NY session open). Then I progressed into navigating "inland" by detecting transitional phase from trending to ranging. I am now able to do that. Inland navigation logic is working. Further testing of inland navigation is proving to work perfectly fine for CoastLine navigation as well (during trending markets). All this coupled with Position management (adding in one direction when in profits only) via scaling in and out would represent the missing of nooks and corners (small inroads) and GPS doing a re-routing to continue towards the intended destination (i.e. Daily Profit Goal). Working great. no freezing during SIM forward testing. Overall a good day today to make this all work per my intended design.

Do I want to be always-in the market? Not for the entire session but definitely for the entire OC.
Do I want to create nano-OCs to aggressively squeeze 50 or 100Ticks from a 10T move? maybe but not initially with a small $10K capital.
Would I have a challenge in controlling my aggression towards the market? I most definitely will.
Should I put totaltrades, totalwins and totalloss trade count controls in place? I might have to. When equity explodes, I am known to add non-stop like a monkey with a baseball bat striking every other tick movement. I was to avoid going that route (as part of my plan in futures)... need to think this thru a little bit but all in all, feeling good about the progress I have made since my return from vacation. All the ideas I had "invented" in my head starring at the vast ocean have come to fruition !
Will I still make money when I go live... no fucking clue!

EDIT: Sneak peek into adding max 3 positions of one contract each when the trade goes in profit. when a reversal signal is met, it reverses the open trade(s) to continue the journey of adding one at a time....until a decent spike comes to touch my daily goal target to trigger a CLOSE ALL and STOP TRADING :- picture is of 8T range bar from today's session. I got some other junk on the right so unable to display the price grid atm.

EDIT1: I forget to thank FIFO regulation. I have whined like a b*tch about this regulation in the past in spot fx.... it is the RIGHT kind of regulation we need to 1) prevent scams in producing fake performance results (not many would understand this!) 2) prevents carrying losers and allows profiting from winners (not many will understand this either!)

I will look up and update my list of research projects mentioned in this thread.

Adding a new research item to my list:

1. How to (quantitatively) design a TREND FOLLOWING system that will work across ALL market conditions? (CP - I am coming for you bro!)

This is an addendum to the first research project "How to get on a trend at the very beginning and get off a tread at the very end (i.e. identify transition from trend to range)

Live trading day...
Lousy movements coupled with lousy entries (manual) but overall a ''good day" so far... I TILT when I am in profit..

CAREFUL FELLOW NQ traders - FOMC and Funds rate decision at 11am pacific today !!! I just opened another 3 contract trade before checking this:-(

Edit: I am out... phew!

Its an interesting journey V !

do the daily tally this month.. i need a pnl reporting buddy

will do (either daily/weekly or monthly per my accounting period once my algo goes live. that's the idea behind being transparent so others can follow... but I will not solicit feedback and comments on my performance. That is only for me to decide !

Today was just staying in touch with my manual trading like I have done in the past months.

I am going to trade the Fed Funds decision in 7 mins (and risk my profits!)... let's see if I still got skills as a "events trader" but doing my style on one pair is going to be hard!

had the same plan...but in spot forex this has turned out to be something i call "no event".

disappointing non-event with NQ as well.. still managed to get a decent lunch worth $45 lol. there was no momentum so got out too soon. it wasn't worth risking my profits

sheeesh, dont tell that 45$ can buy a "decent lunch", Hilmy will ban you!!
are you living in the 3rd world, or what part of this galaxy?!!
impossible!!

sorry man.. I can never compete with Hilmy. He is a pro and I am just a noob. I meant "buy us" lunch i.e.. family of 3 lol

fried chicken on me. With potato wedges

and water.

caught the nice drop

To the point i was making last night... it is so much easy to experience drawdowns when you have realized profits....if I lose, I will sting a little but no biggie
EDIT: Scratch trade... what a waste of time. I think NYSE Close gives me freaking anxiety as I am up against the close to force-close my positions. I dont like it at all !!!!

Done with this lousy movement :-(

Back to Algo development....

OMG - feeling lucky that I got the fuck out of this trade.... pure luck. I guess anxiety works both ways ROFL

QUESTION: Does anyone know how much of 1T in NQ represent in overall market cap for the stocks that make the index?