Tuesday, February 17, 2015

"StoryBook" Trading Meets TopstepTrader's Continuous Combine!

At the request of this frequent blogger, and this not-so-frequent one (!), I've decided to document my journey in the TopstepTrader Combine.

I'm trading the $100K account. Here are the account parameters and Combine rules:


The profit target is $6K. Past performance would suggest an ETA of 20-40 trading days. This is the result of Day 1:




A bit of background info: blue rectangles = MR, Blue triangles = PF, Arcs = C2N and Yellow ellipses = App....all colours refer to the background of the shape.

 

EDIT: I've been made aware that the charts are a bit small. This 5-min chart and this 15-sec chart should be clearer.

I opened the Combine on the 12th of February 2015, but due to US holidays and just generally getting myself set up (I subscribe to Continuum data but the program only works with Rithmic etc) I was only able to get started today.

The green triangle on the 5-min chart depicts the trade I decided to let go. My plan was to trade half-size (I intend to start trading 10 lots shortly) with a one-and-done approach, win, lose or draw. I bailed 3-4 ticks before the target because:

1) Moves tend to be quicker and more volatile during the late EST morning/early EST afternoon in the NQ as compared to pre-market (when I sometimes attempt to catch bigger moves).

2) It put in wicks a hair above the 1st target of the pattern.

My aim is to document everything here, but, should it start to take my focus away from the task at hand, I will scale back/stop the blogging and just continue with my usual record-keeping.

2 comments:

MBAGearhead said...

Welcome back. That request must have been ages ago or do I have a bad memory? LOL Glad to see you blogging again. Good luck!

James Edwards-Marche said...

Thanks MBA! Yeah, it was about a year ago when we had an e-mail exchange. I tried (and failed) the 20-day combine last June so I'm hoping the continuous will help alleviate some nerves.