I had been spending too much time reading other journals here on ET . I need to keep this an auto trading journal, though, as this is a basic thesis of this journal that a 100% auto system can be work. Even when I have attempt to load up on a stock, I can usually look back and say my system would have still done better, without the individual stock exposure during the same time frame.
The market stopped me out of my Spain index ETF EWP today. I decided at the open I would place my stop to give up half my gains, in order to try and let it run, and then walked away from the computer. While the setup was typical for my auto strategy, the size was not. I am relieved to be back in strategy mode now. I really want to begin collecting accurate data on the exposure my strategy takes each day relative to the market, and will eventually post a comparison chart. I think ETFs can give a false sense of security. Most of the time, they are not volatile enough to bother with. The temptation is to increase size to compensate, often at the worst possible time. Sure they wonât go to zero, but the trend can still go brutally against you when they do eventually become volatile. I think you get more bang for the buck in individual stocks.
Continuing to buy dips in precious metals and oil related stocks. At this point, four positions are scheduled to exit at the close.
I think multicharts allows up to 5000 and it is able to interpret easylanguage code. This would also solve your IB connection issue.
Hey Rol, Have you looked at long-only trend following strats? I've spent a lot of time this week back testing different strats, and, although i don't know the specific details of your strat, trend following strats seem to yield significantly more over the long term (talking decades here) than "buy low sell high" type strats. BTW I still haven't found a short strat that works on stocks over the long term. I keep remembering something you said earlier in this thread, something about stocks "wanting" to go higher. I think there's something to that.
Thanks short&naked, I'll take another look at Multicharts over the weekend. I examined it a while back, and thought it was a basic EL interpreter Multicharts had for strats applied to a single chart. I would need real time position info retrieved from within the strat for all stocks being tracked along with equity from IB account to make it work.
Code: [color=green][size=2][b] Total Net Profit $1,708.03 (Per Share) $0.28 Gross Profit $2,484.85 Gross Loss ($776.82) Profit Factor 3.2 Total Number of Trades 51 Percent Profitable 70.59% Winning Trades 36 Losing Trades 15 Avg. Trade Net Profit $33.49 Avg. Winning Trade $69.02 Avg. Losing Trade ($51.79) Ratio Avg. Win:Avg. Loss 1.33 Expectancy 0.64 Largest Winning Trade $507.58 Largest Losing Trade ($154.00) Max. Consecutive Winning Trades 9 Max. Consecutive Losing Trades 3 Total Shares/Contracts Held 6146 Total Commission $120.40 Return on Initial Capital 3.17% Annual Rate of Return 263.14% Buy & Hold Return 0.63% Trading Period 4 Dys, 7 Hrs, 51 Mins Max. Equity Run-up(Daily) $1,725.03 Date of Max. Equity Run-up 5/13/2011 15:00 Max. Drawdown(Daily) Value ($414.43) Date 5/11/2011 15:00 as % of Initial Capital 0.77% Max. Trade Drawdown ($153.00) [/b][/size][/color] Even with the choppy markets this week, the strategy navigated the shark-infested waters coolly. There was some interference on my part however. Last Friday, I was feeling somewhat anxious over the market volatility and pressed my "eject button" which exited all of my positions Friday afternoon to go flat. Not wanting to predict the markets, I still get the sense that the happy days of the past two years have ended. It would not surprise me to see us still around 1350 on the S&P come year's end. Three years in a row of 20+ percent gains would be uncharacteristic for the broad markets, I think. I don't intend to make changes to my strategy though. The DOW closed lower for the week, but net profit was positive with my long only strategy. My current market exposure sits at 22%, with 200% being the maximum allowed. I have had more problems with TS creating the charts. I think I have discovered another problem it has when considering open positions as closed. If it is unable to find a matching sell to one that it thinks is still open, then it gives it the current closing price. There were positions I closed in '08 that it was including in this weeks chart! So I am back to just stating open profit/loss, with the chart only showing realized p/l. Given my short average hold times of 2-3 days this should not distort the charts greatly, just interpret them accordingly. In addition, at least for this week, I am displaying a chart with trade number along the X-axis, rather than time. With my "exit all" on Friday, it distorted that chart too. I still like the charts by trade number as well as area curve for my use because it illustrates the cumulative nature of the trades in creating a mountainous effect. I can easily see how it would be a problem with position trading in interpreting results. I noticed for the first time two days ago that some have started rating my journal! Thanks, it triggered an emotional response when I saw that . Real-time Unrealized P/L ($69.73)