Does someone still happen to have what I believe was an Excel based ( Optimal F ) spreadsheet?
I remember it was from roughly 4 or 5 years ago
You could punch in your various Trading parameters ( Account size, Risk per trade Percent, Number of Contracts, etc. ) and it would populate your Optimal F for any particular trading scenario
Thanks so much to anyone who has it and would be willing to share and or can point me to it or one similar
Can you help answer these questions from other members on futures io?
Wondering if anyone can help me understand. Say you calculate 10% (.1) for Kelly or optimal f. How do you turn that into the number of futures contracts one should trade? For example say I have a 100,000 account balance, Kelly % of .2, $1000 margin per ES futures contract, tick value $12.5. How many futures contracts can I put on per trade?
The following user says Thank You to robert880 for this post:
it does not directly rely to the tick value but more on your planned risk in $ per contract.
on a per Entry base you have to calculate your total_$risk (1000$)/per-contract-$risk, depending on your planned stop loss to get the contracts for this entry (round down to the next number for the number of contracts).
hth
askerix
The following user says Thank You to askerix for this post:
I think I follow.... So let's say that I use the calculator and it spits out 10% for optimal F. My account size is $100,000. I want to take an entry on the ES and my stop is 2 points ($100). In order to get the number of contracts would I do the following: 100,000 (account size) X .1 (optimal f or Kelly) = 10,000. Then 10,000 / $100 (risk per trade) = 100 Lots. Not sure why one would use margin since it does not represent how much risk you have in the trade. It's just the leverage that your broker lets you have. Do I have this correct?
The following user says Thank You to robert880 for this post:
I have (not currently though), but I have analyzed and run a bunch of tests with it.
On a given backtest, it can definitely be shown to be optimal.
The problem in real time going forward is that if (when!) things change with the trading strategy (win percentage changes, drawdown lengths or durations change, etc.) what was optimal in testing suddenly becomes not only far from optimum, but usually downright awful.
So, watch out. Run it live without real money for a few months first.
The following 2 users say Thank You to kevinkdog for this post:
