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Good luck to you on your blog journey, it was fun reading your journal and Kevindog and SMCJB's convos with you. If and when if I'm to consider automation I would certainly re-read this as well
What a great journal it’s been! I appreciate your openness and allowing others in your mind for a bit.
I will be in Cleveland in April as well (don’t know which week yet) and I hope to see you there! You are ending your algo journal journey and I am just starting mine. I take my keys from you in many ways. I even named my journal after yours with a robot theme. What a great example you have laid out for us beginners. So much to learn from each other. I hope you keep it alive even if it’s a once a month check in.
Gee, thanks! I repeat my mantra: I know nothing. I am constantly learning new stuff, relearning old stuff....it just continues. I learned some new things from you this past week....it's all good.
It's funny, I keep doing things that I'm saying to myself, 'this should go in my journal'. I may just pop some random things in here once in a while, just to 'bump' this thread.
Whatever you do, though, don't read my first journal. It's probably crap.
Well, here is a little update on where I'm at. If you have read my journal from earlier this year, you will know that we had submitted a couple strategies to the Strategy Factory Club (SFC). Our first strategy, a CL strategy, bombed. The problem with that one was that it went live the same month oil crashed.
The one bad month was too much for the strategy to overcome, thus it failed it's incubation. The one thing that it did not take into account was that if the strategy had been running, there would have been an very profitable open position at the beginning of the first month of incubation. If you know Kevin Davey's process, you will understand what this means. Long story short, I will need to revisit this strategy to see if this strategy has any use.
The next strategy was for NG, which was submitted for June, which passed the 6 month Strategy Factory Club test. We had high hopes for this one and it performed well. I would love to take credit for this, but my wife actually did most of the heavy lifting on this, especially with the re-optimizations. Anyhow, we were over the moon with the winning results.
The cool thing about the Strategy Factory Club is that you receive all of the winning strategies for the month you submitted. In addition, if you submitted a strategy that had a 'bounty' (e.g. June was Energies), I get to pick a package of winning SFC strategies from any prior month. This is greatly useful for my goal of diversification.
Other than that, I am currently working on some client (non-trading) work. I am also strongly considering starting a blog. I am looking at several things I want do in this blog:
Walk through strategy development from cradle to grave, but approaching it as a total noob
Share analysis I perform that may be interesting
Share useful things (indicators, functions, tools, resources, etc.) that I use in my daily trading life
In other words, pretty much what I have been doing in this journal, but in a format that is better organized. For me, the journey is as important as the destination. I have so much to learn, so why not chronicle it while I'm doing it?
That's all for now. I'll probably do a year-end post, just for fun. For now, be safe and well, everyone!
Thanks for the update! I'm really looking forward to your blog, I think this will develop into a very interesting project!
"If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much." - Jim Rohn
Thanks! Most blogs fail and I have had a couple which I had, but lost interest. The fact that I have kept up with this journal makes me think that I will be successful with it. I love trading and I just didn't have the same passion with my past blog efforts. Nearly every day I have a new idea or learn something new that is share-worthy. The fact that this is linked to my trading, I am incentivized to keep it up. I am blessed with a talented web designer on my team, who is married to an SEO expert.
Happy new year! Since I don't really have a purpose in creating a separate forum post, here are some quick notes about my 2020 and moving into 2021.
2020 was an interesting and instructive year. I learned a ton, primarily around Kevin Davey's process with the Strategy Factory course, his associated Strategy Factory Club, and strategy development in general. I re-learned what I already knew (don't trade an untested system) and that I will never run out of ideas. I discovered two great trading podcasts for systematic traders like myself (Top Traders Unplugged ; Better System Trader). I laughed and learned a lot from Linda Bradford Raschke and Perry Kaufman, among others. I was profitable and not profitable at various points in my trading, but not consistently profitable mainly because I deviated from our defined processes.
2021 is and will be different. There is no deviation now from our established process and no room for untested strategies/algos. Right now I have a bankable set of strategies to trade, so I am building the portfolio that I want to trade this year. It will change as I continue towards the goal of diversification. Here are a few of the things I expect to do this year:
Diversify my portfolio
Learn how to position size to maximize margin utilization
Continue creating new strategies
Attend the Strategy Factory workshop in April
Learn to use MultiOpt, an optimization engine developed by one of the Strategy Factory students
I am excited by the work I've already done this week. It is going to be a great year.
As mentioned late last year, I have been toying with the idea of setting up a blog to chronicle my algo journey. I have finalized that decision and will be launching my site towards the beginning of February. The focus, unlike some sites, will be on the full process, from idea to go-live. I will take an idea and run it through our process, step-by-step. I am aiming to do one idea every week. I'm doing this anyhow, so why not document and share the process? I also want to show how a passing strategy performs once it goes live, in a simulated portfolio. I don't know how these strategies will perform (we never do), so it will also be a learning exercise for me to see my decision making process in letting them run or pulling the plug.
This isn't my first blog rodeo, and I am fortunate to have a very capable assistant/webmistress and her SEO master of a husband available, if needed. This is going to be fun. A lot of work, but fun, too.
That's all from me. I will post a link to my site once it is up and running, and has a little content to absorb. I will have to check with the mods to see that any posts regarding my site are acceptable.
