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TLC Weekly Update August 9, 2019

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All week I was troubled by bad internet connection. Slowed down progress with various projects. Just unbelievable how dependent I am these days on the need to be connected to the net all the time …

My team told me that the Gann Square Excel add-in I have created years ago, is the number one gann tool on the net based on the number of downloads. It is a pleasant surprise for me. Never thought that people like it so much. Just wondering what will happen if I charge a dollar each.

I received quite a number of requests to buy the mechanical trading strategies they see in DaytradingBias instead of subscribing to the premium service which gives full access to all the strategies. I understand what they are thinking of and I can package up the strategies as individual items in the store. The truth of the matter is, the cost of these strategies would add up to way more than the subscription fees. Anyway, I am getting my team to package up some of the items and offer them in the store.

I finally realize that I was sick after I came back to Canada last week. The symptoms were so mild that I thought I was get exhausted from the trip and all. Only until I woke up Thursday in the morning feeling all better that I figure this out.

Someone sent me this Quora answer by James Altucher on Warren Buffett. It is a good read and correct assessment of “The Oracle”. As I told many people asking me about Warren Buffett, he is not a good investor and he is definitely not a good fund manager. Now I can refer everyone to this full length article so that I don’t have to waste time explaining why.

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update August 2, 2019

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I was so exhausted after traveling from Hong Kong back to Toronto that I slept on and off for more than a day before I can get back to my normal schedule excluding exercise. And now that it is Friday, it is my first day of resuming my daily exercise routine. My performance was bad.

What two weeks of non-stop meetings, walking in extreme heat, dining out and significant amount of alcohol can do to me?

Well, upper body strength dropped but I know I will gain it back quickly. Other than that, I do not really feel that bad. It is still too early to tell how long it will take to recover fully.

I guess the worst part of the trip was little to no option to stay away from complex carbohydrates. Every meal I was introduced to try out, with much eager by the inviting parties, has carb as the main ingredient. Exotic ramen, very fancy noodle dishes, you name it, I tried it. The end result is six pounds of fat added to my belly.

I am graceful for the chance to try out all these foods. I enjoyed every moment of having them. Doing this occasionally makes life fun. However, getting back in shape will probably be my priority over the coming few weeks.

Talking about priority, I now have time to get back on track to compile my list of books to read on basic chart reading skills. As I explained before, it is getting more difficult to do so because many of the books I like to include into the list are no longer in print. I am working on adding the alternatives in case you cannot find the ones I recommend.

In the meantime, you can read the series here.

I will get back on track to complete the trading manuals on Emini that I promised my members. It is not an easy task because writing is often a “flow” process that you need your brain to have the big picture in your mind in order to produce content that is coherent with the rest of the book. So I need to read and re-read my manuscripts to pick up from where I left off three weeks ago.

So, catch up time for me and wish you all a great weekend!

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TLC Weekly Update July 26, 2019

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I was doing a presentation in Hong Kong on alternative investment vehicles earlier this week. Some questions are quite interesting. But specifically there is this one question many readers will be interested to know the answers,

What are my opinions on the current market environment?

Here is a quick summary:

  • Brexit is good for UK. British Pound will bottom out soon after Brexit.
  • Do not short Euro now. Too crowded. Too late.
  • When every major economy are using ZIRP to stimulate the economy, there will be unintended consequences.
  • Gold is in the beginning stage of a two to multiple years rally.
  • Equities will not be the place to be for good return in coming two to three years but not necessarily a “crash” that many people wanted to see (i.e. Chicken Little syndrome).
  • Real estate will not generate good return because it always normalize to the long term bond yield which may turn negative if the central banks choose to do so.
  • US dollar will be the place to be until it gets too expensive for the 3rd world countries to service their debts.
  • The belief that you need physical gold implies you believe that the system is heading for total collapse. If that is the case, you should not pile up gold bars. You should buy guns instead. (Stolen from Tim Morge)

There is this very odd thing I like to complain about the restaurants in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong. Many restaurants offering breakfast on their menu but they do not open until much later in the day. And many of them do not indicate what time they open. So I was walking up and down the street not able to find a place for breakfast even though all these places having their signs telling me the nice breakfast they serve … by lunch time.

The week was so packed with all sorts of meetings I could not work on the book list on technical trading skills. I will catch up with that when I return to Toronto in couple of days.

And this year is first time in my life that I have so many people surprised me with birthday cakes and well wishes. I don’t usually celebrate my birthday at all for years. So it is a drastic change indeed. Thank you all of you for remembering my birthday!

For those of you who are curious about my exact date of birth for whatever reason, here is the clue – first moon landing.

Have a nice weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update July 19, 2019

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It has been an extremely busy week since I arrived at Hong Kong this past Sunday. Being busy and having a hectic schedule are not really something that pose serious challenge to me. But the hot weather is. I was effectively sweating all day going everywhere. It was only made tolerable because of the breaks I got from going inside air-conditioned buildings …

It is a more personal trip for which I am meeting with my family, across multiple generations, quite a number of times. We do not get the chance to see each other that often. It is good to see people family members are doing fine. Time is short though since I will head back to Toronto this coming weekend.

One thing I notice is that the price of everything has rise significantly in Hong Kong in just half a year since I last visited the place not long ago. I ask around to see if my observation is correct. It turns out many fast food chains and retail stores are increasing their prices due to the upward pressure of labour costs.

I was rereading the book The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz on the plane. Before all these movements of self-help and all these talks about better performance through the building of proper perspective, we have this book explaining it all way back when. It is still the one that I recommend most to young adults because of the way the message is delivered.

Looking ahead, this coming week will be as hectic as the first one since I have been providing strategic portfolio allocation advices to my clients. I am also in talk with potential investors who are interested in some of my business ventures. Even though I do not usually get myself directly involve in running the start-ups I invest in, it is a great idea to spread the words when the opportunities show up.

Weather forecast is saying that it is going to rain all week long. To me, that means lower temperature. Yay!

Have a nice weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update July 12, 2019

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I was a happy camper 1.5 years ago with my Lenovo Yoga 920. Now that it is dead for no good reason, I have switched to Microsoft Surface Pro 6. It took me several days to copy my backup onto this new tablet / laptop plus the tedious task of installing all kinds of applications to the machine. I am glad to say, I have a new best friend!

What I learned is that the Lenovo’s approach of using the USB-C port as a charging port is in fact a very bad design decision. Many users of the Yoga laptops suffer from total loss just because the port can fry the motherboard, the SSD, the battery and the charger. In short, it is now proven that it is a stupid idea. So if laptop makers see this, please do not make new laptops that use the USB-C port for charging.

In case you are wondering why it is a bad idea for laptop but not cell phones – it is because laptops need much higher voltage output from the port for charging purpose. With clean power sources of course you will be fine. But even in major cities, power surges can still happen randomly and the risk of passing those energy spikes to the laptop greatly increases.

My work on my Emini day trading course is now disrupted until I have the necessary files restored. Originally I thought I lost all my latest set of code examples. However, during one lucky restart of my Yoga 920, I managed to launch TradeStation and did a complete backup onto my USD flash drive. The laptop then died on me again with BSOD just minutes later. This backup turned out to be good enough with 50% of the latest changes I made. So, instead of losing two weeks of work, I lost half of that.

Not bad!

Many people asked about Bitcoin lately. And many people are wondering if the Facebook crypto will change the crypto currency landscape. I am no expert in crypto but I find this short video from London Real where Andreas Antonopoulos talks about that. His point of view should be taken seriously.

Time to get packing.

Have a nice weekend all!

(This update is posted 1 day early due to my travel schedule)

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TLC Weekly Update July 5, 2019

Well, sh*t happens. My Yoga 920 laptop died on me since Tuesday. Tried everything I can think of to “fix” the damn thing but hours wasted with no clarity whatsoever what went wrong. The symptoms include random crashes that force itself to restart, battery refuses to be charged and data files corrupted. I thought I bought a great laptop that will last at least five years.  Not even at two years mark the machine already died.

So my progress in completing the Emini day trading course is disrupted. Luckily, I have backup of my TradeStation stuff so it is a matter of installing it on my other laptop (Surface Pro 6) and restore the backup there and I will be back in business. The more frustrating thing is that some of the spreadsheets I have created for the course have to be re-created from scratch …

While I was waiting for the computers doing their things like backup and restore, I get to read more chapters of the book The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene. The book is huge and really takes time to read. It is also a great exercise to reflect upon the concepts to see how myself and people I know are bounded by these laws.

For those of you who email me over the past few days, you have to wait a bit longer until I have my laptop ready for that. I can only do limited online stuff at the moment. I have added a new item in my list of things to optimize in life after this incident. I will find a way to reduce my dependency of my everyday computer, or at least have a way to make the replacement process much more speedy.

For my premium members, I will travel to Asia starting next Friday. Due to time zone difference I will not be able to participate in the real-time commentary. I will see what I can do once I regain internet connection.

Have a nice weekend all!

 

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TLC Weekly Update Jun 28, 2019

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In the blink of an eye, it is already Friday. I have so many things to get done I lost track of time. It is nice to sit down and take a short break here to review what happened this week.

The progress on completing the technical part of the Emini day trading course is taking much more time than I anticipated not because of the materials are not there. Seriously, I have all these day trading strategies written eons ago. Translating them into TradeStation is not difficult at all. But, in order to explain certain things, I have to use the TradeStation optimizer and taking screenshots of the results. And that is a huge pain in the neck as TradeStation is very slow with its optimization process.

I am so used to optimization at 10 times the speed, I thought I can get these things done in an hour and next thing I know the estimated time to completion is extended another few hours. Since I cannot get people to switch to NeoTicker and its Grid Optimizer, I guess I have to live with this until it is done.

For the giant book list on DIY day trading mastery, the second instalment is now ready. Finally, some books directly related to trading are included. The next set of books will probably takes some time to prepare due to an unforeseen circumstances. Namely, as I flip through the books, I find many of the good ones are no longer in print. I am still trying to figure out a way to include them because I am sure you can find some of these books in the libraries or other book places.

I moved up my travel schedule to Asia from August to July. It is primary for family matters. Hopefully the internet will be good enough there for remote access to my work.

And thanks to all of you sending me your suggestions on what to do next with webinars. I am organizing the materials to see which one will get the go ahead first. I will keep you all posted about the progress.

To my fellow Canadians, have a nice long weekend!

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TLC Weekly Update Jun 21, 2019

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Happy day.

I get my edited draft of The Emini S&P Day Trading Course back. Read it through twice. Fixed up some minor issues. I have this part of the editing completed. So what’s left is to polish the code of the day trading strategies featured in the course and have them ready for download. Of course I need to take screenshots, write and rewrite parts that I am not satisfied with, but I know I am dashing through the finish line. It always feel good to see the completion of a project.

For the big list of books on trading, I finally give in to reality and split it into multiple parts. First part is just posted.

I told my premium members to look into buying gold producer ETFs at the end of 3rd quarter last year. Looks like the comeback play worked out with more upside likely. As I explained to my readers, in order to win big on the long term moves in gold, you need to leverage on the gold producers. These gold producer ETFs holding the major gold companies are the perfect vehicles with lower risk comparing to holding gold or gold ETFs directly and better reward too.

Now that Facebook is going to release its own crypto currency, the validity of the block chain technology as an alternative to money printed by the governments is now turning into reality. We need to pay close attention to the development of crypto markets from now on … As a minimum, at least take the time to understand some basics about them. Here is a good intro video about blockchain published by Wired.

Have a great weekend everyone!

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TLC Weekend Update Jun 14, 2019

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Now that the Raptors got its first ever NBA title, Torontonians will now have to live with a totally jam packed downtown this coming Monday. I wonder how many Raptors fans will take the day off then. Congrats to the team and its loyal fans!

My Emini S&P day trading course first draft is now in the hands of my editor. While he is working on the draft, I just got the graphic design back. Here is a sneak peek.

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In the meantime, I am working on new ideas for more webinars. In fact, both this new course and the Trading Success Blueprint will include webinars so that they can be much more effective in helping traders to do better more effectively and efficiently.

For the next instalment of Smarter Way to Master Day Trading Emini S&P, I am trying to come up with a list of books that I know will help with trading. It turned out to be a huge list of books that I have to keep adding more. For those of you who want to DIY instead of taking the shortcut with my courses to master day trading, this will be the book list you have been waiting for.

One of the questions I am asked most is “which moving average do you use?” or something along the same line like “What period is your SMA?”

Well, I do not use moving averages in my trading. I do not use oscillators of any kind. I mention the moving averages in my real-time commentaries often because there are many traders using them. That in turn creates patterns in the price movements. Awareness of them and their effects is one of the ways to help yourself in putting the current market condition with the proper context.

Have a great weekend everyone!

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My Journey to Fully Automate My Trading: Reference Account First Month Results

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The result is in with the first month of trading the reference account using Big-Game Hunter ES at Striker. There are quite a number of things I learned over the month about the service. It is a good thing that I am trading real money with Striker myself so that I can further refine the trading strategies I planned to offer through them. Let’s go through the results and discoveries one by one.

First, the month has a net loss of $2820.80 all fees included. So it is down 18.8% for the month. It is not an outlier comparing to historical performance. So on the surface it is a typical month for Big-Game Hunter ES. This being said, I will add a monthly return table in the Big-Game Hunter ES page so that it is easier for traders without prior experience in this type of trading to see how the equity fluctuates.

Here is a chart capturing all the trades for the month.

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What is more interesting, however, is that if you know what happened during the month, you would notice that quite a few of the trades taken were stopped out because of news shock caused by Trump making tweets suddenly in the afternoon. Although I cannot tell for sure that these trades would have worked out fine without those news shocks, I know it is not likely that they all experience the worst case scenario either. So, it is something worth monitoring to see if such events continue to interfere with the performance. If so, better protection scheme has to be deployed using higher resolution data.

Another observation is that on days that the disruption of price movement caused by POTUS all resumed the original path the next trading day. It is as if whatever he did, only affected the day trading crowd.

Since I am trading the strategy on Tradestation myself and also through Striker, I get to compare the fills of the trades to see if there is any issue with Striker’s automation. Here is a table of the trades taken and a comparison of the actual fills.

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From the one month experience, it looks like there is a consistent slippage against the strategy with fills at Striker. However, the actual net effect of the trades were magically at zero thanks to one of the outlier better fill of 2+ points. I really don’t know what to say about this until I get more data to analyze. Let’s say I am just glad that the result so far is comparable.

I could not write up this post last weekend because I do not have a good way to capture the daily statements with the reference account. I ended up doing this manually. Without automation this will be very hard to do going forward as I planned to release more trading strategies with Striker. For now I guess I have no choice.

On my own account, given the chaos that is expected during the coming few weeks, I decided to delay the increase of contracts until next month. Hopefully POTUS will be done with his trigger happy tweets by then. I am not worry about Big-Game Hunter ES not going to perform though. I am going to deploy another set of trading strategies with my account soon, it is better I keep things as is so that I can compare the results more easily.

Have a good one!