I like that! If you're going to lose your money, it should be like being "nibbled to death by ducks". I've got a long-time trader friend. He often uses the handle "HoseA" because he once had a string of 14 losers. I've used "HoseB", as my longest is 9. (If you were friends of ours, I guess you'd get to be the "HoseA", with your 23-in-a-row. ) Congrats on "23 losers, but lost only 21% of capital". That's a bigger deal than most traders will ever understand. FWIW.... If anyone ever gets into a patch where they're taking loss after loss, it's usually because their "bias" is wrong. That is, "buying the dip" when they shouldn't, "fading the bounce" when they shouldn't, or chasing too late... and usually with a poorly placed stop. There are a gazillion ways to screw up... but only a handful of ways to skin the market's cat.
I don't understand why you need targets if you are using trailing stops. I'm not saying that trading with targets is always stupid, but it probably wouldn't make sense for someone who is trading trends, since they expect to have fewer winners, the winners need to be bigger, and there is no point getting out until the trend is over (trailing stop is hit). GAT
There are 3-kinds of appropriate sells. (1) Aggressively selling/shorting into technical resistance, and (2) defensively selling when your trailing stop breaks, and (3) aggressively chasing a downside move at a technically appropriate place.... i.e., support break. I've traded for a long time, but I've never considered "profit target" other than closing/reversing the position at technical support/resistance. Nothing in the way of "measured, profit objective" targets. To me the notion of "preconceived target objective" is ridiculous. IOW... when you get on the right side of a play, it's better to "play it by ear and see how far it goes" (some moves will surprise you by going waaayyyy farther than you envisioned) rather than having some preconceived notion of "target". THAT'S IT... all the freebie lessons you muggles get for today.
Well, the charting people won't like this, but the system is just based on Tri-angles, flags, rectangles, etc...so it is a breakout system, and yes, YOU can lose your rump trading just support and resistance, nothing dealing with Chart Patterns or TA is perfect, there are ways to get risk to very minimal, but there are trade offs to degrees of account size, complicated, reduction of some profits. In my youth I use to think you have a shot of doing what the big boys do with $10/5k account, but unless you trading Corn, there is no way as your entire account will be used in various ways to maintain positions at minimum risk. When you small, you have to risk more than 2% if you have any shot of increasing the account trading long or medium duration, at least in my thoughts. The 23 trades was 1993 and since then I have never had that great of losing streak, but I know one day it will be broken. I think all records get broken eventually.
"institutional money management" a whole different game. One that is probably 8 steps away for the vast majority of people on this site. And at least 4 steps away for me. I'm guessing I trade with a smaller account than you, but avoiding draw downs is key. Your money or other people's money doesn't change that. We can throw out numbers all day. I'm not sure how relevant they are. I spread trade futures. 50%-150% is a fine year for me. It doesn't scale to the moon, but a very pleasant living. You wouldn't believe me if I told you my best year. I still believe that for smaller traders not managing OPM that spreading is the best course of action.
Seems, "always spreading" would be too difficult to "get enough of it right and for large enough $$" to make the endeavor worth the effort... but I could be wrong. Sounds to me like you're missing the boat if you don't start up a business teaching others how to "Spread Your Way To 50-150% Annual Gains." I'm sure there would be lots of ET takers.
All my back testing shows ME that trailing stops will cheat myself of the homerun trades for long term commodities trading as I try to stay in trade to capture 75% of swing of past 9 years. When I revert from two minute chart to daily then to weekly charts, after 1-5 days since entry, I have targets to dump half between $2-10k, but upon starting trade, NONE are with the trend, and yes, I have had long strings of losing trades and why I hedge. Eventually I will find the highs/lows, so taking profit helps in a few ways, towards ends of moves, market get more volatile so swings of retracement get deeper and I can take decent amount cause chances are rest of the trade end up breakeven, ES I can short highs and often take $2k before those who jump on cause trend is your friend going against me. And I often will lose something on the option hedge, so the occasional profit taking is helping to keep account from going against me, but yes on the last trade of sometimes as many as 24 "tries", I will miss out on half of contracts cause I had a target, but all testing shows me to keep smoother equity curve, this approach works best. I do add on to my position once long term weekly/monthly trend has change, but the entries are so deep, for anyone who trades off dailies, trend has changed for them, and again I use hedges with first targets. I tried to find methods where trailing stops worked but never could, and me scalping in day trading, targets were only way for smooth equity curve. I applaud those who can make that work where I could never get it to work and have a smooth equity curve, but everything I have seen, drawdowns are steeper. As you get older, more experienced, and account grows, working at huge profits fades away and smooth equity curves comes to play more as you can take on more size if you not losing as often, so I have to trade more to get equal against those who have a different approach. One area many don't speak of is depression, you bet you can get depressed when account is losing, and I certainly have had many continue trials of depression, so losing trades don't help if I have long strings of them, but you have to have mindset that your method been tested well enough and further back enough so you can expect 99% that it won't exceed the limits of "I can't believe that happened" times, but you have to be on constant watch for the 1% times like two dozen trades in Crude Oil when it went to 147, 23 times (again) of future trades not going the homerun distance, but last trade I nailed it. But you can't bet the farm cause of the 1% occurrences and the Crude Oil trade was in the 1% occurrences. As you get older, you simple don't party as much and enjoy quiet times and more steady equity curves, at least I do. But depression wears on you whether starting out or much older, have to be on top of it, and I do have rules in Trading Plan that covers how I am feeling, if too happy are my times I watch the most as I been prone to become dumber than sack of nails. LOL If hedged right, you don't need to trade with stops.
I applaud you Sir, spreading is a hidden gem to trading, I only got into it much more three years ago, and I know your best year could easily been over 1,000% because reduced overnight margins. It took me a year to develop a decent method, takes awhile to figure them out as you can't trade them like outrights. LOL, I had some ideas of finding the "mean" of spread prices like I use to do in Pork Bellies and MOB spread would work in anything, but those were good old days when corn seldom got as high as it went cause they started to make additives for unleaded gas, Live Cattle and Feeders use to be very consistent but not of late. Good job, if newbies started doing spreads, they never would leave. Most of the guys in the pits never busted if they traded hard commodities.
Thank you for responding. I've been going back and forth between 8 and 10 ticks based purely on observation, so nice to see that it's pretty much in line with what you've found statistically.