The Goal I Am Focused Most On
Passing my The Futures Desk evaluation! I feel like I’m stuck on this!
Highlights / Wins To Celebrate
- Progress in my The Futures Desk evaluation. +$1,960.90 in weekly profit.
- I am still trying to reset my expectations, I started the week with $11,242 in total available drawdown. This is like making 13% in a week if I were to deposit the drawdown amount in a personal account and made the same profit for the week. It is way more than I would need if I was trading a personal and focused on compounding over time.
- This also brings me to 60% towards passing. The home stretch is always the most difficult, but obviously the most rewarding when passed.
- I am utilizing my data more and more. The following pertains to me because of my trade data. Yours might be different, so just take a look your own trading data and see if there are any adjustments you could be making.
- In terms of my hold period, I should learn to cut trades sooner. I have good profits for hold times less than one hour. I think I have a good idea of what is going on, and I’ll write about it in another blog post. I need to learn to let go of a losing trade, and I need to learn to not hold onto a bias.
- In terms of my entry time, I should avoid the market open for the New York session and wait till things settle down in volatility.
Lowlights / Things To Work On
- I would have been better off trading just Monday and Tuesday and taking the week off. I hit my daily loss limit again on Wednesday which wiped out two days of progress and some extra.
- I spent Thursday and Friday recovering the drawdown.
- Still trying to calibrate what I should be aiming for per day. I know TFD has parameters, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I have to use 100% of what is made available to me.
- I’m officially one month into this assessment. I’m still coming to terms with taking things slow and it is my old “Prop Firm Brain” that is wanting to speed things up. I wrote about some of this in my post titled: “Reprogramming My Prop Firm Brain”
- There was only one other time I’ve ever taken this long to pass an evaluation account at other firms, and it was because I was testing out an automated trader I built and kept it on one or two micro futures for most of the trading.
- I’m used to passing from as little as a single trading day, and probably on average I was taking about three to four trading days. Yes, I blow plenty of evaluation accounts in that process, which is why I am trying to take this one slow and steady. No more boom and bust!
- There is usually an urge to make as much money as possible that can sometimes be detrimental to trading success. It causes traders to blow accounts, and we have to fight that urge sometimes.
Top Lesson
Learn to be okay with slow and steady progress! The more I want to rush, the more it hurts my trading.
Trading Week Grade
I give my week a B. I mostly stuck with my plan, but still have some issues especially on Wednesday. I think there are two things I need to address in the near term. at least based on my trade reports:
- Stay out of the market open. Data suggests that my entries during this time have negative expected value.
- Cut trades that are taking too long and are in loss. Data suggests that when I hold trades longer than one hour it will be negative expected value.
Trading Performance
The Futures Desk
- MON: $1,011.45 Profit
- TUE: $994.90 Profit
- WED: $2,472.60 Loss
- THU: $1,501.20 Profit
- FRI: $925.95 Profit
- FULL WEEK: $1,960.90 Profit
- Evaluation Progress: +$7,202.85 / $12,001 | 60% complete
