hmmm… where am i?
Well first of all you don’t need to delete unless you don’t want this info. out there. But I have no issues whatsoever. Matter of fact: very nice post (that I’ve not fully digested as yet).
I’m still reading and digesting and will comment as things come to me (otherwise I forget things).
Now I’ll tell you what I find interesting and that I’ve noticed (and I think this is pretty much exactly what you’re saying):
There is one thing I’m very sure of and that is the fact that for some reason or the other: I would have to say that my best trades with this system are on the S&P 500. And this in spite of me going to great lengths to balance out or normalize all of the other instruments in relation to each other. Which once again brings me back to something I’ve said above somewhere: I think it’s the reason that most traders of this (our) type gravitate to the S&P 500 or the SPY etc. etc. etc. Now one could argue well why just not increase your lot sizes on the S&P and forget about all of the other instruments. I don’t have a good reason for feeling like this BUT that to me would seem to be having all of your eggs in one basket. I know that makes no sense because all of these markets are highly correlated.
how did i get here???
I’m reading…
ill delete it because i dont want that info out there.
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Well lemme cut and save it on my PC then you can delete.
I’ll wait for you to finish typing.
what am i doing here…
I’ve copied and pasted into Word (of all things). So feel free to edit parts or delete the posts entirely. Not sure how to respond though if you delete everything. Maybe just take out the "personal’ bits if you know what I mean. Got some few things to ask and add. That type of thing.
ask and add whatever you feel is important mate.
and where is the door…
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As I said before you crack me up!!! LOL!!!
I am TRYING to post something intelligent here!!! LOL!!!
Anyway. QUADRUPLE “Like” to that last post!!! LOL!!!
Now give me some time to get serious here again!!! LOL!!!
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Right. Let’s get to these posts (and then I’m done for the day i.e. this is the weirdest Thursday as things usually happen on a Thursday but today is dead looks like to me).
I really do appreciated all the insight and the detail that you went to in your posts. Thank you.
One thing that you do emphasize over and over is the trend and going with the trend. I doubt that you’ll find any trader worth their salt that will disagree with you. But you already know the problem: when is a trend a trend and when is it not. I spent years trying every indicator known to man in order to try identify trends and to absolutely no avail. There are many (and Wilder’s ADX being the finest of all in my opinion) that can tell you when the trend is ending or over. But none that I’ve ever found to tell you that a trend is now starting. And I mention Wilder’s ADX which is SUPPOSED to tell you whether a market is range bound or trending but as dear as the old man is to me: I don’t see it. So the point I’m trying to make is to not beat yourself up over these trends. Very easy to see a trend after the fact and then beat yourself up. Big difference when we’re in real time. That’s my experience anyway. And probably one of the reasons why I’ve not had a proper trend trade for many years i.e. I eventually just gave up on them. That’s not to say that I’d really love to get into one of those trend trades that last for months and months on end. I would. But either I cannot see the wood (trend) for the trees or I miss the beginning of the trend and only see it in hindsight. And I guess this comes down to the reason why it’s really only this system that I trade and that I can trade. It suits my personality and somehow compensates for my shortcoming in not being able to see these things.
You mention taking instruments out of your portfolio because they’re not done you justice. Oddly enough for me: Gold is something I have very rarely made a profit on with ANY trading system. The only reason I still give it a shot is because this trading system was designed for ETFs and well tested with good results on the GLD ETF. Now one could argue that I’m trading spot Gold and that’s why I’ve never had a real nice decent trade on Gold. They don’t move THAT differently so I’d not be convinced. But this is also the reason why I do not trade FOREX. I lost hand over fist and a lot of money in the first few years. But bearing in mind I was full of myself and over trading and still learning and whatever else what struck me as very strange is that even in those years and when I did bother with statistics such as yours: overall all of my equities trades were profitable whereas every single one of my FOREX trades were not. And unfortunately the FOREX losses topped the little bit of equity profits by F-A-R (cannot emphasize F-A-R enough). And my question has always been to the skeptical: how is it possible that the same trader, same shortcomings, same lack of knowledge and experience, and same crummy trading system(s) at the time could eek a small overall profit on equities but FOREX cost him the farm. To date: nobody has ever been able to give me a reason for this.
So that’s my response to your wonderful posts.
Well. I think I’m outta here for tonight (maybe check much later and scale-in if necessary on Gold) (and am now short first signal on the S&P). I don’t ever recall seeing things so quiet on a Thursday. Hope it’s not the calm before the storm (although even a storm is better than this).
And actually not having a great day. May seem like it from my posts. But actually not in the mood for this today. Have missed one or two entries that I should not have. Basically just not with it nor concentrating. So a good idea to step away from the vehicle.
Later.
Woke up and got out of warm bed to maintain my positions. Dedication isn’t the word!!!
Currently:
Long:
Brent (in profit but no signal to TP as yet).
WTI (small loss).
Facebook (in profit but no signal to TP as yet).
Google (Alphabet A Shares) (in profit but no signal to TP yet).
Short:
S&P 500 (just scaled-in second time).
Dow (new position but late entry so first and second scale-in simultaneously).
Gold (third scale-in).
Bit of a weird combination of positions actually. I’m normally trading in one direction of the other. But: signals are signals.
Done.
Now something I’ve been meaning to do for a while and that’s make available a scanned copy of New Concepts In Technical Trading Systems by J. Welles Wilder Jnr. (1978). While the content thereof may have very little to do with this particular trading system: I still do refer to Wilder’s indicators for a variety of reasons. And for anybody interested in learning THE RIGHT WAY to use his indicators well, then, have a read. It’ll be worth it I assure you. RSI and ADX are, believe it or not, possibly two of the most misunderstood indicators on the planet. So get the information from the man himself!!! Also detailed are some of his trading systems as well as sections on risk management. But be careful of his risk management i.e. Wilder traded WITHOUT leverage. So when he talks about only margining a percentage of his account please ignore otherwise you’ll get yourself in big trouble with a leveraged account. Also detailed is his Commodity Selection Index. And of course: there are gems re: trading throughout the book. It’s not an easy read. Contains no fluff and is to the point. Enjoy.
New Concepts In Technical Trading Systems - J, Welles Wilder Jnr.
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Jeepers. I cannot believe how time flies. Been NINE HOURS since I posted the above at some unholy time of the morning!!! LOL!!!
Well first an update:
As I noted I’m in some weird positions. Weird for me anyway. I’m usually all long or usually all short. But got a mixed bag here now. And seems as though I’m in an almost perfect hedge situation. Anyway. As I said: all about the signals!!!
Now (and some comments would be GREATLY appreciated here):
In my never ending quest to supercharge this wonderful trading system I’ve been wondering about something. The as advertised version scales-in like this: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10 with 10 being a full position size based on your risk calculation. But does it not make more sense to scale in on this basis: 0.7 + 1.4 + 2.8 + 5.6 = 10.5 with 10.5 being a full position size based on your risk calculation (call me a liar for 0.5)???
Can you see the difference??? It means yes that trades that immediately turn to profit after the first entry will yield less profit. But this doesn’t happen that often. Unfortunately I don’t have statistics but more often than not you end up having had to scale-in up to the fourth signal. And this would make a HUGE difference to the profitability of those trades. Thoughts anyone??? Probably best thing I can do is take one or two of these trades that I’m currently in and once they’re over the calculate what the difference in profit would have been if implementing the supercharged method.
I think the “geometric progression” applied to the scale-in makes a lot of sense.
Before I continue with that I have just received version 1 of the TPS EA with a report of trading from 1 Jan 2017 to a few days ago using EURUSD by the book. Except … I noticed the exit used was 80 or 20, not 70 or 30. An extract from the report is pasted below. Note that there was a net profit of $643, which, off $3000, is a 21.4% growth over 2 1/2 years.
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So, continuing, I could ask my coder friend to change the 10, 20, 30, 40% scale-in feature into an adjustable parameter instead of being hardwired in the code. Then we could play with this idea fairly easily.
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It’s really not that difficult. Here’s an example of NZDCAD (but it could be anything whatsoever I guess). I zoomed out on the daily chart (but prefer doing this on the weekly when I’m looking for key levels). The triple line level is a bit overboard, one of them would probably do, but so be it.
So once the lines are sitting there, it becomes easy - just don’t trade into a level. Simple.
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