How important is entry price?

September 3rd, 2012, 06:42 PM

I find that, for me (as a not yet successful trader), good exits are the difference between losing and winning, albeit mildly. If I'm making good exits, then making good entries is the difference between treading water and doing well.

In other words, exits are the difference between bad and good. entries are the difference between good and great. And you can't be great without first being good.

that, of course, is just for me. I think the entry/exit question is largely based on where your psychological issues are. Different people struggle with different aspects of discipline and mentality and that determines what is most important.

September 3rd, 2012, 07:35 PM

patbateman

The problem with this analysis is that you do not control your exit price, you only control when you exit.

You control your entry price and entry time.

If this were true - I would will price down every time before I went long... conversely I would will it up before I shorted

Your point is of course valid... we can only control the when - on both ends of the trade - baring unforeseen outages/ interruptions obviously

==========================

What is truly within our control, as we trade, is a really minuscule, but all important - universe

Best we become extremely adept at identifying it... then obviously managing it

RN

September 5th, 2012, 07:33 PM

Poll closed, results:

Mike

June 21st, 2013, 02:39 PM

Hey all. I thought I'd revive this conversation a little with a look at how we can get entry efficiency data on all the strategies in an optimization set. I'm working on some code to get this done. I could use a little guidance on how to find the start and end of a trade, especially intrabar.

Code

Variables:
MaxPrice(0),
MinPrice(0),
EntryPriceVal(0),
LongEntryEfficiency(0),

// If the trade is on then 

	If MaxPrice < High then
	MaxPrice = High;
	
	If MinPrice > Low then
	MinPrice = Low;
	
	EntryPriceVal = EntryPrice;

// If the trade just was closed then 
LongEntryEfficiency = (MaxPrice -EntryPrice) / (MaxPrice - MinPrice);

I have commented out my if statements because I am not sure how to get the timing right. If you use "if market position = 1", I believe the calculations would exclude the first bar you were in the trade for. If anyone can steer me in the right direction, I'd be happy to share the resulting code...which will record long and short entry efficiencies for each strategy in an optimization set.

How important is entry price?

Discussion in Psychology and Money Management

How important is entry price?