Here I Go Again, Starting Another Futures Journal

Since 2020 has been the weirdest year of my 54 years on this planet let's start this off with some weird and wonderful predictions shall we?



First, I am going to take this tiny futures account (current balance $670.36) and turn it into over $1 million dollars by the end of 2020. Go big or go home. LOL!
Next, I expect the markets to drop hard again probably 1-2 months prior to the November election.
While I do not endorse any political party or candidate, Joe Biden will be nominated for his party and will choose a person of color (politically correct, LOL) as his running mate. Possibly even a woman. If he doesn't then he is a bigger idiot than he appears.
Because of the high unemployment, poor market conditions, racial unrest, etc. Trump will lose the election in the fall.
In his acceptance speech, Joe Biden will utter these words "Donald Trump.... you're FIRED!" LOL! I know I would.

These are all just in fun. Thought I would put it here just to see how many come true.

Now on to the journal. I suck at keeping a journal. Many times I have started a thread only to stop it not long after starting. I want to get better so bear with me once again as I try.

Please remember, this is a journal. While I will try to explain how I am trading, get over it if I don't do well at that either. The teacher gene skipped me. I will update this thread once a trade starts. Possibly a few times as the trade develops. I may go back at the end of each day and add some notes.

I want to have longer running trades (getting out too quickly has always been my nemesis). Because of this, no more very short time frames. Bye bye 20 second and 1 minute charts.

My tolerance for risk is high. Do not judge me for my position sizing for this account. If I lose it I am out $500 (the initial deposit). I can live with that.

Keep it positive please. Too much negativity in the world right now.

No custom indicators, no EA's (although I am using MT5 for this account). I have found that certain candlesticks in a specific position in relation to moving averages can yield significant results. Let's just keep it simple and low stress.

Primarily will trade ES (S & P 500 futures) due to it being much smoother than NQ futures.

Updates will begin in the morning.

Annnnnd right as I get ready to start doing this AMP Futures doubles their intra-day margin. One day of a bigger than normal move and they start raising margins. Bit of a chicken move on their part in my opinion. Oh well, guess I will trade some micro's to start. LOL! It's best long term anyway.

Market volatility is crazy again today. NQ got pushed up about 250 points then they sprung the trap and drove it down 280 points.

ES 5 minute candles were too big for most trades today. I only took one trade so far and it was with 1 micro. Didn't even hold onto it for more than a minute with the way things are swinging.

In the picture below: 200 ema (yellow line), 60 ema (white line), 21 ema (red line). All were lined up for a short. We had a rejection candle off of the 200 ema (it made a higher high then closed lower without making a new lower low). Entry was at the low of the previous candle.



Resulted in just 5 bucks of profit (minus commissions of course).

mags, I see you are swing trading the 5min chart for the micro es. what are your stop/profit parameters?
nerves of steel trading an acct this size, that's ok, totally different strategy for this type of trading.
good luck
regards
goma

Stops will naturally vary with the market. Typically just beyond the swing high of the entry point.

What I am dealing with on the 5 min is days like today that don't have any entries but the markets move nicely. I may have to drop back to the 1 min for some entries. I have been monitoring it this morning.

Targets are discretionary. Looking mostly for price to get over extended and then show signs of weakness.

good outlook, I tend to gravitate to pull backs as well, then again on the 20sec, a pull back is often noise in this type of environment(volatility).
marked up a 1 minute chart on the micro es, more in line with a trader Vic. approach, depending on your risk tolerance, he used it
on much larger time frames as well. no moving averages, but the elipse's on the right are on the "eights" which still seem to hold
attraction (probably for older traders). seems to range a bit between these type points. top and bottom horizontal lines are first highest and lowest points
I mark off if I smell a range coming up.
at any rate, the sporadic price action may be partly due to new stay at home "12 yr olds on their robinhood accts", and lack of conviction/liquidity
by the large players.
good luck
regards
goma

I didn't take any trades today. I spent some of the day trying to figure out why I always seem to lock up on my trading whenever I have a journal running.

Just like most people I hate to be wrong. Even though I know that it comes as a part of the game in trading whenever I am wrong without a journal it is private. I can get over it and put it behind me and move on. Being wrong publicly is a whole different level when it comes to the psychology of trading. Now to get over it.

If I don't see a trade set up on the 5 min within a few minutes of market open, then I will start monitoring the 1 minute chart to find a good place to jump in. I could have done really well today if I had done just that. Around 20 minutes after market open there was a really nice pull back that showed up on the 1 min chart. We shall see how this works tomorrow.

Just need to pull the trigger and get over the fear of being wrong publicly. Let's do this!

Nice ! i am following

took 8 trades on sim this morning after uncle jay spoke. one flat, 5 winners and 2 losses. first trade was a 1-2-3 minus 9T, got whipped out
on price action. remainder were trend trades. I thought it not appropriate to post this in the plan the trade forum, a very valid system, just not
my cup of tea during these high volatility times. trend trading on the 20sec chart is enough. stops were always just above or below trend lines I drew.
not a great risk reward but worked out for plus23T vs minus 11T. eight's again seemed to be in play for price attractions. if this doesn't fit this forum for
you I will not post further.
good luck
regards
goma

since back to live trades, my number of entries has decreased, hey it's real money here. anyways took short at a break in a trend occurring at the
top of a larger range (approx 3106 down to 3094). sideways action, low volatility 3T plus. didn't want to trade too close to the
top of the hour as suspected it would get busy. it did. tmro are some huge option expirations at half and whole numbers, chart below shows how
much they have increased (or decreased) since last week. will be interesting to say the least. since you didn't kick me off your thread yet, I'll
post my "other style" of trading futures here.
good luck
regards
goma

Good stuff.

Allergies have me down and out right now. Grass pollen is the worst for me and it is showing as very high in the area. Haven't done anything trading related the last few days. Getting some rain right now so hopefully it will wash it all down for me and I can get going.

nothing new to report. missed every entry attempt this morning. if price moves beyond my take profit limit I close the attempt, no chasing
just re-evaluate. several 1-2-3's could have been profitable, missed those as well. must be monday. lots of "wood" to chop at these
levels before a breakout one way or another. hope your allergies are better. btw, I hate the middle
good luck
regards
goma

Only took one trade this morning to test out MultiCharts. I switched from MT5 because I wanted more flexibility in the time frames I wanted available and AMP futures offers MultiCharts for free. MT5 the lowest you can go is 1 minute.

I am also switching back to NQ for my trades. ES is nice but it can be a pain at time with how I trade. I also have much more experience with NQ.

Below is a picture of the trade I took for a whopping 4 ticks on MNQ. Like I said I was just making sure that the new software worked properly.



Will start back Monday full steam. I may even have a surprise Monday when I start. Stay tuned. LOL!

Here you are Magnum - this guy trades Micro Futures. He actually seemed to make sense
Seriously, good luck with your journal.

Good info. He has a great voice for making videos. Thanks.

So sick of missing these simple entries. Self doubt will kill everything regardless of what you are doing.

Great entry this morning just after market open. Chickened out and only caught +7 ticks. Got scared when price started jumping around like it normally does just after market open. LOL! I think I just realized why I am jumping out too early. I am too focused on the potential losses. I have my stop set for an arbitrary value initially. That is just to get it set in case of an unexpected uhoh. What I should be doing and now that I am using Multicharts I can do it, is move my stop even before the trade starts. I typically use buy stop limits and sell stop limits for entering a position. That gives me some time to adjust the stop to a more reasonable value depending on market conditions. The small account size doesn't help either but there is nothing I can do about that. I will keep working on me.

Things to fix for Wednesday's trading. Each trade will only have three possible outcomes:

1. Full stop to the swing high/low +3 ticks. Early morning entries will be based on either the 1 min chart or the 5 minute. Once the markets start to move, I will use the 20 second chart for entries.
2. Small reward at breakeven +3 ticks. Stop cannot be moved until EMA 21 is in front of the entry point and price has moved away from it. So in the example above, you couldn't move the stop initially to the EMA 21 because that was ahead of the current price. Instead I will wait for an area where the candle is above and not touching the 21 ema.
3. Big reward. At 200 ticks or more, stop will trail the 21 ema.

Once a trade has started, these are the only possible outcomes. I will not close a trade based on my decision to do so. It's obvious that I cannot do that properly so I will allow things to happen as they may.

Fridays are usually the worst for me as far as results go. I decided to just scalp a little today to try and break my freaky Friday's curse. Took 4 trades for a total of 86 ticks on a single micro contract.

Trade 1: The four moving averages you see on the 20 second chart below are the 21 (red), 50 (white), 200(yellow) and 800(purple) ema's. In this case the price was below all of the moving averages from the big drop at the opening of the markets. Took a long at the break of the last up candle followed by a down candle. The other thing on this trade was the 200 ema was above the 800 meaning the longer term trend was still up.

Trade 2:Kind of hard to see on the pic but price had moved back up above the 21 ema with the 21 being below the 50. Entry was on the break of the last down candle that was followed by an up candle.

Trade 3: Basically the same as 2 but I should have waited for price to pull back a bit more. It worked out in the end but wasn't an ideal entry.

Trade 4: Much better entry with quick results.

Over all I am happy with today's results. I believe next week will be even better. I am considering live streaming (no audio) just to record the trades. Still debating on that part.