The PriceBob Strategy

Hi Turnip

What UK time are you using ? (Sorry i am just reading thru the thread (from back to front weird as I am!!))

PA

I'm going to try to see this little series through to the end. I do have some hurdles coming up that may cause me to have to hit the "pause" button; however, I am hoping to avoid having to do so as I would prefer to march it through straight to the end. Basically, a series of VLOGs showing that Fixed Bar and Reversal Bar trading when accompanied by the mindset of the roulette epiphany, anything is possible.

Hopefully I won't embarrass myself too badly lol

Not the day I should have had. I had a serious platform malfunction that could easily have cost me this account. Fortunately, I was able to access the account through Tradovate and correct course. I'll be back at it tomorrow and hopefully Ninjatrader behaves itself.

I'm waiting for the red news to pass at 8:30 AM before trading. The volume per one minute bar has been in the low hundreds, except for that large range spike which saw over 3500 contracts suddenly trade.

If you were scalping, and you were short, you were probaly taken out with a large loss and left wonder "WTF!" just happened?

I don't know who or why that volume rushed in at that moment. It was the 1 minute bar that opened at 7:52 AM and closed at 7:53, so it wasn't a larger time frame open/close of any significance, e.g. an M30 or M60 or M240 close.

It is almost always better to wait for the institutions to become engaged than it is to try to thread needles amongst the likes of ourselves. Because at any moment, one of those giants can come in and squash us like the bugs we are lol

Unbelievably I had the same problem with Ninjatrader as I had yesterday. I really need to get this sorted out. I'm going to give some thought as to how I should proceed and Ill likely do a video about my decision(s) over the weekend or after I finish trading on Monday.

Heck of a deal Vidvad !!! I just finished watching today's video. Don't really know how one continues or deals with that.


Auto scale TV

Thanks for the Tradovate totorial, blue!

Also, I did come across another guy who had the same problem with Ninjatrader the past two days, so it isn't local to my machine. It may not be widespread, but it is happening to random NT lifetime license holders.

This is similar to what happened to me. The orders are color coded orange (I think that's orange) and that means the orders are viewed as pending rather than active. The solution is to log out of Ninjatrader and back in, and hope that the issue resolves itself and you regain control over your trading account.

Inexcusable.

https://x.com/flexfutures_/status/2024912388848332921

"The biggest lie in trading is that your competition is Goldman Sachs or Citadel or some PhD team at a hedge fund. Your real competition is yourself, your discipline, your psychology, your process."

Ryan Scott (Horse) on X: "You Can Make a Fortune Trading - Don't Let Anyone Tell You Otherwise" / X


There's this pervasive narrative in trading circles that retail discretionary traders are dead. The quants will tell you you're fighting against PhDs with infinite compute power, HFT firms with sub-millisecond execution, and market makers with information asymmetry you'll never overcome. They'll say the game is rigged, the edge is gone, and you're just donating money to smarter players.

It's complete nonsense.

Let me tell you about Takashi Kotegaw, but first let me start with a line from a movie called “The Edge” with Anthony Hopkins and Alec Baldwin
- "What one man can do, another can do"

In 2000, Kotegawa was a 27-year-old working at a temp agency in Japan. He took 1.6 million yen (roughly $13,600) and started day trading Japanese small-cap stocks from his bedroom. No institutional backing, no proprietary data feeds, no team of analysts. Just him, a computer, and a willingness to put in the work.
By 2008, he had turned that $13,600 into $153 million.

Not through some magic algorithm. Not through insider information. Through pattern recognition, risk management, and relentless focus on execution. He traded the same markets everyone else had access to. He just did it better.

His most famous trade: In 2005, during a massive market selloff triggered by an erroneous sell order (the "Mizuho Securities incident"), while everyone else was panicking, Kotegawa bought aggressively. He made $20 million in a single day. The same opportunity was available to every other trader in Japan. He was the one who took it.

The Quant Argument is a Cop-Out

Yes, markets are more efficient than they were 20 years ago. Yes, algorithmic trading has changed market structure. Yes, you're competing against sophisticated players.

So what?

The idea that because smart people with resources exist, you can't win, is intellectual laziness. It's the same logic that says you shouldn't start a business because corporations exist, or you shouldn't compete in sports because professionals exist.

Here's what the quants won't tell you: Edge isn't monolithic. You're not competing on the same timeframe as a market maker hedging inventory every 100 milliseconds. You're not trying to stat-arb the same relationships a Renaissance Technologies algorithm is exploiting. You do not need to play the same games There was an analogy given a few weeks ago comparing retail traders to a pee wee football player trying to compete in the NFL. The author probably thought this was a slam dunk argument. It's not.

Here's why it falls apart: In football, you're on the same field, at the same time, competing for the same ball, against opponents who are bigger, faster, stronger, and more experienced than you in every measurable way. The pee wee player has zero advantages. They're just going to get destroyed.

Trading isn't like that at all.

You're not on the same field as DRW. You're not competing for the same opportunities. A market maker scalping bid-ask s p r e a d s every 50 milliseconds isn't taking all your trades. A stat-arb fund exploiting micro-inefficiencies in derivatives pricing isn't your competition. A macro hedge fund deploying $500 million into a currency position over three months isn't fighting you for your entry.

You're all in the same market, but you're playing completely different games.

The pee wee player trying to tackle an NFL linebacker has no advantages. But you, the retail trader? You actually have structural advantages that institutions would kill for:
* You can enter and exit positions without moving the market. A fund deploying $50 million can't touch half the opportunities you can. Your $50k position is invisible. Theirs shows up on every screen on every desk.
* You can change your mind in five minutes. They need committee meetings, risk approvals, and compliance sign-offs. You see something not working? You're out. They're stuck in bureaucracy.
* You can trade crypto at 2am, pivot to small-cap momentum stocks at open, and swing trade a tech name into earnings, all in the same week. Try getting that past an institutional risk manager.
* You can put 20% of your book into a single high-conviction idea. They're diversifying across 150 positions because their mandate requires it, even when 140 of those positions are mediocre.

The football analogy assumes direct physical competition where size and strength dominate. Trading is pattern recognition, risk management, and execution. A 150-pound person can be a world-class surgeon, poker player, or chess champion because those games don't require physicality. Trading is the same.

You're not trying to out-muscle institutions. You're finding inefficiencies at your scale that they can't or won't exploit, and you're executing on them with advantages they don't have.

The pee wee football player has no path to victory. You do. The analogy is lazy thinking from people who don't understand the actual dynamics of market structure.
The game isn't "can retail beat institutions at their own game." The game is "can you find edges that exist at your scale and execute them consistently."
Success Requires Being in the Top %, That's Not a Bug. It's a Feature.

Of course most traders fail. Most people fail at anything worth doing.
Most restaurants fail. Most startups fail. Most aspiring professional athletes don't make it. Most musicians never make a living from their craft. Success in any competitive field requires being in the top percentage of participants. That's not unique to trading, that's how reality works.

The path being hard is a given. If it were easy, the edge would be arbitraged away instantly.

But "hard" doesn't mean impossible. It means you need to be better than most, not better than everyone. You need to develop skills others won't, put in time others won't, and maintain discipline others won't.

Kotegawa didn't succeed because he had superhuman abilities. He succeeded because he was willing to do what others weren't. He studied price action obsessively. He managed risk religiously. He stayed focused when others were distracted. He took the trade when others were scared. Do you know how many other examples there are of people who did the same? Fucking countless. Naturally, some responses to this will be “Sure, survivorship!” – Yeah no shit, aren’t we somewhat responsible for our own survival? Or is luck everything? Come on.

The Reality: You're Competing Against Yourself

The biggest lie in trading is that your competition is Goldman Sachs or Citadel or some PhD team at a hedge fund. Your real competition is yourself, your discipline, your psychology, your process.

Can you follow your rules when you're down? Can you cut losers quickly? Can you let winners run? Can you stay patient during drawdowns? Can you avoid revenge trading? Can you size positions correctly?

These aren't algorithmic problems. These are human problems. And humans have been solving them for decades.

The opportunities still exist. They're just in different places than they used to be. Market dislocations still happen. Momentum still exists. Mean reversion still works. Volatility expansion and contraction still creates edges. News still moves markets inefficiently.

The game hasn't changed as much as people claim. What's changed is that lazy strategies don't work anymore. But thoughtful, disciplined, well-executed strategies? They work just fine.

Bottom Line

If someone tells you retail traders can't make it, ask them why Takashi Kotegawa exists. Ask them why dozens of documented cases of discretionary traders building eight-figure accounts from five-figure starting points exist.

The path is hard. It should be hard. That's what keeps the lazy and undisciplined out.

But don't confuse "hard" with "impossible." Don't let people who've never done it tell you it can't be done. And definitely don't let someone who failed convince you that you will too.

The opportunities are there. The question is whether you're willing to develop the skills, put in the time, and maintain the discipline required to capture them.
Most people aren't. That's why most people fail.

Be in the percentage that doesn't.

Excellent article Vidvad ! Thanks for sharing.

It is a rarity these days: A well composed social media post that accurately reflects the truth. I shared it here and copied the whole article just in case the OP deletes it from twitter someday (or twitter goes away entirely).

Hey turnip, I hope all is well. Haven't seen you in over a week. Need my Mebob fix!

First off thanks Vidvad for your nice motivational post yesterday! It read it a few times. I think I have finally settled on a working strategy. I made a few mistakes over the last two weeks and did end up blowing my account. But I am learning along the way and that is the important part I think. Below is some back testing I did on it over the last two and half months. Wish me luck.

I copied and pasted it into a word document and printed it out. I'm going to make reading it a part of my pre-session prep each morning for the next week or two. The author of that post has a unique way of stating what we all know (or should know) about our role in our own success. I want to do what I can to internalize his point of view so as to make it somewhat my own.

I feel my trading has really settled down on two strategies: Fixed Bar Interval trading and Reversal Bar Interval trading. The remaining ingredient is money management, and for the most part, I aim for somewhere between a .618:1 up to about a 1.56:1 reward to risk. I mostly trade the ES at the moment; however, GC and NQ remain in my stable of instruments. I remain flexible, and should the currency futures ever return to a more reasonable level of regular volatility during the US session, I will happily add them back in.

My point is that your "working strategy" should be comprehensive, rule-based yet flexible the details of its application at any given time based on market conditions.

We all do from time to time. I feel that one should accept that one will forever be susceptible to the errors that lead to rapid ruin and to be ever vigilant to be mindful of the first sign that the fever of ruin has started to take hold. Being able to admit to others that you've experienced blow up is a sign of maturity and growth, clearly showing that you are a fellow traveler on the way of the roulette epiphany.

I do indeed wish you well, though luck has but a very small part in your eventual success. I believe you will achieve all that you hope to achieve, Belgrath!

Remember these words from that inspirational article posted just above:

The biggest lie in trading is that your competition is Goldman Sachs or Citadel
or some PhD team at a hedge fund. Your real competition is yourself, your
discipline, your psychology, your process.

Can you follow your rules when you're down? Can you cut losers quickly?
Can you let winners run? Can you stay patient during drawdowns? Can you
avoid revenge trading? Can you size positions correctly?

These aren't algorithmic problems. These are human problems. And humans have been solving them for decades.

I just did a quick little scalp using MES to put me over the top to pass this eval account. Funded status should be available to this account on Tuesday. I intened to start another eval now that this one is finished. I am disappointed that technical issues with Ninjatrader caused this eval to be traded in a way far from the trading plan I had intended to deploy. Luck has very little to do with our trading results over the long term. However, it was extraordinarily good luck that I didn't blow this account on Thursday or Friday of this last week.

Ninjatrader is apparently aware of this ongoing issue, and allegedly released an acknowledgement to some users at the end of last week. I do not know how serious NT will be as far as correcting and eliminating the ghost order issue from happening again. I am very gun shy of the platform at this point.

My choices, as I see them at the moment, is to commence trading this funded account aas the target account for the video series I started this past week, OR, initiate a new eval account and trade that account using the plan I had intended and hope NT doesn't continue to execute ghost orders while leaving me no control over my platform, or choose a different prop firm altogether, one that offers a platform such as Sierra Chart.

Sierra Chart has been recommended to be by several other traders over the past few days. There are others as well.

The other thing I am considering, is to open an account with AMP Futures, select on of their available platforms, and fund it with $1000, start with 1 micro, and use my trading plan to see if I can build that account. As I type this, I am starting to feel strongly that that might be the best way to go. However, if I go that way, I imagine it may take a week or so to get everything in order.

Anyhow, this is today's P/L and I will consider this eval finished. The prop firm will not acknowledge its completion until the Globe close on Monday.

Amp and TradingView are my goto...Lots of options

I can see that they have MT5 as well. What is the minimum deposit to open an account to trade micro gold?