[Journey] Future Trading

[IWannaTaco]

Hello,

I made another thread about trading propfirms but I decided I was going to just trade futures myself I started with $3,000 of capital and I'll be trading 1 MES/MNQ.

I have a program that will be trading for me so this will be 100% passive.

It will be scalping with ATR based TP and SL. It will be a momentum play on the 5m timeframe. It is designed to capture short momentum plays by using multiple technical indicators as well as a news reader/AI that tries to decide the current market behavior and fear/greed. It is active 24/7 but finds most of it plays overnight.

I started on Thursday with $3,000 the first trading day didn't go well.

I will post everyday M - F, at market close (5pm EST)

Stay tuned or don't this will work as my own personal journal, good or bad.

Those days results are below.
Current Balance: $2,863.XX

Thursday:


Friday:

 

[DangerJones]

Interesting, I wish you the best of luck. This is going to be either an incredibly strong long journey or an incredibly short one, (I tried trading futures and lost total principal 4 times so Im just joking). This market is insane and unpredictable.

There's a joke in WSB that's current right now and super apt: the absolute worst things can happen these days and crazy enough, calls will still print, unless I pick them up.

 

[IWannaTaco]

Interesting, I wish you the best of luck. This is going to be either an incredibly strong long journey or an incredibly short one, (I tried trading futures and lost total principal 4 times so Im just joking). This market is insane and unpredictable.

There's a joke in WSB that's current right now and super apt: the absolute worst things can happen these days and crazy enough, calls will still print, unless I pick them up.

Worst that happens is I'm out a 1 1/2 week worth of paycheck lol

 

[jelenaitmui9]

what kind of results are you expecting from the news reader/ai component of your program.

 

[IWannaTaco]

what kind of results are you expecting from the news reader/ai component of your program.

It mostly just tries to predict if it is a Bullish/Bearish market currently then it only takes super strong entries that aren't in favor. Mostly avoiding them all together.

The system grades setups on a scale of 1 - 5, 5 being the strongest. So if it is in a bullish market it will take Bull trades 3+ and bear trade 5+.

UPDATE: Not getting much the last few days just sadly donating to their fees as of late, hoping for a strong week this week but we'll see how it plays out.

Day 3 (Sunday, Apr 26 2026) [$2857.XX]​

 

[baobab]

Do you trade a prop account or your own money?

 

[IWannaTaco]

Do you trade a prop account or your own money?

This is my own money

 

[Larry Igna]

mostly just tries to predict if it is a Bullish/Bearish market currently then it only takes super strong entries that aren't in favor

Playing against the trend? Where's the logic in that?
I could understand a news reader bot scanning in realtime. Entry being when market confirms..

 

[IWannaTaco]

Playing against the trend? Where's the logic in that?
I could understand a news reader bot scanning in realtime. Entry being when market confirms..

Usually it can grab some profit during the reversal.

It's a momentum mostly scalper, and momentum can happen both ways even if the bias is the opposite of the momentum.

 

[Syosin]

This didn't go well for me lmao, but good luck to you g

 

[fastproxies]

This is a really cool concept, I know someone doing similar with RSS feeds and ai placing polymarket bets. Following this thread.

 

[awesomewebsites]

All the best for the journey.

 

[IWannaTaco]

UPDATE: Was a rough day early but it made some good profit near the close of the day resulting in a net positive.​

Day 4(Monday, Apr 27 2026) [$2863.XX]​

 

[IWannaTaco]

Day 5(Tuesday, Apr 28 2026) [$2963.XX]​

 

[IWannaTaco]

Going to switch to weekly on Friday at market close daily was too much for me lol.

​

Journal Entry:
Not a fan of how this first week wrapped up for the bot. It started off decent with a green Monday and Tuesday, pulling in $24 and $114, but Wednesday the bot absolutely nuked the progress with a -$294 hit that wiped everything out. Thursday just piled on with another -$341, and while Friday’s damage was minimal at -$28, the week was already cooked. Looking at the stats, the script was heavy on MNQ at 82% of the trades versus 18% in MES, but the win rate just wasn't there, 52% of trades lost and only 48% won. Don't think anything is wrong with the code, think it was just a hard week.

Here is week 1 results​

April 2026 - May 1 2026​

Ending Balance: $2,249​

Stats:​

 

[krisking]

The idea of using artificial intelligence models and algorithms to judge the quality of the current market and then decide how to buy or sell futures seems pretty cool. However, based on the daily profit and loss of futures you shared, you have currently lost approximately US$800. I have a hunch that your trip will end in about two or three weeks and you will lose all your money.But I still want to see more sharing. I wish you can make some money in the next time.

 

[grey_hat_boy]

Hello,

I made another thread about trading propfirms but I decided I was going to just trade futures myself I started with $3,000 of capital and I'll be trading 1 MES/MNQ.

I have a program that will be trading for me so this will be 100% passive.

It will be scalping with ATR based TP and SL. It will be a momentum play on the 5m timeframe. It is designed to capture short momentum plays by using multiple technical indicators as well as a news reader/AI that tries to decide the current market behavior and fear/greed. It is active 24/7 but finds most of it plays overnight.

I started on Thursday with $3,000 the first trading day didn't go well.

I will post everyday M - F, at market close (5pm EST)

Stay tuned or don't this will work as my own personal journal, good or bad.

Those days results are below.
Current Balance: $2,863.XX

Thursday:
View attachment 519691

Friday:
View attachment 519692

Best of luck bro I already lost 2k$ in trading:/

 

[IWannaTaco]

The idea of using artificial intelligence models and algorithms to judge the quality of the current market and then decide how to buy or sell futures seems pretty cool. However, based on the daily profit and loss of futures you shared, you have currently lost approximately US$800. I have a hunch that your trip will end in about two or three weeks and you will lose all your money.But I still want to see more sharing. I wish you can make some money in the next time.

Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. Feeling pretty good after this week lol.

Best of luck bro I already lost 2k$ in trading:/

Sorry to hear that man, hopefully it wasn't more than you can afford to lose. I would be pretty bummed if I lost this $3,000 but it wouldn't be life or death.

Down 25% in week 1 is rough, but the setup grading system (1-5 with market bias filter) is actually a sound framework - that's the same pattern quant systems call a regime filter. The architecture isn't the problem.

Two things worth looking at: sizing and regime mismatch.

On sizing: a -$294 session on a $3k account is ~10% daily drawdown. No momentum scalper's edge survives that exposure long-term. If you don't have a hard daily loss halt baked in - stop all trading after -1.5% of account, require manual restart - the bot will eventually hit a 3-day streak that wipes the account before the strategy can recover. That's not a strategy failure, it's a risk management gap.

On regime mismatch: you mentioned it finds most plays overnight. If the system was tuned on overnight data (lower vol, thinner liquidity, cleaner momentum moves), it's probably generating noisy signals during regular trading hours. That Wednesday/Thursday blowout is consistent with a bot running outside the regime it was built for. Worth pulling the trade log and checking whether those losses came disproportionately from RTH sessions (9:30–4:30 EST) vs overnight.

In tests the max drawdown it ever received was -$1,600 or so. I wish I could have started with like $5,000 to make max drawdown more comfortable (around 33%). But that wasn't in the cards right now.

 

[IWannaTaco]

Journal Entry: Had a really depressing start to the week Monday I was down nearly $500 and was hovering around the -$1,500 drawdown range. But the rest of the week was flawless! Making back my entire losing from week 1 and more! With today (Friday) being a $800 day alone. Had a 60% win rate over the week with most of it being on MNQ. Couldn't be happier with how this week turned out going to celebrate this weekend and hope for a big next week.

Here is Week 2 Results:​

May 3 - May 8 2026​

Deposits: $3,000​

Starting Week Balance: $2,249​

Ending Week Balance: $3,498​

Stats:​

 

[wakinded]

wish you started with prop firms. i had 2k as starting trading with MES and burnt it in 3 weeks. then i traded prop firms with another 2k, got my first payout in 1 month and spent only less than 1k.