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What's a good batting avg?


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What's a good batting avg?

 
TemporarySanity
Philadelphia, PA
 
Posts: 7 since Aug 2014
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for daytrading stock in US markets?

I read a lot about limiting losses and maximizing gains due to the tendency for common patterns to fail "frequently".

What is considered a good ratio of winning to losing trades? 1:2? 1:3? 1:10?

Obviously the absolute value of each trade is going to determine whether i'm + or - at the end of the day. but is this like baseball where even the hall of famers fail more often than not? Again, by fail i just mean picking a winning trade or losing one.


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Massive l's Avatar
 Massive l 
OR/USA
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Winning % doesn't mean much without profit factor.
I've maintained around 60% for the last 2 years with a 1.7 Profit factor on 700 trades.

My hold time ranges from 1hour to 4 weeks. Just depends on the time frame I entered.
I trade 1hr, 4hr, daily, and weekly charts. Most of my trades are on the 1hr and 4hr time frames.

Been using the same strategy for 4 years. The difference between the first 2 and the last 2
was my psyche.

Visit my NexusFi Trade Journal
 
TemporarySanity
Philadelphia, PA
 
Posts: 7 since Aug 2014
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Thanks Massive. By "1st 2 vs last 2" you mean that it took 2 years for you to reach that 1.7 factor?

I'm still just paper trading and trying to do much more than i normally would. I'm thinking this has me in trades that i probably wouldn't pull the trigger on if it were my $s on the line. It's getting much more proficient at the technical analysis and decision making process, but it's not helping my bottom line. Nor is it helping my pschye

 
 
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 Massive l 
OR/USA
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The strategy by and large has been the same for 4 years.
The positive difference in P/L between the years has come from the psyche.

Visit my NexusFi Trade Journal
 
 
Fritzk's Avatar
 Fritzk 
North America
 
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Trading: Futures
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TemporarySanity View Post
for daytrading stock in US markets?

I read a lot about limiting losses and maximizing gains due to the tendency for common patterns to fail "frequently".

What is considered a good ratio of winning to losing trades? 1:2? 1:3? 1:10?

Obviously the absolute value of each trade is going to determine whether i'm + or - at the end of the day. but is this like baseball where even the hall of famers fail more often than not? Again, by fail i just mean picking a winning trade or losing one.

Explained better here by @vegasfoster than I could.

Then read this

Head up and keep your stick on the ice!
 
 
DarkPoolTrading's Avatar
 DarkPoolTrading   is a Vendor
 
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As others have already mentioned, batting average (win percentage) is really not very important. In fact in my opinion the only place where win % makes things easier is in our minds. It's nice to be right a lot. Who wants to do anything in life and be wrong most of the time? However in trading you really need to get use to being wrong a lot.

This is possibly one of the hardest things to do in trading. Being ok with being wrong A LOT and having the mental fortitude to continue trading your method correctly. When you've had 5 straight losing trades in a row, it's extremely hard to put that next trade on and manage it correctly. But that is exactly what is required.

From what i've observed, a high winning percentage is the goal of inexperienced traders. A high R:R is the goal of experienced traders. To make the switch from focusing on being right to instead holding winners is all in the mind and involves a lot of work for most of us. The temptation to break our rules and take a quick winner to appease our natural inclinations is always there.

Diversification is the only free lunch
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wonkietonk
New York, NY
 
Posts: 16 since Jun 2013
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Depends on the strategy, but these tenets have served me well and led to much success:

1) 3:1 reward-to-risk ratio
2) Know what your exits and targets are going to be in advance
3) Only risk a loss that you're comfortable with, given your portfolio balance. For me that's 1-2%

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 tigertrader 
Philly, Pa
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Many traders track their profit/loss statements, but never examine their trading results in greater detail. This is like a baseball pitcher keeping tabs on wins and losses, but never examining statistics (pitches thrown per game, strikes vs. balls throwns, hits vs. outs for left-handed hitters vs. right-handed ones, etc) that capture how well he's really been pitching.

For traders, many of the metrics that reveal how well you're trading include the average heat you take on your positions (a nice measure of execution skill); the average sizes of your winning and losing trades; and the the number of winning and losing trades broken down by:

* Time of Day/Day of Week
* Specific Market or Stock/Stock Sector
* Specific Strategy or Setups
* Market Condition (trending up/down, non-trending)
* Size of Position
* Number of Trades

When coaching traders, I also like to look at what I call "contingent returns". How do you trade after a string of winning trades? After a string of losers? You can learn a great deal about emotional resilience, overconfidence, and coping with stress by pulling out those trades that occur after streaks.

One very simple metric that is easily within the grasp of traders is the distribution of returns. If you plot your daily returns (if you're a daytrader) or monthly returns (if you swing trade) over time, you can generate a histogram that is quite informative. You'll be able to see whether your average trades are skewed to the winning or losing side and whether the tails of the distribution are fatter at the profit or loss end. A trend follower often will have more losing trades than winners, but will show fat tails at the winning side over time if he has captured good trends. Very short-term traders I've worked with have relatively balanced distributions at the tails, but simply have more winning trades than losers: their distributions are shifted rightward compared to a normal distribution.

Over time, generating these distributions, you gain a sense for how you trade when you trade well and how you trade when you are off your game. A fattening of tails at the losing end of the histogram might suggest a loss of discipline; a small tail at the winning end might indicate cutting winners too quickly.

It also helps to take a look at the variability of your returns. The standard deviation of your returns represents the width of the histogram and is one way of capturing volatility. Over time, you can see how your current volatility of returns compares with past volatility: Are you putting on enough risk when you're seeing markets well? Are you swinging for the fences when opportunity isn't there? The volatility of your returns reveals your relative risk aversion vs. risk seeking.

Just about every professional trader at hedge funds that I work with knows these metrics for their trading. It's a way of keeping score, and it's a way of keeping on top of your craft. Examining the distribution of your returns and alerting yourself to shifts in the distributions, from my vantage point, is a best practice in trading and an excellent strategy for self-coaching.

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Last Updated on August 19, 2014


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