Tim’s Journal

[Anonymous]

I’m doing much the same thing.

IB for high frequency trades that need the automation of the API and Charles Schwab for the lower frequency stuff that I only adjust on first day of each month (perhaps five to ten trades a month at most) therefore easy to do by hand through the Schwab web interface and $5 USD per trade.

[TimothyStrickland]

Thanks guys, good ideas here. I agree with you guys, IB is best for short term trades. I did some research and there just isn’t another broker out there as cheap on commissions as they are.

[LEONARDZIR]

Tim,
You might want to look at Vanguard. If your total portfolio is > $500k all trades are $2. ETF trades are free.

[TimothyStrickland]

Not quite that high Len, but that’s the first time I’ve heard them, I did not know it was a platform, just thought it was a hedge fund.

[LEONARDZIR]

Tim,
Vanguard is the largest brokerage firm in the US and one of the largest in the world. I keep most of my investment funds there and smaller amounts in IB and Fidelity. I use IB for my MR and MOC trading and Vanguard for my multiple US rotational strategies. I like the size of Vanguard in case there is another GFC.
By the way they just announced that all ETF trading except levereged ETF’s are commission free ..

[TimothyStrickland]

Nice, yea I knew they were the largest hedge fund, just did not realize I could actually trade through them via a platform, good info there Len, thanks for sharing.

[TimothyStrickland]

This week was somewhat bumpy as my account went from up 10% to down slightly for the month. This all part of trading so I am not too worried about it. Continuing to learn a lot about trading, studying charts and setups and almost finished with module 12 now in the mentor course. I believe module 13 will take awhile so that will be an accomplishment and will bring me about halfway done. I feel more familiar with the code as we go and learning new things has become a bit easier. Can’t wait to build my own system from scratch!

[TimothyStrickland]

End of the Month report:

US Aggressive: -3.69%
Forex Short Term Discretionary: +6.98%
US Original: +4.12%

The mismatch between Nick’s numbers and mine is because I seeded the account. I added 233% capital on top of what I was already using, unfortunately on July 16th which is right before we had the draw-down occur.

I am using less leverage for the US Original, used some of the capital mid month and transferred to US Aggressive.

[TimothyStrickland]

Weekly update:

Trading status:

Overall I’m positive again as last week ended with some rallying and put my account a bit positive, for the most part I don’t watch the numbers anymore, I used to look at the account 5-6x per day, now I view it at the end of the day typically to see what profit/loss I made.

Course status:

I am really enjoying the coding piece of the course, not only learning AFL but I have started going through some MIT open course-ware to understand the logic behind coding. I see a lot of opportunity here in the trading realm so I am diving deeper into the subject. I am a veteran and have some GI bill funding left which I have thought about using to advance my understanding of programming. This is an unexpected turn. I feel as though I can use coding to both enhance my trading as well as my real estate business. My day job is system engineering so I am able to pick up the concepts rather quickly.

Happy Trading!

[TimothyStrickland]

Weekly update:

Trading:

Systems are still trending slightly higher through the week. I thought we were going to fully in the green on Friday but then the market quickly pivoted and gave back some of the gains.

Course:

Just finished Module 13, made some mistakes as Craig pointed out and just need to send out of my last looping task. It was challenging but not incredibly difficult. I think I’m going to get a big eye opener though when I try and put all the code together in a system and try to make it work, that’s the true test!

[TimothyStrickland]

Entire portfolio performance after switching to the US Aggressive.

On module 20 and ready to start building my first system with Nick and Craig!

[TimothyStrickland]

Trading – US Aggressive: +4.5%

Course: Module 24, call with Nick on Sunday to discuss first system setup.

[TimothyStrickland]

Basically finished the course tonight and I am now starting to work on my first system with Nick and Craig’s help. Just finished watching the CMT video on momentum. Ideas I’d like to try first:

First system I want to be a trend following system, due to profitability and the added benefit of the ease of coding.

Second system might be around Mean Reversion which will probably take a little longer according to Nick, because of the extra added technical complexity of coding such a system. This system I want to offset some of the drawdown of the trend following system and to add a little bit of diversity.

If those 2 go well, then I may look into possibly working on a system with forex but that is a long way off.

[TimothyStrickland]

US Aggressive +8.78%

Forex Discretionary: +5.8%

US Original: +0.85%

[TimothyStrickland]

The fact that the US Aggressive is outperforming the Forex Discretionary and there is very little input makes it very attractive. The discretionary strategy is very labor intensive. Working on my first system this weekend, hope to have some productive testing.

My trading knowledge has grown by at least 2x since starting the trading course. There are so many aspects of trading I did not learn from the other course that I took and it was 5x the price.

My first course never talked about backtesting, forward testing, drawdown, next 1000 trades. In fact, some of the things that were taught there is you just need to test your strategy on 20-30 trades!!! That’s exactly what Nick says not to do!

Oddly enough, I went to a conference Thursday where members of the course gathered, there were over 200 people there. I talked to many of them and I couldn’t find anyone who was profitable. Some were still on the sim (paper trading) for over 2-5 years!!!! After i casually mentioned my results a few times I started to draw a crowd and folks were asking me how I did it. One person had been trading for 12 years and another for 30 and still wasn’t profitable. This was very sad as it only took me a year, but luckily I found Nick shortly after I started trading. It seems like many are still stuck in the beginner’s cycle and focused on a few trades. One student I spoke with was going on and on about 1 trade that didn’t work, and I told her to not focus on that one trade, but the next 1000 trades, got a blank stare. I directed a couple of people here, but we will see if they follow through.

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