cycle 2. Stage 4 (month 2), day 4:
IDK if this is unconscious sabotage... I must have introduced an 'optimization' sometime over the week-end which was in fact a bug.
I must have spent a good part of the day yesterday and also today to hunt it back....
On the bright side, this did allow me to review at length this part of the system and this did allow me to make few small corrections left and right...
cycle 2. Stage 4 (month 2), day 5:
A new bug that I have introduced in the recent days did show up this morning. Fortunately, this one was easy to fix. I did it in roughly 15 minutes.
I feel tired today and my productivity is taking a hit. I am only few lines away from an important milestone... No idea why I am slowing down so close from the goal... is it unconscious sabotage?
cycle 2. Stage 4 (month 2), day 6:
I was about to upgrade the server with a significant update. The effort got interrupted by the server encountering unplanned conditions that made the system manage the situation in a suboptimal way.
I am tired to say that and I wish everything would be straightforward for once... Again, it is a blessing that life is giving me by pointing out my system shortcomings and making it better...
I am just impatient to have it just being good enough to handle pretty much everything the exchange can throw at it...
I am feeling down tonight...
My last great idea didn't make the slightest difference in system activity...
If I sum up my experience since I started UMS, it is that:
-99% of good ideas turn up to be a nothing burger
- When I have finally an idea that works, some outside events shuts down the party very fast...
It is particularly painfull since I have started stage 4. Last month when I have experience my last breakthrough, cryptos did crash 30-50% just few days after my last victory. This has reduced by the same amount my generated income....
2 weeks after that, the discovered loophole that was allowing me to generate impressive trading volume got shut down... I went from 100,000 transactions per day to less than 20 per day. IOW, I have experienced a full stop of the benefits of the hard efforts that I have put in the project.
I guess that my success was extremely brittle... I have been saying often how lucky I was during all my small mini victories but those last events is major bad luck...
I feel like I was deserving the success I was getting but life decided otherwise... This is inherently unfair...
Note, that I am not blaming UMS for what is happening. It feels more like fate or something like that. It is as if I was rowing upstream... UMS makes me row stronger but not strong enough to beat the current.
My current state of mind is crap right now but I know that it is transitory... I am a warrior... I'll keep struggling for as long as I breath... I'll never stop...
Some people have easy life... it seems like it is not my fate to have it easy... I'll keep fighting...
cycle 2. Stage 4 (month 2), day 7:
The deadline to still benefit the fee schedule granted for monthly trading volume above a million is about to be reached.
This is also the deadline where fee free trading is still possible in some limited form...
Roughly, I estimate that my volume will drop below the million bar sometime this week-end unless I find a last minute genius strategy to boost my system trading volume to the level it was when fee free trading was a reality.
I'm not 100% confident that I'll make that happen or if it is possible at all within the current style of strategy that I specialize in...
but I'll give all I have as long as there is hope this week-end.
Yesterday, I had a very insistent small voice in my head telling me to work on a very specific item... I am listening to this voice (that you could call intuition). Beside being an unavoidable prerequisite to a lot of other features on my todo list... idk if they are other reasons that I am unaware of for feeling that urge to work on this...
but this is among the first time that I feel hearing and listening my subconscious mind... I thought that it was worthwhile writing about this...
cycle 2. Stage 4 (month 2), day 9:
I have completed the refactoring that I was feeling a strong urge to work on. Beside the new possibilities that having it done is opening, it should provide a significant performance improvement including the infamous system reaction time...
I still have some more polishing to do and address some glitches observed from the latest features added on the live server...
I should be ready to do an upgrade soon this afternoon...
cycle 2. Stage 4 (month 2), day 10:
My last refactoring despite improving system speed did not change anything.
When I miss opportunities, I miss them by several msecs. The optimization that I have introduced yesterday evening is at best shaving few uSecs.
I woke up this morning wondering where my system was spending time to miss book entires by mSecs... I started adding code to make measurements where I thought time was spent the most. I need to find msecs... If I don't find wasted Msecs, it means that my problem is on the network side.
Finally, I have discovered a good lead. A lead that even yesterday evening, I was even not suspecting it as a time drain... I am going to address this last point...
but now, it is 5 minutes from midnight concerning the possibility of doing free trading. I must be about 12K before my fee rates get downgraded. Tomorrow is the 1 month anniversary of my latest breakthrough that made my daily volume explode at over $100K per day. I am pretty sure that I am going to lose my current fee rate either tonight or no later than tomorrow.
From here, I see that I have 2 options... I still have 1 or 2 improvement ideas in my pocket but I feel like with the lost free trading capability, the potential of those ideas is pretty much limited... I may need to spend another week to develop those ideas for probably very limited result...
OR, I return to the idea that I got back when I was on stage 2 to port my system to other exchanges... Maybe there are more fertile environments out there for my system that I do not even suspect exist... I need to explore more in that direction... I lost sight of that option because I got blown away by the result that I was having with my first and only exchange...
The situation has drastically changed... I need to reconsider the strategy to adopt...
cycle 2. Stage 4 (month 2), day 12:
I completed my last optimization yesterday but I have got hit by a new bug that came out of the blue...
it took me the whole day today to find the problem. It was a though one to nail. This bug was a very old bug. I guess that it went unnoticed because why suspect that there is an issue when the system trading is profitable?
This bug did force me to undust an old testing framework that was even not compiling anymore... Doing the maintenance that I did neglect doing on this tool is the main reason why it took me pretty much the whole day...
In an amazing luck, I got struck by the bug several times in a row... I am going to check the other occurences of the issue to make sure that it is always the same issue.
I need to test a little bit my latest performance change before placing it on the server. Hopefully, this is going to happen in the next few hours...
cycle 2. Stage 4 (month 2), day 13:
Today a bug requiring very special conditions to happen did happen 3 times in a row making impossible to not notice.
If it is not luck helping me, I don't know what it is...
Update:
another lucky bug catch!
cycle 2. Stage 4 (month 2), day 15:
Not much to say today except that it has been a decently productive day. The day would not have been complete without a new bug or 2 popping out on the production server.
I really wonder when will be the first week without any problem at all...
My trading volume did melt very fast. June 11 is the day of my last breakthrough. The monthly volume did melt by over $500K in 4 days after the 1 month anniversary of the last breakthrough.
My last improvement that was promising that I was working on last week-end did not deliver as much as expected. I know this is making my processing faster but it does not seem to change anything in my trading miss/success rate. There is still something unknown that is hurting my system performance.
I cna think about few possible reasons that could explain... I just need to validate them...
I think that the limited fee free trading is completely gone now with my current fee rates. I could be running a small tool to validate that as well. I just did not have the time to do it yet... maybe later tonight, I will do that.
I still have 2-3 improvement ideas that I could still add but I shouldn't even think about it... My priority needs to be to port my system to other exchanges... I'll start working on that this week-end...
Maybe I do not need a full blown support to start with... Maybe a limited support allowing me to discover exchanges that would be the best match for my system strategies would allow me to evaluate the best exchange to focus on next...
UMS cycle 2 is 15 days away from completion... I am planning to do a short 1 month DMSI run on cycle 2 completion to change my mind a bit. Last DMSI run has been on February... Since then, I have been pretty much on a dry spell...
cycle 2. Stage 4 (month 2), day 17:
Yesterday, I have broken my several months long dry spell...
Out of the blue, I got a like on tinder. My first impression was.. nah not my type... but I have noticed a small detail that made me think. well maybe she might be fun after all...
So I did open her... It did turn out that she was very horny... and more or less in the same situation than me. that is Back to market after a very long ltr with kids... We did chat for maybe 30 mins... We did agree to meet in a park and an hour later we were in her bed...
I did really not take time to know her better to pull the trigger but I think that I have stumbled into a very good girl.
How does that anecdote fit with UMS...
For one, I did mention on few occassions that by the end of my UMS cycle 2, I would do a 1 month DMSI run to reward myself for my UMS goal dedication with some fun time... The experience has been so unexpected... out of nowhere and so easy and fluid that it makes me wonder if I did experience DMSI TID.
2. I was not aware of it but it seems that my lack od sexual release in the last few months were starting to tax me...
Today, I felt so much energy that it was as if I had a rocket backpack... I got a very productive day too... I was really in fire and I attribute this energy level to the very fun evening that I had yesterday...
I'll see where this new relation goes... She did enjoy herself too a lot and wants us to redo it... So in case that I have a steady sexual partner... I might change my plan to run DMSI and instead jump into UMS final cycle 3...
We will see how it goes...I take it one day at a time but I have realized that I was not a robot and I need to take care of my needs to maintain an optimal work performance...
cycle 2. Stage 4 (month 2), day 31:
Can you believe that? IML product are so powerful that the TID effect makes it unnecessary to actually use the program at all...
The sexual partner that I did mention in the previous entry is still around, still very enthusiast meeting on a regular basis... Not only that but it seems like potential prospects are even lining up to offer me sex on a silver plate if quantity over quality was a thing for me.... All of this abundance did come to me out of the blue after a several months long dry spell... just days before I was planning to run DMSI.
Sticking to the original plan would only be asking for trouble which I do not wish.... Ok, so something is really happening...
TID effect so powerful that you do not even need to actually run the program....
Or, my unconscious is actually collaborating to achieve UMS goals so it did manifest some good time so that I keep the focus on UMS instead of taking a month off...
and this is what I am going to do starting tomorrow, I will start UMS cycle 3...
Concerning my trading system project... Since last entry, I have been busy porting it to a second exchange. Doing this did allow me to improve further my system. This is a colossal task. I just try to not think about what is left to complete. All I know is that some progress is achieved every day.
I initially estimated to 1 week the needed effort to port the system. I think that it is going to be a bit more than that...
I choose the next exchange a little bit randomly... I am not too sure how to make a good choice other than doing it and checking the result once it is done... Here, I hope that UMS "luck" will manifest itself and make my first choice a good one...
I feel like it will be... Something that I did not expect but turns out to be a nice surprise, it is that on top of doing triangular arbitrage... with my second operational exchange, it will create inter exchanges arbitrage opportunities that from my initial sneak peek on the matter appears to be much easier to catch than triangular arb...
cycle 3. Stage 1 day 4:
I took few hours off in the last 2 days to make summer activities with my kids. This small break and moment of joy has been a great relief.
Today, my system got a small burst of trading activity. I don't know if I should be surprised of that or not but the burst did make few bugs resurface. The type of bugs that can only occur in very corner cases.
Well, one was a very obvious oversight. It is just that the feature had never been triggered since its introduction. It was the first time that this code was tested.
I still have one more glitch to analyze. It is another weird manifestation of overlooked special conditions that happens rarely.
I think that I am happy. Luck is giving me the opportunity to see these issues and fix them. In the past, I was annoyed because it was a common occurence. I stopped appreciate those moments. Since I have been weeks without any activity. One good way to reframe those glitches occurences, it is a high quality problem. If the system experience glitches, it is because it is trading... because if it is idle, there is glitches but also no trading and no profit...
Migration to the second exchange is progressing... slowly but is moves forward... I got interrupted by today's glitches. I could be annoyed but I am grateful instead... Not having experienced this for some time makes me appreciate it...
cycle 3. Stage 1 day 5:
I got an horrible day today. No idea if it is related to my decision to backtrack my initial plan to run DMSI for a month before starting UMS cycle 3.
My fwb texted me a short msg this morning to announce me that she was putting a stop to our relation that rougly lasted 3 weeks... Easy come, easy go as they say...
My ex which was very friendly just 2 weeks ago has turned into a hateful and aggressive bitch and she did release her wrath of hell on me...
not sure exactly what is happening. Is it that there is a price to pay to fool TID. The intent was not fool anything but given that my needs are humble.... what I had was satisfying me...
I don't think that I will backtrack my decision to move straight to cycle 3.... I got enough fun in the last 3 weeks to focus on the UMS goal for at least 5 months.
I still have few Tinder leads that I can reach out... not sure if it will do something as they are several days old.. I didn't take action on them right away since I had some sort exclusivity pact with my fwb...
It seems like my DMSI free magic spell is gone... Needless to say that all those events did affect me and has made my day not very productive...
I'll try to reset my mood and start tomorrow with a fresh and unaffected mindset...