Since the last post, a lot has changed.
The elephant-bar algo on USD/JPY is at +32% in just 9 days, and every other elephant bar algo is failing to stay profitable. Something is wrong, so I’m spending some time tweaking each market separately with different parameters.
I’ve created these parameters for every algo now, so they can be easily adjusted at the top of the code. I am calling this version 4.
In the meantime, I’ve deposited $500 into the real live account in hopes to capitalize on this incredible return rate while it’s working. Who knows if it will suddenly drop off in the next few months? If I can pull several thousand out of my futures account in the near future, I may continue funding the algo more.
I’ve also reverted to running the algo every 1 minute, though this is related to a problem I’m not fully certain about yet. I think the algos have a bug, in that they are determining that they should enter a trade, and then entering 5 minutes late. I am not sure why or if this is the case, but the signal generated logs don’t line up with the trades. This may simply be due to the fact that I am trying to wait until a closed candle is confirmed before evaluating it, but either way, the entries may be off.
Besides tweaking parameters, I also noticed that my backtesting algos are applying the profit override inconsistently. I changed it to apply the override if the stop has been overridden, monitored by a boolean, but the live accounts did not reflect this. As of today, all of the live algos are now overwriting the profit (slightly different value per pair) based on a boolean, except for the real live USD/JPY, which I am afraid to tinker with. I have modified the demo USD/JPY because sacrificing the 32% is not something I’m worried about. If it holds or outperforms the real live USD/JPY account this week, I will update the latter to match the rest of the accounts.
Surprises
The biggest surprise was achieving a 68% win rate on USD/CAD. That was one of the pairs that seemed to be less promising initially, and I barely thought about it, along with AUD/USD. However, now it seems like I may have discovered something valuable, and live testing will reveal its validity during the next few weeks.
Futures
As for futures, I need to still make some progress on the consistency and regimen side of things. I want to continue emulating greats, meditating, and staying in my current zone. I need to ensure that I follow the routine in the morning and fill out my excel sheet religiously. I need to monitor QQQ and look for options plays so I can continue to grow the TD account as well. This is currently not optimized and I will have to spend some time figuring that out. A new monitor might be needed, with a wall mount, that keeps QQQ up and a trade ready to enter when I detect a sharp enough reversal on NQ. This is the only way I will multiply that account quickly while growing the futures, and adding other stock options to the mix over time will probably be a good idea too.