Quarter 1 2012 Trading Results

March Trading Summary

Note: Only traded 3 days during month
Net breakdown (contracts traded):
CL -$576(8), ES -$1446(27)

RESULTS FOR MARCH
Contracts:	35
Net $P/L:	-2021
Wins:	3
Losses:	8
Win%:	27
$Commissions:	106
Avg$Win:	160
Avg$Loss:	-313

Thurs. 3/29

2:40pm CDT - More testing and likely enough, for now, with month end tomorrow and a short week next week.

RESULTS FOR DAY
ES Contracts:	19
Net $P/L:	-1625
Wins:	0
Losses:	3
Win%:	0
Avg$Win:	0
Avg$Loss:	-542

Wed. 3/28

2:20pm CDT - Testing day. ES okay, CL not so much.

Net Breakdown (contracts traded):
ES $82(7), CL -$576(8)

RESULTS FOR DAY
Contracts:	15
Net $P/L:	-494
Wins:	2
Losses:	5
Win%:	29
Avg$Win:	191
Avg$Loss:	-175

Thoughts

I really want to get back to live trading but I continue to delay for many reasons.

First, the market will always be there so what's the hurry really? Particularly when I consider that my total equity is exactly the same as it was 2 years ago.

Second, I have not been satisfied with my system development efforts with NinjaScript Strategy. There are nuisances to programming and/or bugs I can't seem to overcome, yet... Not sure if I will get there or not but at a minimum, it is useful for testing ideas one component at a time even if I have to later piece them together in Excel.

Finally, I'm toying with idea of holding overnight (i.e. swing trading hourly charts). I haven't done that in many years but this is a no-brainer way to reduce commission costs which are always difficult to overcome when day trading.

That's my thoughts this Friday anyways. Subject to change.

401k Trading

OK, don't buy this book. I just posted this because I had a laugh that Google/Yahoo knows what ads they should insert into webpages I'm viewing. They know all! And rather than "Daytrade your 401(k)" and be stuck with limited choices, you can just roll it to an IRA, have it held in a trust, then trade Forex, futures, whatever. Bet that isn't in this "guru's" book! Oh, non-Americans can ignore this post. Guess I should have put that in the beginning...

Fri. 3/09

10:30am CST - It had been so long I had to see if could still press the mouse button. And yes, this trade was fully defined before I got in, except of course, for the ridiculous lag in fill confirmation.

RESULTS FOR DAY
ES Contracts:	1
Net $P/L:	97
Wins:	1
Losses:	0
Win%:	100
Avg$Win:	97
Avg$Loss:	0

Patience

"The practice of patience protects us from losing our composure. In doing that it enables us to exercise discernment, even in the heat of difficult situations. It gives us inner space. And within that space we gain a degree of self-control, which allows us to respond to situations in an appropriate and compassionate manner rather than being driven by our anger and irritation." by Dalai Lama

Risk Reward

9:10am CST - Not sure when I'll be satisfied with system tweaks and backtested results from NinjaTrader Strategy Analyzer to go live again but I expect it will be in next week or two. It is a very powerful tool I should have learned how to use years ago (although that might have been hard since I only switched to Ninja last summer)!

The results below from 1 system that I ran through the optimizer throws aside the notion that your winners must always be bigger than your losers. It crunched all the scenarios varying the target from 10 to 150 ticks and the stop from 10 to 100 ticks, in increments of 5 ticks to find the highest net profit over past 6 months. Note that this is just an example and arguably, net profit isn't necessarily the best metric to optimize.