Here is a MTM period analysis (Daily) since starting this journal. Today was actually the biggest $ gain for the month. I think I am going to like this MTM thing.
Here is a side by side comparison of MTM charts and Realized PL for the same time period. I realized I didn't have the box checked earlier "Consider open positions closed, as of the date/time the report was generated." The draw downs are a little more pronounced with MTM, which is what I knew anyway, but it is instructive to see them side by side.
I have decided to change the way in which I will be displaying my equity curves. Before, I was displaying an equity curve line for all closing trades made. Due to demand, I will now be displaying a composed equity curve at the close, which includes mtm for open trades. These charts are cleaner looking anyway, and provide a better picture of the run-ups and draw downs incurred. At the end of the day, all that really matters is where your equity is. In addition, I will consider 1-1-11 as my starting point instead of 1-31-11, to be able to look at progress on an annual basis. Here is an equity curve starting 1-1-11:
Rol, It was never my intention to brow-beat you into making the change... in any case, am glad you made the change, and I do think this is the right move. Using calendar dates and M2M makes this much more understandable. Just 2 more cents, I'll always be more accustomed to seeing an "equity curve" in % terms, or VAMI (adjusted index with 1000 = starting equity).
heech, I've learned that to be able to become skilled, one has to be able take constructive criticism . The opposite is lunacy. I don't think TS does VAMI charts. I think with an accurate starting equity, one can know how much they had to work with when looking at returns on initial capital, and annual rates of return.
Hi benwm, February ended green so I cannot complain. I am currently holding several positions that the strat would have exited, so I have not been following it to the T. As a result, I introduced a snippet of code that will allow a hold overnight on a relatively big loser just to see if it gaps up or rises the next day, but puts a hard stop in place in case in turns lower. Previously, I would just exit when conditions were met no matter what, or mess with the exit and then not have any exit rules in place, (which is what got me to the current place I am at with a few of my current losers). This modification to the strat will allow for a controlled discretionary input on the exit, but still follow rules. We will see if it helps. I got scared out of CCME today after the blow it delivered to me a few weeks ago. This led to me being emotional with it today, and you can see from the chart below why stops hurt! It soon turned around and I would have had a profit on it! I have now permanently removed CCME from my watch list, since I can no longer trade it without emotion. In spite of these events, I ended the day with more equity than I started. I have set up text message alerts from my trading platform, to alert me if there is a disruption to the data network connection. I think if I do not watch the auto trading so closely, I will be less likely to interfere with it. That is my goal anyway, just to let the strat do its thing. Overall, the strat is not blowing up, but is maintaining. Which is good, considering the recently volatility. Being whipsawed would be easy.
Rol, Good to see things are still going well! You mentioned earlier in this thread your general method of coming up with this strat was to look through the historical data for when a stock had a large daily uptick, then look at the daily bars prior to that and see if you can observe a quantifiable pattern and then to automate that. I'm curious if you took news into account in your strat development to exclude bumps that occurred due to news. I'd love to hear why or why not you included or excluded that data. Thanks!