I'm just wondering...I've seen a lot of discretionary traders here and other places, some of whom seem to be successful for a long time. Are there any pure mechanical/system traders here that are successful and have been for at least a year or two?
well theres hope for me afterall then... I am struggling to make profits and I can't really figure out why. Maybe either of you would be so kind to share some of your wisdom? I am willing to disclose more details via email or PM.
I believe in dialogueing publicly for the benefit of the entire community, so I don't do PM. If you can post without revealing proprietary details, have at it.
ok well im a mechanical trader and i build systems. i'll give you an overview of my procedure and maybe you can see something wrong that i dont. 1. i come up with an idea first..i.e. buy everytime x crosses y. 2. I backtest a year's worth of data to find the optimal stops and targets (if it works at all). 3. I crossvalidate with 3 months of virgin data, from the past to confirm similar results with similar parameters. 4. I go live and trade exactly in everyway as I would when i backtested so that by keeping the variables the same it can be as relevant as possible. When I backtest I only count target fills when price as exceeded the target. Since I trade the ES, slippage has not been an issue for me. Also I've live traded my latest system for 4 months now with 30% of expected performance so either I'm: a) in a losing streak, which a similar thing did occur once in my backtesting b) missing something crucial and I don't really have an edge c) doing something wrong fundamentally in my entire approach. EDIT: I also make it a point to keep things as simple as possible so that I can actually keep track of all the variables and approach everything scientifically and systematically when backtesting. Therefore my systems generally have few rules and is more like 'if a crosses b...' than 'if a crosses b and it's a monday and yesterday was a high range day of 20+ pts and 50 ma has been hit and...'
and how many trades are in back tests btw-if this cross that never works for me.. also-please realize, that you ar stepping into probably most efficient and liquid market. it's like driving F1 in manhattan with zero driving experience. you have to compete with best of the best in the world... i trade for about 10 years,about 5-6 simple mech system,but i'm not going to touch that thing- ES, if you ask me. too hard..