Track 'n Trade Futures End of Day

Example 5: Live Trading

Video Transcript

In this Track 'n Trade 5.0 Futures Trading Training Video. I want to start by demonstrating for you, how we would use Track 'n Trade to trade the real live markets.

Now, because Track 'n Trade is so famous for its historical trade simulation, a lot of people get confused, thinking that- that's all it does. That they can't use Track 'n Trade when they want to begin trading the live markets. But that's not true! That's the way Track 'n Trade was designed in the first place- was to actually track and trade the markets for you to trade, in a real live situation.

Now, Track 'n Trade has built into it, these play controls, when you have the Accounting Plug-In. The Accounting Plug-In, is what allows you to move the chart forward in time, and back in time. But it's also what allows us to track the live trading markets.

Now, this is an End of Day Application. So, it designed for position traders. If you are interested in scalping the markets throughout the day, then Track 'n Trade would generally be considered your long-term charts. So, what we do, is we go through here, and we have the software set to the yellow time-frame.

Now, notice on this Button Bar: there are 4 different states of this market. If you have it set, first of all, to green. That means, every time you open up a chart, it's going to display all the data that's available to you. If you have it on yellow, it's going to open up all the data that's available to you, in the database. But if you come up here, and download more data. Let's say, you don't have today's data, and you download today's data- it will not automatically display it at the end of the chart. It allows you to move it forward, that one day with the Price Bar Play Controls. So, you could actually move that forward. That's how we track the real live markets.

What we do, is we come in and the best way to be a successful trader is to: Plan your trade, and then trade your plan.

Track 'n Trade is your planning environment. It's how you plan your trade. You decide when you're going to enter the market on what setups and what triggers. Once those setups and triggers are hit, you call your broker on the telephone, and you place your live order. Then, you follow those orders within Track 'n Trade, as the new data comes into you, every evening after you get home from work.

So, the market set to yellow, is how we track the live markets, as they come through.

The red session, that's the time control. Or the time machine component. That's what allows you to actually open up a contract at the left side of the screen, or at the beginning of time, as opposed to the end of time. If you're going to go back and do simulated trading, of course, you don't want to see the right hand side of the chart. Because in doing so, you can cheat. You know what the market is going to do. So, this allows you to open up any market, any time frame, at the beginning of time, as opposed to the end of time.

So, then you can move the markets forward, make your trading decisions, without having cheated or seen the right hand side of the chart. It's a more real to life test of your skill.

The next one is kind of an advanced setting, it's called the Lock Setting. If you want to do simulated trading with multiple contracts simultaneously, like you would be doing in the real market. Maybe if you had three or four different markets going and you had orders, in let's say: Corn and say Soybeans, and Soybean Oil and Cotton, all at the same time. This lock would keep the simulation environment, all tied to the same date. So, as you move between them, they would always reflect the same date between all three of those, or four of those different simulated contracts.

Most of us will use it in red mode and yellow mode. Of course, excuse me, most of us will use it in green mode, which opens the chart to the very end and displays all the data. Or yellow mode which means I'm tracking the real live markets at the end of every day. Most of the time, I use it in yellow mode. That's the mode I have it in most of the time, because I'm waiting for the next Price Bars to come in. At the end of the day, I'll do my data downloads. Then, as the market gets the data, updates, I can advance that chart forward, one day at a time. Myself and reveal to myself, through Track n Trade, what today's market did and see how it affected my, my plan.

So, now, what we're going to do is I'm going to show you that we can come through, here, and we can plan our trade. Let's say that we've come through and we decided that this market is moving through its wave system: x, 1, 2, 3, 4, and we're going to anticipate a 5th wave up in here. Maybe an a, b, c back in here. So, we're going to look for and anticipate where the market is going to go. We can use a couple of our Projection Tools. I'm going to use the 1, 2, 3 Projection Tool, to kind of project that I think this market might bounce back up and hit that 100% level. If that's the case, I'm using the yellow placement, so that I can come in and I can place my order.

Now, what I would do, is I would come in and I would say, Okay, I'm going to Buy 3 on a Stop. I'm going to hit Okay. At this point, I would come over here and look at my Trade Log. My Trade Log indicates to me, all the trades that I've done in Track 'n Trade. I can actually print this out, or I can save it, and I can send it to my broker, so my broker can see my history. Or I can just use it as my own reference, so I know what I've done.

So, the greatest advantage of this window, is that you can save it for your own records, or provide it to your broker. But it gives you a record of everything you've done in your software. So, now, as we come through, let's say we either called our broker and said we wanted to buy 3 on a Stop at 188.52, Good Until Cancelled. That would be tomorrow morning on the open. That market would, that order would either be filled, if the market hit our price, or not. Or we could go to our electronic trading platform, and of course, enter it that way, as well- over the Internet. Whichever you prefer.

But this, again, Track 'n Trade is where you: Plan your trade, you trade your plan, and then you track your trades through the software.

Now, as the market moves forward, did we get filled, the following day? No, we didn't. So, we step forward, again. Now, we're filled. Of course, this is in the simulated environment, saying you didn't make a deposit. But let's come back here and tell it that we did actually make our deposit. This is the RBOB Gasoline. So, let's say we put $50,000.00 into our account. As that market is moving forward, we can come back to our trade log. We can then, see that we placed our order, in the RBOB Contract, on Tuesday, March 20th. The RBOB contract, which is the Unleaded Gasoline, we bought 3 at 188.52, and we put in a Stop. Then you can see that on Tuesday, March 20th, let's see, that was the order. Then on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 our RBOB contract was filled. We filled 3 contracts at 188.52 on a Stop.

So, now we come in here, and what if your broker or your electronic trading platform says, 'No, you weren't filled at 188.52, like Gecko Software said? You were actually filled at 188.50.' So, you come in here, and you right click on this tool. You say, Settings, and you just say, I was filled at 188.50. Now, you hit Okay. Now, it's readjusted and your accounting package will reflect exactly what's over in the real markets.

Now, as the market moves forward, we can come in here, and we can place a Stop Order. Let's say we place our Stop Order, here, and we're going to Sell 3 on a Stop, if we're wrong, and the market turns against us. Maybe we're going to limit out and take our profits at the 100% level, if we're right. Also, we're going to Sell 3 on a Limit. Hit Okay. Now, we step forward, the market did not touch either of those. We can look at our Trade Log, we can see that we set up our orders to Sell 3 on a Limit at 188.15. Also, we set a Limit to Sell a Stop at 198.36.

Excuse me, I got those reversed. The Stop was at 15 and the Limit was at 36. So, now we hit Okay. The market moves forward, we step forward, once again. It didn't fill....there, it filled our Limit Order. We took our profits of $13,903. We come back to our Trade Log, and you can see that our order was filled 3 at 199.57, and it was the Limit that was filled.

Now, we can come in here, and...actually, I wanted to show you one other feature. What if we come in here, and we actually move our Stop? Let's say the market moves forward, and we move our Stop up a little bit. Well, now you come to the Trade Log, it's going to show you, that you moved your Sell Stop 3 at 188.15 Stop, to 3 at 184.66 Stop. So, see, it gives you a complete record of everything you do to plan your trade and trade your plan. Also, how to reflect that over to your broker for live trading.

So, then, as we move forward, the order is filled and that, again, we're back to having it reflected in the chart. Now, Track 'n Trade does not send Live Orders, the Futures version does not send Live orders down to the market. Again, you have to call your broker or do it through your live trading platform. Track 'n Trade is the location and the place where you Track your Trades. Plan your trade, trade your plan.