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Evalutating my year


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Evalutating my year

  #1 (permalink)
 mcteague 
New York NY USA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: esignal, thinkorswim,
Trading: Stocks
Posts: 122 since Oct 2012
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(I was not sure which forum to put this in. Please feel free to move)

I trying to figure out how to evaluate my year. I am going to be down for 2014. So saying the year sucked would be easy. However the majority of my loses came in the first 1/3 of the year. 5 really bad trades represent more than 75% of all losses. And most of those occurred in the first two months.
The second half of the year has been very good. Obviously not every trade makes money. But I have not had any month where profit was not at least twice losses. In fact from the beginning of November till today. I have had five times more profit than loses. So the changes I made to my trading and money management systems seem to have worked. I am picking better winners and more significantly much much better at getting out of losers and not taking marginal trades.
So I am happy with the improvement. But on the other hand I am still going to be down for the year.
And even if I project my second half results over the whole year I am still not beating the S&P. Close, but not quite. This is all just trading equities. Perhaps I should mention that last year I did great and made really good money. But some of that was clearly luck. As the disasters of January and February demonstrated.
Anyway I am just trying to figure out the most honest way to access the year. Should I be encouraged or am I deluding myself. I have learned a lot and improved a lot. But I don't want to be a fool
Any thoughts on how to look at these things. Thanks for any thoughts or opinions.

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  #3 (permalink)
 
Cachevary's Avatar
 Cachevary 
Russia,Khabarovsk
 
Experience: Beginner
Platform: NT
Trading: Gold
Posts: 407 since Feb 2014


I always thought that the first quater of the year was the most easiest to trade.The signals are mo clear and precise,to me.

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  #4 (permalink)
 mcteague 
New York NY USA
 
Experience: Intermediate
Platform: esignal, thinkorswim,
Trading: Stocks
Posts: 122 since Oct 2012
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Although the question was about my year it could, if people had wanted to, been seen more broadly as a question about learning and performance in general. A common standard is to compare your performance to the $SPX. Why trade if you could just buy the index and do better? Thats kind of a rough standard because very few professional hedge fund traders have done it recently.

There is also the issue of the learning curve. When I started trading about 2 ½ years ago I knew almost nothing. If you know nothing you have to expect loses. That is the price of your education. Still it is hard even taking those when the market is zooming to new heights every other week. In my original post I talked about the breakdown of my loses and better performance in the 2nd half. That analysis is useful. And we probably all do something like it at end of year. But you also don't want be hiding the truth from yourself.

Although I ask about myself in the post. The broader question is how should anyone be looking at the last year. (or any year) Are you beating the S&P? Is that the correct standard for success? Do you just look at the bottom line for the year, or do you look various quarters. And how much do you factor in learning?

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  #5 (permalink)
 
deaddog's Avatar
 deaddog 
Prince George BC Canada
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Firstly I evaluate my trading by whether I followed my plan or not. This way I know if the problem is the plan or the trader.

Secondly I feel if the strategy can not beat an index then you are spending a lot of time and effort fruitlessly.

"The days when I keep my gratitude higher than my expectations, I have really good days" RW Hubbard
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  #6 (permalink)
JohniFx
Hungary
 
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mcteague View Post
Although the question was about my year it could, if people had wanted to, been seen more broadly as a question about learning and performance in general. A common standard is to compare your performance to the $SPX. Why trade if you could just buy the index and do better? Thats kind of a rough standard because very few professional hedge fund traders have done it recently.

There is also the issue of the learning curve. When I started trading about 2 ½ years ago I knew almost nothing. If you know nothing you have to expect loses. That is the price of your education. Still it is hard even taking those when the market is zooming to new heights every other week. In my original post I talked about the breakdown of my loses and better performance in the 2nd half. That analysis is useful. And we probably all do something like it at end of year. But you also don't want be hiding the truth from yourself.

Although I ask about myself in the post. The broader question is how should anyone be looking at the last year. (or any year) Are you beating the S&P? Is that the correct standard for success? Do you just look at the bottom line for the year, or do you look various quarters. And how much do you factor in learning?

just look your own performance like the charts: are you in an uptrend? downtrend? just range bound? would you go long on yourself?

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  #7 (permalink)
 
Scalpingtrader's Avatar
 Scalpingtrader 
Hanover, Germany
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Plain "beating" an index - in my opinion is just a matter of leverage, providing you are bet positive of course.
The more interesting question might be: when matching an index' return, are you able to get these results with less risk than the index typically imposes on buy-and-hold assets?

Other metrics could be cost-efficiency, other trade related analyses such as profit factor, holding times (loss vs win) average win vs. loss, winning trade %, winning day %, outlier analysis etc and of course, probably most interesting in your case, their development month-over-month / week-over-week. Optimally while noting the changes that where made in between the compared periods.

Hope some of that can be of use for you
ST

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  #8 (permalink)
sharpshoota
Bodoe , Norway
 
Posts: 143 since Jun 2014
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Don't judge yourself so hard, you're still learning.
Everybody need to spend alot of time learning to play the game consistently profitably their own way.

I'm still learning , I ended the year at flat zero. But I am only trading a small account. When I'm done learning I'm gonna trade my real size account.

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Last Updated on December 27, 2014


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