Low Tech Brokers Statement Use

Discussion in 'Strategy Building' started by profitseer, Dec 7, 2002.

  1. They say, you can slightly improve the performance of a system with no stops by eliminating the worst 20% of trades.

    How do I know what the worst 20% of my trades would look like since I always stop them out?

    Well, for us low techies, just take a painful walk down the right hand column of your brokers statement where everything is marked to the settelment price.

    I use to ignore this, now it is the most interesting thing I read everyday, and the monthly contains a wealth of useful information.

    It's just I haven't quite figured out how to make this useful information produce wealth yet, but maybe you have some ideas.
     
  2. Quit trading the losers ...
     
  3. I knew there was a simple solution.

    And all the time I have just been trying to trade more winners.

    But seriously, profit I am not sure I understand the question. It seems to my pea-brain that you trade oranges and want to apply a rule for apples. I say this because you preface your post with "improve a system with no stops" but you use stops.

    :)
     
  4. yeah see, the idea is you see what it would have looked like if you hung on to the close. And then you make some kind of analysis. Like maybe, even with no stops I wouldn't have got killed that bad.

    And secondly, you ask yourself, now why the heck am I taking profits at all?

    Did I tell you about the time I got stopped out 8 times trying to get short es at 1129? I'd be up 200 points on that trade now. Oh well, I think I got 14 or something (minus the 8 using 1 pt stops) so why is everybody sneezing? That's nothing to sneeze at!
     
  5. Ok I see now.

    But were you trying to get short for a big move or a shorty? Were you looking for 200 points? Because that is exactly how I trade my longer term positions.

    With cost of biz so cheap relative to pre-internet days, ie., charts and commish, there is no reason to take big hits on long term positions, ie., the large drawdown of yesteryear.

    So it becomes a matter of what you were looking for. I don't mind getting stopped out of a position several times because I have an objective number - like the Line in the Sand - uh oh, sorry sunnyskies - and I am in below it and out above it with a profit objective well below it.... in the case of a short obviously.

    It's tougher if you are getting in hoping to profit without an idea of the profit objective. The one minute chart is never going to get you in for a 200 point move in the ES. But if your lines in the sand are drawn ahead of time in the successively longer time frames, then each time you cross one you can move up to that time interval.

    :)