Going live. My approach to beat the market

Beginner Questions
1

So, i found a system which works for me, backtested it and went through a period of demotrading. To gain experience with real-money-live-trading i opened a 100$ account (Broker=Oanda).
I can easily afford 100$, so loosing all wouldnt kill me.

I want to discuss two things, because i’d like to hear some different opinions on both:

FIRST:
A performance-record

I think the most improtant thing now is not that i make profit, or just trade my system but to learn as much as i can from every trade. Constant improvement.

For this i developed an excel-document which will be my performance-record.

It tracks overall-information about:

  • the number of winning & loosing trades
  • the sum of the gained/lost $ of these trades
  • the average of the winning/losing trades
  • win-trade-ratio (how much % of my trades are winners)
  • an overall profit/loss

It tracks trade-information about:

  • Long/Short & currency of each trade
  • the pip-value of each trade
  • info on why i entered a trade
  • info on how the trade progressed
  • info on why i exited a trade
  • the outcome of each trade in pips
  • a field for additional comments
  • and the profit/loss a trade produced

So my question is:
What do you think?
Are these enough informations about my trades?
My trading record must be able to let me review my complete progress as a trader i think. So is something missing here?
Maybe a field on which i put my daily mindset/motivation in?

Take a look:

1022×239

SECOND:
My long term approach

It goes like this:
Whenever i can double my account-size for the first time i’ll take the gained amount away to create a pool of money which i can use to start again, when i should blow up my account.

For example, if i assume (Edit: Just to explain it easier) i would double my account every month it would look like this:

Account size: 100$
Month 1: 200$ (account doubled) (100$ taken away) (In case of blowup i can start with 100$ again)

Account size: 100$
Month 2: 200$ (account doubled) (already reached this point, so i dont take away money)
Month 3: 400$ (account doubled) (200$ taken away) (In case of blowup i can start with 200$ again)

Account size: 200$
Month 4: 400$ (account doubled) (already reached this point, so i dont take away money)
Month 5: 800$ (account doubled) (400$ taken away) (In case of blowup i can start with 400$ again)

Account size: 400$
Month 6: 800$ (account doubled) (already reached this point, so i dont take away money)
Month 7: 1.600$ (account doubled) (800$ taken away) (In case of blowup i can start with 800$ again)

Taking away that first 100 Dollar from my account would be especially important to me, because it limits my risk to loose the money i put into the account to 0.

Creating these “checkpoints” i see the following advantages:

  • lets me start again pretty close to where i was in case of a blowup
  • Less fear of loosing everything means less emotions involved (psychological improvement for me)
  • the longer i do this the more “checkpoints” im creating. Should it work out like above i could start all over again 4 times without my actual bank account involved.
  • when playing videogames years ago (and still today) i was always used to save my progress overly often. So i can see this approach matching with my trading-style.

Of course i also see the big disadvantage:

  • Everything takes much, much more time. Looking above i could have reached 1.600$ in 4 months without these checkpoints.

But hey, i can also see an exercise for patiance in this negative aspect, so its maybe not that negative. :smiley:

Okay, im happy about every comment.
Im still a beginner, but i know i can lear. :wink:

NForex

2

Keep your inherent % risk low and you will NEVER be in danger of blowing your account.

You may consider some of these columns for your log:
Date, Time.Initial, Time.Final, Pair, Direction, Entry, Stop Loss, Position Size, Exit, Max.Adverse (max adverse excursion prior to exit), Max.Favorable (max favorable excursion prior to exit), Max.Max (max favorable excursion before initial stop loss trigger OR max favorable excursion at the end of the trading day), R.Initial (initial reward/risk), R.Final (the final reward/risk after exit), R.Favorable, R.Max, Slippage, Spread, Commission, Carry

In terms of financial statistics (its on another sheet in the same file):
Total.Trades, Total.Wins, Total.Losses, Total.B/E, Win%, Loss%, B/E%, Total Spread, Total Commission, Total Carry, Slippage%, Average R.Final, Average R.Max, ROI, Revenue, Net Profit, Average Profit/Loss (in pips), Standard Deviation of Profit/Loss (in pips), Expected Profit, Average Expectancy, Average Hold Time, Average Frequency

3

your excel sheet looks like a work of fiction, double your account every month!

if you are even profitable two years from today even with a dollar of profit consider it a great achievement.

well anyway I dont want to how u say in english dampen ur candour, you’ll soon realise what i mean to say after you’ve gone live.

take care trade safely :slight_smile:

4

Haha, obviously i cant expect to double my account every month.

I thought it would be easier to explain my long-term-approach like this.

5

Sry, i dont understand that term. Can you give an explanation?

6

It means to limit your single-trade risk to about 1-3%. You can change your risk on the fly and you will never be in danger of an account wipeout as long as you pay attention to drawdown.

7

Ah, understood.
At the moment im trading 2% per trade, so i’ll guess thats fine. :slight_smile:

Thank you for the explanation. :smiley:

8

Here are some advice:

  1. If you are trying to double yor account every month, yow will blow your account sooner or later. So my advice is: have a realistic goal. After 2 years of trading my goal is 15%- 17% a month. If you are a newbie then maybe 5%-10% a month should be enough. After tradeing for a while if you easily make 5%-10% a month, then consider increasing your goal.

  2. You have your trading rules? Make a list with them, print them and put in your desk, so you read it every day. And FOLLOW them.

  3. Don´t take capital away. Instead, try to save some money, and once you see that you are profitable, then add that money to your account. Don´t ever let your initial capital go less tahn 20%. If you start with US$ 100 and after a month you have US$ 80, then stop trading, save US$ 20 and start again with US$ 100.

:smiley:

9

Lol…harsh but reasonable.

10

Already done! :slight_smile:

Thank you very much for your good advice.
I’ll try to keep everything in mind!