indextrader7 

Here's a look at the morning session

Could you not cut off the x and y axis so that we can see time and price?

Mike

Now I short right at a support level. Price has printed a decent sized down leg at this point, I'm chasing the move.




Finally a nice trade that makes sense to take. Bringing me into profitable territory for the session.




It's always amazing to see how amateur many of my mistakes are. I mean, really dumb stuff. I think my focus for the near future will be focusing on my mistakes. I've probably always leaned toward that type of review, but I feel like I've gotten away from it lately.

Big Mike 

Could you not cut off the x and y axis so that we can see time and price? Mike

Those axes don't matter for my journal purposes here. This is about the analysis, and I want a zoomed in focus of the price action, but just for your own purposes here is a full chart.

It's nice to see that going though a funk/drawdown in my trading over the past couple months has only done as much damage as it has. I'm pulling through, and bright days are ahead of me. Right now (pulling into profitability) is the time where I tend to let back down. I can not do that. I won't get sloppy.

Here's some performance data starting August and going through Friday.

gap filled

I'm considering changing my daily maximum loss of 2% to a WEEKLY max loss of 2%. My logic is as follows:

I read about a hedge fund guy that manages his traders. He gives them a 3% stop out (practically lose your job if you hit it) level for the year, and it resets annually. He's structuring his traders like trades themselves. He may have a couple guys stop out at 3% and go home, but the rest will generate 5%, 10%, 20% returns for the year. Excellent risk to reward is achieved.

Then I thought about my daily 2% stop, and the fact that most of my good days I make 1%. So good days are 1% while bad days will be -2% ? Not a good risk to reward there. Then I thought about my good weeks which are typically 4% to 5%. So if I make my weekly stop 2%, and my good weeks are 4% to 5% up, this creates a nice risk to reward skew on a weekly basis.

We can look to my actual results for some more information in making this decision. Over the past 124 trading days, I my average winning day is 1.2% and my average losing day is -1.3% but I win 77% of those days.

Maybe I don't need to change anything. I have no idea. Maybe implementing this would be really valuable.

Possibly the most important thing to consider is how this change would affect my trading behavior, the psychological side of this coin. I would take very small risks early in the week, and as I booked profits I would expand my risk taking capacity proportionally. There is a huge difference in risk taking capacity for being able to risk 2% each day, versus knowing it's all you have to risk being stopped out for the week. Maybe it's mostly mental, but my biggest incentive is being taken out of the game. Being taken out for a week would be very much motivation not to let that happen.

It's so hard to know what is the right thing to do often times in trading. Honestly, I should consult someone with much more experience in trading risk management.

blah blah blah.... blah blah blah blah

More information to help figure this thing out. Daily variance graph. Shows the absolute value of the difference between the highest account value and the lowest account value for any given day. This is different from losses experienced from the starting account value for the day, this would be largest intraday drawdown experienced from any high point.




If anyone can think of some other type of data we should be considering, then I'm all ears.

Do all my profits simply come from the fact that I can oscillate my account value up and down by a percent or so each day, and walk away when it is up???

Surely it isn't so... I don't know which way is up anymore.

On individual trade level:
avg win:loss ratio is about 1.5
avg win % is typically 50%

Daily view:
avg winning:losing day about 1:1
winning days 77% of the time

Intraday, I have an average fluctuation of +/- 1%.

We're still considering what type of weekly stop (if any, or any type of optimal stop levels) will be optimal, given how I tend to perform.