Good point Speciaul....I am generally using a series of CBV charts for trading. But, i need a contiuous contract so i can see longer term trends. I don't have that at the moment, so I'm limited to charts within a single contract timeframe.
Then that is why you need to listen instead of explaining your thought process. I will try repeating this again: If you think win rate is important, you have a very long way to go Traders worry about their expectancy. Newbies worry about their win rate
dude STFU everybody knows what expectancy is. have you heard the term profit factor? LMAO what a douche
All else being equal, the higher the win rate, the better the expectancy. Expectancy is important, but its calculation for future performance is far more pie-in-the-sky than win rate. Expectancy assumes BOTH an average win rate AND the average amount of directional movement. The amount of directional movement is a much more difficult assumption to make. A win rate alone is certainly not everything, but only a fool would dismiss its relevance.
I use/evaluate expectancy a lot when i'm automating strategies...thats all fine and dandy. However, how do you guys project expectancy for discretionary trading? Do you just look at what your expectancy has been for actual discretionary trades placed?
Have you looked back at a reasonably large sample of your own trades where you've gotten out near B/E after a large paper drawdown and found overall it would have been better to stay in longer? Nothing like hard data to guide these decisions in the future. Another possibility, in lieu of tediously researching a million old trades, is you could always reduce to 1 lot and see where the trade goes. Kind of a backdoor way of tackling the position size problem.
dude, do you ever edit your posts? You are LYAO because you know how to spell PF? And you think it is a great revelation to point out that PF is a synonym for expectancy? how nugatory (there, you can look that up in your online dictionary also)...
HuggieBear is officially killing it. Since that fateful day 3 weeks or so ago when I rode 5 Cl contracts down $3 in about 2 minutes (amongst other idiocy), I have had one of the most extreme swings ever. I went from down 25% for the year at the end of that day to now up around 25%. Not only have I had a "good streak", i have only had a handful of losers out of easily 100+ trades. Such a streak it has been that i closed out every position i have today (even DNDN, which, by the way, I made a small fortune on in the last two weeks), AND i went to 100% cash in my retirement account. My intent is to go small or go none during the time where i would normally be overcome by greed and go for the snowball/parlay/gigantic payday. I plan to mostly sit this situation out until a more favorable market condition occurs. (preferably after another selloff, but maybe if we get a bit more overbought). If i had to pick a position right now, I'd probably go heavily short. Which means the market is probably going to retest old highs because i'm due for a major string of losses. Now, if I can just cobble together another 9 months of this I'll be all set. Going to try to go fairly conservative most of the time and then hopefully catch one or two market extremes to go big sometime this year. My having ended the last two years flat was primarily due to 3 or 4 big losses offsetting a mostly solid performance throughout the majority of the year. Main goal is to avoid those situations as much as possible this year -- if i die, i want to die by 1000 cuts. Not by one or two shotgun blasts.
By the way, a special "shout out" to BP for being the enabler for a couple of my biggest wins. Kid is dyn-o-mite money from a contrarian point of view...