2008 and first half of 2009 were easier markets. Simple breakout systems were printing money. Anyway i give you guys an update : Current balance is: £30020 September has been an unkind month so far.
Almost impossible to predict. Historically October has good volatility which can feed into november. So if things are like 'normal' over the last quarter i would expect some improvement. However there are no guarantees the final quarter will be close to 'normal'. I get the feeling things are going to remain crap. But that could just be recency bias playing tricks on me.
Hmmm..... Looking at daily prices on the FTSE & Dax, September has been pretty volatile so far (Dax 8107 to 8770), so traders/systems who profit from volatility should have done pretty well I'd have thought. My stock trading has been OK, nothing to shout about but a positive P&L.
When i said volatility i really meant 'fear'. There hasn't been much fear in the markets recently. Its easiest to make money when there is either a lot of fear in the market or a lot of greed (which is just a fear of missing out). That is when other market players panic and hand over their money to you, if you can keep your head and not lose your discipline.
OK, I get you. But I reckon shorts on the Dax were VERY fearful last Wednesday night .... Pity we don't have a proper VIX on the European markets.
Yes the news events can cause panic behaviour for either the longs and shorts, which lasts a day or two. But ideally we need a constant state of panic in the market that lasts for several months or years. Extra ordinary delusions and the madness of crowds. In the mean time we have to try and eek out small/medium sized profits and try not to lose too much.
"But ideally we need a constant state of panic in the market that lasts for several months or years." Hmmm.... I've been observing the markets for years now, and I reckon such periods account for a relatively small fraction of time. If a trading strategy requires such conditions, then over the long term, it's going to have a negative return in my view.
I been watching the markets since 1999. 1999,2000,2001,2002,2003, second half of 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010,2011,2012 were all good trading periods for my style of trading. Lots of booms and busts (fear and greed) in those years, dot com boom followed by bust, followed by iraq war, then financial crisis then rally off the 2009 low, debt crisis in europe. 2005,2006, and first half of 2007 were slow not much happening except I remember the lebanon war in mid 2006 really got the markets moving for a couple of months and saved me having a bad year. 2013 has been pretty crap for my style of trading, not sure if this was due to market conditions or just plain old bad luck.