Alright Valhalla, here by unpopular demand is my trading journal.
Intro:
I have had ups and downs like many of you on my trading journey. Made a lot and lost a lot. As Thots said the other day, making money as a day trader isn’t sexy. I use to want to make these big multi week/month plays based on all sort of macro but lets face it the world is tough to predict. Additionally, holding large positions over the weekend and overnight is fucking stressful and I am kind of over it. My day job as the CEO of a Hemp Processing company is stressful enough thanks.
Trading goals:
-No holding large positions overnight
-Very little averaging down (when you are wrong you are wrong, rather exit and wait to reposition)
-Trade mostly SPY due to bid/ask spread tightness
-Trade FDs to get max % movement on quick trades (yes I know it is risky)
-Hold options contracts for really no more than a couple minutes (try to take theta out of equation as much as possible)
-Keep my account at $50k max, every dollar I make over I immediately pull back to my bank account (I just seem to make mistakes at over this $50k psychological level)
-Make $3-5k per day and deposit into my bank account, consistency is key
Strategy:
-TradingView and Lux Algo
-5s, 1m, 3m time frames up at same time
-4th screen are cycling between the mega-caps on the 1 minute
-OTM SPY FDs based on stacking multiple timeframes and playing the stacked trend
-Use LuxAlgo oscillator (basically a stochastic) very effectively to play within those trends
(my system is tough to explain but hopefully you kind of get the gist of it)
Mantras:
-The trend is your friend
-Patience is a virtue
-Don’t let greed guide you
I think myself and many others enjoy hearing you on VC and hearing your strategies along the way. I appreciate hearing the play by play of what megacaps/SPY are doing intraday and you giving entry and exit ideas on VC especially when I’m at work and can’t always be looking at the charts. Keep on killing it!
Congratulations man, you absolutely murdered it the past few weeks! It’s been truly inspirational hearing you pulling withdrawals every day, it seems you’ve found your trading style and really nailed it down. When do you decide to cut losing positions when scalping like this? (if even applicable these past weeks lmao) Hard % or dollar amount stops, cut n’ flip to the other side on a new signal being painted, or just kinda by feel?
In any case, I hope you’re enjoying the weekend, the weather’s beautiful, and you more than earned it this week
Congrats on your success! I’m looking forward to learning more about your style because I’ve been doing similar trading with spy on my days off from my normie job and doing pretty decent. My question is how much of the 50k do you have to go through to make those gains? I’ve been having to run through all my settled cash to make about 10% daily (with a much smaller port). For context I usually play about a week out expiry and sell within a couple hours.
Well to be quite frank, I don’t know what to say here other than, thank you all sincerely for all your kind words. I will endeavor to provide only the most reliable of (imo) amateur commentary on daily moves in the market.
I can’t stress enough how not sexy trading like this is. It is just all discipline and I absolutely do not follow my own rules 100% of the time and when I don’t I find myself having to navigate out of a bad trade that I held when I should have cut and repositioned. Which is not easy with FDs. The whole idea is to hold these FDs for as little time as possible to take theta out of the equation.
I trade the entire 50k probably once or even twice over in a day. Honestly, i got no problem trading the 50k 10 times over if i can get 2-3% every-time. It isn’t so much about each profitable trade as it is about getting out of a bad trade quick, it is all discipline. I can honestly say I have had the opportunity to get out of 95% of the trades I have made on SPY positive but held to get more profit (cough, greed, cough) and then got myself into a pickle.
Really, 90% in a week isn’t sexy? Lots of folks would love to have that, hah.
This does highlight the importance of having a margin account over 25k, though. Setting up Lux and will be looking to build up out of a cash settled account, however long that’ll take, hah.
With FDs do you mean anything under 5dte or basically anything that’s the next nearest expiration period, be it 0 or 1dte?
Like the other guy asked, when do you bail on a trade and cut? That’s been the hardest part for me, figuring out when to accept a trade isn’t gonna win and escape.
Don’t pay too much attention to that percentage. It doesn’t account for when I remove cash to my bank account. So 100% is really 50%. I keep the account hard pegged to 50k unless I happen to pop below 50k in which case I got to trade myself back to 50k not add from my bank account.
I had pretty good success today trading ATM FDs riding the trend, 5% on the account today. Never held anything more than a minute or two. This, combined with Thot’s “set a limit sell ASAP and let it fill”, was super helpful.
I only had time for a couple scalps. Was super busy at work. Day job bullshit…
Would have been way more up if I hadn’t gotten into SIGA for 1000 shares at $13 average. Ouch. Just goes to show. I should just be scalping SPY. I’ll add to my mantras with “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”
Here is today’s haul and the corresponding withdrawal to bank account:
Just wanted to say Jekyll, thanks for making this. I was gonna ask if you didnt mind writing down your strategy on the forum. I really like your contributions to VC, and I want to try and emulate what you do [using a smaller account].
Couple of questions [bad timing from me posting just as the market opens, so no pressure to answer yet] but:
One of your rules is only holding FDs for a couple of minutes in order to eliminate theta. If after 2 mins, your FD is only say 1 or 2% up, would you just take that? Or do you hold for a certain % win? Would you keep holding till 10% up? Or are you super strict and would just take the 1 or 2% and move?
What EMA timeframes do you use on Trading View? Im new to this, so I only have the 20 and 9 EMA lines on.
Thanks Jekyll
‘The trend is your friend’ has massively helped me over the past few weeks.
I am going to try to explain my method a bit better next time I have some time on the weekend and hopefully that will answer some more of the questions above.
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