It varies greatly depending on what kind of opportunities the market gives that day. When I leave my desk for the day with positions still on, yes I am taking a risk that something unusual will happen while I'm gone. But if I stayed to try to mitigate that risk, then I'd be assuming that if something odd happened that I'd take the correct action by manually overriding my system based on decisions I'd make on the fly. My past performance indicates that I don't have any edge in trying to outguess the system, no matter what the circumstances are. You are correct about the fear and greed thing though. I've reached a comfort level where I really don't care about how much I'm making or losing. I just execute and let things play out. Yes, it sucks watching a good day go down the toilet, but that was going to happen whether I was there to watch it or not. Might as well be doing something enjoyable instead of wringing my hands in frustration while fighting the urge to make bad decisions.
Lescor, If you don't mind, how much did you pay for the automation features that help you to execute and exit your trades? I have a quote of almost $10k for the coding of two gray box strategies in Sterling and Interactive Brokers. Do you think that's reasonable? I received lower quotes in the $3k - $6k range; however, this particular vendor was the most detailed and responsive. I'm not sure if the others are as understanding of the intricacies of my strategies. Any thoughts... Thanks, Walt
Soooo dull this week, but the end result was good. Every strat produced moderate profits with no big losers. +17k gross for the week, only traded 430,000 shares. Daily pl was +6, +1, +6, +2, +2. I wish there was something exciting to report, but just plain old summer trading.
How many strategies do you run Lescor? Do you manually execute your orders or is it all automated? Thank you for the journal!
Holy cowballs Batman,,, there is more said in these two paragraphs about trading than in 20 books we can buy off a shelf. Verify system, follow system, have discipline always. Be ok with results and have the patience to let the odds work themselves out in your system. period..... EF
A bit of offtopic: to lescor and others in the know. What kind of programming API does Echotrade provide? Is Sterling Pro the only gateway to execute orders via Echotrade? Is there any java API for Sterling? Does Echotrade directly support FIX?
lescor did you trade CPO and/or V today? It worked for me on the short and long side, I'm curious how it was for RTM traders.
I think Echo is offering Lightspeed now as well as Sterling. Not sure on the rest. I didn't trade CPO or V today. The weather was nice the the market was dull so I was out most of the day.
You mentioned several times on this thread, when asked how you handled particular adverse moves, that you was lucky to be out of the office when these moves occurred. Is this pure coincidence, or you have certain schedule, like, heaviest trading only in the morning, do not open large positions during lunch, etc? In other words, do you have any statistics/analysis how to avoid these moves?