Algorithm update: first test trade in progress

I put on the first small trade to test this strategy last Monday, February 6.

The algorithm design is to put on a similar trade every Monday, forever; backtesting shows this works nearly 80% of the time.

So the performance chart is so far like this:

Trade Date	Result	Profit/Loss
2017-02-06	Open

It should show +10% in the Profit/Loss column in another 11 or 12 days.

I will update this whenever I have a result, at very minimum.

The Plan

I became aware recently of brokerages that charge only $500 margin per contract for /ES (S&P 500) futures. (Margin is typically 8 or 9 times this). So one can make (or lose!) 8 or 9 times the money when using this extra buying power.

I signed up for an account with one of these brokerages, Zaner and funded it with $5000.

My plan:

• Test for a week using just 1 contract ($12.50 per tick), with a goal of making a quick $100 every day.
• If that works, try it with 9 contracts, making a quick $900 or $1000 every day.
• Get out if the trade goes $50 or $60 (this week) or $500 or $600 (next week and beyond) the wrong way and try again later in the day.
• Continue work on a trading algorithm in the meantime

So far:

I just started this today, making $90.12 ($100 minus $9.88 round trip commissions & fees). P&L was just over $100 but it ticked down just as I was clicking the 'close' button.

Introduction: I failed as a trader, so I'm trying a computer program

I got interested in trading in 2008 during the financial crisis. I knew there were ways to make money no matter which way the market moved, but I didn't know the details.

I started trading in 2009 and had intermittent success, but overall failed miserably. I made numerous key mistakes, the one that recurred most recently was thinking I knew what was going to happen. Specifically, this guy could never be elected:

But he was, and I was caught on the wrong side of the trade ..

One place I've had some success is with day trading, though I don't like staring at the screen for long periods. This leads me to a plan ....