Simply buying 1 NQ at market open (4/21/14) and then selling (05-02-14) at the close would have yielded you around a 50 point profit. If I'm reading your P&L statement correctly (and I apologize if I'm not) it looks like you made $171 dollars? I think you need to consider developing an entirely new strategy because alpha that negative can not be excused for any reason.
Please don't give such baseless comments. How would you know NQ would give 50 points if you hold till the close??? Lajax has been providing useful analytical posts, so either contribute meaningfully, or else don't give comments that only massage your own ego.
That's exactly my point. Simply buying the contract and not knowing anything or doing anything until the 10 days were up would have performed several orders of magnitude better than his strategy. That's not OK, he needs to hear that, and you need to accept that.
Chris doesn't know. He's just making a hindsight analysis commentary in which one can look at any market today and then compare it to any day in the past (e.g. 1 hour, 10 days, 6 months, 1 year) to then say if a trader had done this and that...he will be more profitable. I think everybody makes hindsight commentary when reviewing trading of others and their own trading. For example, last week I saw someone post a real-time trade and make +6.50 Emini ES futures points. The next day, someone else makes a hindsight comment to that trader that if you had held on to the trade... you "could" have made +24.25 points. Yet, he had an excellent reply to the trader making the hindsight analysis via replying back to say... "if I had held the trade I could have actually made +27.75 points in comparison to your hypothetical +24.25 points but that's not my trading system nor yours because even you missed out on another hypothetical +3.50 points" Reality is this, if we know the specific of someone's trading plan and knew exactly where they should have entered and exited a trade...our hindsight analysis will than have merits and can be helpful in giving tips to improve someone's trade performance because we would know the real benchmark. In contrast, hindsight analysis is not helpful if it has nothing to do with the trader's trading plan. For example, if the trading plan dictates +2.25 points on a particular trade and the trader only captures +1.75 points...anyone later showing up in hindsight to say you could have made +5.50 points...that hindsight analysis commentary has no merits because it doesn't involve the traders actual trading plan.
Reality is this: He grossly underperformed the market and cost himself an enormous amount of time and money to do so. If pointing out that his strategy performed exponentially worse than blindly buying the high and selling the low has no merit then I will gladly choose to be unmeritorious. Also bear in mind that every fund that has ever existed has been compared to a benchmark, so while you can feel free to hold on to the opinion that it doesn't matter, please know that you are wrong. My opinion is that if your trading does not show positive alpha, then you have failed and need to work to improve. I also would like to say that I hope he does improve, and wish him the best.
The benchmark is his trading plan...good or bad. Thus, he can not make the benchmark something he's not using. If you know the specifics of his trading plan, hindsight analysis of someone's performance will have merit because you will then know what the real benchmark is for factual comparison. This is logical. Therefore, you're correct, you have just only made an opinion that you yourself has implied to it as unmeritorius in comparison to my prior reply considering you have not provided any comparison facts about blindly buying the high and selling low. Thus, without facts by you about his trading plan, its just an opinion by you and nothing more. Simply, I am correct in stating to make a proper benchmark comparison, one must at least know what the benchmark (the facts via understanding the details) that involves that particular trading plan that's being used. I will now assume you do not know the specific details of his trading plan. Thus, you do not know if he's performing better than the trading plan or under-performing the trading plan. Yet, to cut you some slack, I will assume the thread OP is a new trader or new to this trading plan. Therefore, its not reality to expect someone to apply the trading plan as designed until he gets more experience in applying the trading plan. In other words, he will make more mistakes in the beginning in comparison to later...that's reality of trading and reality of learning something new. I wish you the best in your trading too...simulator or real-money. P.S. If you know and understand the specifics of his trading plan and after he's gained more experience in applying the trading plan, we wouldn't be having this discussion. That's a fact.