Call me Vidvad - I day trade futures

You misunderstand the meaning of "tilt". Here is what I mean, as it eloquently explained by Google Labs. I have an edge in MM and Mindfulness.

I understand that every trade has its own path, I do not have emotions anymore as I trade, regardless which way this trade will go.

I have not changed my trading plan in the last 3 years. I do not have "tilt".

100%

Even those who have reached "Market Wizard" status, trading huge personal accounts on the floors of the exchanges or large pools of investor funds have tilted, often losing millions of dollars in a day or over the course of a few days. Tilt is an ever-present danger unless you are a cyborg or a sociopath. Part of my roulette epiphany was a real awareness of the damage tilt has done to me periodically over the years, an awareness that multiple losses can undermine my emotional discipline quickly, and that I must be mindful of the signs of tilt so as to stop it in its tracks before it does me harm.

I think it would be a mistake for any trader to think he has finally and forever conquered tilt. It leaves an unguarded flank in your trading plan exposed to attack from an enemy within.

I want to thank all those who have contributed thoughts and shared their experiences here in my journal. While we haven't all always agreed with one another, nonetheless each and every one of you has in some way contributed to my growth and improvement as a trader over the past year. I thank you all.

I wish you all a healthy and prosperous year ahead in 2025.

"Tilt is an ever-present danger unless you are a cyborg or a sociopath."

I believe I am neither

Let me put it this way: I believe in statistics of my edge.

Yes, if statistics show that my edge is diminishing, I adjust my edge and continue trading. That adjustment is part of my plan.
I do not deviate from plan outside of adjusting my edge, if statistics call for it. Therefore I do not call it "tilt" It is part of my plan.

This is probably last time I will comment on this subject. 8 years in this business, it took me 5 years to get rid of the tilt you are writing about. I won over the "tilt", and has been trading without "tilt" past 3 years with success of an average +10% a month. That's about it.

Yes, same to you and subs who interact here, finally a thread with smart discussion outside of displaying trades in hindsight and irrelevant(to successful trading) discussions of how to enter a trade and what indicator to use.

Thank you. That's why I will be starting a new journal soon. This journal started a s a typiical charts and indicator journal (though it was never a systems thread).

I want to start a fresh journal where the focus will be what I call my roulette epiphany from the very beginning.

There are many methods and systems one can choose to trade if one wants to make a consistent profit.

The real issue is the mental discipline to remain committed to an edge and the emotional control not to deviate from it or do damage through over leveraging, over trading, or adding to losing trades.

Dow Futures M1 TF.

This is live trade chart for the purpose to display commitment to the trade.

You can see SL, TP, and that at the best PA level for this trade, profit was 156 Pips(Points). As per my trading plan for this trade, my TP has not been reached.

Do you think, I was tempted to grab 150 pips and be happy about it? If answer is - "Yes" - you would be wrong. I would be devastated.

If I would to take this profit, my edge of the trading plan that incorporates Entry, Money Management and Mindfulness(No Mindfuck here for Greed and Fear) would be ruined.

I know I will be ahead in my next 50 trades if I stick to my trading plan. That is a winning attitude of 10-12% per month for the past 3 years.

To finish up on this trade, it ended with -5 Pips --- all per trading plan(second image)

Good Day today, all by trading plan. I will call this episode "2 Days in the life of the real trader" See posting above. I think I made my point.

I appreciate VidVad that I wanted to do this 2 days display on this thread. Done.

YM HOLO style short.

HOLO Template (60 minute):



And using a reproduction of Driven's template (five munute ohlc & Heiken Ashi combo)

MNQ/NQ are really on the verge of becoming untradable for me as the intrabar ranges, even on 1 minute charts, has become so large that risk is difficult to manage appropriately.

MES/ES and MYM/YM are possible alternatives.

Also, might be looking again at methods like HOLO which are more "level to level" trades that are not as susceptible to the short term back and forth we're seeing on the smaller bar durations like the 15, 5, and 1, minute.

Part of the roulette epiphany is the acceptance of the risk and uncertainty of every trade. The current looniness of the MNQ.NQ has made it difficult to keep risk at an aceptable level.

Today is very very difficult day, CHOP CHOP CHOP, it is a day like today that tests good and bad traders. I lost 2 trades on trailing stops and stopped trading.

There is not much chirping going on on FF, I expect 95% of the people lost money or revenge trading right now.

My plan is to stop trading after reached max amount of a loss per day.

I live to trade another day and still profitable for the week.

I decided to post a chart with losses. a rarity on FF and in the "guru's" world.

That is a very, very good part of a trading plan.

For 2025, I Have a max daily loss limit of $500 after which my account will auto liquidate and lock me out for the day.

If I accumulate profits over time and increase trade size as a result, I will raise the max daily loss limit.

You can also do it by % of the account as it grows, as an example 3% of the account per day. It is not an easy situation when you stop and then market go's your way on the next "would of been" trade, but a MUST STOP.

% of Stop Loss is direct corrélation with Monthly profit you expect to make. I expect 10% a month, so I have to go with rather larger then I would like % of Stop Loss per day.

Hi Vidvad long over due, but i thought i would ask anyway

Do you mind posting your exact ATM bracket if its not too much to ask for?

Btw how many contracts do you use per trade? MES, ES?

Kind regards

This is how the MES-ES is set up currently. Keep in mind that trade situations vary. When I place an entry order on MES-ES, it is either a limit order or a stop market order. Once filled, these brackets are placed by the platform automatically. Current is -16 tick stop loss (-4 points) and +20 tick take profit (+5 points). I adjust these orders once I have a position. For example, there was a HOLO short opportunity today where once a posion was entered, the stop loss would have been reduced to -12 ticks, and the take profit would have been increased to +97 ticks.

Trade size varies and I have sized down since the volatility started picking up. I went from trading 1 to 5 NQ's to trading 1 MNQ, as an example.

I added a new funded account to my portfolio tonight and when I start trading that account I will be starting with 1 to 3 micros, as it only has a $2000 drawdown allowance.

If I may share a piece of advice, I'd suggest that what size someone else trades should be of no concern to us as traders. Each of us should trade the size that lets the trader trade from a care-free state of mind and also be in agreement with one's level of capital so as to avoid the risk of ruin i.e. "blowing up."

I know some are trading 100 ES at a clip. I know a trader who posts regularly to twitter who blew up his $250,000 personal account right before Christmas trading 150 ES at a clip.

I'd rather trade 1 MES and know for certain there was no chance of me losing my account than have $250K and get absolutely wrecked trading Navinder Sarao size.

As far as ATM strategies go, every set up has its own ATM. I have a method known as the 9/30, when I was trading it on NQ I was using a 25 tick stop loss and take profit. Under current conditions, those parameters are laughable. For the NQ roulette, a 12.5 point stop and 25 point take profit was working well for most of two months. With the rise in volatility, those figures are no longer appropriate.

Every instrument will need its own money management design, and different methods on the same instrument will require different money management designs. While price action is largely stable, volatility expands and contracts, so money management plans should be continually reviewed and revised as market conditions demand. NQ is moving 20, 40, 60 points in a minute or less these days. The money management that worked in November is currently obsolete. If you were trading 5 NQ's in November when price was moving an average of 6 or 7 points every 1 minute bar, and it is nor averaging 10 times that, then your largest size today should be 5 micros, or 1/10th of the largest size three months ago.

So whatever answer I give you today as to the size I am trading is likely going to be different three months from now.

So this long answer to a simple question is so I can make the following point: Only you know your method and system and the bar duration you are using to trade. Only you can do the back testing and data collection necessary to determine the proper money management functions of your trading plan.

Good luck in 2025!

I will be starting my new journal any day now. I have added a new funded account to my stable of prop accounts this evening, and that is what I've been waiting for. The next journal will pick up where this one is: Exploring the roulette epiphany and strategies for dealing with and protecting oneself from the mental assaults that undermine successful trading. I will continue to work through the insights I am still gaining as the result of my roulette epiphany. I will use the newly funded account to offer a practical applicartion of the roulette mindset.

I am still trading my Topstep accounts. I've added a prop account with a second prop firm.

I am reposting this information from early in the thread. When I refer to the HOLO method I am referring to FF member TooSlow's HOLO method which you can find in his thread in the systems section here at FF.

I am posting it because given the increase in volatility, I may be moving back to this method for the time being as I find it an easy method to trade and to manage risk. Any method you trade is fine. The roulette epiphany will allow to you to be profitable with any method that has an edge. However, if a method requires too much risk for you emotional stability, then that method will be difficult for you. The NQ has become too wild for me at the moment. HOLO on ES, YM, or CL will be easier for me to trade and maintain my composure, stick to the plan, etc.

I would like to note that one change I do make is that if price is far below the Highest Hourly Open (HO) or above Lowest Hourly Open (LO), then I will look at the most recent HOLO's and trade those levels. I will give an example of this in separate post.


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I have copied and pasted below the rules for the original HOLO presented by too slow. I do not use any of the rules that have been added later to try to make it easy for those who were too stupid to be able to trade by the original rules. The new rules make it more confusing, imo. If you're interested in learning the HOLO, the following is all you need to learn:



HIGHEST OPEN / LOWEST OPEN TRADE

Place a line at the highest H1 open and lowest H1 open for the current day.

Sell short at the highest H1 open after price goes up through it and comes back down.

Buy at the lowest H1 open after price goes down through it and comes back up.


Stop loss is the current daily high or current daily low.
Adjust your position size accordingly.

Take profit by moving stop. (I don't like the following three rules as I think they are likely to result in a lot of small losses and breakeven trades while leaving MANY large profits on the table. - vidvad)
When trade is +5 or more, move stop to BE+1.
When trade is +10 or more, move to to BE+5, or switch to trailing stop.
Optional exit is to exit part of trade position with a profit to bank it, move stop to BE+1 and watch the market.

(Each instrument has its own character and volatility and you should use that character to develop a trading plan. For CL, I use a +50 tick take profit and a max stop loss of -25 ticks. I will place my stop 2-3 ticks above the high/below the low of day. If the high or low of day is more than 25 ticks from entry, I max my stop loss at -25 ticks. I give these trades all the room they need to breath. If I went to +1 stop when the trade was +5 ticks I'd have about a 98% win rate with an average win of 1 tick, not even enough to cover commissions and fees! - vidvad)

NOTE:

Do not wait for the bar to close to enter a trade.


WARNING

When price breaks through yesterday's high or low or makes a new high or low today, that is a breakout!
Trade the reversal with caution.

First, read the rules.
Do not add anything to the rules.
Do not subtracted anything from the rules.
Do not modify the rules.
Read the rules, again.

The first line: Place a line at the highest H1 open and lowest H1 open for the current day.
Current day means today according to your broker.
My broker starts a new day at 5PM NY time which means when it is 5PM, I have to move the lines.

The second line: Sell short at the highest H1 open after price goes up through it and comes back down.
Price has to GO UP FIRST.
Price has to GO ABOVE the highest H1 open.
AFTER, price has risen above the highest H1 open, THEN AND ONLY THEN, do you enter a short trade when price falls back down to the highest H1 open.

The third line: Buy at the lowest H1 open after price goes down through it and comes back up.
Price has to GO DOWN FIRST.
Price has to GO BELOW the lowest H1 open.
AFTER, price has dropped below the lowest H1 open, THEN AND ONLY THEN, do you enter a long trade when price rises back up to the lowest H1 open.

The most difficult thing about this method is you have to WAIT.
For many traders, waiting does not come naturally.
Failure to wait, will in most cases, result in losses.
I suggest you literally sit on your hands while you wait to avoid entering a trade too soon.

There is no "trick" to this method.
No gimmicks.

Let me suggest at the end of the trading day you post your marked up charts here.
We can see how many days price closes above the highest H1 open and below the lowest H1 open.
Zero will mean there would not have been a loss when the rules were followed.

Many traders ask how I know when the highest open and lowest open occur during the day because the next bar may make a new high/low.
I do not know.
No one knows.
What we know, from the previous count, is the close is usually below the highest H1 open and above the lowest H1 open.
This is our "edge".
This is what allows us to bank pips on a daily basis.

Not much to do, just finished my 6 mile run...a bit of philosophy below..

Good start for you, especially crossed out parts of this technique..although you know my preference not to really care about entries too much.

It is all how you manage it per your plan and not deviating even a 1 pip from Positions size, SL, Trailing, TP when MindFuck(Fear and Greed) overtakes your brain.

Here is something new for you. When MindFuck start overtaking the brain, do not dismiss it, just accept it and say "Fuck Off" few times..power of acceptance and not dismissal helped me over the last few years.

Yesterday I took this short on the YM (US30, DJIA futures).



The Highest Hourly Open occurred before the start of the NY session (8:00 AM) and the NYSE session (9:30 AM). I used the Highest Open of the NY session as the target level for new shorts. There was a preceding HOLO long but I wasn't trading YM at that time.

Per TooSLow's rules, I entered early. Price was in "an area of interest" but it had not yet dropped back below the level of the Highest Open that I was using, which is the trigger for a short per TooSlow's approach to this method.

What I do is to start watching the 5 minute YM once price is above the HO level. Currently I have my chart set up like Driven18 has his charts: 5 minute OHLC bars so I know the actually price of the YM, and I superimpose Heiken Ashi candle bodies on the OHLC which is an indicator of trend, potential trend change. Once price went above the highest 60 minute open I placed a sell stop a tick below the Highest M5 candle open. That is how I got positioned short where I did.



My stop loss was above the high of that entry bar, my take profit was the blue line which was the previous day's low.

Had I been stopped out, the loss would have been 18 ticks, and I would have entered another sell stop below whatever the current highest 5 minute open would have been. As it happened, this particular trade never backed up toward the stop loss, and instead price fell over the next hour to the profit target. They are not all so nice to me lol. This trade was a massive 11.44 reward to risk (+206 Take Profit target and -18 tick stop loss). This is not the norm.

I don't want this thread to become about methods and systems.

The point of sharing this is that I have been using an M15 method on the NQ since my roulette epiphany. I have been and remain profitable using that method. But the volatility recently has caused 1) a higher probability of consecutive losses and 2) significantly larger losses than I am willing to incur.

I have several methods I like to trade: A 9/30 method using two moving averages, which a a scalp method, the M15 Roulette Epiphany method, which is also a scalp method though aiming for somewhat larger targets than the 9/30, and the HOLO method, which I consider more of a swing method as I apply it. I am not systems hopping. I am simply going to apply particular method that I have in my arsenal that is best suited to the market environment of the moment.

Of the three methods, the HOLO with M5 accompaniment is probably the one that will be suited to a wider variety of market environments than the other two. The M15 the second most versatile. The 9/30 is great on those days where we see 1 to 3 nice trends, but it gets chopped to death on range bound days.

I know you don't focus on entries as much as I do, but I find that by doing so I am able to better manage risk by varying position size. I haven't been doing much of this lately as I have been trading small size for the most part (average 3 micros on a micro trade, and 1 emini on a mini trade currently).

Also, by having an additional rule for entry, it helps keep me grounded in my rules and my plan.