UPDATE - End Of Continuous Combine 2 + 10-day $30K.



Improved on the larger-sized winning day metric...still lower highs and lower lows....

Looking back over my journal, I saw many instances of hesitation after booking profitable trades and even more after losing ones...especially if they were the first trade of the day. I also noticed that I had taken only 40 trades in 23 (trading) days compared to my first attempt, where I took 53 trades in 19 days....

All of this lead me to the conclusion that this particular Combine's parameters were a poor fit for my method's expectancy as well as my risk tolerance.

Taken from April 23rd's journal entry:

"The last three days (21st, 22nd and 23rd) have seen me stop out on the first trade only to be offered at least one opportunity to make it to target from there. Today was an especially profitable day for the method and I just sat by and watched after the initial loss. I was in the zone on paper and would have made an absolute killing if I had taken all trades... but I need to remember that it's not like this, not even close to, everyday...
IMPROVE: Take a smaller combine and express myself...."

I mistakenly avoided risk in an attempt to manage it. With a $3000 maximum draw down and $336.8 risk per trade (6 ticks of risk with 10 contracts plus commissions..) I could only afford to lose 8 in-a-row from the outset before being too close to the draw down limit to trade again. 9 and I would have been out of the game. This pushed me to have an overly tight daily stop equivalent to two losses which meant that, when I started out with a loser as I often did, too much emphasis was placed on the fact that I literally couldn't afford to lose if I wanted to be able to continue trading for the day. This made it almost impossible to trade the edge effectively...

One day's data is missing...total is ~+$100 more than the above...



Higher highs and higher lows!



 

So, against my own Ego, I determined that the smaller, $30K Combine would be much easier to trade. The reasons are as follows:

1) Lower profit target (on a per contract basis) - The target is $1500. As the max. no. of contracts is 3, this means $500/contract. The larger, $100K Combine required a $6000 profit target with a max. no. of contracts of 10....$600/contract.

2) Much larger draw down allowed (on a per contract basis) - Max. DD is now $1500 ($500/contract) compared to the $100K's $3000 (only $300/contract). This is the main reason for the switch.

The pay-off is a slightly smaller imposed daily stop ($500) of $167/contract as opposed to the $100K's $200/contract ($2000)...but this doesn't concern me in the slightest as I shouldn't be trading anyway if I find myself at those levels of loss in any one day.

The extra DD allows me to use the full daily stop AND still be in the game after a theoretical 3 daily stop-outs in-a-row...

$33.68/cont./trade=$101.04/trade using max. position size. Therefore daily stop= 4 losses (4*$101.04=$404.16 - less than $500). 3*$404.16=$1212.48...

The equivalent daily stop on the larger Combine would have meant hitting the max.DD after only two daily stop-outs in-a-row.

All of this meant freedom to "express" myself/method without immediate fear of hitting the above parameters.

As there is only one day left of this 10-Day Combine, hitting the profit target is not something I'm going to push to achieve. I'm prepared to do another, possibly continuous, $30K straight after this one...especially as I made some small but significant changes 3 days after the MFE was screaming at me to do so.

For the record, here is what the new, MFE-based, approach looks like on paper. Note that the first day's results were traded on SIM to build some confidence in the newly-acquired info....the rest (7) are as traded in the Combine...