Reflections on October

My first significantly profitable month EVER :)

Well, that was it, folks.

Even though October 31st was annoyingly red on the day for me (end-of-month “fun”), I’m now technically a one-month-under-the-belt “profitable” futures trader. As you’ll see below, I technically did have “profitable” months earlier in the year, but these profits were so small it’s hard to decipher whether they were actual skill-based “profit” months, or just statistical anomalies. But with $2.6K bagged this October, in what many are claiming “challenging” conditions, I think the monthly result is pretty clear. (I don’t know about “challenging” conditions, every single day of trading seems pretty challenging to me!)

So then… why is my account balance still lower than it started this year? Because I sucked for all of April, May, June, July, August, and September. That’s right, 6 months of failure. I’ll let you in on what Tradovate reports for what I’ve done with my account for each month of this year (trust me, it’s not that impressive):

April - Algo, +$745.00

May - Algo, -$2377.50

June - Discretionary, +$496.25

July - Discretionary, +$244.75

August - Discretionary, -$1321.25

September - Discretionary, including my 5k tilt with 1 NQ, -$3954.00

October - Discretionary, +$2855.00 (Tradovate gross PNL says $2855, the chart max says $2605… not sure what is going on there)

So yeah, if you did the math, I’m still down $3311.75 since April. To be fair, (or maybe we shouldn’t be fair) I started running a completely naïve algorithmic trading system in April and May, where the worst luck being that it was “profitable” in April. I then assumed I had the golden goose, and then of course had a disastrous May with the algo. So let’s say from discretionary alone, we could take away that $1632.50 of losses. So, I’m “only” down $1679.25 on the year. From what I’ve heard from many horror stories of futures traders, I’ll take that as a market tuition any day of the week.

However, I’m hoping to keep my momentum going into November & December. I think if I give it my all, I can perhaps get back to breakeven with the 41 days of trading left per year, needing on average $80 a day or “just” 40 MNQ points. With the discretionary-only “market tuition” costs, (i.e., not including naïve algo losses) I would need to make about $40 a day, or a mere 20 MNQ points. However, I don’t want to use either of these goals as a benchmark because I know I’ll be kicking myself every day I don’t hit at least this target. I’m just going to keep my best system running, revising it as more and more of my own trading data comes in:

• 2 MNQ for all of November, if November is also green, the reward is to trade 3 MNQ for December :)

• No more EU sessions

• Trade probabilities provided by my AMTJOY tool, 2:1 RRR with at least 50%+ historical probability - confirmed with price action and cumulative delta (order flow)

• Set trade and wait for stop, breakeven, or profit target

However, even as I write this, I continue to see my trading methodology mature right before my eyes. I find myself looking at higher and higher time frames more often (as high as the 1, 2, and 3-month (i.e. quarterly) time frames. I think it’s powerful to know where the REALLY big money is. I also find I’m starting to draw some key trend lines (diagonal) as well as key support and resistance lines (horizontal). I also continue to work on my models, and just recently, to make them fun, I’ve started color coding them. I think long term I might end up like one of those guys on Twitter with their very own cool charting system and signals. We’ll see.

Even while my system evolves, I must follow it over, and over, AND over again. To be honest, once you start to get it, trading IS a blast, when you start to be able to read how markets move, see where people are trapped, or where the path of least resistance is, especially on those trend up or trend down days. But this feeling is of course only on the good days - and trading of course comes with red days.

After a red day, or hitting your broker-defined max loss two days in a row (like I did, just last week), as a beginner, you start to question everything about your abilities, your system, why you even decided to trade, what a waste of time it is... and so on… it’s insane how bad emotionally just one day feels, even when you are up thousands across the entire month. Slowly, however, I’m starting to realize that this pain and frustration is just a waste. It’s not worth your mental health to brood over. You can’t be perfect in trading, and you never will be. From beginner to pro, even the best are “right” 60-70% of the time. Don’t let anyone try to convince you otherwise. It’s really much more about having the discipline to see that your winners make more than your losers. Just trade the math / setup / probability and repeat. You can’t control the outcome of any one trade, only the risk and reward. Slowly I’m coming to terms with this (slowly!).

Also, now that I’ve got my new job, I think it’s time to start looking into investing a lifetime subscription to Tradovate. This year alone so far, I’ve spent $2871.36 on commissions. If I’d had the lifetime subscription, (which reduces each individual trade by 55% for micros or 62% for minis) I would have saved almost $1300 dollars, just $200 short of their lifetime subscription, in just 7 months of trading! I’m not affiliated with Tradovate at all, but just crunching some numbers on how much sense their lifetime makes if you are a futures trader.

So, looking forward to another month as a “profitable” imposter syndrome trader. Let’s see how I fair in November - already up 110p as of the 3rd 😉

Cheers 🍻

-Chris