Fully automated futures trading

Discussion in 'Journals' started by globalarbtrader, Feb 11, 2015.

  1. Kernfusion

    Kernfusion

    Yep, same, interestingly, my PROD system with less capital but same instruments made more money, broke through HWM by a lot (+10%?) and now returned almost all the way back to the beginning of September level, but PAPER with 2x more capital barely touched HWM and now retreated back to even lower than it was a couple of weeks ago.
     
    #3491     Oct 5, 2022
    Elder likes this.
  2. Elder

    Elder

    Kudos to you and Hobbytrading who keep taking money out. I switched to full compounding a couple of years ago on the basis the expected SR of the system justified the extra juice potentially available, although these benefits if they materialise come at the cost of the hair on my head. I am fascinated by DO but won't implement it until I have had a good read of your highly anticipated new book.
     
    #3492     Oct 5, 2022
    Gambit and Kernfusion like this.
  3. wopr

    wopr

    Almost exactly like Rob. HWM on 27th, now 7% DD. I run Rob's DO and similar capital, so that's somewhat expected, though much less markets.
     
    #3493     Oct 5, 2022
    Kernfusion likes this.
  4. KevinBB

    KevinBB

    September was a very good month, 3rd best in an excellent calendar year to date, which most likely will never be repeated. However, like most others, the last few days of September (net -2%, but included a -4.19% day) and the first couple of October (-2.99% and -2.54%) haven't been good. Its still in the profit give-back stage, not too many new losses.

    What I am finding is that with a small account size, results can depend greatly on instrument selection. As an example, a forced change from micro to mini currencies (when MJY was dropped), then changing back (minis became too risky) has made quite a difference in results.

    Maybe its just luck.

    Running ST Framework, 6 equal weighted sub-systems, 16 active instruments (asset class weighted) with about USD $170k. 25% vol target, 2% IDM.


    KH
     
    #3494     Oct 5, 2022
    Kernfusion likes this.
  5. KevinBB

    KevinBB

    of course, that should be x2 IDM.
    (excuse: too early in the morning when I wrote the previous post)
    KH
     
    #3495     Oct 5, 2022
  6. Kernfusion

    Kernfusion

    Btw, has anybody looked at ICEEU Gilt futures? I was in the process of onboarding them and noticed that only long Gilt ("R") has any volume (e.g. here: https://www.barchart.com/futures/quotes/GZ22/price-history/historical), but short ("SG") and medium ("H") have no volume at all, neither in IB TWS EOD-data, nor on the Barchart: https://www.barchart.com/futures/quotes/QEZ22/price-history/historical
    Is it maybe because no one has volume information on these 2 for some reason, or they're truly completely illiquid ?
     
    #3496     Oct 5, 2022
  7. A bit surprised to read that september had been a great month for some. I am running DO and for me the month ended around 1,5% up (had a bad last day of the month - lost 1 percent). My base currency is NOK, so I presume that is part of the reason (differing account size being the other reason) my positions differ from Rob's despite having the same setup as him. Luckily the draw down the first two days wasn't too bad either - around 2%. (reading rob had a dd of over 7% since september 28th)
     
    #3497     Oct 6, 2022
  8. Might as well have a proper update. Cumulated, non compounded returns:

    [​IMG]

    So still a great calendar year, but basically flat on the UK financial year I use for my accounting period. Since long only stuff has got smashed in that period as well, I'm expecting my financial year to not be that great, although I'm hoping I will gain some from holding non GBP assets, and having a bias to value stocks.

    My expected futures risk is still pretty low, so as I said a fair bit of my P&L in the last couple of weeks has come from the GBP messing around. I'll save my feelings on the current government for twitter (TLDR - not favourable).

    I won't bother posting any more details, since you can look at my reports page. Suggestions for more reports always welcome.

    Looking back at my last update, my to list looked like this with comments in bold:

    - refurbishing an old bike done
    - trying to get a bit more exercise ongoing, going for a bike ride when I've posted this
    - baiting crypto people on twitter this mission will never be complete
    - finish the official first draft of my new book, including the appendix done, met the deadline
    - working my way through the list of issues and enhancements on pysystemtrade finished the backlog though there's always more to do
    - writing up code and spreadsheets to accompany the book not started
    - doing several rounds of proofreading ping pong with my editor in progress
    - implement intraday mean reversion abandoned: see below
    - adding new markets in progress

    The new book has reached the 'final' proofreading stage where I'm looking at the actual form of the book rather than a word document, so I basically have a 632 page pdf to go through with a fine toothcomb over the next few weeks.

    (That's 632 pages without the index; it will probably weigh in at about 650 pages - over twice the length of my previous books on trading - smart portfolios was a little longer, clocking in at ~530 pages),

    The other big job I've barely started, but will have to crack on with next, is the production of code and spreadsheets to accompany the book. Different from my previous books, these will be behind a 'pay wall' accessible only to purchasers of the book. I have until the book comes out to do this, which is about 5.5 months away still (the worst length for a deadline - it's hard to motivate yourself to do it when it's so far away). However I am teaching again in January, so it would be good to finish that task before December, or at least get a good chunk of it done. So that will be the priority once the proofreading is done.

    I noted a few months ago that I'd be implementing the intraday mean reversion system from the book. I did write some code and even did a couple of test trades. However ultimately I decided it would not be a good use of my limited capital, as this sort of strategy isn't amenable to dynamic optimisation (there are more complex optimisation schemes under which you could trade both this strategy and a DO style system, but I will need to spend a lot of time thinking about them, and I'd be concerned about them adding very much for a lot of extra operational risk). It's unlikely I'd gain additional SR by reallocating from my DO strategy to an MR strategy with just a few markets, even if the latter has a higher expected SR per instrument.

    It looks like then, for the forseeable future, that I will be sticking with a single system. I will probably add some new trading rules at some point (perhaps even one that tries to capture some of the effect that the intraday system is aiming for), but broadly speaking I can't see any major changes on the horizon.

    I decided then to pivot to adding new markets, as this is a task which goes quite well alongside proofreading as it's mostly mindless and mechanical, and there are limits as to how much you can do in a single day (primarily because you die of boredom, and also because I'm downloading data through a barchart subscription that limits me to 100 tickers a day). I'd say there are only around 20 or so markets in the pipeline which will actually be tradeable and add some reasonable diversification.

    Once I have those 20 markets, it will be a good opportunity to go through all my markets, checking costs and slippage assumptions, and getting a set of instrument weights that I expect I will be sticking with for a while to come.

    After the book comes out in April I expect to spend most of my time on pysystemtrade, doing a proper tidy up of code conventions, documentation and generally doing a long overdue clean up.

    So as you can see, the next few months are very much about tying up loose ends and tidying up.

    Rob
     
    #3498     Oct 6, 2022
    Adam777, Elder, Kernfusion and 4 others like this.
  9. blink18

    blink18

    From today on, mini Lumber (LBR@GLOBEX) is finally available for trading at IB!
     
    Last edited: Oct 6, 2022
    #3499     Oct 6, 2022
    Adam777, Elder, HobbyTrading and 2 others like this.
  10. Kernfusion

    Kernfusion

    was kind of looking forward to that one, but was also concerned that because both trend and MR can't be traded on the same instruments it might require duplication of capital.. hmm.. Hope there's still some potential there, as this seems really promising theoretically..
     
    #3500     Oct 6, 2022