FIFO rule kills futures traders profits!

Discussion in 'Trading' started by Ates, Nov 12, 2020.

  1. Ates

    Ates

    I put a horizontal line to my entry when i am in profit i close others and leave only last added one. If it goes against me, i use the horizontal line as a guide and calculate the new avg. So I can make sure i am in profit (or loss).
     
    #51     Nov 14, 2020
    Andrea Wylan likes this.
  2. Andrea Wylan

    Andrea Wylan Sponsor

    It depends on the trade and my plan for it. Sometimes I do scale out so I have less risk and I’m comfortable staying in the trade. And then often it does turn into a winner.
     
    #52     Nov 14, 2020
  3. deaddog

    deaddog

    Ah, Traders dream; never have a loser.

    You're not one of the "It's not a loss until I sell" crowd are you?
     
    #53     Nov 14, 2020
  4. TimMykes

    TimMykes

    I'd think if this bookkeeping of profits is hampering you, you have much bigger issues .
     
    #54     Nov 14, 2020
    Asterix likes this.
  5. whoa whoa whoa, a fellow linsux user! Any tips to use it?
     
    #55     Oct 13, 2021
  6. Asterix

    Asterix

    You mean this fifo rule or in general? I have been using it with wine forever. I found some youtube tutorial how to set it up for development and debugging AT code. Can share it you if you need it...
     
    #56     Oct 13, 2021
    nooby_mcnoob likes this.
  7. Just in general. Good to know it just works with Wine.
     
    #57     Oct 13, 2021
  8. never ceases to amaze me how there isn't de facto semantics / terminology for this measure; one might even claim "inverse hanlon's" (cough, yet again) when seeing that there are literally zero brokers who do it right for you.. but i can't keep claiming that for every dang thing in retail land XD

    It's kinda funny you getting flack on this forum for asking this especially since it's natural to ask this question:

    "wAiT, iF I'm iN a pOsItioN, what's the price that above/below which i make/lose money!?!"

    But true, heaven forbid you ask this question or get it is a default from a broker XD

    "you must have bigger problems because asking fundamental questions about losing or making money when trading definitely means your 'strategy must be wrong'" .. - nameless manual traderz who can't do basic arithmetic

    And yes, you're 100% right in assuming it's computable for any style of trading and no matter the lifetime in between net-zero sizes of the target asset.

    @Antes though I love the semantics of LIFO (being a nerd meeself) i think what you're really after is what we call in the comp trader space "price-per-unit". It's actually really simple once you realize what's what it is (and what you should call it) but the measure itself is slightly tricky (technically calced as an asymmetric recurrence relation) and that "trickyness" is probably why you got so much ad hominem from other's on here (because they'd rather crap on your good question then think for themselves of course) even though what you're asking is fundamental to all money making in trading no matter the style, since like, how else would you know if you make or lose money.

    Why it's not LIFO:

    well because when you make the position smaller you don't want to change the "price-per-unit" (aka ppu) where as LIFO implies that you do. LIFO IMO has a different purpose which i prefer to think of a "contextual ppu" depending on what you're doing such that when you exit some units of the target asset you would remove the price-weighting of those units from the weighted mean that determines the "LIFO average price", where as with "ppu" you **wouldn't** adjust the "average price" when you make the position size "smaller" (i.e sell for a long pp, buy for a short pp).

    well, WTF is PPU!?

    well, think about it, it's teh price that for each new transaction in the asset you either take a +ve or -ve PNL, aka a win or a loss of units in the source asset, the one you bought the destination asset in (so ur USD for ur MNQ, or ur mooneros for ur buttcoinz).

    The calc is stupid simple:

    - When adding/increasing the accumulative size of the position in the destination asset:

    ppu = ( ppu[i-1] * accum_size[i-1] + ppu_latest_clear * size_of_latest_clear ) / accum_size

    -
    when removing/subtracting from the accumulative size you simply update the `accum_size` part since whenever you add again, you'll need to re-weight the last `ppu[i-1]` with that new size.

    So think, if i'm long and sell some well on the next buy the size weighting if my remaining units **time** the previously calculated ppu for those units **plus** the new cost basis, **all divided by** the new total size i hold.

    For those of you familiar with means this will look at lot like a form of exponential mean. More pragmatically, it's basically like a rolling weighted mean of accumulated cost basis. You normally would toss commissions into the cost basis bit as well as a flat constant addition (since normally it's not per unit, or at least not quoted/tracked that way).

    Wait so do i have to do this myself!?

    Prolly. most (retail) brokers are out to churn accounts to zero not help you manage risk and make money XD

    For those of you who wish there was a better way i know of a nascent FOSS trading platform that has this built-in by default, tracks it in TOML files, and let's you track your pos graphically as a line overlayed with the target asset; if you want the link just dmz me B)
     
    Last edited: Aug 2, 2022
    #58     Aug 2, 2022