The advantage of this trade is largely because some hedge funds follow this strategy, and so they help to close the 'pricing anamoly' for you. AKZO/BASF is in play in Europe. Is anyone else interested in trading European pairs?
Jonny, On my radar, this trade showed an exit yesterday. Did you not clear out on this one, or are you still holding it? Cheers, Adrian
What might have happened is that an exit signal was triggered intra-day yesterday, however towards the close when I trade it was still below its mean if that makes sense.
I do just UK shares as I'm based in the UK but I'm mainly spreadbetting at the moment due to the higher charges at either end for CFDs. I don't have the resources to bet the number of pairs I like to with CFDs or with a prop broker, so I spreadbet which is working out as a good compromise. Us poor folk are stuck with what we can get. That said its doing OK, although in the last few days things have quietened down a little with many fewer daily trades. At the moment 72.1% of my trades are profitable and I'm up around £1000 over the last 6 weeks or so. I started my first month during the trial at £1/pt but I'm now at £10/pt having satisfied myself that there is a good likelihood of me being able to walk the strategy forward. Hopefully it'll continue.
Hi Angelo. True, Jonny's trades have alot of subjective choices added in. Thank you for your links. Perhaps you can crystalize my thinking. As I understand it is that if two prices move in the same general direction, then they can be said to correlate. However If one is moving in the same direction alot faster than the other, this will cause an ever expanding spread, and a loss to correlation pairs traders. Cointegration is when prices move together over a period of time, at approximately the same rate, thus avoiding exploding spreads, and profitable circumstances for cointegration pairs traders. Is that right? Adrian
For me the system is working this way: In May I made 34 trades. I closed 20 trades for a profit and only three for a loss. One would think this is a great achievement, but it is not since I am still keeping 11 pairs and most of them are awful. The worst pair is PTI â short and BLKB- long. Alone PTI I am currently 47% in minus, this is by far too much. Good thing I am taking only small positions, but still this doesn't save me. I am sure that most of the 11 pairs I will sell for a loss and should I sell them now I would wipe out all of the profit I already made with the 20 profitable trades. Actually I would be in a big minus assuming I sold all the 34 trades as for today. But I am waiting for exit signals...... Successful Trading means: Cut Your Losses and Let Your Profits Run, but the strategy is doing the exact opposite. I have the impression that I am cutting the winner and I let the losses run. I am happy with the exit signals, but sometimes I could sell half of the position, protect myself with the stop loss and try to make more money. More important however, is cutting the loosing trades. It does make sense to be long the smaller stock since the majority of my losing trades are the trades I went short. Secondly, it will be necessary to observe the news for all the pairs. This would take some time but it would pay off. Does anyone know what news would be the most important to check? What are the best websites to check for news quickly and efficiently? Any other suggestions? Does anyone experience similar problems? Last week seem not to be good for mean reversion.
Dr Who, thank you for your response. I confess that I am impressed by your results and that you are inding significant numbers of UK trades to monitor. What kind of stocks are you looking at?