My month to date results for May 2007:

 # closed winning trades : 1

# closed losing trades : 1

Net monthly profit (loss)% :  9.6%

Current drawdown : 12.7%

Last equity peak : April 11th, 2007

I did hang on to that modest 2.9% gain for the month of April, and May is off to a decent start.  It is interesting that the last couple of trades on the long side have been losers, while the last couple of trades on the short side have been winners…this despite the fact that the longer term trend seems to clearly still be UP.  Today, the system is idle, and will become active following tomorrow’s employment report.  One of these months, the market might actually pick a direction after this report, and I’ll catch a nice trade…a good percentage of the results in the backtest are from gains immediately following the employment report.  However, in the past few months, the system hasn’t generated any trades on employment Friday.

On another note, I’ve been posting fewer entries lately due to my preoccupation with the idea of trading full time so that I will be able to create more trading systems.  Sometime last week, when my mind had really accepted that idea, suddenly the result of every trade carried more psychological stress.  I don’t think my mind or my trading account are quite ready to support me full time here, but I have managed to work out a reduction of hours in my day job for 3 months, effective May 15th.  The job income will still pay the bills, and I’ll have a couple days a week to really focus on further system development.Â