[MadMarketScientist]

Thought I would join the fray again since its been a little while since I posted about how my trading is going.

September has been pretty good so far. You can see my summary below. What's interesting is I'm about 50% on winners/losers (it's actually a bit better due to the way Ninja Trader reports when you trade/execute on multiple contracts) but I'm nearly 2:1 on my average gain to loser amount so that's really pushing me forward.

My best trades this month probably were a long I was holding on the Dax futures that took off with the employment report, and actually today was really nice with the Crude Futures oil inventory report that came out 11am EST on Thursday -- normally it's Wednesday at 10:30 but due to the holiday came a day later. My approach is to always wait 2 minutes and then trade that market -- it usually has great movement for about an hour.

I'm trading these markets as of now - though I do change this at times....Crude Oil Futures using Renko Charts -- 5 cents and 10 cent renko bars. Dax Futures using 377 Tick charts. British Pound Futures using 10 pip renko bars. I do add in EURJPY at times also using renko but haven't had a chance rencently. I sometimes change between BP Futures and the straight forex GBPUSD but BP I like since I do better on spread since I'm just paying commissions and maybe a slight slip compared to at least 3 full pips spread on GBPUSD.

Anyway, I'll try to update this periodically during the month as interesting things come up for me.

[MadMarketScientist]

A couple of trading days since my last update, but returns remain very consistent. Friday and Monday were up over $3K combined. On Friday Crude Oil did very well for me with two trades that went $0.25 per contract ($250/contract x 2) and I was trading 2 contracts there, and then 1 contract a different way but that one ended even. The Dax didn't do much but did end slightly positive and picked up about $200 on BP Futures. Today, it was all about the Dax as it had a really nice long trade that started about 1:25am PST/4:25 am EST. I find to trade the Dax successfully I have to trade it during the European prime market hours.

I have yet to have real success with the Dax in US hours so I rely on some automation to at least get me into those trades since I'm sleeping during that time. Maybe if I move to Hawaii I can actually trade them live - if I did I'd do better since I like to make some small subjective moves but as it stands now I rely on automation of my rules to get me into the Dax trades. I'm not the hugest fan of automation since I think it takes away a lot of your ability to pro-actively trade but for me this is an example of either getting these trades or trying to do them live and really having no life due to sleep deprivation. I choose the former and just deal with some of the shortcomings.

The other observation I have is thank god the summer is over -- trading has been significantly better since late August -- and for me the mid June through July period was the most challenging of the last 12 months so really nice to see things back to what I consider normal. Hope it stays that way for a bit.