Rob C

Futures (GC - Gold) algo trading journal Monday 5/02/22. I was taking a break from posting my trades, but I had to post this one. I always hope that my algo will trigger some winning trades during the night that I reach my goal by morning and I am done for the day before the open. That finally occurred. Gold Futures get lots of volume over night from Asia and trades can be triggered. I got two winners last night and the second one quite large. Both were pullback trades that worked well. Then the algo turned off, as programmed, when my goal was reached. A good start to my Monday morning. Have a good night. Rob C

Hi Peter, sorry for the delay. I am taking a few months off journaling on BBT. I will probably restart in August when I have time again. For DAS Futures try this link: https://dastrader.com/docs/how-do-i-trade-futures/ But I thought I read some BBT members not happy with the Futures data from DAS. I was told right from the beginning Ninjatrader is the best for Futures and I have not been disappointed. I like the platform more than DAS except for speed. DAS is faster. So if your are scalping stocks there will be nothing better than DAS. Outside of stock scalping there are other options. Yes I STRONGLY recommend Ninjatrader for Futures. Great plots, great functionality, great algo programming, great back-testing and awesome replay SIM trading. You can try it for sort of free. The Platform will be free but you will have to open an account ~$400. But I think there is a monthly broker fee. Maybe as high as $25/month. But you can try it out in SIM trading and see how you like it. To get all the bell and whistles it is a single payment of $1.1K. I hope that helps. Well since I am here anyway I might as well post my trade today. I came back from work and noticed my trading computer was frozen. I have been having this issue lately. Tried defrag and updating the drivers, but no luck. So I thought I missed a good trading day. But I checked and my algo triggered a trade before the computer froze. Have a good night. Rob C

Futures (GC - Gold) algo trading journal Monday 3/28/22 It doesn't get more textbook than this. It looked like the algo was not going to trigger a trade today. Then just before the market close the price dropped quickly and then retraced fast, but not too fast back to the 50% Keltner line where the algo triggered a short. Then the price dropped right to my target. Have a goodnight. Rob C

Futures (GC - Gold and MES) algo trading journal Friday 3/25/22 Another day with 3 trades triggered. The first trade was triggered on the gold futures in premarket. Definitely some weakness in the market and a good pullback which triggered the short. Then over an hour of meandering until the algo reached its limit and got out at BE. Then 5 minutes later the price dropped and reached the target without me. That's 3 GC trades in a row the algo got out at BE but would have been winners. I will definitely be looking at the algo parameters this weekend. Then the price made a new low and a pull back. This trade was text book with a nice pullback, the algo shorted and then the price ran to my target. The MES showed strength about 1 hour after the open with just enough momentum to satisfy the algo. With a strong pullback the algo went long. The price hovered for a bit then really dropped fast to my stop. That's 2 MES stop outs in a row that were triggered by the bare minimum momentum. I will need too look at those parameters this weekend as well. Wow! 11 trades this week. I am usually happy with 5. Winners: 5 Losers: 3 BE: 3 Have a good weekend. Rob C GC MES

Futures (GC - Gold and MES) algo trading journal Wednesday 3/24/22 Another good day with 3 trades triggered by the algo. It has been so many weeks that I felt lucky to get one trade a week, it seems amazing to get these many trades. Gold had a strong opening and a strong pullback which triggered the long. The price kept dropping but the stop held. The price bounced off of the lower Keltner band and then went straight to my target. The next trade was on the MES. When I reran this trade on backtest the trade was not even triggered. It barely met the minimum requirements to trigger a trade live, but it did. First, I got a really bad fill with a 6 tick slide. If I only had a 5 tick slide the trade would have been a BE. If I had a good fill it would have reached partial profit. As triggered though it hit my stop. Right at the end of the session I got lucky with another trade. This one very text book. Broke the resistance to a new high. Pulled back and the resistance became support. Price bounced off the support to my target. Have a good night, Rob C

Futures (GC - Gold and MES) algo trading journal Tuesday 3/22/22 Big day. Algos triggered 4 trades today. The GC opened with weakness and a text book pullback. The algo went short. The price did initially drop but then started to meander. The algo is written so it is not very tolerable to this behavior and covered at BE. About an hour later the price did reach my target. We had 3 long trades triggered on the MES. Lots of strength and classic pullbacks. The first two trades the price quickly reached my target after going long. The last one immediately went against me and just reached my stop by a tick before heading back up to reach my target. Have a good night. Rob C

Futures (GC - Gold) algo trading journal Monday 3/21/22 Though the volatility was low enough to trade on the MES the only trade triggered today was with the gold futures. Strong momentum right from the open with a deep pullback about 1 hour after the open. The algo went long and the price did reach my target. But I have the setting to get out at BE way too tight. I do know this but the GC contracts are expensive so I do want the algo to bail on the trade quickly. So the price just moved high enough to reach the price it is not expected to pull back. The price did, so the algo sold at BE. I got a great fill and actually made some money on the trade. Have a good night. Rob C

Futures (MES) algo trading journal Friday 3/18/22. Finally, the volatility was just low enough today for the algo to trigger some trades. We had some good momentum in the morning which peaked and we had a strong pull back. Once the price stabilized the algo went long. The price didn't do much and the algo sold at BE before the price dropped. Then for the rest of the day the momentum was up but weak until the last hour. Again on a deep pullback the algo went long. First, it took a partial then sold the rest at the target. Have a good weekend. Rob C

Futures (GC - Gold) algo trading journal Monday 3/07/22 As I said previously my algo has been sitting out the markets due to the high volatility. But luckily things calmed down last night on the Gold Futures for the algo to trigger a trade. After the NYSE closed things went south for gold and hit the bottom with a slow but significant pullback. The short was triggered. Though the price did drop it did not reach my target and retraced. Th algo covered at BE. Have a good night. Rob C

Futures (GC - Gold) algo trading journal Wednesday 3/02/22 Due to the high volatility of the MES my algo is sitting out the markets each day. So I spent quite a few hours to update the Gold Futures algo. I finished updating the shorts algo and turned it on yesterday. A trade was triggered today. I really like this trade from today and not just because it was a winner. The momentum down was prevalent and we had a strong pullback about 2 hours after the open. But the algo did not trigger the trade due to the momentum not quite strong enough (see the 200SMA -bright green line - slope is not large enough yet. This is good since it would have been s top out. The price dropped and and sat at the low for a few minutes then we had another pullback. Now the momentum was strong enough and the algo triggered the short. The price dropped very quickly to the target. Have a good night. Rob C

Futures (MES) algo trading journal Friday 2/25/22 A really good day today. I was thinking, due to the high volatility, the algo was going to sit out the whole week. But the volatility was just low enough to day to allow the algo to trigger some trades. There was 90 minutes of really good momentum and and deep pullbacks but the volatility limit was being breached. Finally after 90 minutes the volatility dropped within spec limit and a long was executed on the first deep pullback. The price got near my target but then fell back to sell at BE. The good news is I reprogrammed the algo last weekend to take partial profits. So actually a sell order went through when the price got near the target. So it was a profitable trade. The price fell back and starting to make another attempt at the at the high. The algo triggered another long. I got a terrible fill. Too bad just an average fill I would have had a winner. Same as before the price went high enough to trigger a partial profit sell then fell back to BE. The price made a new high with another pullback and the algo went long again. The price dropped and my stop barely held. The the price rose to my partial profit target and my full target. Have a good weekend. Rob C

Futures (MES) algo trading journal Friday 2/18/22 I had a loss today making my first red week this year. Powerful weakness in the morning and we had the type of pullback the algo looks for and it went short. But the pullback was too deep and I was stopped out. Then the price did drop afterwards and reached my target. So for the week: 1 loss and 2 BEs. This also makes me BE for the month of February so far. So I have a lot of data to process. The main issue is I have had 6 BEs in February and 8 in January with out taking a partial profit. More than half of my trades are BEs, That is a bit of money left on the table. The previous market conditions it was not profitable to take partials but I think that is different in the new market conditions. I need to analyze if it is time to start taking partials and program the algo accordingly. But that is what long weekends are for... Have a good weekend. Rob C

Futures (MES) algo trading journal Thursday 2/18/22 Big drop in the MES yesterday afternoon with a nice pullback. The algo shorted and we did get a price drop but retraced and the algo covered at BE. Then a few minutes later dropped to reach target. It seems to be common now (like Tuesday) if I did not pull my stop to BE I would have had a winner. It may be a new personality trait of the current market. If I get enough data I will update the algo accordingly. Have a good day. Rob C

Futures (MES) algo trading journal Wednesday 2/16/22 I finally got a trade this week. With volatility and sideways movement the algo sat out the last two days. By 30min after the open we got enough downwards momentum so the algo was waiting for a deep pullback. We got a perfect one and the algo shorted. The price dropped immediately but then retraced and the algo covered at BE. About 10 minutes later the price did drop and reach my target. Have a good night. Rob C

Futures (MES) algo trading journal Friday 2/11/22 We had a small window of moderate volatility in the midday for the algo to trade. After continued weakness and the usual pullback that the algo waits for a short was triggered. The price did drop and just missed the target and was covered at BE. Then a few minutes later the algo triggered another short. This actually should not happen because the price move to test the low already occurred. So I need to dig into the code and see why the algo let this happen. The price move high enough to stop me out before moving lower again. Have a good weekend. Rob C