cycle 2. Stage 1, day8:
Ok, I have found the glitch and the number of monitored paths for the fee free trading method went from 2 to 86.
On one hand, it has been a while since the last time that I was so optimistic, excited and motivated to succeed. The technical achievement is extremely rewarding...
OTOH, with the prior 2 monitored paths, the system made 20 trades. I was in position to hope a multiplication of trades simply due to extrapolation. Alas, this didn't happen. Since my system is monitoring 86 paths, it only added 3 more trades on top of the first 20... I am not giving up yet. It is expected that market conditions change over the clock. The first 20 did happen during the european markets were open. I need to at least give the system 24h or more before concluding on anything...
but the impression that I have, it is as if I was in a video game and as soon as I discover a winning strategy, the AI rapidly adapt to basically level down any edge the new strategy was giving me with the existing rules...
I would have been ecstatic if the system would have traded non-stop for the whole day but it seems that this was not today...
cycle 2. Stage 1, day9:
Second day of using the fee free method. The system got another spike of activity around 4AM which I think matches the European markets opening time.
The system got about the same amount of trades than the day before. About 20 + a "normal" size trade with fees.
It is very disappointing. It created about $100 of trading volume and roughly 25 cents of profit... I guess that I can consider that as passive income. It is now done and this will add up non-stop everyday to everything else that I will add to the system effortlessly.
but the grinding process toward success isn't over and I need to keep trying...
cycle 2. Stage 1, day 10:
I am currently in an emotionnal roller coster where 1 day I am 100% optimist and the other day, I feel like the opposite.
Yesterday was my down day.
I feel much better this morning now that I got the latest 24h trading summary report.
The system made 87 trades generating a $1,500 volume. It did miss 8 opportunities leaving a value of $2.74 on the table. The success/miss ratio is 91.58%.
The generated profit is $7.34. It does not seem like much but prior to the latest addition responsible for all this activity, I would have made only 1 or 2 trades.
I am going to call my system the automatic penny collector! and I feel like I can build something sustainable and solid on top of what is there right now...
I currently have 2-3 cool ideas to implement in my mind and I know that in the next few kernel releases will contain new features that should speed up even further my system (the next one being expected to be released in a week!) so my feeling toward the future is positive... I am going to surf this vibe as much as I can because it is extremely beneficial for my well being...
idk if this is expected but I feel that the UMS effect is stronger in the second time running it...
cycle 2. Stage 1, day 12:
My confidence in my system is growing. It still shows the same low profit numbers but what is striking is its stability.
For the last 3-4 days, it has been able to maintain more or less the same level of activity. About $5000 trading volume. 100 trades and more or less $10 of profit and all that during a very low volatility period.
I am just looking at the executed orders in the last 2 days. It is now over 800!
Prior to the latest release. It has some rare good days but the usual was rather quiet days...
If this turns out to be a solid baseline, this is very interesting because that means that slowly but surely, my monthly volume will grow and at each new trading fee discount level, my trade size will also grow and should have a snowball effect.
I am currently working on a major refactoring that should lead to improve by a lot my system reaction time... It is a bit complex task but I am very confident that it will work fine. This task is giving me the opportunity to revisit code that I haven't reviewed for a very long time and this is great as it did allow me to discover many many ways to make that old code better.
I thought that it would only take few hours completing this task but I have been working on it for at least the last 3 days...
Also as I was working that, I have been interrupted by a glitch that did occur while my system was trading. A very rare event only possible due to the increased system activity just did invalidate an assumption that i was having about how the exchange is working.
It kinda annoys me to have that happening while I am eager to complete my promising refactoring but I am grateful that luck did help me to make this realization. I need to beat the iron while it is hot or else I might forget about it...
Also, another anecdote worthwhile mentioning. My last 2 interactions with the exchange support have been incredibly beneficial. In the first occurence, they provided valuable info about how their system work that did allow me to modify my code to take advantage of this priviledged info.
On the second occurence, I did report an error that their system was creating and they did fix the problem and have giving me a $20 credit on trading fee to thank me for having reported the problem...
wow... I am definitely riding a good wave right now... This is fun!
cycle 2. Stage 1, day 14:
I took care of all the bugs the current run has highlighted. I have also attempted to improve my fee free trading system.
Before this attempt, I was excited about the amount of activity generated by the system. I have a window containing a list of all the orders executed in the last 3 days.
the record of listed orders did reach 1,100 orders! but the frenzy has calmed down has there is no more new trades since early this afternoon and the oldest entries got removed and now the list is about 700 orders long.
This state of affair leaves me perplexed. I either did broke something in my attempt to improve the system or it is just an unfortunate bad timing where market conditions are unfavorable of my system strategy...
I'll leave it run for the night... If there is no activity over the night, I'll seriously consider reverting some of the last changes that I did... but I highly doubt that I seriously broke something...
cycle 2. Stage 1, day 15:
It turns out that what I have described yesterday was a regression. This morning, I have found out that the system made zero trade during the night.
I have rolled back some of the changes that I have made yesterday and the system started to trade again.
This made me realize 1 thing. What I did was trying out an idea on something that I was not fully understanding. My actions were mostly guided by intuition. In that context, the odds that I fail and conclude that the idea was bad were immense. I have been very lucky to fall on the perfect parameters that would work and show me the potential of the idea...
It seems that in the last 2 weeks, since I have started the cycle #2. I talk VERY often about LUCK and how it is helping me in my UMS journey...
cycle 2. Stage 1, day 16:
I have returned to the drawing board... I think that I have found an elegant way to make the fee free trading work even better than it is now...
I feel a burst of productivity given the latest result that I got but the time still pass too fast... I am not seeing the days go by and so many stuff that I put aside to complete the next server upgrade...
I got interrupted again by a new problem caused by rare events that did trigger untested code...
I have looked into the problem. I wrote a solution but it took me the whole afternoon. So, completing the next fee-free trading version has been postponned... Hopefully, I will have completed later this evening.
cycle 2. Stage 1, day 24:
The new free fee trading system did keep me busy the whole week... At each iteration, the system improves. I still discover new bugs but as I see them, I eliminate them.
It is amazing how many of them were still lurking out there. They probably show up because of the new usage pattern that the code is using.
Things finally starts to work very nicely. I did finally succeed in fully understanding the whole free fee trading phenomenom. I have tweaked my system to fully take advantage of it. The whole thing is still not 100% bug free but almost and I am working on fixing the remaining bugs...
I use to have my trading client to play a cavalry trumpet victory song each time a trade was occurring. It used to be a rare event and hearing the cavalry trumpet was exciting and motivating. However, I need to review the conditions to trigger it as the way it is now, it starts playing once every 5 seconds...
Again luck is on my side. Some events happening twice in a row in the morning just before I wake up and start looking at the result has shown me an invalid assumption that my system was having.
These problems nicely line up one by one to make them easy to digest and fix. Once the last one is addressed, the system will be very efficient and stable...
I can feel it and touch it... It is very exciting...
cycle 2. Stage 1, day 26:
The trading system has become an obsession. Even more since it started to create interesting results...
In the last 48h, it executed close to 6000 orders... The vast majority of the trades have been profitable... because it is $3-$4 trades, it does not make a huge profit. We are talking about $10 daily but what is striking is the consistency and stability of the volume.
This allows me to think that I finally created a solid foundation that I can improve and build on top of it.
since I wrote the last entry, the system is now around 7,500 order execution...
now that UMS is palpable... I kinda feel a bit dizzy... as if I realize that my life is about to significantly change and there is a part of me that has a fear concerning the change that it is about to occur...
UMS is clearly cleaning deep stuff for me allowing me to overcome those fears and the unconscious urge to self-sabotage to keep the comfortable status quo...
cycle 2. Stage 2, day 1:
The increased activity of my system did keep me very busy last week. I have found a bunch of bugs that I would not have found if it was not for the increased activity.
The result is extremely positive. I am still in shock that my last idea did worked so well. I had a good feeling about it but the result is above my wildest expectations. At some point, I have touched almost 50,000 orders execution in a 48h period.
Since the frenzy started, my monthly trading volume has moved above $400K in about a week. I get a small but steady daily profit.
I got an unexplained glitch that was making me leak profit in about 10% of my trades. I was extremely annoyed by this and wanted to find a solution before making changes that could increase even more the trading volume. Rationally, I should not worry. After having discounted the loss, the overall result is still positive.
I was trying to avoid contacting support to ask them for help. It is weird but I kinda feel guilty about the result that I am getting. I feel like I am tricking the system but this is a false impression. Everything I do is totally legit and within the rules and parameters established by the exchange... It is just that I have succeeded in thinking outside the box....
I can expand about the idea that I was developing in the last entry. This newly found success is making me stressed... No idea why... It is as if making good money was not something normal for some parts of me. UMS has clearly broke some strong inner resistances...
Cycle 2 stage 1 events have been insane... Will stage 2 be able to create even greater results??
cycle 2. Stage 2, day 5:
My new reality is starting to become the new normal with which I am feeling comfortable. The exchange that I am using did stop to offer few cryptos with zero fees for everyone. One of those currency was a real golden goose for my new strategy.
With this special gone, the amount of trading did significantly diminish. It went many dozens of thousands of trades daily to a more reasonable volume of several thousands.
The effect of that drop is that the amount of profit went from borderline sustainable to nice, fun and encouraging but unsustainable. My system must be generating about $30 of profit daily. This is not sustainable but the nice thing is that it is totally stable. Everyday, this amount comes in with a very high level of predictability.
I am beating new records. Early 2021, I got close to reach half a million trading volume without ever reaching it. $500K volume was acting like a glass ceiling to me. This is done! I must be getting close to $600K trading volume. I did reach $500K in roughly a week. If I extrapolate the pace that my trading volume grows, Reaching 2.5 Million in a 30 days window is possible. This volume might bring something nice as 2.5 millions is another step in the fee schedule. Reaching new low fee levels might open up new possibilities that I have never been able to access before... Or maybe not... Nothing special did happen when I have reached $500K... We will see...
It is funny how my recent successes did change my priorities. I used to obsess about missing arb trading opportunities by being frontrunned by someone else. This still happen today... but those missed opportunities only represents a small % of my trading. I still have few ideas how to speed up my system reaction time and I will eventually look into it but now, the most urgent and profitable priority is to optimize my new micro transaction strategy...
Concerning this, Something weird is happening but I trust my unconscious and UMS on this... I had a simple goal to move forward my new priority... This simple goal did create some prerequisites. And when I started working on this new prerequisite... I have discovered that this prerequisite was requiring itself a prerequisite... It might feel a little bit like drifting but I am feeling so energetic, productive and positive that I allow myself to follow my instinct and work on whatever my guts is feeling that it is the right thing to do.
I have no idea how long the detour will last but I am confident that this will eventually pay off and that I will return and complete the original goal. The latest thing that I have been working on is something that I have wanted to do for a very long time but I did procrastinate on the task because it felt like a huge and painful task. It is to refactor my code to allow supporting additional exchanges easily. I have started working on that... There must be a good reason why I am doing this but TBH, it is not a 100% conscious decision...
cycle 2. Stage 2, day 6:
Yesterday evening after having written the last entry a new bug did manifest itself. Again a rare combination of events did trigger it to show up.
Hunting it down did again interrupt me from what I was doing. I spent the whole day looking for it. I think that I have found it. This is why I am taking a small break to write this entry...
Some could say the whole experience a waste of time but to me, it was 100% worth it. I prefer to catch bugs sooner than later especially if volume increases...