Dimsky's Journal: 100 x 100

Mondeoman · January 18, 2022, 1:31am

Hi, thanks for the response. You are too humble. I still think you are doing some very useful fundamental statistical analysis. It was a long time ago now, but I attended a weekend forex course in London hosted by Jimmy Young, who had been trading majors for over 20 years after he left his corporate career at various banks on their Forex desk. Jimmy made a point, just like you are doing, about his analysis of past 20 years of raw data, and came to the same conclusion as you - there was more than a 60% correlation between whatever it was he had measured, and so he always used last trading day closing price as his baseline. Within the first 10 minutes of London open, he chose to trade with trend (I can’t remember if Monday’s trend needed to be same as Fridays, or what was the indicator he used to open a trade, but he had a rule for entry, stop loss and take profit. It was based on a 60%+ probability of being able to catch at least 70% of x pips, x being the statistical average of the 60% probability he caught the trend in the right direction. If I recall rightly, by going for 75% of the pips in the right direction, his win / loss ratio was about 65%. We did not get any notes to take home and his presentation pack files emailed after the presentation did not cover the detail he lectured about.

The link below is to the same guy who hosted the London conference. Attendance was a (reasonable) $300.

Edited. Oh, about the cryptos, and for trading them, I don’t think there is anything magical about cryptos that doesn’t occur with the majors and crosses. It’s just that there are 10,000 of them, and most of them pair with either BTC or one of the USD stable coins.

I do follow a lot of fundamental analysis about cryptos on Youtube, always make sure I have read the whitepapers of those I choose to trade, and the reason I really like trading them is because they are so volatile, I do not use leverage and hence do not use a stop loss. If and when they collapse to zero, it is never overnight. It is always a long tail down to a satoshi or two.

darthdimsky · January 18, 2022, 2:19am

What I love about the whole Jimmy Young bit (and I hope I don’t sound patronizing) is that he gives #s that you can use to determine whether his argument holds water or not. He’s basically giving you the tools to debunk his own method.

I’d be able to download broker data and apply a similar methodology too after hearing him out. And that’d give me the opportunity to find out if it works for the current market conditions. Perhaps it works for some instruments and not others? That too can be tested. That’s why I like it.

I really meant about being ignorant about cryptos. I knew whitepapers existed but I didn’t know there was fundamental analysis around it. First time hearing about it. That’s pretty cool. Do you have a go to YT channel you found reliable?

Mondeoman · January 18, 2022, 9:34am

Hi,

By far the most reliable source of information is linked below. It’s Guy from Coin Bureau. I thought I had understood what I needed back in June 2020 when I created my first investment / trading plan based on crypto “types”. That was just scratching the surface. I think by now, though I have not measured it, I have probably spent more than 1,000 hours doing some R&D on all things crypto.

I don’t wish to tempt fate, but last night I traded a NFT for a 15X. I did not think that possible, and didn’t really want to sell it, but as you probably agree “everything has a price”, so I put it up for auction on a NFT site at about 10 times its floor price - and it sold due to its rarity. I still can’t get my head around what kind of nutter pays a 12X (it was a 15X in USD terms) when the buy price is in plain sight in the contract, and I’ve owned it for just less than a month.

To date I have bought and sold over 10 NFTs, and all the others were within a small range. But this one last night really made me think - is this the year I give up the day job?

I have literally hundreds of links in my OneNote folder for Crypto. Below is a snippet of the folder contents of some of the cryptos I have researched since June 2020.

I just finished a re-definition of my allocation last night, and it now contains up to 30% of value to be diverted from longer term holding to shorter term Liquidity Pair (LP) and NFT trading. Three months ago, both LP and NFT trading were not even on the radar. Today, they constitute almost 50% of our portfolio. Too important to ignore. I have @ponponwei or @ria_rose to thank for that. One of them gave me push to think about playing “play to earn” games, which I dismissed outright, and then decided to look into after talking to an ex-flat mate of my son who got a job inside the GameFi industry. The rest is history.

I am very fortunate to have the time to go and do research into what others think are very off the wall ideas. I now have the basis for a new business, because I think I can scale the identification and filtering of NFT trading without staff needing to understand crypto or even open a crypto account.

The reason I am so clear about spending time pursuing this is because I learned some of these skills playing Runescape with my sons, and during the past three years, I have been practising price discovery methods in that game to reach a “gold pieces” balance of 900 million GP. I haven’t played for a while, but all that fun time has become a serious part of my trading plan for NFTs. Strange how life works out.

darthdimsky · January 18, 2022, 10:30am

I think I remember Coin Bureau when I initially read up on Cryptos in 2017. I think it was the most reliable source of crypto information at the time. I didn’t know about it’s YT channel. Will give it a look.

Yea, Runescape’s free market has a lot of interesting dynamics. The price a 3rd age bow has skyrocketed to the 2B range atm I heard recently. This was 3-400m in 2019 atleast. There are some really good flippers in game that also trade in real life markets I think. Sadly I spent time levelling up non combat skills and not enough merchanting so I don’t have any in-game skills that help in trading.

Mondeoman · January 18, 2022, 2:02pm

Then you would like DeFi Kingdoms. The NFTs in that game are Heroes (like Pokemon trading cards) who you send on quests.

darthdimsky · January 18, 2022, 9:45pm

LOL I think I would which is why I’m going to avoid it for now. I have a very difficult time switching off something I take an interest in. That trait has been helpful for trading but with games it’s proven to be a time sink. I was skilling as an ironman (manufactured/harvested most skilling requirements) on a normal account. My OSRS stats:

2022-01-19_00-46-10

I want to make trading work full-time. There’s a lot to do and gaming, in my case, will get in the way. If and when I succeed (swing trading on larger capital) I’ll go back to OSRS I think. I feel disappointed I couldn’t finish some in-game objectives.

Journal:

Penning some thoughts I’ve been processing on the downtimes.

Need to implement a grading system in my journal. Possible solution here and another possible one for ref in “The New Trading for a Living”.
Get back on the daily notion grind after 100 pip analysis
Resume and keep the Anki grind. No excuses.

Current to do:

MQL5 script
Read Trading in the Zone & Mental Game of Poker to start drafting a mental routines/exercises
100 pip exercise continuation on H1/H4
Incorporate a journal grading system
Brainstorm a method to quantify mental state, at trade, within journal.

Mondeoman · January 19, 2022, 1:17am

Hi,

I hope the screenshot may encourage you to allocate a little time to that idea. This represents about 20% of the income I am deriving from this game. The rest is in a liquidity pair. The underlying currency (Jewel) is down 25% in last few days, but it was up 200% from when I got in, so not bothered in the short term.

This represents 50 trading days, the first 25 of which earnings related to a total of eight heroes, the last 25 representing contributions from a total of 25 heroes. The cumulative results of this exercise has helped to cement a plan for NFT trading. And that is that the NFTs I invest in MUST have an income-generating capability, preferably one that can potentially deliver 10% per month of value purchased with little or no “operating cost”. Snapshot taken at 1am local time.

P.S. OCD in RS3. If RS3 had been a blockchain game for the past 3 years I would probably have about $100K value in there right now.

greenscorpio · January 19, 2022, 1:41am

Out of curiousity had to Google name , obviously familiar with Golden Girls and Mary Tyler Moore show grand old age bless her

darthdimsky · January 19, 2022, 1:59am

My knowledge base and the late stage at which I began trading/investing is a huge cause for concern. It’s very subpar. There’s a massive opportunity cost if I step off the gas at this stage in my development.

There’s an even bigger concern and reason though. I don’t deal in anything crypto related cause my offshore bank will cancel the account if they get a whiff of me dealing in it. Forex no issues, but not crypto. It was difficult finding a bank that facilitated this. Can’t jeopardize the situation right now.

darthdimsky · January 19, 2022, 2:08am

Yea, for me it was Golden Girls & Golden Palace as a kid. Had no idea she had a potty mouth till I saw her with Ryan Reynolds

greenscorpio · January 19, 2022, 9:47am

Yes I remember been young when they first aired them shows over here awww when we only had 3 channels

SpaceCowboy2104 · January 19, 2022, 12:14pm

Hey @darthdimsky, been going through your blog, interesting stuff, i feel like your working yourself way to hard. looking back at when i started out trading i wasted a lot of time on things that felt were really meaningfull, but later just proved to be a waste of time and energy. im not saying that your doing the same, bc i dont really know, but trading isnt as complicated as your blog indicates.

darthdimsky · January 19, 2022, 2:42pm

Hey, welcome to the forum!

Completely agree with you. There’s enough blogs/journals/strategies that even compliment your argument. Even the way I traded when I documented and worked on in my Notion updates proved to do well enough for me.

I can simply revert to what I was doing and get good results I believe. I’d rather not do that. I’d rather set up a comprehensive system and build a firm foundation for a possible chance at trading full-time and in other markets/instruments.

If you look at it from that context this isn’t a lot of work. In fact, this should probably be the bare minimum.

Edit: There’s also a part of me that that will cause me to be disappointed in myself if I “let go” of certain ideas. I want to trade like the institutional traders I admire reading and listening to and the common denominator in their approach is putting in the effort & hours.

SpaceCowboy2104 · January 19, 2022, 3:01pm

well i guess you have to do what feels right to you. will follow

darthdimsky · January 24, 2022, 2:46pm

Done.

I was so wrong. This was nothing like riding a bike. Or maybe it is. I haven’t ridden one in years.

Glad I’d uploaded that gif in the Notion thread. The field headers and data formats ensured I didn’t have to touch or source anything from Notion. Plug & play all the way.

Very proud of this part. As a coding noob I’m feeling a bit arrogant right now. Justifiably so.

Two marked efficiencies over previous code:

Previous delimiters were hardcoded within a Printf() string. Not this version. CSV delimiters can be changed now within the FILEOPEN function.
Previously there were individual For Next loops against each group of arrays (each of the indicators, 10H/L values, OHLC values). This was because I was strictly enforcing the logic in the MQL5 manual samples and whatever code I could find online. Chucked it and figured a workaround when I realised this time round that most of my arrays were one dimensional because I was only looking at previous day values only. That helped streamline the code. I was procrastinating at the prospect of coding and error checking those loops again. It’s amazing how a want to be lazy can motivate innovative ideas sometimes.

I’m pretty sure there my code’s far from efficient in the eyes of a seasoned MQL5/C++ coder. But this is my Frankenstein and I’m proud of it.

Notion Checklist.csv (10.4 KB) Notion Checklist MQL5 code.txt (5.1 KB)

Restored Balance

The code is super important. This code enabled a process that I built a rigorous daily routine around. Challenging enough that I never once completed my daily checklist:

I’m naturally headstrong and relentless. Good traits for problem solving but naturally bad when the same traits leads to a propensity to overtrade, revenge trade & chase profits. Atleast the same equivalents when I played poker.

The routine building was to adapt to a more compartmentalized approach. It was to force efficiency and economy of mental capital (termed by Alexander Elder) over time. With the intention of adding onto it or changing it when things got too comfortable. To shock the system.

In hindsight, it might’ve been worth it to have paid for a data recovery tbh. But not having it had forced a re-evaluation of what I was doing. I expect a more robust approach to my previous routine.

Possible New Projects

Now that I’ve just finished the coding exercise and have built a library of sample codes to make future coding easier. I should be able to:

take on building a data extract for the historic MT5 economic calendar data.
build code for adhoc data extracts. Recently needed ATR values to run some numbers. Was forced to let go because the time required to invest in learning code for that requirement wasn’t worth it. Now it’s a very simple exercise.

Reading:

Decided to start with Disciplined trader and work my way up to later books. Dismal progress. Let the coding take most of my time and just went through 40 or so pages so far.

Surprising MQL5 discovery
Was going over some pretty good MQL guides like this one and decided to check the author bio for this one. Was surprised to see he’d coded the following:

Pretty cool that he’s created EAs on Thomas Bulkowski’s findings. What’s interesting is whether the basis for those indicators can be used to update/continue his studies, given that the book was published nearly 2 decades ago.

Mondeoman · January 25, 2022, 6:22am

Mind blowing. I haven’t got a clue what the coding means - a bit like me trying to read Arabic.
But you are on a roll and I can see that. Well done. On a more simplistic level, I have committed to become “a blockchain consultant” by Q2, 2022. Having publicly stated it, I now have to get my skates on.

Off the wall comment. Have you thought of applying to code with a crypto business? According to Linked-In it was the most sought after skill in 2021 with an expected 100% increase in demand in 2022. That was what caused me to seek serious training material in blockchain.

darthdimsky · January 25, 2022, 10:02am

My coding skills and drive are limited tbh. I have no natural interest in coding but I have a strong drive for data analysis. That’s why I learnt the bare essentials for data extracts and haven’t bothered going into EAs and custom indicators on MQL5. But I have a feeling that will change over time when I want to avoid micromanaging trades and atleast semi-automate certain processes.

I have plans for python, statistics and econometrics going forward but I have to do a better job at compartmentalizing my ongoing study and everything else.

I’m really excited to see how this works out. Will you be updating your crypto journal with regular updates with this regard? If you haven’t considered it I hope you will. It’ll be an inspiring read.

Mondeoman · January 25, 2022, 7:26pm

Hi,
I am not sure at this stage, but there are a couple of areas associated with project and programme management that I have been steered towards over the past four years, rather than by force of necessity than choice. Customers never seem to have the full mix of skills in a team, so where we are short I have always volunteered to cover. One of those areas is business analysis. If I get a good BA that is a godsend. But often the BA role comes from the business discipline who owns the project (human resources, finance, operations, cyber-security). And that then led to governance, reporting content and cadence definition.

I see a future where companies have no choice but to adopt blockchain as unbreakable set of rules, and I see governments mandating compliance in law or “authority documents” that will cause this shift to happen, as Sarbanne-Oxley compliance in the USA led all CxO leaders to pay close attention to their accounts to avoid going to jail for cooking the books, whether they knew or not.

Corporations will preferentially adopt DACs (corporations) rather than DAOs (organisations) but the interesting part comes when companies wish to federate their access to critical business information with infrastructure that will replace one way and two way trusts between legal entities. The governance and architecture of that future compliance scenario is what interests me the most.

I just bought the NFT domain mondeoman.dao from unstoppable domains. Not sure what I will do with it yet but it will be part of my study to understand the differences between Web 2 and Web3 at the application layer. For example, DNS does not currently recognize the TLDs such as .dao, .wallet, etc. Ethereum has made their own ENS service, but such standards are in the pipeline to be issued. The DAO or DAC will choose whether or not to advertise the path to their decentralized services. There is a lot still very unclear to me, but having done the MCSE certification 20 years ago sure helps. I’ll let you know if I post, or send you a link to my discord server or AWS server when I know how the architecture will store my data and metadata.

darthdimsky · January 26, 2022, 7:53am

Not necessarily I think. From the functions of the BAs I’d worked with they would interact with me as a subject matter expert. So with my better understanding of business processes and knowledge of data at a finer granularity I’d be able to assist with their documentation. Like their User Requirement Specs.

Maybe my definition is very narrow because that’s how the BA’s in our org usually functioned. Can’t confidently say if that’s best practice to be fair.

Before this I’d like to see governments adopt this. Especially in my country. There so much blatant pilfering, corruption & mismanagement that this kind of thing would be revolutionary.

darthdimsky · January 27, 2022, 6:32pm

Notion upload failure

A bit bummed. My notion CSV upload keeps failing. Created an alternative code with the hard coded delimiters and that didn’t work either. Going to DB copy and see if that works. Might have to resort to creating a new notion ID to create some kind of test/staging area to get an idea if it’s restricted to existing ID, because the CSV shouldn’t be the issue. Atleast when I read the common problems faced by users with the same error.

The downside to Notion is that there’s no error log that I’m aware of to determine specific error. No dev console of any kind for any kind of basic troubleshooting atleast. Just:

Worst case scenario: I’ll just have to duplicate and work this out on Excel. Not a huge issue. Just that I’d built a very streamlined workflow to build relationships to journal and individual currency pair analysis areas. These relationships will no longer be possible with an offline Excel file.

Psychology

Am still reading Disciplined Trader. The following resonated a lot:

Was feeling a bit despondent. I’ve gone to great lengths to get to this stage in my journey. When thinking of the worst case scenario of possibly discarding what I worked on in Notion, it struck me a bit hard. Was it worth it? This excerpt helped answer the affirmative yes. It reminded me of the reason I decided to do all this. Reminded me of the time I won this tournament:

Was the worst thing that could’ve happened at the time. Played ABC poker that tourney. Played with good bet sizing, proper positional play. Must’ve been very card lucky too. Probably the worst thing that happened to me at the time. Would’ve been better if I’d lost that day.

It built a very false image of my actual skill level at the time. My ABC strategy actually regressed a lot because I tried so hard to duplicate the good fortune of this win. Made way too many unnecessary adjustments to my game and broke what worked. Not to mention I wasn’t making an effort at studying and analyzing my game either. It was basically an unsystematic dismantling of an already average game.

Even on the rare occasion I remember it, it doesn’t affect me. I’d relegated it to my past. Today it evoked a few strong emotions of how terrible and how under-prepared my approach at the time was. Guess I’m just feeling a bit weak and vulnerable from this setback. I’ve managed much worse in this journey (funding my account & setting up bank) but the culmination of all these setbacks hit a bit today.

Guess everyone has their moments. Glad that excerpt helped set things back to perspective.