Glandular fever :(

On the 1st of november I booked a flight to Hong Kong to fly out 2 days later, I wanted to tell a girl that she means the world to me and just put a smile on her face, we are not really together we only recently met when she was on business in Germany. She asked me to come so I did and we spent a whole weekend together. Anyway I went to Hong Kong and unforuntately she had just flown out to the states and I got very ill and turned out I had glandular fever which gave me tonsilitus and has damaged my liver and spleen. I am recovering now but had to delay my flight, so I haven't been trading this month because I have been abroad and too ill to fly back. I hope to trade the last couple of days in November and hope December is a good month and I can't wait to trade gas oil heating oil still, infact I miss trading so much, all I wanna do is trade lol!

I just checked the stats for the traffic to this site and it seems even though it hasn't been updated in a while it's still got similar levels as before so it's nice to know people keep visiting it. Is there anything I miss out in my posts, leave a comment. I do plan to keep this blog and I never plan on quitting trading and I do push hard to succeed and I am not someone who will be content to just take a reasonable salary from trading and stop pushing to achieve so hoping this blog will tell an interesting story.

Well hopefully not long till I am back in the action :)

EDIT: I was meant to move out my flat in London, but because I am abroad I got a friend to organise cleaners and my mum to pick my stuff up. But I just found out because the shared flat where I live was a mess the landlord trashed all my things, took my computer, cash, watch, all my belongings in London.

October Trading

This completes my 6th month as a trader! It has gone so fast and next month I will be trading gas oil - heating oil which will occupy me when fixed income is a little dead, and it's very much an action trade. I cannot wait!!! Maybe I will end up trading it as my main trade but for now I will be trading it on the side.

My month below, before costs:

My job explained

You know if your competing for the top place as a trader you can't afford to sit back and take it easy all the time because then the guys who are not as good at trading but were aggressive and avoided bad luck will be over taking you. Enough of those guys will just lose it all but risk taking will always be a big factor of your success.

Risk taking does quite interest me, like when you pay insurance you are paying a premium for them to cover the extreme situation but on average you would be better of paying no insurance, obviously, it's just taking a losing bet but one you are often willing to take because you want to avoid the extreme situations. Even the insurance companies insure themselves with other insurance companies who do the same back to avoid going bust in an extreme situation!

I like risk because taking risk makes money, that's how the insurance companies profit and that's how I profit as a trader. Many people in the market are willing to pay the spread between the bid and the offer to obtain a price right now, I am trying to profit from this and get in and out quickly, but I don't trade outright much, I hedge myself and wait for the two products to revert whilst trying to work the bid and offer spread on each individual market to my advantage. The spread often reverts especially if nothing fundamentally is changing. The bid is just the highest people are willing to buy now and the offer is the lowest people are willing to sell if you want to sell lower you can do it instantly by selling it to the people on the bid and vice versa.

So my job is to scalp the market, so I am getting in and out quickly, it's offering a service to others and providing liquidity in the market place, it's useful for some others but let's face it it's not something to be proud of to do as a job although I love doing it. But it doesn't just make money so easily because money is being drained out of the market by the exchange and essentially the middle man and fundamentals are ripping spreads apart even on a hourly basis at times, news comes out during the day and sometimes it can be unexpected news like a downgrade on a countries rating. So money is being taken out by people allowing you to trade and the actual traders are fighting for the rest of the money but if your good the rewards are fantastic. In my job I am essentially selling something to buy it back at the next price down because I scalp and don't position trade, so I don't necessarily need to know the direction the market is going, it's kinda arbitraging. Interestingly people make money just by queuing on bids and offers, if your first in line you have a big chance to get back out at the same price and sell or buy it off/from the people behind you otherwise you have a free shot at queuing the other side to get out for a profit. Although getting first in line means taking the risk initially, your price could become hard to get back but once everyone has piled in behind you, its generally profitable as long as bids and offers aren't getting smashed so fast. You can always que for a price miles away from the action and be fastest to do so, then if it ever comes to that price you have a great chance to make money. I would assume you fight against fast computers to do that as when the market opens the prices all the way up and down are filled instantly. As prices move sometimes lifting (buying) the offer is the only way to get a good price, if you know it's likely to become bid then queueing the current bid is near useless!

What I do is trade similar products that move generally together, the markets make there moves on fundamentals but everything else is cause by panic, emotions and people reacting in different ways. In spread trading (where you buy one thing and sell something else closely related) you make money by the volatility in the market on a short term basis, the markets move independently but with some kind of correlation and you just get in and out. Also the spread has meaning because the difference between the two products say the 2 year and the 5 year German bond means something because lending money at different points in the future will give different returns and this changes therefore the futures curve shows if the economy is going to strengthen or weaken for example. So anyway most days the spread prices are just bouncing around a range, it's great because you just wait for it to hit the top and you sell the spread, it bounces back and you get out it goes a little further and you buy it and you work a good price by queing. Unfortunately there are many things going on in the world and the curve on interest rates on bonds is getting flattened and then being smashed back to an upward sloping curve constantly and queing can actually mess you about as the markets can move fast unexpectedly. So spread prices are being whacked around often but things have been pretty manageable and I heard there was a period of 6 months where nothing moved together in what I trade and it just took out loads of traders like me, unfortunately. Also when selling a spread you have to sell more when it goes higher having already sold unless you know something is changing and there's reason why it could continue to go up, because otherwise this spread moves a little further than you think all too often and all too often it comes back and by averaging it means you can cope when the spread trends, it normally trends with dips so it's okay and you would be paying up far too often without averaging. Although as you average your position quickly increases and it can get ugly.

Recently the markets are coming perhaps more efficient, say the bobl moves up, the schatz instantly flips, so the guy on the offer who is say 3/4 of it now buys at this price level making the offer now the bid and you didn't have time to sell the bobl on the offer and que the bid on the schatz or even take the offer on the schatz which would seem okay if the bobl already moved and you got filled on the new offer. That is what has changed in the last 2 weeks and apparently it's what happened "in the old days" it's okay you can still do your job as a spreader just it's a little frustrating.

Update on the month

Yesterday I was up 500 euros before the TED went down, I bought it and it kept going I had 48 by 60 on my largest position ever (600 euros a tick) I was on the verge of stopping out and by 9pm I reduced my position to 40% so I could hold it overnight and I was down around 800 euros. I also held 4 flys overnight and in the morning I came in and was shocked on the netting to see the fly which I had sold was printing up quite high, my PnL showed -2000 but that was based on settlements which don't mean too much, so I was really printing -1400 which was disastrous. Luckily the fly opened up at the same price and I got out for 100 euros profit on it. The TED came down lower and I got in and jobbed my position slightly. I had a chance to get out at a good price but only took a small amount off, as I always get out too soon, but it turned out to be the high of the day, sigh. It came down again and I couldn't really buy more so I felt pretty limited in what I could do. I was down 400 euros on the day and still had a loss of about 800 from yesterday and had all my costs to cover too.. I was short the fly now and basically took a loss of 300 euros on it, I couldn't see how it was going to break down as it seemed to have found a new range. I got flat with no positions on bringing yesterdays loss to a little over 500 euros and was up 130 for today. Even though it was approaching 4pm which isn't a great time to put a position on I decided I was going to stay. I made some great entry and exits on the TED and made 375 euros in about 20 minutes bringing my total gross profit to -39 euros for the two days which was good enough for me. After costs -£700 which is alot, but I could have been down a couple of thousand. The markets have been far from easy the schatz is impossible to lean, the price you are waiting to take gets taken by 1 person, and sometimes the next price gets taken all by one guy and your sitting there wondering if he will do it again, it's so hard to get in and out when it's like that. The good thing is it looks like I will make the target for eurex rebates which will be 2000 euros back for the month. Then there are some liffe rebates so I will cover my £1500 desk fee plus have extra left over and I am up £500 net for the month and I feel like it's been really tough for this week and last.

A long week

Thursday night and I was long the bund bobl schatz fly and I was improving my position and just as I bought some bobl there was a bobl stop downwards, it did 9 ticks in about 5 seconds and I clicked sell bobl as a reflex and was able to get back in the bobl only 2 ticks lower. It was frustrating and I held the fly overnight, it opened at the same place and came down more so I bought more and before I could get the bund on there was a bund stop which screwed me over big time. I was sooo frustrated I lost money in the TED trying to get out just because I was so offside in the fly and my positions were too big. I lost 500 euros just because of bund stops and not getting fills, for example I would be queing to buy the schatz and the bid would go down to the last few, people next to me were queing it and got filled but I didn't. The fly kept tanking and I was down at worst case 1200 euros, I felt sooo low. I felt like I couldn't click buy or sell because it would immediately do something crazy to screw me over. I carried on to improve my position during some news which caused the liquidity to go fast and did a great job. I kept improving my position even though the fly kept falling and soon was only down a few hundred on the day. I stayed till 6pm and got in and out the fly countless times making money buying it as it slowly drifted lower but obviously not in a straight line. I felt happy to know I had the skills to do this, which helped me relax and forget about the bund and bobl stops that had cost me money.

The fly made a small bounce back from the low and I got out, it was near 6pm and I couldn't see how it was going to go much more unless I stayed till 8 or 9pm. I wanted to leave the office so I decided to get out. 20 minutes later as I was updating some things on my PC the markets all tanked massively and the fly rocketed up giving amazing prices I felt sooo gutted. I hesitated to sell it which was a mistake as it would have given some profit instantly but I took advantage of the situation in the TED. The euribor was slow to catch up as it's likely very few people are watching the markets so I sold the euribor and bought the schatz which had fallen considerably, I got out for a tick within about 2 minutes which was cool. I finished up 257 euros, once again an amazing come back, considering the fly didn't bounce back whilst I was in it. I am breakeven for the week after costs but at least I should have covered my desk fee. Everyone has said how crap the market was for spreading this week so I am just content to have made about 1300 euros for the week, unfortunately I just traded a huge amount so costs were high.

A good day

Due to some kind of problem we weren't able to trade until 10.42am. I could see the charts and could see I was missing out on easy money, very frustrating. When I was finally able to trade things went really well, it was not a repeat of yesterdays frustration. Virtually every time I entered and exited a trade the market moved to give me a great price and I kept my costs low for the day and made £400+ after costs. The last few days I had struggled to make anything after costs so it was nice to bank a good up day.

Each month I pay the exchange money to trade, its charged based on the number of contracts I buy and sell and at the end of the month they give a percentage of it back. I am now trading bigger size than previous months and the money I get back will cover the cost of my desk each month. This is awesome because now I can just be happy to make money net and not have to keep thinking about a huge desk fee to cover. So like today when I made about £400, that is £400 I will have added to my months total after all costs. I am feeling much more relaxed knowing that as before I wasn't getting much back from the exchange and my desk was just huge in comparison! All this has changed because I sized up, I knew it was the right thing to do. I am staying on this size for now to try and build my account up as the next size will really hit my account hard when I have bad days.

Fly break out

Between 7am and 7:20am the fly tanked, 30 ticks. I was showing -1600 euros and bought some bobl to stop myself out, I ended up putting it back on at a worse price as I saw the momentum change in my favour. The fly did come all the way back but only half way initially. I didn't hold it for that long, I cut my position down to just 1 clip and was showing -500. I took that off and was completely out of the market with a PnL of about -400. I traded the TED for the rest of the day and finished up 65!! I didn't make a huge amount of trades so I didn't lose to much after costs. I did get so frustrated again though, I was first in line in the bobl to get filled and bought the bund back, it instantly fell and I didn't get the fill in the bobl and I missed the next bobl and the next... just before taking the bobl at a crap price I decided okay I will buy back the schatz here which was my other leg, I clicked to que the bid and it instantly was offered by 1700 and the price below traded. I then sold the bobl outright by hitting into about 15 lots and BAM it went 500 bid and traded up. It was so frustrating.. but I am so happy that I didn't have to stop out at -1600!!

Pure frustration all day

I was sleep deprived and the markets were frustrating for everyone but not only that I kept being first in line to get filled and then it wouldn't trade through me time and time again. Every time I lifted the last 6 on the bobl it instantly went 300 offered and took out the bid, sigh. It felt like I couldn't do anything right but it was more to do with people squeezing you into taking prices you didn't want. I did feel like I read the market well today, I bought the euribor on the low and made some outright trades which would have gone my way had I not scratched them. So I am realising sometimes I just need to wait and not be eager to scratch just because one guy needs to get out or has a different opinion and makes my position look bad for that moment. I scratched my euribor at the right time and legged half a tick on the schatz which I did because I thought the euribor was a clear buy I also held my schatz even when the price below was taken out because I couldn't see how that price would go offered, I guess today was just a very hard day to make money, the TED just drifted up and the fly drifted down, all prices flipped and squeezed you. This normally happens on days where there is little news due, like today.

New best week :D

Only beat my previous best by 11 euros though. Total gross profit this week: +2413 euros.

Today I spent an hour watching a friend trade who has recently started on fixed income, he is in a part of the company that has the "new guys". I found some things he needed to change and was doing my best to help, then this guy next to him asked me questions and started taking notes! quite a compliment I guess. Then after work in the pub there was a guy much older than me who has recently started and the guy who backs me asked if it was all right if this guy comes and watches me trade in the morning on Monday. I didn't think I had that much to tell someone who was new but I guess I have picked up a fair bit of knowledge in 5 months. I was always picking people's minds when I was new though.

4 days into October..

.. and already over a 1/4 of the way to matching last month! I am now actually scared with my size, stopping out kills you so much and my stop loss seems huge but that's just how it is. It's been over a month until I last stopped out so it's easy to get carried away with my expectations. Today I was getting so frustrated with the market and myself, I just lost a couple hundred euros on stupid mistakes/unfortunate timing. The spreads were ridiculously tight but I did okay. Tomorrow is ECB rate decision! but to be honest I get so bored during it. I just hope the spreads are good.

First 4 figure day!

I was thinking about it and yesterday I did it! +1008 euros, so awesome, about +£500 net profit for the day. The TED went 9 ticks today but I was selective and got out of it and back in and did alright. Anyway September is now finished and really pleased with how it went, here is a graph of my gross profit for the month!

Euribor froze

It really sucks I was qued just 1 below the bid on the schatz, I got filled as everything fell and couldn't get out the euribor, -425 euros in seconds. Couldn't make it back did 1160 lots (record amount) and finished -15 euros. I sized up on the fly and I am going to just trade 12 by 15 now on the Euribor-Schatz. It was pretty cool at the end of the day I had to sell 38 schatz and just took out the entire bid lol! really want that 4 figure day.. just did 13 hours at the office, feel fucking tired but looking forward to tomorrow really want to make some decent progress. Last day of the month, normally would worry about messing my month up but just gonna push at it tomorrow!

40 by 50

Now back and trading again, today the market was very unusual, there was a lot of flipping in the schatz and the euribor was moving very fast. Legging resulted in missing prices, so naturally I missed prices and kept trying for the same price and failing, the spread was going away from me and I averaged in super tight due to frustration of missing prices and had for quite a while 40 by 50 on. It was too much and I was sitting on -1000 euros knowing I could be at -1500 just from a large trade going through. I couldn't make much money on it, and ended up scratching so much of it. I had a reasonably good day in the end, which was cool because I was really sleep deprived and also hadn't eaten much. I didn't want to size up before going away because it sucks to lose a lot before something important, but now I am going to trade 12 by 15 once I am up 100 or more euros each day and then if that goes well just trade 12 by 15 instead of 8 by 10. Hopefully then I can have my first 4 figure day!

FOMC

Each month we have the rate decision for the US, currently at 0.25% it was unchanged. The figure was released last night at 7.15pm, so of course I stayed. Last time I didn't do that much and realised if I had just done what I was thinking I could have made some good money. So this time I wanted to get involved, there is a lot of room to make and lose because the liquidity dries up massively around this figure. Prices move fast and you can easily sell something and immediately click buy at a cheaper price and be out all within a few seconds.

I watched the markets as I heard it the rates were going to remain unchanged and the markets moved.. I didn't know which way they would go so kept watching, I eventually sold the euribor and waited on the schatz and got filled pretty fast. Then the price below the euribor vanished and the one below that went down to 12 on the bid so I clicked on the 12 and then the one above got taken and I was feeling a little stupid for not just taking it, but I don't think anyone sold it at that price anyway. I got out for 1/2 a tick and then sold the fly, then reversed and bought it for a few ticks. The bund had a stop but it happened in a blink of an eye literally, I didn't even see it go up and down just I could see it had done so...maybe I was looking at the schatz at the time though (but it was really fast). Then soon after the bobl did a similar thing and shot up and the liquidity dried up massively so I just clicked on the higher of the prices which had no one willing to sell at, it had already retraced by 2 ticks so I assumed I wouldn't get it, but it did a little spike upwards and filled me at 28 and I immediately could buy it at 26, for 2 ticks profits. I was done and up 145 euros from the 40 minutes of fun I had trading over FOMC.

I am now up 1100 euros for the week but I am taking a couple days off trading :)

Didn't expect to improve on the previous week...

... but I did! I was too busy over the weekend to write a post but last week I had my best week ever! 2400 euros. That's now two weeks of making £1000 net profit and today I started this week off well and was out the office by 2pm.



I have been waiting for the day where I stop out, it probably should have been on Friday, it went about 7-10 ticks a lot of people I know who trade the same thing stopped out, I was in it and was in it very early too but made 100 euros from the trade and finished up 355 for the day. It was really close to stopping me out though so I am feeling really quite lucky but also I felt I traded every opportunity and did a good job overall. The only reason I didn't stop out was there were some opportunities (at the time you would be thinking about getting out) to get in and out, spinning 50-100 euros each time. After that it came back in our direction so you could scratch loads of your clips and take a small hit on the earlier ones, giving you a scratch or small win.

Always wanted a somewhat exponential graph ^^

Profit before costs since I started in May. Please keep going up!!

Need to size up!!!

I spoke to the other guy who backs me and he said I should aim to size up, and do it after I have made money in the morning, so start on 8 by 10 each day then do 12 by 15 later, I think is a great idea to do it this way. He said within 4 weeks I should aim to trade 20 by 25! but I think it's perhaps too ambitious, but it would be amazing!

Now that I am starting to make money I feel really annoyed having to pay such big costs about £3000+ a month. Why can't people play zero sum games for free (poker, trading etc) let us gamble our money in peace... the exchange rapes you, desk fee's etc what a joke. I get pretty cheap commissions although I pay a lot for my desk. So I could get it cheaper trading somewhere else all in all but it's not that much better, plus I think the atmosphere and possibilities for the future (for example if I backed someone I would get money from the round turns they do, which I hope to do one day) make it worth staying. Either way trading is expensive sigh.

Keeping to 8 by 10 for now

So I traded 12x15 and was down 1100 thinking what a shit time to size up. Luckily it came back and I found myself up 100 euros and flat. I then made a tick to bring it to 250 but my boss said I should keep on 8x10 for now and having seen just how much damage I could do on this size I decided it was the right decision. Although there is no need to stay on 8x10 for too long! Just I decided I should get my account a little more positive first because I could feel myself feeling uncomfortable averaging in which is not good. I still stand by my last post but I don't think I am ready for 1500 Euro losses quite yet. Anyway it was a good day and I crossed a milestone today, which is 10,000 euros gross profit since I started in May. Although I am excited I have to remember just how hard it is when the spread blows out and how much it sets you back! but feeling good about my execution and understanding and knowing I can take money out the market.

The big question! when to size up?

No doubt my approach to sizing up has been "relatively" aggressive. I think I am immensely lucky to be backed by two people who's attitude is, to not put any blockers in the way of my progress and who believe the same as me. I believe is it is nice to have money before sizing up, you need some cushion to be able to keep yourself in the game. But sizing up isn't necessarily a one way process, just because you sized up doesn't mean you have to stay on that size. My costs are big and I don't want to spend half the month covering them each month. Thing is soon I will need to draw money to live off as well and then it becomes tougher to size up, it becomes mentally harder too. Okay so there is no rush, I can do it slowly and gradually but I know people who are not sizing up who have been there as long as 4 years and trading my size or lower. Now why wouldn't you size up! you make money gross.. just trade twice the size and in a months time you won't look back, your "cushion" will increase relatively to your size and hey if you have a bad few trades on that size just size back down, you will have a worse month but so what you gave yourself a chance to make twice as much.

I think having played poker before it has made me really appreciate some things in trading more than others. In poker to make more money you have to improve and beat better players, in trading you just trade twice the size and you make twice as much as long as you don't trade differently and as long as twice your size isn't really big and then has problems being absorbed. I find that people who are there for a number of years really don't struggle to make money in the markets, they struggle to live of what they make pay £2000 in fixed costs and then pay their variable costs. I honestly think people are making a huge mistake and I find a lot of people disagree with my approach and think it's a little reckless. Why risk your trading career just to make more money, well two things EV (expected value, in the markets) is positive just abuse this fact and also secondly greed! and also you can do it without risking your trading career.

I am now at a point where I could go and get my account nice and positive before sizing up or try the next size for a day. If I size up and it goes bad I can just go back to the size I was on. Then try again next week. It's somewhat rare to lose money but when it does it's big, and it will only be 1.5 times the size, which seems well worth the reward. Pretty sure I am going to try out 12 by 15 on Monday, although Mondays aren't great because the big guys are whacking on positions but I'll be first to admit 1500 losses will suck so bad but my daily target would be 450 euros which to me seems insane!

Edit: After writing this I was reading an interview on Paul Rotter (aka flipper) the most successful futures trader, in fact he traded what I am trading now. He says:

Q: what are your strengths as a worldclass trader and where are the differences between you and other traders?


A: it´s the ability to get more aggressive in winning phases, taking bigger risks, and scaling back in losing times. this is against human nature. the best thing is to have somebody around who is neutral to trading, that switches the terminals off, when a certain loss level has been reached for the day.

Which is cool because its what I was getting at! If we were robots we should just be getting aggressive when we know we are profitable but because we are humans it's best to do it in winning phases because we will be trading our best then. That's why I think he says "in winning phases".

New best week ever!

My 19th week trading! £1100+ after all costs.

Stressssss

Yesterday I was up for the day but I decided to leave a position on overnight, today in the morning I sold 1/3 of my schatz on the netting and it came rocketing down, it was such a good price but I had worked at the office 14 hours yesterday and 11 hours the day before that and just wasn't feeling totally with it at such an early hour. I should have made 375 euros leaving it on overnight if I just took it all off on the netting, but instead just made 150. I was pissed off at myself and took a break outside and for some reason was feeling low. I am obviously too hard on myself, just a couple of weeks ago I miss clicked and cost myself 50 euros and decided it was better to leave early than carry on trading, for some reason I couldn't forgive myself. So after this I was feeling shit, it wasn't about the money, obviously 50 euros isn't a big deal it's just that I want to do well. I think I was feeling low because I felt like there was such a fine line in having a disaster week and doing what I have done, I guess I just have high expectations, sigh.

Recently the TED has been so awful and it's been a struggle but after my 15 minute break I came back feeling a little better and got involved in the markets, they were the best they had been all month for spreading and I made exactly 600 euros, which was really needed as I felt I had worked so hard recently but couldn't book a nice win because the spreads were trending and not ranging. All in all a good week so far and not far from hitting €2k gross on the week. I really want to push my size up but the stress has been higher than I could imagine.

Terrifying to be honest but felt relatively calm also

Before lunch I was up 400 euros, was really happy with my trading and felt I had made the most of each opportunity. Then the TED went 11 ticks!!! brutal. I didn't even start buying it until it had moved 4 to 5 ticks, and I used my profit for the day to keep myself in the trade otherwise I would have stopped out. My worst print was -1100... fucking -1500 in 1 trade... stupid. The terrifying thing was my size was so big, 1 tick was worth 400 euros at this point, the biggest size I have ever had on (32 by 40) The euribor didn't move and the schatz kept going up like 12 half ticks... infact the euribor eventually moved but down! and they normally move together.. I don't understand why the euribor just didn't move. It was just awful to trade, trading the TED was basically just trading outright on the schatz today. I was sitting there still down a fair whack and I sold 109.620 in the dec 10 schatz and bought 98.940 in the euribor sep 11, and then bought 109.615, sold it again at 109.620, bought 109.615, sold 109.620, bought 109.615, sold 109.620, bought 109.615, sold 109.620 and bought 109.615 and then sold 98.940 on the euribor (to scratch it). Never done anything quite like that before and omg it helped so much, each time I did it I made 50 euros. The spread came back some of the way and finished up 376 lol.. couldn't believe it. Dodged another bullet! give me luck! all those bad beats in poker being repaid??? haha.. I mean really I did good today but I was literally hoovering my mouse at one point getting ready to accept the loss and the prices never traded so I was able to stay in.

Euribor on it's high Schatz on it's low

Yesterday started so bad, Euribor on it's high Schatz on it's low, it was 7.15am and I am down 600 euros, thinking oh god. The fly ended up going 50 ticks! and I remember at that point I was thinking my first clip is 40 ticks offside, which is -400 euros alone but I was printing only 100 down which was awesome and it meant I had done pretty well in jogging my position throughout the day. The fly barely came back but the TED did and in the end I had one of my better days! It's just 5am so today I am going to be a little more cautious as I have almost stopped out every day of this month so far, and feeling pretty lucky but I also really hope the markets improve for spreading because they have been awful recently.

Was about to stop out

I put my last 8 by 10 on at 2, giving my position a tick value of 350 euros, I would have to be fast to stop out, I was showing a print of -700, but I sold at 2.5 and bought 2s again and then legged some 3.5s and bought 1.5 selling 2.5s, I then sold the rest of mine the highest sell was 4.5 having bought all the way from 5.5 very aggressively. During this I had made 170 euros on the fly and I got flat for non farms and over it I made 130 euros on the fly, bringing my day to +320 thank god! Stopping out twice would have sucked.

Stopped out

Today I stopped out and because I was so tired I came home. Down 950 euros, it sucks but for the week I am down just under 300 euros which is okay. This week has had very few opportunities. Losing so much in one day hurts and it wasn't great timing to lose because yesterday 2 friends of mine quit and someone just left our team, the guy next to me quit a month ago and the person behind me is leaving in a month. I also heard someone who has a fair bit of respect from others could be leaving too. That in itself is depressing but it's been quite a while since I stopped out so there's no need to worry, I can keep trading 8 by 10 and put off 12 by 15 for now. I traded 8 by 10 today and wasn't that aggressive to average in, but it went about 10 ticks and I didn't even puke it at the low, it went further and no idea where it is now. :)

August Complete!

My target for the month was 2000 euros gross, I broke through that and broke the 4000 mark which is awesome. After all costs I made a little less than £500 (I think), but I am really going to work on selectivity next month and really was doing way to many marginal trades, I got bigger limits recently which is exciting so I can up my size and the other day I had 28 by 35 on! which was so awesome, unfortunately it just didn't move and was forced to scratch a lot of it.

Anyway here is August (gross profit)

There were so many times during this month where I am sitting -500 euros just I held the trade and put more on and the graph just plots it once the trade is closed so it was a lot more stressful than you may think!

For September well I dunno what I want, I guess just to build my account up and make progress If I can be clipping in with 12 by 15 at the end of the month it would be great. I currently clip in at 8 by 10 and sometimes 4 by 5 but pretty much dropped 4 by 5 now.

Another day etc

I seem to mess up every open recently. I waited for the netting to finish and lifted the price the schatz opened at, which still had about 35 left on the offer, I got 5 of them. It went bid and looked like it was going to push through. It didn't go and I decided to hedge myself after not taking a scratch but ended up scratching the trade. I made just 20 euros doing a few trades, nothing was going great. The TED has been trickling down for a week now and a new low came along, I had been watching the price action and felt like it was a good buy so I bought 3 clips, one was 1/2 a tick off the low but I made 200 euros from it which was cool. I was trying to buy the euribor outright but after it dithered I didn't have the patience to wait. My execution on the fly is just sooo much better now, with the fly if your going long you have to buy 4 schatz, sell 3 bobl and buy 1 bund. Therefore it's a lot harder to get the overall spread price that you want. Today I sold 66s, which was the price offered but it went bid and I decided to sell 69s, I bought it all back at 66s and sold 68s and then bought that back at 64s, happy days! Whilst doing that I was also buying the TED lol.. so there was a lot to concentrate on. I traded 550+ lots today (costing about £180...), the most I have ever done in a day. I covered my costs with about £90 profit, but it wasn't an easy day and during it I missed some prices and scratched a great price in a fast moving market, but oh well, live and learn :D

It worked out OK

The fly opened pretty much on the very high, I sold 2 out of 5 clips on the netting and it instantly came down fast and I got the rest of at an ok price, finishing Friday down 395 euros, meaning I made about 400 euros by leaving it on over the weekend w00t. Thank god that is over, today my day wasn't great, the TED wasn't easy to trade and the 160 euros I made on it today doesn't even cover my cost for the day. Hoping to make 1100 this week to make August a really good month in total!

Sigh

This whole week has been tough, the markets haven't been good for spreading and on friday the fly made the second biggest move I have seen it do. I thought I did a great job at jogging my position but by 9pm on Friday I was massively offside and decided to hold it over the weekend. I just want to know where it will open on Monday, not really enjoying having such a big open position on.

Constantly trading for about 2 days...

The last two days have been both mentally draining and a complete roller coaster. On Monday the TED spread was edging to it's high and of course everyone is selling it. At first it wasn't so bad to trade, around 10 to 12 it was almost dead, but I was able to take 1/2 a tick repeatedly whilst everyone around me was just sitting back. I managed to massively improve my position. After lunch the spread continued higher it was looking ugly, but then fell back about 2 ticks which was enough to put me a couple hundred in profit. It didn't stay there for long and went higher and I continued to sell it and sell it!! and it kept going... people stopped out around me and went home and I was still selling it and jogging my position wherever possible. It broke the high and I was sitting in an almost empty office down 411 euros. I waited and waited and it was getting near to the close, within the last hour between 8pm and 9pm it came down a little but barely. I had a huge position on, 250 euros for 1 tick and it had gone about 10 ticks in total. I got rid of 40% of my position and watched the netting, no good prices came and so I held my position overnight, hoping it had just drifted and people would sell it tomorrow. Tomorrow after watching it for 10 minutes I decided to get out just 1/2 a tick better of than what I could have done last night but ran one clip down a couple of ticks and was flat bringing my PnL to +145 from yesterday. It was really nice to have survived a blow out but felt greedy to make money...

..I was tired and I quickly reversed to buying it and I probably only started selling it 2 ticks before others around me but it was so costly. The bund/bobl/schatz fly broke out massively within about 5 minutes and I sold that, the TED was just falling all the way back down and my boss gave me a nudge indicating I should stop out! I was showing over a 600 euro loss, I couldn't believe it... I felt pissed off I had worked so hard yesterday by jogging my position to avoid stopping out and now I just go and stop out stupidly. I took all but 1 clip off on the TED and sold another fly, my risk was a lot less now but the fly continued up and the TED continued down I was showing -740 euros... I jogged my TED making 25 euros improvement, which just seemed nothing in comparison to the massive hole I was in. I tried to focus and even got out of the TED and back in a tick better, made a tick for 50 euros and then the fly came down and I got out for 210 euros profit, my PnL was about -400 in total now. The TED just didn't come back and was stuck in a 2 tick range and sometimes even tighter! the markets were constantly flipping and squeezing you into taking prices you didn't want to take. I scratched one trade several times because of the markets behaviour but kept getting back in to take small amounts of money out of the market. Then there was news and the markets went crazy as everyone smashed their positions into the markets based on the news, some good spread prices appeared for milliseconds and I managed to get them selling the euribor and buying the schatz at a price so that I could sell the spread for a profit. The TED really didn't do anything but I kept scalping it and legging aggressively, making calls on the markets next move so that I could take 25 to 100 euros from it and by 3pm I had traded almost every opportunity and was up 53 euros for the day! It was incredible, fun and tiring. What will tomorrow bring?

Best week ever!

All this week (gross profit) ^^

Results and thoughts for the week

My week was OK but I did expect more from it, I lost 400 euros in 1 trade trading something I am still new too and I am taking a break from it and concentrating on the Euribor-Schatz spread, which made me about 1000 euros this week.

(gross in euros)
Mon: +360
Tue: -485
Wed: +327
Thur: +210
Fri: +250

On Friday I was able to trade 2 clips and take them off for a tick profit and then later managed to get a tick and a half from a trade and I could have easily made a couple hundred more as the markets were moved but the spreads held in giving good opportunities but unfortunately family problems caused me to stop trading after lunch.

I am really pleased that I am putting in 300 euro days already and my boss has talked about sizing up next week although I am already putting on my 3rd clip 1/2 tick in if im confident. Because really if I make money trading 2 clips, it won't be any different trading 10! only psychologically and actually I can understand why many people are still trading 1 clip who have been there a few years. It is because when you lose in spreading you lose big! therefore on 1 clip I have had down days of 900 euros so with 3 clips it could be 3 times that! but simply if you have been trading for years then you are making money why not just trade bigger size and you will make more, up to a point of course, because it is easy for the market to absorb any size I would think to sizing up to so of course I am going to try. It is mentally challenging to size up so early but if I take a hit I can just trade 1 clip and then do it again!

A battle against trading costs

Today I paid £1440 for my desk for the month, which is still reduced. It seems such a lot but the cost can't be avoided, just to trade on the exchanges alone are costly. Also I have to pay each time I trade but before those costs I am aiming to make £250 a day which is definitely doable. Although today was a big wake up call how hard this job is. Making money in the markets doesn't seem too hard but making enough to overcome the costs does seem quite hard. Although I am only starting my 4th month so still early days and since I upped my size I haven't had one of those easy days and it's been quite a struggle just to hit my target. This week it's been the case that I have put 2 clips on at a price then it goes against me just half a tick and I normally average at 1 tick but I want to improve my position so I put 1 clip on at that price and then take it off where I had my 2 clips originally on and then keep doing it and eventually just scratch my original 2 clips, so I end up making money just from the 1 clip so hoping I can have some days where I just put 2 clips on and take them off for a profit. Anyway I can easily be positive in my account at the end of this month, although its the slowest month and perhaps the hardest so I won't expect too much from it. Couldn't hit 1200 for the week as I lost 485 euros on tuesday but 1/3 of the way with still friday to go lol... which is the day where blow outs regularly happen so I will just be happy to have a positive day.

A new month!

Today I traded 8 by 10, twice the size I started on. I have been trading 8 by 10 (i.e 2 clips) a little but this month hopefully is the end of 4 by 5 (1 clip). The nice thing with starting with 2 clips instead of 1 is I can take half of it off and still be hedged in the correct ratio and then put it back on without missing a move in my favour.

Today I was trading non stop from 7am to 9.20am and did virtually nothing for the rest of the day. I came in and bought the Schatz outright with 10 lots and sold for half a tick higher within seconds then sold the spread price of 22  with 2 clips and took 1 clip off at 21.5 and put the clip back on at 22 and did the same again. Then 22.5's came on and I sold 1 more clip, bringing my position to 12 by 15 (3 clips) which is 150 euros for 1 tick!. I then took 1 clip off at 22 and another off at 21.5 put 1 clip back on at 22 and took it off at 21.5 and my final clip off at 21's. I forget what else I did, I traded the fly and punted a little but barely made much from it. A nice start to the month at least, interesting to see where trading leads me and a little unsettling knowing I could blow out tomorrow as in blow out for the day, but feeling more positive and surprised just how well the last 6 trading days have gone.

A lot of guys where I work who make good money are trading 4 by 5 albeit averaging tightly but I have been pretty aggressive in trying to get my size up, taking full advantage of having two relaxed backers and knowing too well from poker the importance of moving up but especially in trading where there is no difference trading 20 by 25 or 4 by 5 because they are both so relatively small anyway. Therefore I really want to get my size up and not let my emotions get in the way and not fall victim to thoughts such as "I made 100 euros, lets keep this money" then sit on 100 euros just because I don't want the pain of knowing I was up 100 euros and then looking at -300 euros...

Goal: Make 1200 euros for the week and then trade some 12 by 15 in good spots.

July (gross)

Had two huge losing trades but had an amazing run in the last week bringing my total higher than June which was my target. Hopefully in August I will break 2000 euros. I have a definite up trend throughout my first 3 months so I feel a little more confident now and hopefully can be trading bigger size next month.

Meh?

I should have blogged about my big loss on friday but just been really busy and busy thinking too. Friday was -1025 euros.. fun.. I puked the low, so it doesn't get more painful than that. I have considered quitting and not because things are going bad because they aren't just maybe realising the importance of a stable career. I worked hard to get to this point and thought I knew what I wanted but now not so sure what I want. I am trying to think ahead and think about those around me too, we shall see..

Going back to trading, to make my decision even harder I had my best trading day today! +688 euros

roller coaster day again

Well today I got to work for 7am having slept less than 4 hours.. I stayed an amazing 12 hours and on the open I was quickly up 108 euros, I was pretty aggressive and continued to do so and the same shit happened again, the TED goes up and I am stuck selling it and to make matters worse I am buying the bund/bobl/schatz fly which is plummeting... Around 10 or 11am I had basically maxed out my limits and my pnl was fluctuating between -200 and -700 really fast and it wasn't a pleasant experience! Everytime i que'd the schatz I had to take market... and it was really getting to me, at the end of the day I was queing the schatz  which had less than 50 on the bid, 8 of them were mine and I was waiting for about 30 seconds, it looked like it had to trade and if just something traded I would have finished up 140! a massive recovery... but the schatz went massively bid and I was forced to get back into the fly and 1 hour later I have sold more flys and now down 140 for the day. I felt so annoyed knowing just 3 ticks which is nothing on the fly would bring me down another 90 euros but luckily ben bernanke gave his speach at 7pm and I was able to get out and punted the bobl for 30 euros finishing up 90 euros, which is definately my best recovery yet!

Tuesdays are always good!

Today things went well, I took prices I should have and have improved my execution on the fly but still learning good legs to take. I sold the fly on the open, which opened high and watched the TED go from 20 to 23 before selling it, then I took the euribor off and put it back on and improved my position to short 24s. I bought 22.5s on a leg and then sold 23.5 buying it back at 22.5 and continued to make money on the fly. I also punted the schatz which worked out, hoorar!

An intense and draining day

Today I traded virtually non stop from 7am to 5pm, my first couple of trades were aggressive but made money but then the TED spread trended upwards once again but to make things worse I was selling the bund/bobl/schatz fly as well which was also trending upwards and I was struggling to keep my PnL above -600. I had a low point of just over 800 euros down but worked hard to jog my position and scalp the fly and finished the day down 205 euros which felt like a huge win, although all in all a bad day

Update!

I am currently half way through my 3rd month as a trader. I trade fixed income but more precisely I spread trade and scalp and typically look to make a tick or two ticks at most each trade. I come into an office every day by 7 am and trade the open with other kids my age, it is the dream job if you can earn a salary from it. Many people come and go and the success rate even after their 4 week assessment is low. They selected about 25 people to train and assess and took on 6 guys which is above the normal intake each month. Now there are only 4 of us and were only 50 trading days in...

I wasn't sure what to write on this blog but I think I have a better idea now. My story so far is I was selected as one of the 6 guys and then was selected to join one of the best teams on the floor where I get a lot more freedom and I sit next to experienced people who I can ask questions and learn from. The truth is, no one is really sure themselves on what to buy and what to sell and it's hard to teach someone else, you just have to put a lot of screen time in and I have done a few 14 hour days since being there. It eventually will cost me £2k a month for my desk plus it's costing about £70 a day to trade and I get about half of that £70 back at the end of the month. At the start of my 2nd month just before I was to receive about £800 back in rebates my account was down £2.2k and I felt like quitting. I was probably half way to being asked to leave, which is normal for the ones that make it but I still felt negative, luckily things have picked up and my account is virtually flat now. Also the guy I sit next to has bought half a stake in me from my original backer and has been teaching me what he knows and has faith in me, which is cool.

I am starting to make money trading outright also, I typically buy the euribor and sell the schatz or the other way around but together as I spread trade but once or twice a day I spot an opportunity and I lift or hit the schatz and que the otherside for a quick half a tick. After the CPI eurozone data yesterday the markets kicked off and I traded outright and then just went to the pub which is cool because if I can learn to trade outright it's going to help.

Recently the markets have been volatile and this week there was a bund and bobl stop, whereby they moved too many ticks in too little time and they close and go into netting. I was long bobl when it rocketed up and took my schatz off which didn't move anyway and ended up profiting a tick on it and taking 4 ticks on the bobl which was lucky to be on the right side of it.

Anyway things are going ok and I love the job and just wish I can build my account up and survive another month for now. Last friday everyone in the office stopped out pretty much and was down the pub by 11am, I lost 775 euros which isn't good... it's taken me a week to make it back and I am up 1000 euros (gross) this month, I haven't made much after costs but I just want to beat last months gross total of 1400, 10 trading days left, wish me luck!

June

Update

Well at the end of May I had one really bad day losing 930 euros in 1 trade... it wasn't just me but I was feeling very demotivated and I couldn't see how anything made any sense with spreading. Luckily since then it has gone better.

Week 4: Day 2

On the open I sold the schatz for a quick profit and made several trades and by 8am I was up 150 euros, which is my profit target for the day. I felt each time I hit my target early I missed out on opportunities so I kept on trading and bought the spread on the low of the day at 7's, it went down and I bought 5.5's too, it carried on downwards, the euribor bids were pulled and it fell down, the schatz didn't follow. The spread was at 0's and instead of buying the spread I punted the euribor and made a quick tick profit. The spread moved up 2 ticks and came back down and I bought at just under 0's whilst still being long 5.5 and 7, I sold some at 2's so took a 2.5 tick profit, my largest winning trade yet but I still had two massive losing trades running. When it fall back down I did it again. My original trades seemed a mile away and when it moved up I sold them both at 4's and was back on 150 euros for the day. Having been down 575 euros it felt pretty good and it was great to not lose anything on the trade overall even though it went heavily against me. It was pretty scary having 3 clips on, which is really my limit although I am able to go further but I doubt I would.

With 3 clips on a 1 tick move against me is equal to my daily target each day! I could easily blow a weeks work in minutes so buying more really took some balls lol.. I felt like the downward move was complete and it was a good buying opportunity. Although at one point I was thinking about getting out the trade and almost did! I made one more trade to bring my day to +175 and called it a day!

Spreading is kinda cool

I only made 1 trade on Friday so didn't bother to blog about it, but today I had a reasonable up day which was nice because every Monday I have lost money so far. In fact during my second trade of the day I was down 400 euros but it eventually came back in my favour.

I am approaching the end of my first month and it has been far better than expected. Spreading is really quite fun, there is very little information on the internet as well as scalping which are the two techniques I use to trade. Spreading ensures that I am hedged when I take a trade on and I don't even have to have a bias on any of the two products. I trade two similar products and when I buy one I sell the other, the spread between them changes with time and when the spread moves wider I sell it etc. The spread does trade within a range often but can move to a new range without warning. The challenge is to make a lot of winning trades and not allow your few losing trades to be to big. There are many things I like about this style of trading one is because I am trading the spread it doesn't really matter what each individual price is, I could be buying the high of the day on one of them but that could be because the other product just blew through it's high of the day and I think the other one will catch up. It is easier to do than trading outright I don't need to guess the market direction just try to work the bid and the offer. Because I am scalping I just look for a small profit.

I try not to pay the spread between the bid and the ask, as a scalper you would like to wait in line to buy something then wait in line to sell it, the cheapest seller is always higher than the cheapest bidder so if you can bid at the best price and have someone sell it at that price to you then you can offer it at the cheapest and hope someone buys it. Not everyone wants to wait in line and if the price is rising then normally no one is going to sell it to you at the best bid price so you have to buy it off the people on the offer before they retract their offer! and soon this will become the bid anyway. It is not just about going bid and then offer when you spread because you have to think about getting out a good price and keeping yourself hedged. If your not hedged it is very easy to just lose a days profit target, so there are many factors to consider and always two ways in and out of the trade. You can always buy 1 of the products if you think it is going to go up, if it doesn't but you see the other product about to move a price down you can sell it at the last possible moment which gives you a chance to make profit on an outright and if it doesn't work just hedge yourself. I have been doing this especially if I like the price I would hedge myself at, there are many other things you can do, e.g. buy and sell one side of your hedge when it is oscillating between two prices and turn a profit whilst being hedged some of the time! Maybe I will go into more detail about it but just to say I am enjoying this style of trading.

Week 3: Day 4

I made a buy early on at what appeared to be the low, but it was in a down trend over the week so the second time I became hesitant to buy again. It was annoying because I would have made 50 euros but it did retrace back to the low, and I did manage to sell it near the high for a small profit but didn't buy it when it came back to the low. It did break down and I bought it a few ticks lower and sold for a profit and it continued to gradually make new lows and I did the same again. I really think I should have been selling the lower highs, especially if I think it is still trending downwards. Something I realised is that it is so against human nature to sell a price that seems cheap, it appears to make more sense to buy the new low but logically this is far more riskier as you are fighting against the trend and it could just fall further than you think.

As the day went on it was ranging downwards and the range was becoming tighter and tighter and I feared an outbreak and more towards the downside. I was really hesitant to get involved and just decided to watch and it did in fact fall about 5 ticks in a short space of time. I then considered buying it and I had myself queued and then realised I wasn't going to get the price I wanted so I pulled my order which was to sell the schatz. Literally 2-3 seconds after I pulled my order, there was news I believe from Trichett saying there will be no quantitative easing and I think just the fact he said the word made people panic buy and it literally rocketed up 6 ticks and then retraced back but continued to rally upwards making the TED spread plummet further. I just sat back and watched I didn't trade after 1.30pm and was pretty happy to not get caught in this trade like I did last time.

I had a good day today and I have had just 1 losing trade in my last 24 trades, so wondering how far this will continue!

Week 3: Day 3

At midnight last night Germany banned naked short selling of German bonds, which is what I trade and I wasn't sure the affects of it. There was also a rumour about the Euro breaking up and I decided to watch rather than get involved as did many others around me. I eventually traded at about 11am and made a tick. I made 2 other profitable trades for the day and finished at about 5pm, which is a long day when you get in before 7am!

I am having a really good run for the last 20 trades or so with only a couple of losing trades, which is awesome. Today I realised the schatz was making the spread range and the euribor was often not moving with the schatz. Therefore I normally entered with the schatz first much more and realised the best entry was when the euribor looked like it was about to go bid or offered and then to que the schatz, get filled and lift or hit the euribor depending if I was long or short. There were a lot of opportunities to leg and you could get a good price leaning on the euribor throughout the day. There were many more trades I mentally took which worked out well but didn't take because of the fear of rumours becoming fact. I really didn't wanna get caught offside of a huge movement.

I was feeling a little demotivated after losing 200 euros on Monday, but overall it's going well and I feel like I am improving and thinking about more each time I enter a trade. My goal right now is to be at least flat by the end of the month after commissions which for me are already over £500 for the month... :(

Week 3: Day 2

On the open I waited for 7's and went long, it carried on down so I bought 5.5's, I was then queued to buy 4's but didn't get them. When you are looking to do a third average you know things are going bad and I would have bought 4's as they seemed hard to get otherwise I would be looking to dump the whole position at 4, or if I got 4's dump the whole position at 3. It then retraced and I sold 6.5's and 7's giving myself a tick profit by about 7.30am. I then did pretty much the same in the other direction, my first sell was too aggressive and I sold some more and bought them back half a tick cheaper and then did it again and I ended up scratching my original short too. I got stuck in a trade over lunch and grabbed lunch at about 2pm. When I got back I was pretty content with my day so was just sitting and watching but then I couldn't resist selling the high of the day, at first I didn't take the sell because it looked too easy, but then it became hard to do so I did it on a leg and then legged the other side for half a tick, I was in and out within 4 minutes which was one of my fastest trades so far.

One of my best days so far, and pretty cool considering I was down a lot when I was trying to buy 4's.

Week 3: Day 1

Not quite as bad as last monday, down 200 euros and a lot of round turns so not too great. The big move was done within an hour and it just didn't move much for the rest of the day. I really messed up today and fat fingered and at one point was long on both the euribor and schatz... I really felt tired and almost dizzy when I closed my eyes. Luckily I was able to scratch almost all of my errors and just lost money because I picked bad entry points. Anyway, another day tomorrow :D

End of week 2

It is the end of the second week and in total I have traded 7 and a half days and so far it is going well. The last 25 trades went really well and I learnt plenty about execution and knowing when to take risk on getting in and out of trades. I have some confidence now that I will be able to trade profitably but it should become clearer by the end of the month.

So far I am really enjoying this style of trading and just trading generally and just hope things carry on well.

Week 2: Day 3 and 4

Didn't get time yesterday to blog, but it was my best day so far! I ran my profits 1 tick which really helped increase my profit for the day. Today was a more interesting day as always I was trading the TED spread, euribor - schatz spread. By early morning I was up 125 euros and then I went long on the low of the day for a second time, this point had held many times before although it was making lower highs so even though I wasn't as convinced for some reason I got in and someone flipped the euribor and I got filled on the schatz and had to take the next price in the euribor. So I didn't get the price I wanted and I then averaged in when the market was highly volatile, moving between levels rapidly and I averaged in at the same price unfortunately.... I was kinda annoyed and a better price came on so I took that as well. I then was told to unwind my position because it was quite big, so I scratched the last average and took a half tick loss on my second average in. It wasn't really going my way, nor was it really going against me but at one point I was down 300 euros for the trade, so I decided to take a loss. I had infact legged out when I took a half tick loss,otherwise it would have been a whole tick and then I had realised the schatz was going up and down around the same place, so I bought it back at the low of this movement but soon as I did it broke through it and as I was leaning on the bid on the euribor and I hit it just before it vanished. So I took a 1.5 tick loss for my original trade, so 2 ticks overall, which wasn't bad especially considering it broke down further and  I got a pretty good price for what was available. It did pop up briefly 1 hour later about 1 tick above where I went long but it didn't last and it soon tried to break through the low of the day.

I saw loads of selling in the euribor (a 5000 lot was sold) and I decided it was pretty weak and sold the low of the day and the schatz moved up 3 ticks and the euribor didn't move. Therefore I had so far sold the euribor and bought the schatz, so I could sell the schatz 3 ticks higher for 75 euros in profit but I would then have to go at market on the euribor otherwise I would be unhedged, going at market and closing the position would give 50 euro loss on the euribor and so 25 euros profit for the trade. Therefore as the offer on the euribor was 5000 (pretty big) I decided to sell the schatz before it retraced back down and I queued on the bid in the euribor, if I got filled I would make 75 euros otherwise if the offer started to go I would get ready to lift it and take just 25 euros. The schatz came back down and the euribor held steady so I decided to rebuy the schatz and it once again went back up and I sold it again and the euribor started to go bid and I lifted the offer and locked in a nice profit bringing me back up to where I was in the morning. This was the first time I had done something quite like that and it makes trading a lot more fun.

Week 2: Day 2

Spent just over 11 hours at the office, I made steady money but not much. I was already in a trade and was considering buying more but I accidently clicked buy instead of "trade ticket" and I was trying to re-hedge myself at the price I wanted and lean on a number in the euribor, which ever became available first and also trying to scratch the miss-bought lots. It was a lot to think about and I ended up legged and was long on the euribor and there were about 50 on the offer, 6 were mine (2 were filled) but no one was taking them. The guy sitting next to me bought them off me, haha.. but he said he needed them. The range was much much tighter today and I picked the top and bottom almost perfectly, just I only took 1/2 tick each time and I should really have given it room and took at least a tick. Therefore I need to work at letting my profits run for a little longer. Since being down 675 on Monday morning I have recouped over a 1/3 of my losses, which isn't too bad.

Week 2: Day 1

On the open the schatz plummeted and I watched for 20 minutes before getting involved, the TED spread which had rallied a huge amount looked to be turning as the schatz was retracing and so I sold it, it almost immediately took off again and I was 5 ticks offside and I averaged my position by selling more. It continued to go against me and I dumped it about 2 ticks from my last sell. I fat fingered on my first trade too and was down 675 euros within 40 minutes of the open, which seemed disastrous. The spread continued 10 or so ticks more but I didn't get involved and I waited for the guy I report to, to get in the office to see If I could still trade or not. It seemed almost everyone was down huge amounts. I was told I joined at the best time possible because I am seeing the extreme side to trading and spreading, I just hope my account can take the hit.

I had a chat with him and he said I could trade but soon as I had a losing trade I was to stop. Luckily I put together 5 winning trades and finished around 5.30pm and finished -493 euros, not soo bad considering I was actually showing -800 euros at one point whilst still in a trade...

I felt a little de motivated after losing 500 euros in 1 trade but feel quite positive knowing I can take ticks out of the market, so I just need to work on averaging and knowing when to use it. I have been told I could average up to 3 or 4 times but I still have to know when to puke it and get out the trade. I learned from last time to not average so tightly but the move was just too big and if I continue to average you run the risk of busting your account! Hopefully I'll get the hang of averaging as it is useful.

Day 3

Today was another crazy day but really intense at one point for me, I was quickly told what had happened after I left, loads of big stocks had hit 1c and shot back up and the DJ had dropped 900 points and liquidity had dried up immensely and it was so hard to trade. I jumped in at about 7.30 by longing the TED and it ripped through me and I averaged my position for a better price and it continued to go against me... I managed to sell half of my trade for a profit and averaged in again and it still dropped and my profit and loss was printing -500 euros at one point... I made a mistake by buying the euribor but not selling the schatz when I tried to average for a third time and the euribor moved 3 ticks and I sold everything and legged out the schatz, such a messy trade but I was down 238 euros which was a whole lot better than 500!. Considering if you lose 5k or more you generally get asked to leave... but the markets were just mental.

From then I made a series of trades making between 25 to 63 euros and finished -75 euros, which was pretty cool considering. The first 2-3 days of trading went good overall and I learnt a lot and made some money. The graph is a bit weird cause its showing my balance twice between each trade so I actually did 22ish trades instead of 45.

2nd Day

Today was insane by 11am I had hit my target again but made a very costly error by double clicking by accident and lost almost half of it but managed to pull it back to where it was. The markets were moving so fast and it was so hard to get out at the price I wanted. I was really happy during the day to just sit down and get in a trade then back out 4 minutes later and go to shops and chill out.

The bobl rocketed up, I don't trade it but many people around me do and the spread shot out by 100 ticks and the environment kicked off pretty badly... I feel sorry for some guy who was helping me, who was definitely on the wrong side of it. It was just brutal how it ripped out the range so fast... when your looking for 1 tick profit and it moves 100 ticks in 20 minutes, it's a scalpers nightmare, especially if you average into it.

First day trading!

So yesterday I didn't even get a desk, I just socialized and watched some people trade. Some guy was up 1k by 11 am.. I saw he was trading pretty big volume until the next day when they sat me next to a guy who is trading like 4-5 times that amount. Everyone is really laid back, a lot of young guys mostly in their twenties all joking about or cursing at the screen ^^. The atmosphere is great and I am so glad almost everyone is wearing casual clothes and that I have been put on a team that gives you a lot of freedom.

So today, I was trading by 12.30 and by 2.45 I had hit my daily profit target, which was insane. I was out with a girl till gone midnight so felt pretty tired and after hitting my target I just laid back and went to the shops and chatted to various people. I left at 4pm and that was my day! No way I expect to just go in and be profitable so I will try and prepare my mind to expect to lose but it was great to have a good first day.

The trades themselves involved going long the June11 TED spread, in the morning the Euribor had shot up and the spread was at a high and I wanted to short it at about 11am but I hadn't been given the all clear to trade. Before I traded, the guy I report to asked me what my strategy was and I just said sell 10's and buy 8's and he said great. Then when it broke down to 8 and went to 7, I was trying to buy 6's and the guy came over and goes I see you didn't get the 8's, a good thing too etc. So by the time I got in I had chat with the guy next to me and he kind of helped me establish good entry levels. The 8's became too easy to get too fast and so I kinda of waited to see what would happen. So I went long 6's and sold 6.5's for 1/2 a tick profit i.e 25 euros and was a bit annoyed because 7's were really easy to sell and it soon went bid at 8. I waited for it to retrace as I didn't fancy getting involved around the 8.5 to 9 mark when the high was about 11 and the low 7.5. 1 hour later it had come down and I tried to buy 5's and soon as I got filled on the Euribor I hit enter and picked up 4.5's! and sold them for 5.5. I did 1 other trade profitably but nothing too interesting.

Anyway I will be in at 6.30am and can't wait to trade the open. Today was really crazy what with the rumours about Portugal's ratings and at one point it was so tense having my finger poised on the mouse button whilst everything bounces around super fast, so was very pleased to not get caught.

On to the floor

I made it to the floor!!! So happy and to top it all off I was recommended by the people who ran the 4 week course to a successful trader who now manages a team of traders and he decided to take me on. The idea is I should progress faster as I will be sat amongst experienced traders that I can learn from rather than be put with all the other new traders.

A really big turning point in my life, the last 4 weeks have been intense and tiring but probably the best 4 weeks of my life. I spent the last 3 days drinking with different groups of friends and was eventually sick last night, when I couldn't take any more but glad I spent time with everyone I know in London.

My plan for this blog is to blog each day now that I have the internet but I am little unsure. I don't know but hopefully I can provide something reasonably entertaining to follow.

Right now I start on tuesday and should be spreading on the TED spread (the euribor vs schatz) and may well be doing bund/bobl/schatz (10 year, 5 year and 2 year german bonds) we shall see!

End of Week 3

I haven't been able to blog this week as someone who moved out the flat cancelled BT, so I have had to reconnect but will hopefully have it soon.

The last week was spent mostly on the simulator and even though there were long periods of waiting for opportunities, it was pretty fun. It is really rewarding as a scalper when you take a tick out of the market although right now it feels like quite a challenge. I made the cut this week and will be back for the final week and at the end of next week they will decide if they will take me onto the their trading floor. Next week we will go live with real money, which will be exciting and hopefully I don't lose as much as I did on the simulator lol.

Success!

Hi everyone, I have been busy with moving into my new flat and catching up with sleep, but it is great to see that there are people returning to this blog! I have good news which is I passed the first 2 weeks and have progressed to the 3rd week. I am not sure how many people made it through, I only know 2 who made it and 1 who didn't. I still have to get through a tough field of people but I was pleased with how I performed under their tests which are aimed to see how you cope with stress. They even tied us up to a machine to monitor our heart rate but I was really quite focussed and relaxed. I had to execute trades by listening to broker language and it went quite well, the only problem is the mental maths needed in calculating a spread trade, which is slowing me down a little, but it's something for me to focus on improving.

I now have easy access to the internet, so should be table to blog each day. I now know about spreads, bonds and general information around news etc, as well as how to execute trades and what we are trying to achieve. Next week should be interesting except the part where I have to wake up at 5am lol.

Training course: day 7

Wow, I just realised I forgot to blog yesterday, I was aiming to blog each day and it's proving hard. The course is really demanding and I had some problems with my new flat and personal matters too. Even though I am putting so much effort right now I am not sure it's good enough. I am doing well but not out performing the group. I really feel quite tired from everything and gonna get some sleep right now and will try post a more informative post tomorrow.

Training course: day 5

I am now into the 2nd week and getting closer to the first round of elimination. There are 3 rounds of eliminations, the first being at the end of this week and then 1 each week onwards. Looking at it now it does sound a bit crazy to put all my hopes on such a small chance, but the chance seems totally worth the risk. Firstly there is intense competition to get an interview and then it seems about 10% of the people seen are taken on for the training course. Then once on the trading course you have to survive three rounds of eliminations to get a place on their trading floor and be backed by them. Then those select few have a chance just less than 50% of being profitable, based on this companies performance. lol?

Then again this job really does pull together a lot of what I am good at and things I enjoy. To be honest if I don't succeed here I am going to keep trying it's just too perfect. I love the way people trade here and although it's very repetitive, it's also really amazing. I am trying to improve on what I suck at and it looks like the time spent practising my mental maths paid off as I improved my score quite substantially today. Also feel like I am understanding everything we are doing and just can improve on the speed and make sure I can remember all the facts, sometimes it's hard to remember everything in such a short space of time.

Training Course: Day 4

Yesterday was fun, we finished early and hit the pub and then met up with a friend for drinks afterwards and got back at 2.30am, what made for a long day after a heavy week. The atmosphere at this company is just amazing, I don't know how I could possibly go back to being a software developer, where no one has anything to talk about, you can't really get that excited about code... If this job works out for me, it's going to be pretty full on, but I can't see what else I would enjoy doing. It's going to be tough to get a place with them after training so I just have to go for it and hopefully hard work will pay off.

We set up our trading environments yesterday and watched the bond markets at the moment when it was announced that Greece was downgraded, which was pretty cool to watch. We generally spent the day being tested and improving our skills of quoting the market and different spreads and butterfly's. My keyboard and mental maths scores marginally improved and I am reasonably pleased with my other scores. I have a fair bit going on this weekend but will have to find a fair bit of time to study and read the news.

Training Course: Day 3

Wow, I am feeling so tired, I barely have time to write this post. Although we finish at 5 or 6, I am finding I need to study right up until I go to bed. I really learnt so much today, especially what scalping with spread trading is all about. Before today I knew the facts but now I can really appreciate why people spread trade. It’s really all about working the bid and the offer and trying to make the spread (or whatever you call it) on one side of your trade so that you could potentially scratch the market right away (i.e. break even trade). Therefore I can see when I start trading it will be about waiting for opportunities and then about execution and speed, or so it seems.

I have improved my mental maths ability but it’s really draining doing it all day, right now I really need to sleep and wake up early enough to revise some figures about bund, bobl, schatz, euribor and so on.

Training Course: Day 2

I am feeling a lot better today, which is good!

I decided I am not going to go into huge detail about the company or the course structure in general, at least for now as I don't know the view of others at the company. I wouldn't want to upset anyone but I will do my best to provide enough detail.

I continued to be tested and was more pleased with my results today, I managed to remember almost all the names that I was learning last night. I really don't know how I remembered 38 persons names all in a night, including their first name and surname and when many were foreign. Having stayed up learning information and revising topics ready for tomorrow I didn't get much sleep but it didn't affect me much. It's also great to meet successful traders and to hear about the money they are making, it's definitely motivating and just a great atmosphere to be in. My head feels packed full of information right now, we are learning about spreads which we will soon be using. Were focussing on things like bobl, bund, schatz etc. Just to give you some idea. I am finding the course really informative and I am so glad I applied here.

Also it's great to be back in London and to have lots going on around me, I really feel energized, something I haven't felt like in quite a while.

Training Course: Day 1

Today and yesterday I have been feeling a little unwell but nothing too bad, enough to have an effect on me unfortunately so just hoping I feel completely fine tomorrow. So, today was my first day, it was really good and there were a lot of nice people and I met the guy who set the company up and he came across as a top bloke. Today was quite relaxed but we still got a fair bit done, including keyboard and maths tests, group work and general knowledge of the course. We have a similar test tomorrow and a huge chunk of it was on names of people that I didn't know off by heart, so I am going to have to spend tonight learning these. It seemed to catch everyone out as I did quite bad but still got a little above average. The other tests went well especially the keyboard one but I know I could have done a little better overall if I was feeling 100%. Anyway I really like the atmosphere and definitely enjoyed the day and I am looking forward to learning lots more.

Introduction: Part II

I am approaching my start date so here is a recap of my life journey so far.

Firstly I decided to properly blog this because I haven't found anyone else blogging their journey right from day 1. I myself was looking for a blog a couple of months back to give me an insight while I considered quitting my job as a software developer, but never found what I was looking for. I wasn't after the analysis of the market for the day, I was wanting to know what kind of journey this would really be. I am hoping this blog will help those who are considering taking up trading but still entertain the ones who like to follow someone else's progression.

I am 23 and a graduate in computer science, I am the kind of guy who gets heavily into something (perhaps addictive personality) but who also loves to be clubbing with friends, pretty lazy outside what I want to be good at and needs a ton of sleep lol.

I see trading as my second project to master, the first was poker. It took me 4 months to make my first $5000 in poker before losing all of it back over the next 2, where I found myself broke. I went on to play profitable poker for well over a year or about 300,000 hands and paid for tuition fee's and living costs with poker winnings, I came out debt free from university I was quite poor but was truly thankful to be able to make consistent money from the game and teach others around me. Below is my net profit from 888/pacific poker, I made a smaller amount on sites such as pokerstars etc.

I soon burnt out from the game after graduating and lost all ambition to improve and quickly found a job as a programmer. During that time I was becoming heavily interested in the markets and global politics. I have always wanted to do a big bet on something with a ton of risk and I thought this time was the best chance I would get, as I was single and living at home. I leveraged myself with IG and put up everything I had (£5000) and on 4th feb (I recall) there was negative news about US jobs, more jobs were lossed than expected, not to my suprise. I saw this as good for gold and hadn't considered closing my bet after reading the news. Thinking about it now, it seems the US stock market plumets for obvious reasons and this causes a flood into the dollar, gold generally has an inverse relation with the dollar as it's priced in dollars so as the dollar strengthens and people also go to the dollar because of risk etc, gold takes a nose dive and people are probably shorting it too... I hadn't tied all this together, I was just bullish on gold for the very long term. Gold was already down on me and after the $45 drop that day I was closed out of gold making me broke for the 2nd time in my life. I was fully aware of the risks and thought I could afford to go broke, as I had a steady job. The following day I got an offer in London to train with a firm and there would be a small chance of getting backed by them after the training. Luckily I have savings tied away that I wasn't fully aware of and although I can make rent payments and whatever without an income I have had to budget myself massively. I do not regret anything and have spent ages mastering money management over the last 2 years and I always understood the bet could definately be considered "stupid" ;) I am just pleased that my ability to control my emotions have really improved since 2 years ago, I hope this will put me in good shape to give myself a good shot at being a successful day trader.

So, I start a training course at a prop house on the 6th of April. I do know roughly what I am trading and what strategies they use but I will write about this once I have more of an insight myself. I do not intend to mention where I am at, but may do at a later date.

Updates to follow shortly,

NoRhino

The US economy and the impact it has on China

This is just my view and should not be taken at face value. I wrote the following paragraph at the end of 2009, outside of this blog:

"I have recently consumed myself in every bit of news around the US economy and I have listened to Peter Schiff, Ron Paul and many others as well as people with different views on the current situation. The desperate attempt by people like ben bernanke to artificially stimulate the US economy is just making matters worse, as his solution is to print more money and to give it to the banks and businesses such as Freddy and Fannie, which now have 100% of their loses covered by the government. The government is getting bigger and bigger and intervening with the free markets, which I disagree with. The housing boom was brought about by too much easy credit, you only needed to put down about 5% to get a house, and people believed housing prices would just continue to rise, I mean how dumb is that. After the inevitable crash what then would have happened would be that lenders would tighten up on lending and be more cautious to lend to people who were too likely to default. But the government stepped in and said we will guarantee the loans so then people started to lend, the interest rates were at a record low and this encourages no one to save and again encourages people to take risks they wouldn't have had the government stayed out of the free markets. The government encouraged more spending, more debt in many ways, e.g cash for clunkers. The country is massively in debt and they desperately need to let companies that are failing to be productive fail, let resources be bought up and let new companies start up, which aren't owned by the government and aren't a drain on tax money. They need to allocate resources to allowing the country to be productive again."

Support becoming Resistance

Day trading really interests me and I love how a markets move for the day is largely pinned to fundamentals or news but then how there are also so many psychological factors playing a part. There are different players with different goals, e.g hedgers and speculators. Each player is unique and has access to an array of tools. Some use technical analysis which is the process of analysing past data to predict the next move. Technical analysis can be done in so many different ways which adds to the complexity of understanding how people interpret the data but this makes trading more interesting.

The perfect strategy

If you wanted to just read what I think the perfect strategy is for something like trading or poker just skip to the second to last paragraph! I find the term strategy cropping up too often and used falsely and I actually dislike the word more and more these days. If I go back to when I played Warcraft 3 on PC, I was pretty decent at this game but not until my mind was opened by a friend of mine. We ended up making a team together, I was fast on the keyboard and had been playing a while and he was a top half life player who was a great thinker. He showed me that the best strategy is the most flexible strategy, one that is ready to counter whatever your opponent does. Now I always make sure I try to adapt to the situation in everything I try to master now.