Watch out - after a good winning streak is usually when you are greatest risk of having a nasty drawdown. Be careful not to get sloppy or complacent, and keep an even closer eye than normal on your risk control and cutting of losing positions. If you start losing more than say 5% of your capital, cut back size rapidly. With regards to longest winning streaks, I once had 84 consecutive profitable trading days, daytrading stock index futures (SMI futures) back in 1999. I have not got anywhere near that since then, and don't expect to either - it was a case of the particular market I specialised in having a fair amount of inefficiency that I was able to exploit.
Mine is 24 days. Doesn't matter though, since I just kept hitting singles. Not a good way to get rich. My three losing days this year are #1, #3 and #4 on my daily equity changes. So out of my top 4 days in terms of absolute numbers, 3 of them were negative. Very bad. I take profits of half my winnings for the day everyday that is above the last equity peak. On one of those losses it took me EIGHT trading days to get back to the last peak. Eight days without a paycheck. What a knucklehead! Albert
PREPARE to lose! Because I think your posting this may have just jinxed you BIG TIME judging by my past experience in going public with wins! bonne chance keeping it going! regards, IcE
Funny, I think my best winning streak was in Oct to Dec as I turned profitable. Guessing about 30 days in a row and then one bad day came. No biggie, then I went in Jan, my best month. My losing streak was 5 days and turned into a vicious spiral of bad trades and mounting losses. There is a thread by me in Psychology section about that streak. During that same period, a trader I know went on a 26 day losing streak. Like I said before, check yourself before you wreck yourself.
Douglas refers to this in "Trading in the Zone" as euphoria, the feeling that we can't lose. He also points out that anyone can make a winning trade, or a series of them for that matter. When I begin to feel euphoric, I do best to take a day off, and reward myself for my success. Last week I had reached my weekly goal by Wednesday, but continued to trade, and ended up down for the week. I began to feel invincible, and forgot that in the market anything can, does, and will happen.
My record was something like 28 days, but I find that usually after streaks like that it is like someone turns off the money spigot. Suddenly the opportunities are gone for a week or two. That's happened to me countless times.
I'm consistently in the black. I average about 4-12 trades per day. My journal over the last 3 years shows a 75% success for profit taking in equities. I only trade stocks and ETF"s and I'm out by the end of the day.
Nice job. However, be careful. Think of a game like blackjack. It is definitely possible to win 6 or 7 games in a row. By the 8th game, you may start feeling cocky, like you can't lose and may start increasing your bets or making decisions you would not normally make. That is where you need to step back. Unless you feel that each trade is completely independent of each other, you will set yourself up to fail, and you may end up worse than you were before you began. I applaud you for doing well so many times in a row, but you you might want to consider taking a little break if you find yourself feeling indestructible. Good luck, and stick to your system.