The market is very forgiving. 04/20/07 +22.5% I played long stangles today. Statistics becomes a more important role right now. I am investing more time in developing systems than trading. When I have made big profits, there was no need to invest too much of my time into innovation. That hat changed this week and I face that challenge. I am happy that I have had one winning day after a big DD series. I see it as a task to improve my tactics and run comprehensive backtestings to get the facts and develop a good feeling about the markets.
04/23/07 +18.55% Im happy with todays results. Ive been watching the DAX to find out that the markets will enter into a sideways movement. I capitalized on that writing a straddle. Im far below my record high, since Ive made novice or newbie mistakes, but my average growth since starting this thread is 2.5% per trading day. Im above my target of 2% per day. Personally Ive the feeling that Im getting more professional every week. Lets see if I can run that growth for the next 5 years! Im getting back confidence, but please correct me if Im wrong. Please write our opinion or write about your experience if running a similar long term project. Thanks!
Still not wiped out. But big loss today! 04/26/07 -51.4% What I missed today is ACCEPTANCE. There is no need to throw money into a loosing position, just to make a big loss looking not so big. There are days when I have to accept losses. Hard for me, but extremely important to learn. I thought that the Dow will stay below +75 but it was a trendday and an old rule is NEVER EVERY FIGHT A STRONG TEND! NEVER!
04/26/07 +15.7% Risk ca. 45 - 50% of the account. Max. loss probablity was 30% during the day. Its a hard time, but average growth is 1.9% on a 77 day streak. 1.9% per day from the beginning on average. My target is to reach the 2% target average growth per day soon. May be tomorrow.
Mos people look at winning percentage as their decision to trade a system or not. You can take a trading model that has a 40% win percentage and make money if your Reward/Risk ratio is 2 to 1 or greater. (average winning trade * percent winners) - (average losing trade * percent losers) = average winning trade. (200 *40%) - (100 * 60%)=20 20 *100 trades=$2k A. Most people don't have the discipline to stick with a model. B. They want the big wins off the get go. C. Most traders don't even have a written trading plan. As you can see from the above example, you can make money with a model that only wins 40% of the time. If you have a model that wins 80% of the time, I will bet that you have an inverted reward/risk profile. Took me a long time and lots of losses until I finally decided that I was the problem and not the markets or the model.
Nice gain today. Easy with nearly no time consumption. 05/02/07 +11.3% Average gain 2.1% every day since 80! days.