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