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Day 37: Day Trading JournalDay 37: After a gap of about 15 days during which I was not trading, and trying to figure out if I can find a better algo strategy or trying to find out if manual trading is better. Since the algo that I had deployed was doing good in paper trade but real trade is a way different battle since the market gives you the worst of price at both times - entry and exit, it resulted in a breakeven after a month, now I decided to focus on my manual trading instead. I realised that when trading manually, decision making is very complex and cannot be fit in a simple algorithm even when I am looking at just one indicator. The brain actually analyses many different things without even we realising. Most of the time, brain picks up correct entry signals. I tested out my strategy by paper trading and backtesting on different stocks than which I normally follow and I found that the strategy is good and I do good and I am profitable in that. The issue however arises when real money is involved as the most difficult part to master i.e. our emotions, are not involved in backtesting or paper trading. We need to trade live only for that and build that mindset. Nothing else can prepare me for that, so its all real trade for me now, very small positions but rigorously testing the same strategy on different stocks untill I have mastered the emotions.
NSE:INDUSINDBK
by Hiren1
Day 36: Day Trading JournalDay 36 : Today, I put a halt on algo trading as well as day trading. After algo day trading for @14 days, I realised that I was not making profit, whatever profit had accrued was taken away by market. So I went back to my algo backtesting and stress tested it for worst case conditions and that actually came very close to my real time trading. Then I realised that day trading is not gonna make money. So I have decided to stop day trading and figure out a way to trade swing, now to see whether to follow the hourly chart or the daily chart and if any rule can be applied to it. For the next few days I will focus on trying to find that, meanwhile any trade I do manually will be a swing (holding overnight) to see how it goes.
NSE:INDUSINDBK
by Hiren1
Day 35 of Live algo Day Trading JournalDay 35: Not much movement today. Remained negative during the day. I am increasingly getting this feeling that intraday is not worth pursuing. The time market is open is very less, the first half hour or the full hour goes just in trying to figure out where the market wants to go and by the time you think what you'd like to do, it stalls and gets into a range. By the time it ends, the market timings are over and everybody wants to pack up. Where is the time to chase any strategy, where is the time for any strategy to develop. I think I will try looking for a swing trading strategy and see if that is profitable or not. Progress/Setback : Nothing much on both counts, will have to explore more.
NSE:INDUSINDBK
by Hiren1
Day 34 of Live Algo Day Trading JournalDay 34: What a bad day it has turned out to be. Market gyrations has given me losses for all the trades taken. The algo was correct, the logic captured the direction of the market, however the intraday pullback of the market was beyond its normal limits (or as per the set calculated limits over a certain time) and kept hitting SL everytime. Took four trades, all wrong. Setback: today's market has made me thinking if I should incoporate something else in the logic to figure out the major direction and take trades only in that direction? This will keep me occupied for the weekend.
NSE:INDUSINDBK
by Hiren1
Day 33 of Live Algo Day Trading JournalDay 33: Good day but did not turn out good for me today. Algo gave me entry in the morning, turned out profitable, but subsequent two entries took away all the profit. Overall a negative with minor loss. Progress: Stuck to the algo even when was sure that we are near the support and should have taken profit. So, no manual trading today. Learning/ to ponder: When market takes away your earnings, should you solely rely on algo ? I am thinking of changing it to stop it once a desired profit target has been achieved and take no more trades...... What are your thoughts on this ? Let it run or stop and get out ?
NSE:INDUSINDBK
by Hiren1
Day 32 of Live Algo Day Trading JournalDay 32: Day opened good, however could not sustain bullish momentum and gave up all the gains. Algo waited till it got the pullback. First trade turned out to be loss making as market played mischief and got me out. On the second trade also market tried to play mischief but the sellers were very strong and did not allow it to go beyond my SL and hence was saved. Getting to the target was a long patient wait. Had to wait for two and half hours to get it. For most of the time market just tried to push beyond the limits and kept on fooling people on both sides but my algo kept on holding. Finally at last it did go in my direction and got profit. Progress/Learnings: PATIENCE pays. Got jittery at a time when market was close to my stop loss and thought it might get hit but did not do anything manually and held on. Patience and faith on the system pays.
NSE:INDUSINDBK
by Hiren1
Day 31 of Live Algo Day Trading JournalDay 31: Day opened bullish, my stock opened and immediately ran up to its high point. Algo did not trigger as it is deisgned to get in on a pullback. Got an entry; market tried to cheat but could not succeed and was saved. However later on the market cheated and threw me out with a minor profit. Algo again got triggered but in the wrong direction, suffered small loss. Third time algo got triggered but came out at parity. Progress : Did not do any manual trade today even when felt like taking a bullish position manually(in hindsight looks like I was correct), but idea is to build the habit of only algo trading, no manual trading, so good, did not get into temptation.
NSE:INDUSINDBK
by Hiren1
Day 30 of Live Algo Day Trading JournalDay 30: Made a mistake today. Market was bearish in the morning and algo took a position which went on to be incorrect. Again algo took another position and this also turned out to be a loss making trade. After the fall over last few days, I was bullish while the algo signals were all bearish. So, after two wrong trades by my algo, I thought let me take the next trade manually and I went long. Market punished and threw me out. Then again I took two more trades (even when algo was quiet and did not give any signal), made up the loss that I had made in my manual trade. Overall, a loss making day, losing bit less than 1%, but the worst part was losing my patience and getting overconfident on my skills. Bad idea. Setback: Manual trade.... i think due to getting overconfident by looking at the chart, getting influenced by a certain call, bad impact...
NSE:INDUSINDBK
by Hiren1
Day 29 of Live Algo Day Trading JournalDay 29: Good day today. After falling for almost week, market took a breather and the bulls tried to put a stop to selling. My algo got me into a bullish position in the morning and the momentum gave me my target pretty soon. Had to be away so did not trade later on, but the algo did very well on paper trades. Had a not so good day yesterday and was not feeling good yet continued with the algo without touching it during the day, turned out to be a wise decision. Progress: Overcame the sadness of losing yesterday and did not do any manual trade, let the algo run its course.
NSE:INDUSINDBK
by Hiren1
Day 26 of Live Algo Day Trading JournalDay 26: It turned out to be a good trending day today. Right from the morning the market decided to fall and kept falling. Yesterday I had tweaked my algo to take entry on pullback. Unfortunately, the morning pullback was not strong enough to get me a signal, so missed the morning trade. However, algo caught the afternoon pullback and gave me a good profit of around half a percent. Internet consistency is an issue which is pestering me since long (now I realise that its this thing which made all my algos go wrong when I used to subscribe to other algo developers/websites). Will have to do something to raise an alarm or a flag whenever there is a drop in internet. This drop made me take two manual decisions - one to get out when I saw that all the exit levels were broken and yet I was not getting any signal (that's when I realised that the data is not coming) and second time when algo did take the entry (because of wrong data), and then I got anxious as there wasn't enough time left and thought that the market might reverse as everyone would start closing their positions. Progress : stuck to algo and let it run its course Setback : Took manual decisions and got panicky/anxious when there wasn't enough time left.
NSE:INDUSINDBK
by Hiren1
Day 25 of LiveAloDayTradingJournalDay 25: Another Monday after a weekend, however, now I don't feel the pressure of being wrong because I was out of sync with the market due to the weekend holiday. Now it seems the faith on the system is taking over and the thought never occured to me that its Monday. I just let the system figure out the signals and let it work. I just sat in front of it and just kept an eye on if the connection is still there and the internet data is flowing. Rest... the algo to decide. Algo worked very well giving me the correct entry and exit signals and made a good half a percent today. Progress : Faith getting better, anxiety gone, no panic/fear, no FOMO even when I can see the signals where I could have got in manually, yet did not take any manual positions, no emotional upsurge of taking manual position.
NSE:INDUSINDBK
by Hiren1
Day 23 of LiveAlgoDayTradingJournalDay 23: As expected, today being the day after a holiday (a trading break day), turned out to be a bad day. The markets remained range bound the whole day (for my stock) and just kept on hitting SL on both sides, frustrating (now, it's more like trying to frustrate). Anyways, I stuck to the algo, not doing any manual trades and the algo did not fall for anything, just the usual bearable defined losses. Realised that I dont trust all other algo websites from where I used to subscribe, is due to this; the drop in continuous internet. This is the culprit that makes my program lose data and give wrong results. So... will have to compensate for it. Progress: No FOMO, Anxiety, or front running, or anything else. No such emotion arose, I just let the algo do its job even when I can see that it missed the signals due to data loss. So, a bit more progress today.
NSE:INDUSINDBK
by Hiren1
1
Day 22 of DayTradingJournalDay 22 of DayTradingJournal: Let the algo run from the morning. Algo did a good job. Had an issue with internet in later part @2:30 when it stopped downloading data and hence no signals. This eroded my profitablility, otherwise later on I checked up eod data and ran a backtest to see the discrepancies in the live vs backtest data. Surprisingly, both matched. Other than the internet issue everything else is OK. Progress: No FOMO, no temptation (or controlled it), faith in system.
NSE:INDUSINDBK
by Hiren1
Day 21 of DayTradingJournalDay 21 of DayTradingJournal: Full live algo deployed. Algo did very well compared to what I think I'd have done had I taken trades manually. Algo did as expected, taking all the entry, exit, SL, Tgt signals correctly. Progress: No manual trades today, no FOMO, no front-running the signal, no fear/greed while sitting in front of the system. Had an instance when I was tempted to take a manual trade, but stopped myself from doing it and kept the faith on the algo. Setback: today, nothing.
NSE:INDUSINDBK
by Hiren1
Day 20 of DayTradingJournal - LiveAlgoFirstTestDay 20 of DayTradingJournal: Today I did my first test of the algo that I have been trying to make. I put it live right from the morning and let it take all the trades that comes its way. Surprisingly, the algo did very well. (I think if I did manually, I might not have been so good). Learnings for today: Keep the faith on the system, it pays well. Since TV does not allow publishing of live data, I made a video of it to check for later. You can check the live trade of algo on my YT channel at hiren2517 (TV doesn't allow me to paste the link here)
NSE:INDUSINDBK
by Hiren1
Day 19 of DayTradingJournalDay 19 of DayTradingJournal : Good day today, the algo performed as expected. Gave correct signals and fired correct signals to broker account. Tried tweaking some more, but then after running on dummy account realised that the existing setup is better, so will continue with it tomorrow as well. Tomorrow, will let all signals go through the algo and see how it performs during the day. Take away for today: Faith on the system, giving it time to unravel the gift it has, it takes it time, give that time and you'll be rewarded.
NSE:INDUSINDBK
by Hiren1
Day 18 of DayTradingJournalDay 18 of DayTradingJournal: Today was a good day with my algo finally doing as expected. Had this issue since last two days, though I had fixed it up last night, however, realised a small bug had crept up, was taking data from one set and applying to another set and expecting correct results. Obviously wrong, got it resolved and then tested it. The algo now gave the expected results. Today's trading take away: Mirrored a trade as per algo's signals even when it looked like I should take trade on the other side (had there been no algo signals, i'd have taken the wrong trade as the charts and markets decieve you), but then I decided to keep the faith and took the trade suggested by the algo. Turned out good and profitable. There was an instance or two wherein the lizard brain tried to get to me to get out the trade but I persisted, kept the faith and let tha algo run and give signals. So, progress on two fronts - faith on system and control on lizard brain.
NSE:INDUSINDBK
by Hiren1