Software for Automatic Trading of Futures Markets
The final verdict for August, which was tough going. Still it could have been much worse! Looking at the figures, you can see that the trades broke even and the losses are just about equal to the brokerage fees. That’s why it is so important to control costs in day trading, and why strategies which don’t trade every day – such as the one in my book – are sometimes superior.
A loss of $160.68 today.
… and my good friends trading wheat have started the month with two good wins!
I didn’t trade yesterday – a bit busy getting the new software release out – so just a little bit of currency movement in my account. Quite a nice trending day, although I may have been stopped out…
So August wasn’t a very inspiring month, although it could certainly have been worse. Clients in the wheat market did better, reporting returns in the 10-20% range.
I will be switching into a new strategy for September – clients should already have the details.
A win of US $289.32.
Clients: I’m aiming to get the new software release to you in the next 24 hours.
A small win of US $64.32 in this session. (Another instance where the trailing stop took us out early.)
This was an example of the trailing stop taking out a trade which would otherwise have won – a potential problem whenever you use a trailing stop approach.
We are hitting a lot of chop as the contract price hovers around the 1000 cents mark. A loss of US $135,68 today.
It’s been hard to make headway this month! A loss of US $210.68 in this session.
The blog account is spinning its wheels this month! A loss of US $185.68 today.
A number of clients have asked when the new release of TradeOnAuto will be available. I’m using it myself, and it seems stable now. I plan to do some final testing during the coming week and release next weekend.
There was a nice downtrend today, but unfortunately our short was stopped out.
August continues to be a tough month, with a poor win ratio. Some strategies which make huge returns in good months would have been really hurting in a month like this, but we have managed to keep out of trouble (so far).
Wheat continues to do well, with clients reporting good results.
A win of US $ 139.32 today.
(Clients might be interested in checking out the returns from wheat this month, using this strategy with bias locked.)
A win of US $214.32 in this session.
I had a bit of excitement with this trade. I’d made some changes to the trading permissions for the blog account, and when I logged in I was told I was not subscribed to the market data. By the time I sorted it out over the phone, the session was about 4 minutes old, too late to use ToA to pick up on the open – so I decided to trade manually!
What chaos! The IB interface has changed a bit since I last traded manually, and I had no spreadsheets set up for this strategy. It was a mad rush, getting the orders to go in and calculating levels with pencil and paper, but I managed to muddle through.
This strategy requires you to work faster than some of the others I’ve used, and even with 2 minute bars it’s all too easy to make a mistake. As it was, I got through more by luck than judgment! I had forgotten what manual trading does to the stress levels. Thank goodness for ToA!
This has been a pretty tough month so far, but we’ve managed to edge ahead towards the end of this week.
ToA managed to slip in a very quick short trade today, before the market headed up strongly, winning US $239.32.
I opted to do some serious testing of the new release of TradeOnAuto last night, so did not trade the blog and my position is unchanged. Looking at the chart, there was a possible win, although with my close trail settings I would have expected a small loss.
We’ve listened to customer feedback and there are some really great features in the new release. One persistent request has been for the ability to trade multiple markets, or trade multiple strategies on the same market. I’m delighted to say that facility will be included in this release.
You will also be able to control the bias if you wish – that is, specify that ToA will only take long (or short) signals.
We managed a win of US $289.32 today. As you can see, we are pretty much spinning our wheels this month! Day trading is a fast paced activity, but sometimes requires great patience.
We weren’t able to dodge this bullet and took a loss of US $ 235.68 today.
It’s been a tough start to the month with most signals going against us. Most days this month it would have paid to trade in the opposite direction, by not allowing the bias to change. But these things tend to equalize out over time.
A small loss of US $35.86 today.
Obviously I prefer a winning week. But if I get four losers in one week I’m delighted to be less than 0.5% down. Clearly the trailing stop mechanism I’ve put in place has worked well, minimizing a couple of the losers while not interfering with the winner. (The danger with trailing stops is that they often tend to cut short your winners as well as your losers. We’ll see how it pans out in that regard as the month goes on…)
It’s great to see some positive signs of life in the other commoditie, but I’ll be sticking with my plan for the month. One observant client pointed out that we would have done much better recently using our current strategy with one minute charts! It’s true, we would. But my experience tells me that if I suddenly switch to one minute charts, that will be just the time the two minute charts run hot!
A loss of US$135.68 today.
So, after four trading days with one win and three losses we are right back where we started. Obviously, I’d prefer to be further ahead, but I’m pleased with these settings because the average loss is about one third the average gain, which is what I like to aim for.
Wheat had a "limit up" day yesterday – that is, up 60 cents for the session. It seems to be taking off, so we’ll keep an eye on it for next month..
By the way, when limit moves are about, the Exchange may choose to expand the limits to accommodate market movements. It pays to keep an eye on this page to check the limit on the contract you are trading. You can enter expanded limits on the ToA control sheet. You won’t lose anything sticking to the normal limits, but may miss an opportunity. (If you do enter an expanded limit, be sure to enter the correct value when the limit is subsequently reduced, or ToA could set targets / stops outside the permitted daily trading range.)
We took advantage of the early move to the downside for a win of US $389.32 today.
I like the first trade of the month to be a win, but it was not to be! A loss of US $235.68 today.
Stuart drew my attention to oil which has been performing remarkably well for the last few weeks. The strategy I’ve been using for beans would be applicable.
