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First month trading- Review my output #s please


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First month trading- Review my output #s please

  #11 (permalink)
 
SoftSoap's Avatar
 SoftSoap 
Canada
 
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amoeba View Post
Hi SoftSoap,

Just a quick thought from my own experience, I did much the same as you, I practiced in market replay to refine my entries and practice platform execution. But I found a huge difference psychologically when going live or even practicing on a live feed between the ability to speed up market replay and having to sit and grind it out over a trade moving back and forth before going to your target/stop.

It still represents one of my bigger struggles and is an area of improvement I am continually working on. If you are just scalping momentum then this might not be applicable for you, but if you are entering positional trades then it is worth practicing waiting now.

That makes a lot of sense. I've heard a lot about the psychological change so I've tried to mitigate that as much as possible but I haven't given much thought to the 'waiting' part.

I'm under the impression that I shouldn't move away from sim until I'm consistently profitable in sim, and with 38% wins, I feel I'm not close to that yet. I like the fact that with sim I am learning very fast without having to wait, but I know the world isn't like that.

I was initially planning to do about 3-4 weeks of 'live sim' so I can experience the waiting part, but not until I'm profitable in sim. Do you think that rushing that will outweigh the benefit of being able to do 1-2 weeks in one day?

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  #12 (permalink)
 
SoftSoap's Avatar
 SoftSoap 
Canada
 
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bbgg91 View Post
I am with amoeba, open a demo account with someone and practice on live data. Testing on fixed data is ok but the problem with that is, you can get up and walk away. Harder to do that with live data. Having to wait for trades (as you should) you also miss them as well so you have to factor in the probability of missing a trade. Minimising your losses is ok but you do not make money from losses. Focus on getting things right more often and managing the trade from there. Try and get the direction right at least 70% of the time. Remember even then not all of those trades will work either as there will be pull backs, random spikes and nerves all come into play. For me 50% of trading is managing the trade.

Always being in a trade is hard. I have never seen a system as such work but that is not to say one does not exist.

It's something I'll have to give a lot more thought into, than I previously had. I like the fact that I can get ~2 weeks of learnings in one day during sim. Do you think it would be too much if I traded a demo account with live data at the same time as sim on previous data?

and I don't mean that I want to be in a trade all the time, as a matter of fact I'm trying to hold myself back from always wanting to be in a trade because I think that is damaging me more. I think a system like that would be very hard to make profitable.

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  #13 (permalink)
 
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 amoeba 
Sydney, NSW, Australia
 
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SoftSoap View Post
It's something I'll have to give a lot more thought into, than I previously had. I like the fact that I can get ~2 weeks of learnings in one day during sim. Do you think it would be too much if I traded a demo account with live data at the same time as sim on previous data?

and I don't mean that I want to be in a trade all the time, as a matter of fact I'm trying to hold myself back from always wanting to be in a trade because I think that is damaging me more. I think a system like that would be very hard to make profitable.

For me, and it always sounds so cliche, but the real learning curve started when real money was on the line.

I actually went back a step from futures to miniFX, even though I had been trading ok, just to settle myself into better trading patterns where I could hold for the day and add/remove from a core position. The trick for me was no longer being too concerned about the loss, which miniFX allow me to do. I'm not sure if you have miniFX Equities available to you in Canada? I know the US doesn't allow CFD style products.

Not being concerned about losses only comes from having some trust in your edge or trading method. There is lots of good information about breaking your stats down into information to assess your edge, but here are a couple I would look at from a physiological perspective, rather than as a performance number;

Total draw down; is this amount something you would be able to stomach with real cash?

# Lossing days in a row; would this number cause you to panic in real life and change your approach or system (which possibly negates your edge)

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  #14 (permalink)
 
SoftSoap's Avatar
 SoftSoap 
Canada
 
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amoeba View Post
For me, and it always sounds so cliche, but the real learning curve started when real money was on the line.

I actually went back a step from futures to miniFX, even though I had been trading ok, just to settle myself into better trading patterns where I could hold for the day and add/remove from a core position. The trick for me was no longer being too concerned about the loss, which miniFX allow me to do. I'm not sure if you have miniFX Equities available to you in Canada? I know the US doesn't allow CFD style products.

Not being concerned about losses only comes from having some trust in your edge or trading method. There is lots of good information about breaking your stats down into information to assess your edge, but here are a couple I would look at from a physiological perspective, rather than as a performance number;

Total draw down; is this amount something you would be able to stomach with real cash?

# Losing days in a row; would this number cause you to panic in real life and change your approach or system (which possibly negates your edge)

This is great advice and I love the suggestion of assessing information from a psychological standpoint . I like those 2 metrics that you mentioned. Any others that you suggest or any references that I could look into more around the same topic?

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  #15 (permalink)
 
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SoftSoap View Post
Yes this is a serious question
I know getting free feedback is something that I shouldn't expect but I'm not asking for a detailed analysis, just things like "drawdowns are too much, or expectancy isn't high enough, aim for X expectancy" or something like that.

I know I'm not good enough to trade live yet but it's hard for a new trader to know whether or not they are on the right path according to their experience. When doing research online I find that the numbers that are posted (50+ expectancy, 80% win ratio, 30% monthly ROI, very high numbers) are all for professional traders and it's hard for me to benchmark myself on the first month of progress against a 10-year veteran.

So I'm seeking input on whether or not I should continue what I'm doing and tweaking small things as I go, or if I need a drastic revamp of my overall strategy.

Then the results are fantastic. 10% in a month is perfect and nothing to be disappointed with. In fact, if this disappoints you, then you have to bring your goals down to earth a bit.

The gotcha is in how much risk you too. There's option strategies that regularly return 10% a month and do that month after month. Trouble is you need to have your entire account on the line to do that and so on a bad month you wipe out your account.

Obviously that's not what you are doing because of your trade frequency but your max DD was 11% - what would be interesting would be to see how wild the swings were in the month. Do you have a P&L chart?

Anyway - 10% is a good month IMO.

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  #16 (permalink)
 
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 amoeba 
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SoftSoap View Post
This is great advice and I love the suggestion of assessing information from a psychological standpoint . I like those 2 metrics that you mentioned. Any others that you suggest or any references that I could look into more around the same topic?

Checkout all of FT71's videos in the members section. He has some videos specific to trade metrics and trader psychology. Really worth watching them.

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  #17 (permalink)
 
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 TheTradeSlinger 
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SoftSoap View Post
I'm a bit disappointed with my first month performance, and I wanted to post some of my numbers to get feedback on what is good and what is bad. This will help me know what I should focus on to improve over this next month.

Here are my numbers

ROI%: 9.11%
Win %: 38%
Payoff ratio: 1.93
Expectancy: 9.76
# of trades: 336
Avg R: 0.28%
Max Risk: 1%
Avg Reward/Risk Ratio: 2.72
Max DD: -11.4%
Avg DD: -3.96%

For those curious, I'm trading the NQ and currently on sim (~3 months of data).

Absolutely worthless if you are not trading live. Sim results do not equate (or even rhyme) with live results.

Trade live, even if its with a $100 forex account, to actually experience the full gamut of trading pressures and challenges.

These "performance numbers" are taking football video game stats and thinking you can play in the NFL.

The best thing you can do is to immediately open a live account and get to figuring it out.

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  #18 (permalink)
 
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 Anagami 
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TheTradeSlinger View Post
Absolutely worthless if you are not trading live. Sim results do not equate (or even rhyme) with live results.

Trade live, even if its with a $100 forex account, to actually experience the full gamut of trading pressures and challenges.

These "performance numbers" are taking football video game stats and thinking you can play in the NFL.

The best thing you can do is to immediately open a live account and get to figuring it out.

Absolutely horrible advice. You will blow several accounts if you follow this.

You are never in the wrong place... but sometimes you are in the right place looking at things in the wrong way.
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  #19 (permalink)
farmer55
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Can't believe I'm replying to this post. How does anyone even make over 300 trades in 1 month? I guarantee disaster if you ever go live. But your broker will love ya for about 10 days. You clearly do not have an edge. Do not ever waste real money until you know without a shadow of a doubt that you have an edge. Contrast this--- I have a 2 trade set goal, when reached, stop for the day. Mon, 2 trades, 17 min, done. Tues, 2 trades 21 min done. Today, tough day, 8 trades, almost 4 hrs, done. This is what making money trading looks like.

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  #20 (permalink)
 
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 SoftSoap 
Canada
 
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DionysusToast View Post
Then the results are fantastic. 10% in a month is perfect and nothing to be disappointed with. In fact, if this disappoints you, then you have to bring your goals down to earth a bit.

The gotcha is in how much risk you too. There's option strategies that regularly return 10% a month and do that month after month. Trouble is you need to have your entire account on the line to do that and so on a bad month you wipe out your account.

Obviously that's not what you are doing because of your trade frequency but your max DD was 11% - what would be interesting would be to see how wild the swings were in the month. Do you have a P&L chart?

Anyway - 10% is a good month IMO.

Thank you for your feedback.

I should re-word my original post. It's 1 month of real time, but about 3-4 months worth of data. So it's more of a 2.5-3% monthly ROI. Here's a P&L chart to show some of the swings. The account is quite small as it's my worst case scenario (15K), but I'm hoping that it'll be closer to the 25K mark by the time I start trading.


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