So, here's the deal. I think I'm finally a net positive trader. Both my swing trading and now my daytrading are net positive. Of course, there are down days. But overall I'm net positive, which is what Brett Steenbarger called a competent trader. You can overcome the overhead, commissions, data feeds, bid/ask spread. You can read my backstory of my losing trading days, then back to corp world, and now part-time trading to being net positive at this thread(http://www.elitetrader.com/et/index.php?threads/prop-firm-proposal.292976/page-9#post-4224560) However, I'm NO where near where I want to be. And where is that? I like to be 1X my annual salary this year. And 2x next year. And so forth. To define this problem, I have a FT corporate job that pays well. So, I only trade like an hour or so in the morning. Yes, I miss out a lot of opportunities. Occasionally, I put in a few trades in at work. But not all the time. So, my window of opportunity to make $ isn't as wide as a full trading day. But at this stage I'm not good enough to trade full time. How do I scale up? 1) Code up my trading to a system? That will take some time. And it would solve the limited window of opportunity problem I have now. But that could easily take months if not longer. 2) Do more swing trading? Since that's where the big profits are coming from. Also some of the big losses too. But refine that? 3) Add bigger sizes intraday? I've tried that with mixed results. Some of my biggest intraday gains have come from bigger sizes. Some of my biggest intraday losses have come from trading bigger sizes as well. I use FundSeeder.com to track my record and to be honest. From their analytics, it looks like it's a net positive trading method though it can definitely use some improvements. Any thoughts? I feel like finally after all these years, I'm finally net positive. But I like to capitalize on that and not just a profitable hobby, but rather a lucrative enterprise. Any thoughts? Any other options? Thanks in advance. trader99 p.s. gotta head to work.
If I was you I would do (1). That will mean you can continue trading around your job without a big time commitment. Then you've got a safety net if things go wrong and you can more easily keep your cool and avoid mistakes. (2) is probably okay. Bear in mind that you won't get consistent profits (and probably ocassional large losses) with swing trading. (3) scares me the most; day trading in big size around a job.... really? If you PM me your FS account id I'll have a look at your record and see if there is anything that jumps out GAT
I vote you go with option 2. Swing trade more markets and don't just look at direction bets. Don't quit the day job, carry on with your career progression. From my experience the journey can be like climbing a mountain, every time you think you have reached the peak another one appears. GL I am with GAT on option 3 that scares me.
%% [1]Trend Trader 99; you left out a very important part of your evidence?? [2,3]]Which is more profitable; few do daytrade well?? [4,5]]Do you know why so few do daytrade well?? Hint= slippage,...... + so few ever read Market Maker Edge,book with 6 month charts. [6,7]] I cant think of a worse time, or time in the market, to ''add size'' you said. And ''i think i'm net positive'' You are hopefully , but not many part time brain surgeons. Wisdom is profitable to direct. Let me check my position- swing[ not a prediction].................................................................
Best option. It would allow you to automate what already works. Solve your problem and bring you a step farther in this game. Don't overtrade. But if there are really more opportunities, try to catch them (1 Option is a solution). You don't have to size this way. It should be kind of optimized. Ruin vs Exponential Wealth... What works better for you ? Daytrading or Swing ? Automate Swing and spend more time daytrading. Or inversely. Automate the strategy that is more prone to be so.
This is interesting. My Swing Trading net profits are much much higher than my daytrading profits. But my daytrading profits can smooth out the swing trading results. I would NEVER quit my dayjob. I have a really good job in terms of pay, intellectually interesting, and in a growing field. Because of my good job, I have the luxury to trade better than back in my prop trading days. #3 Can work at times. Needs more consistency.
I'm thinking #1. But it can easily eat up 3-9months to fully automate everything. Maybe less if I get help. Most of my net profits have been from #2 on equities. Swing trading futures has resulted in one of my biggest losses. It's too scary to hold that many contracts overnight and many days. But for stocks, I can sit through the volatilities and hold for the ride. I think I should explore this more since from a pure numbers/stats perspective, that's where all the profits are coming from. But right now, my account is not big enough to hold more than a few decent sized swing trading positions. It's not like my account is big enough to have a portfolio of 20 stocks to swing trade. If I did 20 positions then each position would be too small to matter.
Swing trading has generate vastly more net profits. I think I should explore that more. And it's slower pace to match my day job and temperament. The problem with daytrading is that though my pattern setups are right(most of the time), it's too fast for me to react at times. But interesting enough, I've been net profitable recently with daytrading. That is my up days are higher than my down downs and there are more up days than down days. I have the occasional big daytrading losses as well but I'm trying to minimize that.
I'm not guessing. I'm using FundSeeder. I have 3 accounts on FS. One of the account I almost exclusively daytrade and the stats are decent. Though I agreed, swing trading is less stressful and more profitable.
I'm not sure why you have mixed results here. But first I will share my opinion as if you were saying that you were trading futures. Suppose you trade 1 ES contract and you have a strategy that works. Like you say, maybe you don't make money every day, maybe you have one losing week out of every 5 or 6, but overall, after a few months, you are profitable. In order to make more money, doing things like holding longer, taking more trades, all of these things introduce too many factors. You're essentially building a new system practically since any of these actions would require more backtesting. Even something as simple as scaling in or out isn't simple. The only way that I see to make more money without changing a thing would be to trade 2 contracts. Of course, the problem is now that you have twice as much money on the line, and hence there will be a psychological element, but for all practicality, given the liquidity of ES, it shouldn't make any difference trading 1 or 2 contracts, other than what it does to you. (yes, maybe on some limit order you might only get 1 contract filled, but this would be rare that there is only one traded at this price left for you) By doing anything else, there are too many variables, so you first want to see what this does to you. If you know that you can squeeze out 5 points a day on average, and hence make $250, in order to make $500, you simply trade 2 contracts, all in, all out. Now you may very well find that it affects you psychologically, but you will at least have learned something very important. Now back to your reason above, it sounds like you're trading equities, and perhaps getting filled on more shares is a problem for your strategy, so this isn't good, but in order to increase the money you make in the most straight forward fashion, more size is really all that is necessary before you start to change other things. Of course your losses will be bigger in terms of dollar amount, but your gains should be bigger by the same amount, and hence, these shouldn't affect you. If you find that you are taking bigger losses but not as big gains, then it may very well be a psychological issue brought on by the money aspect. My point to all this is that if you start changing up other things, there will be too many variables. First you would like to see if you can psychologically handle the larger size and if this can have zero affect on your trading. If you start changing things such as automation or doing more swing trading and don't get good results, it might take too long to actually figure out what the problem is as there are too many variables.