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.