Been trading for sometime and admittingly never been that consistent. Yeah during the dot-com era, I had a few years in the seven figures but also had some HUGE drawdowns. And in the last few years, I can't say that I have made or lost that much money. Now this year.. Its not the end total that I am proud of. But its the every day consistency that has "finally" come my way. Looking back in 08, I would say I only lost money on roughly 15% of all my trading days.. And those losses were generally not big enough to effect overall returns. My question for everyone... has your performace spiked this year? Again, not in P/L terms, but consistency... I don't want to fool myself that I turned the corner if the "masses" are having a much better year as well.
I'm having a record year... but it's only my second year in the business so not sure how much, if anything, that means.
Has the increased volatility made you more consistent or have you made some changes to your trading to accomplish this? Are you basically trading the same way this year compared to the last few years? Anyway congrats on the consistency surge.
Im not sure what ill do when things get back to "normal." Maybe I should just quit while im ahead by muni bonds and get a job as a ditch digger building bridges and highways.
Jan-Feb were pretty tough. October turned out to be legendary. I made in one day what I usually make in a good month. Even after weird P/L fluctuations the year was fun... guess means little since it was only my second year with trading as primary source of income.
I haven't had a losing week so far this year trading commodity futures and also didn't have a single losing day from mid February to early April. My most rewarding/consistent period was from february to June while vola was crazy on ags, metals and energy. It has gone downhill since. I would like to trade stocks in this crisis environment but I 'm a deep loser on stocks... It's my first year as a pro and my best year of course.
I was having an amazing year and consistently profitable trading pairs until I got super-leveraged in a few and almost blew up, if it weren't for that everything would be awesome...i know there's lots of other guys in my firm that are cleaning up...
Big improvement in consistency for me too this year. I laid a lot of ground work to try to diversify strategies that paid off. I've got 8 separate, distinct strategies now, 5 that I employ every day. That has made a huge difference in smoothing out my equity curve, which reduces drawdown risk, which allows me to comfortably trade more size. Win/loss days this year are 174/64, which isn't fantastic compared to someone who scalps. My average win day is almost 2x my avg loss day and I've had back to back losing days 7 times this year. My daily profit factor is 5.0 (total profits/total losses) Add in some automation and a vix over 50 and I'm at almost 6x my previous annual record. I wish it could last....