Here is my wrap-up for the 5th week of live trading. Weekly Overall Self Rating: Good Daily Goal Hit – 2 of 5 Daily Max Loss – 0 of 5 Goals for the month progress 1. I executed 2 days in a row trading only my edge. I took two trades outside of my edge. 2. Hit 5 days green days in a row, so I will be increasing share size to 150 starting on Monday 3. I have a 2:1 ratio 4. I have above a 60% average win rate Risk Controls 1. Did not trigger Max Loss control 2. Did not trigger Max Share traded in a day control Trading Methodology 1. Did not increase or decrease share size in the week. 2. GGGG Weekly Analysis of trading Focusing on trading within my edge has really brought everything together. I have been less emotional once entering the trade as I have gained more confidence in my trading edge. After my struggles the first two weeks, I decided to take time and analyze my trading edge while I was away from trading due to work. This gave me a solid 7 days to review my simulator and live journals to see if I could identify why my winning % had dipped so much. I found that I was entering trades outside of what I considered my edge. I then decided to clearly identify what my edge was and only trade within that for a sample set of 20. The past two weeks have highlighted the huge impact this has had on my trading. As you can see from the stoplight chart below I have had a huge improvement. Nov 29th I trade outside my edge and got stopped out at my entry point according to my edge. What I Learned I have learned that if I trade within my edge my probability for having a winning trade this week was 88%. If I trade outside of my edge my probability for having a winning trade this week was 22%. For me this has increased my ability to handle my emotions and control my ability to not trade when I am feeling FOMO. I did miss 2 entries this week, but I was able to stick with my rule of letting it go if I miss the trade. I know the trade is not going to work each time, but at least I know I am entering a trade with a high probability of going in my direction. Below you can see my analysis that I have started doing each day at the end of the day. For a stock to meet my edge it must be within risk/reward ratios, have 2 of 3 indicators, and 3 of 5 confirmations. I have done this for 5 and 15 Min ORB, but as of now I am only trading 15 min ORB. What I did not Expect I truly did not expect the profit taking management to be as hard as it is. Right now I am having issues holding a stock moving in my direction to my predefined exit rules. I have this urge of making sure I take some profit before it goes against me. This is going to be my next area of focus once I complete my edge analysis sample set of 20.

Hello, I would like to add my experience so far going live (6 weeks so far). I am hoping by posting my goals/results it will help with the discipline I need in keeping to them. I was in SIM (both DAS and TradingSIM.com) for 6 months with very poor results. Saw no progress so I looked for a new platform. I felt my primary issue was hotkey and other careless mistakes. Though DAS is a very strong and nimble platform, I always felt like I was fighting it. I guess my brain is wired differently. Looking at other platforms I thought Etrade-Pro would have the best impact on my hotkey, etc. mistakes. Which it did. I went from ~2mistakes/day to only 2 total since I went live. I wasn’t planning to go live, but Etrade has no SIM so I kept my risk to only $25/trade. Here is my first month results: I am only striving to accomplish psychological goals. At the moment I am not interested in my P/L or my win% rate. I was quite pleased with my Winners($)/Losers($) ratio. In SIM it was 0.6 to 1. I was always cutting my winners short and having trouble stopping out. I have an over trading issue I need to deal with so I need to keep my trades to a minimum (~3/day) so I only choose good setups. Hulk days. I knew I would have an issue with this. It is not a coincidence that the number of hotkey mistakes is equal to the number of hulk days since that was the trigger for both. This was the reason I failed my goals the first month and I am still keeping myself to $25/trade risk until I have a whole month keeping to my min goals. I define hulk day as more than 7 trades, going past my -$75 S/L limit and consciously choosing too large of a share size at least once. Correct Stop Out % was my favorite stat. This really helped me going from using hard stops on all trades to now using manual stops on all trades. By keeping this stat I know it is quite likely my chosen stop out price is correct and the stock will unlikely turn around and be profitable. Once I went to manual stops I started S/O before my predetermined stop when the trade didn’t feel right anymore. This was the primary catalyst to improve my W$/L$ ratio. I determine this stat by looking at the next technical level. If I would have used the next tech level as my S/O instead would the stock turn around and make it to my first profit target? The answer was no 77% of the time. Here are my results for halfway through my second month live: I am concerned my over trading tendencies are kicking in more. I need to control it. I am really happy with the W$/L$ ratio, but I don’t think that is sustainable at this level. I don’t know if the hulk days are under control or not. I will only know, next time I get a hotkey or other type of mistake. That’s all. Thanks for reading. Any insight you could give me would be appreciated. -Rob

Here is my wrap-up for the 4th week of live trading. My third week I traded both Wednesday and Friday, but did not find any trades to take. I was busy Monday and Tuesday with work, so I did not trade those days at all. Weekly Overall Self Rating: Satisfied and built back some confidence Daily Goal Hit – 2 of 5 Daily Max Loss – 0 of 5 Goals for the month progress 1. Met my goal for Month 1 and did not blow up my account. I ended the month slightly red but nothing that was worrisome to me. 2. Did not meet my reward to risk ratio goal but was able to get it back to a 1:1 ratio by the end of the month. In the first two weeks I was well below were I wanted to be. 3. I ended the month with a 58%-win ratio. Although I was a little below 60% I still consider this a win. Risk Controls 1. Did not trigger Max Loss control all month 2. Did not trigger Max Share traded in a day control all month Trading Methodology 1. Did not increase or decrease share size (largest win streak was 3 green days in a row) 2. GGGRG Weekly Analysis of trading I had four really good trading days. Monday and Wednesday, I hit my daily goal. Tuesday was probably the best learning experience as I took a loss on my first trade, but I was able to control my emotions and find another good opportunity to enter and ended the day green. Friday was tough day trading AMD, I did execute my trading plan the way I Intended. The only thing I was unhappy about is I did not have a hotkey available to execute a trade at 200 shares. Due to the movement of AMD, my trade plan called for an increase in share size, which if I had available, I would have ended my day meeting my daily goal. I have since adjusted my hotkey layout to accommodate for this. Thursday was the worse trading day as I took a trade outside my edge and setup. I did an extensive analysis of my trading edge after the first two weeks as I was not trading well and determined a few key indicators and confirmations that had to be met prior to trading. My goal was to only take trades that met these criteria. What I Learned for the month First and foremost, the biggest thing I learned is that if I execute my trade plan according to my edge, I am extremely comfortable in the trade and have a lower fear of losing or being wrong. When I do this, I have an overall comfortable feeling with no issues of stopping out, emotions are in control after a loss or win, and I can continue to trade with little effect from the last trade. Now, when I enter a trade out of FOMO or against my trade plan, I am extremely emotional in the trade worrying about if it will go in my direction or not, have second thoughts about where I have set my stop loss (luckily I have yet to move it), but most importantly after the trade I am pretty emotionally drained because I didn’t execute the plan I had in place. My Journal for the first two weeks reflects I was having big issues following my entry and exit rules, while the last two weeks I was following my entry rules much better. I still have a lot of work to do on my profit taking plan, but I believe I started improving on that now that I have worked on entering only according to my rules. What I did not Expect from the first month If you have read my previous posts, I still think the only thing I did not expect was the impact of the commissions on my psychology. I had to adjust how I traded after the first two weeks because of the impact they were having on me. Revised Goals for the month progress 1. Execute 5 days in a row trading only my edge 2. Increase share size once during the month after 5 straight green days (this will be achieved by achieving goal 1) 3. Have a 2:1 ratio at the end of the month 4. Have a 60% average win rate

Hi @Mike B... "not blowing up my account" is a negative goal, how you think about your goals can influence how you feel about it, and whether you achieve it. "Not blowing up my account" could mean you are trading with a fear to lose mindset, and it not necessarily means to grow your account or become a profitable or consistent trader. Some people says that negative goals don't work because is not the way our brains are wired to work. For instance, "don't think of an elephant" ...You weren't thinking of one before, but now that you've been told not to it's impossible not to. Negative goals like: I will quit smoking, I will not eat as much, I won't spend so much money, etc. are almost never attained, your mind visualizes yourself smoking, eating, and spending, and that's what you end up doing. I remember once in a flight they announced "Remember NOT to forget your belongings"... I almost left my stuff in the plane... (Remember ___ to forget) Instead you need positive goals, goals where the image is of what you do want to achieve: I enjoy breathing fresh air, I will eat small healthy meals, I will save my money for …, etc. Goals in general work this way. You must visualize the goal and your mind will do whatever it can to achieve it. If you want to become a profitable or consistent as trader you have to tell your brain what do you want to achieve. Maybe you want to reframe this goal so that it sends a positive and clear direction to your brain: "Increase my account X% or X$$ daily" and it will do whatever it takes to achieve it...

Generally, for backtesting you have a few options. -Quantopian : Cloud based, aimed at algorithm development. -Zipline: Local version of Quantopian, tad complex to get setup and running right. -Backtrader: Open Source Python backtester with ability to trade live via the IB API. Learning curve, but probably the best of the free bunch. -Amibroker: Powerful backtest software but expensive ($400 for the complete package). They all will do what you want if you know how to program for them, that's where it gets tricky, as you have to set them up to load in your executions and how to handle the In-trade procedure. The tool I'm developing (and will eventually release to the community) loads your exported trades, caches the minute data for the stock, and then runs a bunch of simulations against that data before producing a report of comparisons to the baseline. For example if you wanted to compare what your PnL looked like if you never moved to breakeven and sold at R.5, R1, R1.5, and R2 levels, it'd do it. The report crunches the benchmark numbers and adds some meta data about each trade (e.g. calculated stop too close, risk reward ratio not adequate, scaled too early, didn't let run) - the goal is to give a broad brush idea to people about areas they may be able to hone their edge (a few trades flagged as scaled-too-early is just noise, a large percentage might be something to look at). The difficult part about this is making it user friendly. 🙂 Not sure when I'll have it in a state to release, lots of projects at the moment so the passion development has to go on the back burner.

First off, my thoughts are with anyone in Northern or Southern California that have been affected by the fire, and to those supporting the efforts in the areas. Here is my wrap-up for the 1st week of live trading. Weekly Overall Self Rating: Good Daily Goal Hit – 0 of 5 Daily Max Loss – 1 of 5 Goals for the month progress 1. On track for not blowing up my account 2. Well below 2:1 ratio 3. Below 60% on average win rate Risk Controls 1. Did not trigger Max Loss control 2. Did not trigger Max Share traded in a day control Trading Methodology 1. Did not increase or decrease share size 2. RGRGR Weekly Analysis of trading I managed to achieve the most important goal of not blowing up my account. I did however, find a way to reverse the average winning trade versus average losing trade from a 2:1 ratio to a 1:2 ratio. I did this by being fearful of entering the trade at my planned entry point, and instead entering at lower entry point; thereby, messing up my profit taking plan and throwing off my exit points. I was extremely happy that despite my poor entries, I never messed around with the stop loss and exited every time I hit it. Once though I hesitated, but was able to bring myself back to reality and exit. Good thing as it went against me about a minute later. By the end of the week my average loss was consistent with my simulator trading average losses. Friday was the worst day as I did not listen to myself when I was thinking to not trade, because the setups were just not there. I traded twice and hit my daily max loss. I am glad I learned that lesson this week. What I Learned Transitioning to live trading, I am hesitating on my planned entry points as I want to be completely sure before entering the trade. The problem with this is that I am missing my planned entry point, and then because of FOMO I am entering late instead of re-evaluating the trade and determining a better entry point. This is lowering the amount per winning trade. When evaluating the trade from my planned execution it is meeting all of my expectations with regards to risk/reward ratio. What I did not Expect I would say the one thing I was not prepared for was the psychological aspects of commissions and ECN fees. I have always said that I would consider commissions and ECN fees as a learning fee to getting through the learning curve. I never really analyzed how much I would be spending on these while I was in simulator as it did not matter. In simulator, I was maintaining a good risk/reward ratio, so the effect on my net equity never really appeared in any of the analysis. Due to my poor risk/reward ratios this week, it highlighted the amount I spend on commissions and ECN fees, so as the week went on, I became worried that I was spending more than I had in the simulator. This was causing a negative affect on my psychology, especially at the end of the week. This weekend I went back through my simulator trading journal and calculated what I would have spent on commissions and ECN fees in September and October. To my surprise and comfort, I actually spent less this week than average. Just another reason why journaling is so important. Now that I actually did an analysis on the fees, I have fully accepted the cost and should be able to trade freely without worrying about it. As you can see from the below analysis, my poor use of indicators and confirmations is leading to bad entries that negatively affect the risk/reward and psychology. Additional goal for next week is to improve my entries.