Accomplished
Was out of town for a bit so I did not get to much done other than listen to some good podcasts. Among those were several episodes of Akil Stokes’s Trading Coach Podcast and the most recent Chat with Trader podcast, which I found very insightful.
I did check in my most recent changes to my shared repository and went through a much-needed code review with a friend of mine.
Strategy development is coming along slowly but surly and I am learning a great deal along the way.
Goals For this Week
It has come to my attention that my chart time on stocks does not even hold a candle (pun intended) to my chart time on crypto. I plan to do a manual walk through of several stocks to start looking for recurring patterns to try to describe through an automated strategy. Currently I am trying random ideas and seeing how they work and what their various metrics are. Almost as if I were throwing darts at a board while blindfolded. Obviously not the best practice as one could imagine.
Thoughts on the Week
Wow what a wild ride!
In the two weeks since my last journal entry I had both one of the best and one of the worst trading days years to date. The $60k level for BTC has proved a specifically tough cookie to crack. The volatility of the persistent pullbacks and retests provided me with a stream of successful trades. It was on the retest of $50k where I got my face ripped off. The entire Month of April’s gains were wiped out and then some. But this is not the first time this has happened, and it will not be the last. I am still well ahead of my target for the year and currently sitting in less than 5% drawdown on my USD trading account and a 3% drawdown in my BTC account.
With the overperformance seen at the beginning of the year I have been anticipating such a pullback, as am I am firm believer in “gravitational economics” (what goes up must go down). Now I have zero idea weather or not this is the end of the fall in prices or not, but I am honestly feeling more comfortable about the trading going forward. Given how much time we spent butting up against all-time highs it was rather unsettling each time my trend following strategies would enter a position. The one has an average win size of 20% that would mean when it entered at $61k for it to be an average winner BTC would have had to go over $80K! I am optimistic and long-term believer in BTC but that seemed like a long shot to me given how much we moved so quickly. Now that we have pulled back there is some room to follow trends and not need to hit new all-time highs.
As one could imagine most of my positions either were stopped out or took profits. Only think I have now is a half-sized position in LINK-USD that is set to exit at midnight UTC time today (Sunday the 25th) so far, its sitting at about +3% but there is still a whole day of trading between now and then.
That is a wrap for now. Stay safe out there and remember to trade responsibility, plan your trades, and know your plan.