I’m afraid I’ll let you down,Yijeong…Look what I did this week!

Equity Last Week: $66128.91

Current Equity: $33071.48

Change:  – $33057.43

But I’m not worried because I have learned some new things about trading this week. I think, as long as I keep making small progress every week , I’ll have a big improvement on my trading skills when this program is over.

Although Jim said we don’t need to write blogs for the rest of few weeks, still, I want to use this space as a platform to show what I did for each week and what I’m going to do for the week ahead. As I said before, since I already spent a lot of time on this game, I’m going to continue trading ,even in Term 2. I will still use Tradesim to practice my trading skills.

What I did last week? Briefly, I found a graet learning material from 501 assignment. It’s a booklet written by CBOT(http://www.gofutures.com/pdfs/TradinginFutures_intro.pdf), which provides a thorough introduction to speculating for those who have had only minimal exposure to the futures markets, including the parts of introducing the speculator, market mechanics and terminology, fundamental analysis, technical analysis and trading guidelines. I have already read the first 10 pages and found it quite helpful.

Next week, I’m going to finish the rest of this booklet!  Also, I want to read another article about technical analysis called Technical Analysis: Indicators And Oscillators.(http://www.investopedia.com/university/technical/techanalysis10.asp#axzz2CWdwOW7t) I found this from Roson’s blog.(https://blogs.ubc.ca/rosonluo/)

The last thing I’ve learned from this week’s trading:  The determination of cutting loss is important to a trader! Never dream that the situation will get better. So, strict disciplines must be made!

That’s it.

Cheers!

This list is the best source where I’m going to read and learn from. Thanks Mark!(https://blogs.ubc.ca/mliew)

FRE 501 Bloglist

I believe you have read my problems in the first entry.Here are my solutions:

1. Set An Objective

My objective is to be a trader,part time or full time, in the real world.I’ll get my trading license and use some of my money to trade. I can’t do it now.But I will make it happen in the near future,because I have been spending so much time learning trading.I don’t want to learn something that I don’t know if I will use in my life. So, do things as a trader.

I believe this decision will give me enough incentives to learn more useful things in futures market.

2. Read More Others’ Blogs

To stop repeating myself, the best thing that can help is to read other people’s blogs more often, not just read one person’s blog once a week for reason of course requirement. I believe learn from my classmates will always be an effective and efficient way to learn.

3. Set Milestones for Learning

I believe in self-teaching.If I really want to be a trader in the future, I should try to find ways of teaching myself. I think setting milestone to each week is a great approach to learning.

4. Do Analysis Every Day

Search market information and do analysis every day. Don’t leave these work to the end of the week. A real trader will never toss the market aside for even one day.

5. Change Blog-Writing Pattern

To make most of the blog, I decide to change my writting pattern. Instead of continuing to list fundamentals,I will add more research findings in my blog. I hope my blog to be different from others’.

6. Something to Remember and Something to Forget

Always remember why I am here. This is the key to everything. Forget the rest.

For the other courses, I’ll try my best to balance the team work and my own stuff. Don’t fear. Just hold on to the key. With the key, I believe I can overcome any problem.

My current equity is $66128.91. I gained $15480.27 this week.(66128.91- 50648.64=15480.27).

But,still,I’m very depressed, partly because it was Tradesim’s terrible system that made me so much money. However,the thing that troubles me most is that I feel I’m stuck in this trading game,even in this program. So, even if I’m “right”,I take it as “wrong”.

I don’t know if you have the same feeling with me. But I can tell you that my passion is fading. I can still remember how much I was into this trading game two month ago.But now, I feel no fresh any more.

Repeating myself is the last thing I want to do,especially when the things I’m repeating are meaningless.I’m not saying this game is meaningless. What I really want to express is that the way I’m handling this game is inapproprite.

Why do I think so? The initial objective of this game is to let us apply what we learned in class to the real world situation. But I find my trading game is getting more and more like an assignment(despite it’s acturally kind of an assignment ),which means I do it with less interest and all I try is to finish the blog writing. Here are reasons why I have painted myself into the corner:

1. Lack Objective

Yeah, I don’t have an objective. I spent a lot of time on the game,but don’t know if this game worth it.

2. Lack New things to learn

After trading for weeks, I found it getting harder and harder to find something new to learn from the game. I know there are still a lot I can benefit from keeping playing the game,but I’m just inside the box and don’t have a clue about where to find these new things.

3. Lack Time

Assignments and presentations are driving me crazy. I can obviously feel that the workload now is much heavier than that in the beginning of this semester. Usually, if you are busy, it means you are making the most of your time and, as a result, you are supposed to learn more. But sometimes, like now, I just feel tired and confused by the  endless work I have to do.My attention is distracted. So, I think, busyness is not helping me. It is detroying me.

4. Lack Approprite Research Methods

Every week, I read news, check market data, write blog and comment on classmates’ blog.A routine is formed. But my time is not actually evenly distributed: I spent a lot of time on writing blog while a little time on doing the others. I don’t think it’s a good way to learn.

5. Lack Passion

Passion fades.That’s part of the human nature. And I’m not an alien. I’ve been slacking off recently. It’s not good!

All in all, I know I must make changes. What am I going to do to rescue myself? Please see the next entry–Week8:The Road Ahead.

Hi! Another new source found this week:

Infoma economics: http://www.informaecon.com/

When I searched information on the web, the name of Infoma economics was often shown in the article. It seems to be a very influential private company. Market analysts often put much emphasis on the predictions that this firm made. So I decide to do a little research on it. Things below are what I found:

Informa Economics, Inc. (formerly known as Sparks Companies, Inc.) is a world leader in broad-based domestic and international agricultural and commodity/product market research, analysis, evaluation and consulting. The company was founded in 1977 and, in 2003, was acquired by Informa plc (“Informa”). Informa Economics, Inc. serves hundreds of firms, institutions and trade organizations worldwide.

Hope it’s helpful!

In the coming week, I will mainly use two tools to help myself make decision . One, still, is the market analysis. I feel safer to depend on market analysis,especially price-limit, to give orders when the prices are quite volatile and the market seems not to have a obvious trend in the short term.  The other is the USDA reports:

As you can see, the lastest US export data will be published on next Thursday.And one day later, there will be much more new information for market to digest,including two big market movers, Wasde and World Agricultural Production report.

I still hold the point that every first half month is the key to the entire month, because the “key”, the most influtial reports, is given during this period. Don’t believe anyone.Using your own brain to analyze the reports is always better.

So, my strategy for the next week:

1. Five contracts of buy-limit on corn(C2Z) at 732

2. Five contracts of buy-limit on soybeans(S3F) at 1505

3. Ten contracts of buy-limit on soybeans(S3F) at 1490

4. Get up early on Wedesday and Thurday morning to check the newly released reports.

Good luck to myself!

• Equity(Last Week):  $45093.41 ;
• Equity(This Week):  $50648.64.

So, I earned  $5555.23 this week. More specificly,I only earned money on corn,not on soybeans. What happened was I set sell-limit on soybeans(SF3) at 1570 and such price level was obviously triggered finally,while Tradesim failed to process my order.Then the price began to go down. Considering the big possibility that the price would be down furture, I had to offset my soybeans contracts using an market order,which was processed at the beginning of the next day’s outcry board at 1536, the exact same price at which I bought the contracts! So, I didn’t win or loss any thing on soybeans.

However, afterall, I made some money. And the main reason for that,I figure, would be my correct technical analysis. After reading the market commodities charts very carefully, I believed there would not be any big space for corn and soybeans to go down. I relied on technical analysis because I thought there was no very important market news to help me make the decision, since we’re in such kind of embarassing period: old crops have been harvested and new crops are still in planting stage.Another reason was that there was no influtial official reports to move the market.

But the situation will be totolly different in the next week. See “The Road Ahead” for more details.