June

All I can think to say is my PNL is more mean reverting than these spreads. To a good July!

EDIT: just updated the graph as I made some just now, all the spreads blew out within 5 minutes massively! 5 minutes seems like a long time when your waiting to sell the spread so obviously sold into it and kept doing so until I was like oh my god, need to get out looks like its never gonna stop. Each of my charts had a sharp line up, bobl ted went about 12-15 ticks in those 5 minutes, considering how I was complaining about a 25 tick move over the day in my previous posts, so it was a huge move. The schatz ted went 5 ticks and 4-5 ticks normally stops you out if there are no retraces which there weren't. Then the spreads reversed  so fast and came back most the way and I profited 400 from the move. Actually a really nice move in the end. July has cost over 5000 euros in comissions and therefore a bad month but I feel my results are good considering how bad the spreads have been. I have made 2100 euros since mid day yesterday (after I stopped out) which is impressive considering spreading is all about frequent small gains and infrequent big losses and normally when I stop out it takes longer to recover. Although the bobl ted has been really bad since I started trading it I really like it as I can leg prices a lot easier than the two other spreads I trade. The euribor schatz spread has so few opportunities and I am trading it less and less each day. Trading the euribor further out against the bobl means prices move faster and ranges are bigger so its alot more exciting too and I feel it's not so impossible to make a bag (1k) in a day trading the fly and bobl ted so I am hoping to recover my account and whack it back into positive figures so I can start drawing again.

Almost game over

This Euribor Bobl spread having blown out on the downside retraced all the way back up to near its high. I stopped out basically twice on it and was thinking about writing my final blog entry. I played half life 2 deathmatch and watched dexter and then saw the it had pushed higher past its high and sold it again and if it goes more I couldn't see the point of continuing this "job". I made some back and scalped it on it's high and held some overnight trying to run it as much as possible. I kept going 300 in profit to 0 and I scalped it with a 2nd clip whilst it did that and the 3rd time I was 300 in profit I just took it. I have recouped 1400 euros since I last stopped out yesterday so I will keep going. At least I know I can make decent money I just need the spreads to not move huge amounts.

Its been almost impossible to spread trade and yesterday the markets were moving so fast and what seemed to be erratic unlike anything I have seen before. I think that shows just how screwed the EU is right now, which makes spreading in these products a mission.

Can't believe it!

Last Thursday I stopped out -1900 euros, the Euribor-Bobl which I had just started spread trading literally collapsed! I can chart it for the last 3 weeks and it has about a 12 tick range and has been bouncing around perfectly. Almost as soon as I decided to trade it it fell massively. It stopped me out on Thursday along with the fly which made a reasonable move. Then on Friday I was up 1100 euros by 9am and I am not sure how I did it as the spreads had barely done anything. The Euribor-Bobl spread had retraced a bit and then continued to move down. I was down to 100 euros up and was getting out, I stopped out half my position on the Euribor and got a ticket for the bobl 1 price above market ready to take it if it got there. This gave me a chance to put my Euribor back on at a better price and avoid stopping out. I qued various prices and got filled on all of them and made 500 euros. I put my spreads back on full size and was up 900 not too long later.

Then the spread pushed lower putting me to 0 and I got half my position off and did the same thing, profiting 300 euros on the Euribor. I thought surely I have survived this huge move, please don't make all this outright trading for nothing. I am soon printing up 700 and then about an hour later -85 euros and I am getting out again! I trade the Euribor and Bobl outright loosely and not really as a spread but remain very much in the spread. I get it positive and put everything back on that I had taken off. I sell 1 clip 2 ticks of the low of a 25+ tick move and hold 75% of my maximum position over the weekend and I am printing +500 on the lowest traded price, so seems a success.

This morning I come in and improve my average position and then quickly am able to get my position off completely as it retraces 6 ticks and then continues another 6 although I am already out. This brings Fridays trades to +1400 euros, which makes it my best day in trading, suprisingly. I survived the huge move which just seems unbelievable and below is the spread which I took a screenshot of on Friday (the left one has a timeframe and the right one is last 2 and a half months)

Mr.Bobl

aka the 5 year german bond, I prefer this market to the others that I trade and perhaps hoping to eventually learn to trade it outright. So today I have added a new spread the bobl ted, euribor - bobl. It seems fun because you use an euribor quite far out, I am using March 13 so it moves alot quicker to March 12 for example. Although the spread is quite dangerous and can make some big moves but its been pretty solid recently. I made my first trade a quick 50 euros, I hedged and unhedged myself on the euribor within 2 minutes, I didn't want to hedge but not ready to trade outright yet.

I have only made two trades today its been very slow but I feel a lot more positive today, I have 3 spreads and 5 markets all lined up across my screen to spread across and can roll from one spread into another more fluidly now that I am doing bobl against euribor as well.

Btw if anyone trades bobl outright please leave me a comment so I can ask some questions!

Trading video

Last Friday I was down a fair whack and I decided to record part of my screen over non farms to avoid trading badly. Seeing as so many people have been messaging me about how to enter a fly here is a link to the video I recorded.

http://imageshack.us/clip/my-videos/62/jdz.mp4/

Sorry for terrible resolution, the 1st ladder is euribor, 2nd is schatz, 3rd is bobl and 4th is bund. The first trade I do is entering euribor-schatz spread. 2nd is shorting the fly which starts with buying the bobl. Then I exit the fly by taking market on the bobl.

Dan

Losses.

Alot has happened since I last posted. I had two really awful days, on Wednesday and Thursday. My long term bet wasn't so long term and I stopped out of it -1200 euros. If it wasn't because of that it wouldn't have been so bad but other trades were going offside and was hard to hold them as the combined losses are too big. I tried really hard to not stop out this other spread and was making up to 250 euros a trade trading outright and made around 600 euros in total trading outright. I was trading outright leaning on stopping out. I recovered 200 euros at one point on Thursday and I was on the offer of the bobl and all markets just moved a huge amount up in less than a second and I lost like 400 euros instantly and was pretty pissed off to say the least, I finished early and tried to cool off.

On Friday I saw my statement quite negative now although I had withdrawn from my account to make it close to £0 just before. Then on Friday at about 1pm I was down -1000 to -1200 euros and didn't want to stop out because then it feels like game over...

I ended up having the best recovery ever. I didn't do anything different just got in and out as many times as I could and I was even trying to work bids and offers in the last 10 minutes of the day. I ended up +848 euros and now my account is a little better and can make it positive in a good week. It has just been really tough  this last 2 weeks hopefully things will calm down next week.

Last week

Not so good..

A long term trade

I have been watching the Euribor March 12-September12 spread for a while. Although not charted it I could see its been tanking. I decided to long it today, 8 by 8 and if it goes up try to hold it, I won't take any off until at least 20s. The interest rate between the two are really close and there 6 months apart. March is predicting 1.89% and September 2.05% and today the interest rate is 1.25%. I think they will be hiking rates during this period more than the market thinks and this spread is really low. Although it can always go lower and even negative. Below is the spread since just before March and I am long 16.5s, 1 tick for me is 200 euros (EDIT: I thought it was 100 euros and just realised so I have put more on than I thought! but already in profit and I wanted to do more so will keep it) I never do Euribor spreads so its a first time thing for me.

Huge loss :(

So yea the fly went down more and literally on the low for this day I panicked as I printed 350 euros over my stop and I thought I'll just take it all off at once and I qued the bobl and got filled and had to take market on the schatz but the bund just went and I missed a fair few prices and stopped out -1750 euros. Considering I was up 655 on the day and I lost 200 euros more later on the loss is to depressing to add up. I know for a fact others trading over those two days had some horrible losses as well. I stopped out at such an horrible price and within 20 minutes it had retraced a little and the bid, which would be at market to get out at was 1250 euros better off than where I got out. I really screwed it bad. I took the rest of thursday off and went clubbing came back at 3am and was trading by just gone mid day, although I was planning to take the day off... I made 380 in no time at all and now I am short the euribor-schatz with big size over the weekend and around the zero mark from the last traded price which seems pretty good considering how far it went, I was pretty conversative on it.

My week although unfinished I thought would be amazing, half way through I was up 2000+ and now around zero, with £1000+ in costs! Eitherway it's not so bad and I have been able to make many withdrawals including another one just before this loss.

Fack

I was buying the fly all day, ranging really well... and then I scratched the low of the day and thought this was gonna go lower, already really low. I had a 15 minute break and came back and saw I would have been in profit so got in and got a bad price and bought all the way down, it ended up making a huge move down and I was so pissed off because I thought it would. Just its a spread and its low so it goes against logic, so maybe I shouldn't be so angry but I sold some on the netting to get out as it was printing something good initially and then the prices changed in last 30 seconds to lower than the days low and it's too risky to pull my order incase I am unhedged and I am not sure I can so late and so I sold an awful price. Was doing really well and well over a 1000 down on this fly since it tanked with 60% of my limits on overnight.

ARGGG..

Non stop trading!

Hmm.. was doing well half way through the day, low costs and up 500+ euros. Then the fly was going down nothing to frustrating but everytime I entered and exited the spread I got so fucked. I was scalping the fly like 5 times in a row making a loss each time and the spread was bouncing around within a range :( The spread came down a little further and I was down 200 euros, one trade I lost 200 euros on because everything fell so much at the wrong time.

Then something weird happened later on, the bobl went up to 115.94/95s and back to 115.92s and then back up and then back down, in a nice smooth motion but fast and kept doing this for a while... the bund was trying to keep with it and the schatz staying still. I qued the 94s and 92s and legged the bund and repeated and made a couple hundred on it.

Its actually taken me a couple of hours to write this, so much is happening with quite a lot of pauses but still the fly is so sweet since 5pm, its moving and really thin and the best I have ever seen it in the evening. I have done a personal record number of trades for the day, 1333 lots so far or about 50 trades (in and out) and almost up the same amount as earlier after costs! Also 3834 euribor march 12 was sold at 7.47pm which is huge and massssive for this time, generally no volume on any markets. That pushed the TED down and I bought some and now offside, looks like I will have to hold this overnight now.

Edit: not having to hold too much overnight, last 5 minutes liquidity decreased loads, 2 to 3 prices on most of the markets had no one buying or selling, mental! today was so much fun, sleeeeep now.

Last 40 trading days

Two months have passed since I restarted and I have made almost 15,000 euros in the markets during that time. I am hoping it wont be so long until I am debt free, it's been a while since I bought something I wanted! and thank you to all my regular followers mainly from UK, US and Denmark :)

I know it doesn't include costs but hoping soon I can claim to have taken 50k out of the markets (lifetime), still a little way to go though, wish me luck! :D

Reflecting on life

Finally feeling well! I hate trading when I am ill because I find it harder to let go of mistakes and sometimes I try and overcompensate them, anyway I am ready for the week.

Yesterday I spoke over the phone with my biological father, I have only met him once when I was about 16 and it was really cool. I will probably meet him next weekend, my step dad failed me and even though my biological father did too he admits his flaws and I can relate to him and I find him pleasant company. He is a risk taker too and will be interesting to learn why I am the way I am.

It got me thinking about my life, I made this blog recently more about my trades, blogging results and my emotions on the tough and good days. Although perhaps its more interesting to reflect on how I got to day trading. I think I had a good path in software development and not so long ago I was in contact with the president of BT for a job in Hong Kong and also in contact with a guy who wanted me to be the new junior developer, someone he can teach and he took a liking to me I think.. I would have started somewhere above £30k if I was successful. I never applied and I told my friend to tell the BT president I am going back into trading and thanked him for his help. I would have been miserable developing although being in Hong Kong would have been sweet.

If I could enjoy life, to want to comment on sports, the weather, go to the cinema and actually enjoy it, I could have been at peace with a more normal route. I get bored, I get frustrated by others but I am very quiet in my frustration. Although not to my closest friends who I unload it on, sorry! I must also have some sort of bi polar thing too. I hate falseness and hierarchy, my mum said as a child I always wanted things to be fair and would go out my way to make it so. I was in the lift once at work, two guys entered the lift from another company, one was clearly senior and the other clearly a new starter. The senior guy was so patronizing in how he spoke, it was unbelievable. I listened to the whole conversation and was so disgusted I could feel my blood boiling and instantly said "that sounds like fun" as sarcasticially as I could and looked at the senior guy like ye fuck u.. for someone so quiet it should have been surprising but they didn't know me and I was obviously ignored. Around that time I also put my neck out to get my friend off a bad product, the whole team was shifted to fixed income and then I complained again when they weren't aloud to average, lol. I wasn't gonna let them emphasize their profit heavily on comissions at the expense of my friends career.

Perhaps I shouldn't have picked such a tough entry into trading, I could have tried to go to a bank or perhaps worked in software for a bit closely with traders and migrated or whatever. I did this route because it makes me happy and I thought I have a good chance, although I admit there's many ways for me to fail, but then if there weren't it wouldn't be the job for me. It's not such an easy game, spreading is good and all but for me it's a stepping stone to something bigger and more secure. I can only try and stop and review where I am going and keep a level head, there is a balance! Things are going well, better than I had hoped since I restarted in April but always good to reflect.

For any newcomers, I wrote a few blog posts (kinda articles) about a year ago on: zero sum games, what I think the perfect strategy is and about the worlds biggest economys.

Week 9

4.30pm now and I think I will leave the screen, people are rolling to new contracts and I will roll over on Monday. Right now its quite thin on the new contracts so best not to leave overnights and I don't want to leave overnights on the current ones I am trading as they expire on Wednesday so best call it a day!

Non Farms was good to me, I was decisive and legged well, I basicially made my day on it and had a really good week too, which seems surprising as it didn't feel like it was one along the way.

The week:

zzZ exhaustion, more blow outs etc

Yesterday was going well until I sold the Euribor-Schatz (TED) in the afternoon which carried on until 9pm and was buying the fly. Was around -100 at 9pm having been up about 400 euros. Held it overnight and this morning the TED went further, 8.5 ticks from yesterday which is a big move but no big shock with everything that is happening with Greece. I hit my stop and traded outright, anything before taking the -1000 euro loss and made a little. -900 and was then outside coughing, choking, been feeling ill since monday, can't tell you how badly I just want to sleep, but I gotta commit to this job! Then the TED tanked and I got out about 900 euros better off. I didn't want to buy the TED even though I knew others were, it still seemed high, but then it came down another 1.5 ticks and I bought it and is working out.

Actually I think I am gonna lie down I feel like I might pass out.. I am flat and up 355, I did just get out of my longs for a scratch and bought bigger size further down and took a tick. Rarely do that.

Gross profit for May

Broke the 9000 mark! first time ever.