When in a deep drawdown, I keep telling myself if I can get out alive, I will never overleverage again, but then I do it again. I'm learning though. I plan to trade with no leverage for awhile, and cautiously use 2X leverage on occasion going forward. I am confident that posting my drawdowns will help me address my issues.
There's not enough volume in Sep contract yet, so slippage would be significant with market orders. Besides, I'm not a swinger. I'm a buy the dipper, sell the ripper.
So, no open positions going into weekend. I turned strategy off and just did some light discretionary long and short trading today. I thought it would wind up a down day and wanted to hang onto recent gains. Past up a few thousand by not letting strategy execute.
Here is my YTD performance. It now shows SP500 as well as NQ100 daily closes vs my MTM account balance. I am up 11.09% for the year and NQ and ES are down. So, aside from massive DD's I am outperforming. I'm trading more conservative in March, which seems to have smoothed out the equity curve somewhat. I just need to keep rockin' and rollin'.
Well, the draw down estimate is based on back testing, as well as personal experience. So not completely scientific. By being more cautious, I may not hit 100% APR for my style. What are you huhing about?
100% returns and cautious don't go in same sentence. Now you man say that is how personally you trade. True we all have different tolerances but swinging for the fences is not cautious no matter how one looks at it. Anyway price determines returns, not the trader. What the trader can only determine is where stops need to be, and let the trade do what it will.
The price movement after you get in determines if you will make or lose money. But the trader determines how much they will make or lose through the size of the position they put on. A trader can lose $1000 on a trade or they can they lose $100,000, how much they will lose is almost entirely under the trader's control.