Stick to what you're doing if it's working for you. At the moment you're doing better than 90% of the average ET member.
yeah pissed, I`m doing real good now, far better than 20%. but eventually it will all come to a stop and a hard reversal. then what?
Read this paper (see attachment). This methodology can be expanded beyond commodity futures to any "big market" you speak of as long as it's trading on an exchange. You can replace "Real Estate" with REIT ETFs for example, if desired you can even drill down further, e.g. one bucket with US REITs and one with Intl. REITs.
Makloda, an excellent paper, thank you for posting it. I have been working much recently on looking at the excess returns of commodities and futures in general. It is instructive to note how many of the different contracts have an effective excess return of zero. Tests going back over 37 years of monthly data on both stock indices, bonds and commodies have confirmed to me the usefulness of momentum strategies and their superior performance over buy and hold. Amusing to note this typical acedemic sign off in the final paragraph: However, there is no way to guarantee that the historically observed pay-off to momentum or term structure signals will persist in the future. If an investor wishes to bet on the persistence of historical patterns of return........................ Yes, who knows what the future holds but unlike the acedemic, a trader / investor has to put his money where his mouth (or rather his research) is!
Enjoy the ride while it lasts. Diversify your assets into other non-trend follwoing strategies. What else is there?
thank you all for your contribution - much appreciated I sure am enjoying the ride while it lasts, but as a full time share trader I got to prepare myself for the down years. I would be negligent if I didn`t do that. I`m sure I dont have to go into non-trend following strategies, `cos there are plenty of markets. Did you know that IB also started trading in Ozzie stocks? I`m thrilled because the brokerage and platforms in Oz are terrible. I like Oz better than US `cos everything is computerized and no market makers with unexplained trade prices with a market order.
Wow that is some dense material. I have never read an academic study on the markets, though except for some abstracts (that were actually rather long as well). I am reading it... half finished because my challenge for the summer has been to read something new every day. I don't have a huge understanding of the futures markets, but finding lots of cool tidbits that I can understand/others that I'm confused about.