I'm sort of in the same spot. Good looking strats, want more, want to make them perfect. Want to be absolutely sure because of fear. Maybe I enjoy the creative process more than actually trading it. I have a little book called "Don't Worry Make Money". one of the chapters is titled" Don't rely on too much data" and one of the lines is this " If we had to overcome every possible objection before we got started, then nothing would ever get accomplished" Another line in the book is " Don't be afraid to take baby steps" The other thing is, let's not forget, this stuff is not easy. It's ok to admit that and not beat-up ourselves over it.
doesn't anybody practice money management anymore? If you are scared there is nothing wrong with you, you have no psycho problem you need to talk to a shrink about, you are simply trading too large. Don't they preach this any more? Sell down to the sleeping point? Get small, trade small, invest big. No system that any man of sound mind and body invented will wipe you out. You probably won't make money, but you won't go broke if you stick with it and don't switch in a drawdown. Buy and hold investors lose big money all the time. But no thinking man keeps all his eggs in one basket. IMHO, 100% in buy and hold is just as ill advised as 100% in trading. If you know anything about trading it is your fiduciary duty to do it, even if it doesn't work out. It is just good money management.
............................ until you cross over to the dark side.......... the advice of oldtime is right. trade small for hundreds of trades. the bell curve will be ready for the climb, when you are. s
"No system that any man of sound mind and body invented will wipe you out. You probably won't make money, but you won't go broke if you stick with it and don't switch in a drawdown." Thank you for reminding me/us of this. I am certainly confident I will not lose money. Not so confident I'm of sound mind. After nailing down some technical details this weekend I intend to go live monday. I should be working on it now instead of writing this post. Avoidance behavior ?
good luck, don't forget the part about quitting in a drawdown, that's when it gets really dark and you do start to wonder if you were of sound mind and body, because Lord knows you won't be when you are in it. when I'm in it, I ask myself, "If I did just the opposite would I be rich?" If the answer is no you're ok
I ask myself, " If I did just the opposite would I be rich...? " If the answer is no you're ok......." ............. now that line is almost as good as some of mine......... very good OT. s
i give you motivation: one year working on your trading stuff is much to less. You need at least 4 years of hard work and backtested off your ass of your stuff. Then there must be the decision point, where you walk to the other side for yourself or not. If you cant do it, besides you could after all you know, you are the biggest loser in the world and do not deserve to life.... Take it easy, you still have 3 years left, work on it and the maybe the light will come. Always work harder as before....doesnt matter if you work urself to death......
thanks all for the words of encouragement and discouragement (for the latter, I mean you two hatetherisk and shopster, LOL). yes one year is short, but at the same time feels long without a break. this might be a combination of burnout plus getting to the real meat of the problem. up to now I've been successfully tweaking my algorithm that led to incremental but definite improvements. I think I have exhausted all the low-hanging fruit, and now my latest ideas require a lot of new coding and actually something like sophisticated machine vision, i.e., making the computer recognize certain patterns that the human eye can easily recognize. I will take a break for a while and come back to this.
stay focused on your work 18 hrs/day..dont waste time! you're either working toward your goal, or away from. there is no try, only do.
Yes. It`s not just about hard work, but smart work. How many hours and days have I wasted sitting at my desk and looking out in the air? No real work is done and no real fun is had either.