Short day

Prep today was minimal, after strong trend days looked to play offer bid offer range bound day, after last few weeks of strength there was more than likely going to be some differing opinions with downward bias most probable, aka profit taking.  Traded only the morning session of the ES.  Reasonable trades but too quick to take profits.

The real work begins

Home and back to trading in SIM at last after a successful trip to the states to trade with the pros and alongside other traders. My initial goals are as per this post, to refine technique, decide on the key markets I will trade and establish a routine. Today's trades on the Euro.

Market Prep

Trades

Weekly Goals

I'll be trading real money this week with same size as in SIM, risking a maximum of 1% of capital on open trades.  Goals for this week, much as last week with a few changes.

1. Daily market prep - improve on creating daily prep documentation and then implementing the scenerios. Get Bias right across multiple time frames then execute correctly in your timeframe = Edge!
2. Exit stategy implementation - hold onto trades to projected targets, give them room and time to move.
3. Thinking in Probabilities & Capital Protection -  premium trades only, focus on keeping odds in your favour, once the trade is on remember anything can happen, let it run one way or the other.
6. Take all triggered trades - execute 40+ trades by close of markets on Thursday.
7. Patience - take your documented trading plan trades only, no development trades this week.  Wait for the market to create the trades, don't be too agressive, react do not predict.
8. Stay Relaxed but Focussed and Enjoy - stay focussed during trading hours, remember losing trades are the cost of doing business, move on to the next one, focus on achieving the big picture over a large sample of trades
9. Achieve consistency in trade Execution and Risk management - the result will be consistent stats over a large sample size, standard deviation of less than two, a smooth and rising equity curve.
10. Daily Routine - work to a daily routine you will be using in the future.
• Weekly/daily goal setting/review
• Market preparation
• Prep market structure on charts for every market
• Market economic events today, major news events today, major earnings?
• Set risk management parameters, position sizing for the day
• Trading and recording trades
• Record keeping
• Mark charts with trades, entries, exits
• Review individual trades, comment on charts with mistakes, improvements required..
• Export daily trade execution from IB, update BT combined spreadsheet, export to csv
• Import into MSA, review stats if required.
• Copy all files to Daily folder and close out.
• Update journal with commentary and charts as required.

Atlanta Trading

It's been a busy month, planning and preparing for our family trip to Ireland for a wedding and my trip to Atlanta for the a two week trading workshop with Tzar Analytics.  Time has flown by.  Week one of the trading workshop is over and what a week! 

Two trading rooms with nine traders in each under the keen eye of Alex and Davin, very successful prop. traders. Fantastic atmosphere working alongside a great bunch of people all trading for a living, at various levels of progression.  Exchange of ideas, discussions between each of us on how we're doing, what startegies we're using, our trading styles and much more, consulting directly with Davin and Alex on our trades, watching them trade their own accounts, ongoing advice and tips and much much more - it's been a brilliant week! 

I'm off to a good start with my trading this week on SIM, I'll be trading real money this coming week.

Missed Opportunities

Unplanned family commitments and Protege course work have dominated the past two days which has meant I've spent less time on Sim trading than I had planned.  As a result I missed trades on Thursday and by the time I was on screen the market had been in trend all day, was against value highs and was close to the end of my day.  The Blue box shows one time I did get to be on screen later than the triggered setup conditions, I had to sit on my hands to stop taking the trade, knowing I could well miss much more upside but also be taking on more risk and knowing the setup was outside my plan rules.

I also ended up having to be away most of Friday so decided not to trade at all. No trades past two days, not what I planned but being ill prepared and unable to focus on the game, I think this was the right choice.

Not counting three B/E trades I took 18 trades over first two days on SIM; 12 winners, 6 losers = 66% winners. Avg.Win/Avg. Loss Ratio = 2.42.

I've had a reasonable first two days in Sim trading and making progress in the right direction - good news.

I also took a quick look at the Euro 6E futures on Friday after much talk about it during the EL webinars and, I've had the 6E in my plans for sometime as a secondary market, it reminded me just how much and how well it can move and is definitely a market I'll be working on in the future.

Market Prep and Probabilities

Todays charts tell the story.  Risk management worked out well today. Improved my read on pattern sequences over yesterday but my market prep is still lacking, found myself going long into VAH / Offer Zone with little headroom, okay for a scalp but that's not my longer term objective, short bias was a higher probability from that location.  Remember, think in terms of Probabilities x Magnitude of Gain.  Cleary the bias was down.

SIM Trading Begins

I've spent the past week putting together my new trading plan based on the excellent training and live trading sessions done last week with EL and the longer term course I am doing with Pride Educators.

My plan calls for an incremental approach.  I'm starting out by trading single lot size, with a small risk/reward ratio.  The purpose is to learn the tradeable chart pattern sequences, learn my execution platform and most importantly gain risk management experience using scratch and reentry techniques.  If I can achieve a level of success, especially in the latter then I have a good chance of going to the next level of increasing size and using scaling in and out to manage risk and create profits.  At the moment I'm essentially scalping the market.

A rather slow start to my SIM trading today, I need to get into a daily routine with documenting prep, although I did prep for the market my MP chart is not well documented. 

Key Pages

I've added some key pages on the top right of the Blog.  I'll use these to gather together some key concepts and ideas for consideration in my business and trading plans and, any other important material I pick up along the way.