Trader P/L 2009

subterfuge · #**1201** 10-30-2009, 09:48 AM

45 pips profit yet again! Best week in a while. Gonna be sad when this roll ends, but as long as it doesn't 'dissapear' for good, i'll be happy, lol.
Gonna go over lots of days price action over the last few years and see how my 'system' would have held up. Gonna be brutal doing that with ninjatrader i feel...Getting curious about the statistical side of trading at the moment/backtesting etc. I dont really know much about it tho, but I think ill have more confidence in my ability if i can get some figures to shout back at me.
Hope everyones done OK today anyway.

brownsfan019 · #**1202** 10-30-2009, 11:42 AM

10-30-09: -$152.50

Today was a day where missing a couple trades brought me into the negative. Up till today I was able to miss one here and there and be fine. Not today. Missed nice trade on ZF and Russell. End result is a negative day after that chop on the ZS. Volume is still split on the ZS so I'm ready for everyone to be trading the same contract already.

bathrobe · #**1203** 10-30-2009, 12:35 PM

Originally Posted by eric341

Bathrobe do you mind telling us your percentage return for the year so far?

I am very curious, as you seem to make a profit the vast majority of the time.

I wish I was that consistent!

I am profitable 91% of the time, right now on the year I am at roughly 20%

bathrobe · #**1204** 10-30-2009, 09:41 PM

I was down -12,000 today. I was not going to trade today but in the end and on a day where the es was possibly the easiest it has been to trade in a while, I over-analyzed and looked counter-trend.

subterfuge · #**1205** 11-02-2009, 10:21 AM

up 47pips.
I thought today was gonna start the losing streak earlier as I kept going from breakeven to minus 15pips, to near B/E, then to minus 19 etc. Things picked up in the last hour tho and I managed a few decent trades.

I spent some time like I planned too, this weekend, just going over random days action from various years, and It did seem that my 'system' would have generally been doing OK on the random days though 2007-2008 that i chose .(Obviously I was just 'backtesting' using my eyes wirthout any fancy software so its hard to be exact) Gave me some confidence tho, combined with my current run.

I know that a few weeks is not a long time as far as consistency goes, although I do trade fairly small timeframes and thus can place 20+ trades in a day, so thats roughly 200+ trades to go by so far. It is one of my best runs, considering, as ive said before, I consider myself a Breakeven trader.

Where do people stand on the 'market is always changing and so you must keep changing/adapting your method' debate? Doesn't sit right with me, personally. I mean, they say that one must spend months and months developing and testing a method and then taking it live with small stakes and then gradually increasing stakes. However, if they method only 'works' for a few months, is one then expected to not earn any money for the next 6 months whilst they develop and test a whole new method? There surely cant even be that many methods!!? I hope im misunderstanding the concept of the argument, otherwise, trading goes from being hard, to near enough impossible. Have any of you successfully traded the same method for a long time now and dont expect to change anything in the future?

Anyway, long post. Would appreciate any answers to my ramblings. I think its good to occasionally break up the blotters with our thoughts along the way.

cheers.

brownsfan019 · #**1206** 11-02-2009, 11:25 AM

Originally Posted by subterfuge

Where do people stand on the 'market is always changing and so you must keep changing/adapting your method' debate? Doesn't sit right with me, personally. I mean, they say that one must spend months and months developing and testing a method and then taking it live with small stakes and then gradually increasing stakes. However, if they method only 'works' for a few months, is one then expected to not earn any money for the next 6 months whilst they develop and test a whole new method? There surely cant even be that many methods!!? I hope im misunderstanding the concept of the argument, otherwise, trading goes from being hard, to near enough impossible. Have any of you successfully traded the same method for a long time now and dont expect to change anything in the future?

My personal feeling is that you can tweak things as you go but the core method can remain in place. For example, I've done more with risk management than entry method in recent memory. Once I decided that I don't need to catch every single move, I focused on decreasing my risk exposure and increasing my profit potential.

With that said, there are more ways to trade than we will ever see in our individual travels. If you want a sample, check some of these charts out.

I've mentioned this previously and one day I'll do a writeup of it, but I believe that just about any trading methodology can make money if the proper risk protocols are in place. That will mean different things to different systems, but IMO the risk management is much more important than the actual entry system. If you can finetune your risk to get it to a point where you are comfortable, I would think you could trade that profitably for quite awhile with some adjustments along the way.

Even something as simple as loading up when you are hot and backing off when you are cold like we briefly touched on previously. From wikipedia on bet sizes in blackjack when card counting:

Ranging bet sizes and the Kelly criterion

Between 70% and 90% of the player edge when counting cards comes from placing larger bets when the count is favorable to the player. (The rest of the edge comes from changes to basic strategy based on the count.) [12] A mathematical principle called the Kelly criterion indicates that bet increases should be proportional to the player advantage. In practice, this means that the higher the count, the more a player should bet on each hand in order to take advantage of the player edge. Taken to its ultimate conclusion, the Kelly criterion would demand that a player not bet anything at all when the deck doesn't offer a positive expectation. "Wonging," as shown above, takes advantage of that.

Seems so simple, but how many 'load the boat' when they are hot and back off when things are not in their favor vs. trading the same amount each and every time? By doing something as small as this, you could have huge results to your final p/l. Now your winners become bigger (in theory) and your losers become smaller (in theory).

brownsfan019 · #**1207** 11-02-2009, 11:33 AM

11-2-09: +$351.88

I guess I'll take it but not where it should be. Missed a few trades and the p/l shows it. Not the best start to the week.

Dinerotrader · #**1208** 11-02-2009, 11:53 AM

Tried the ES a little today. Overtraded the ZS when my setups weren't there.

brownsfan019 · #**1209** 11-02-2009, 12:09 PM

Good to see you posting dinero!

ZS is losing the old contract and we got a nice move there. I know you didn't make money at it, but watching the charts should have felt differently today. I was short into that but got out WAY TOO SOON... bummer.

Welcome to posting to the thread!