Summary of a small disaster

Discussion in 'Automated Trading' started by travis, Feb 19, 2009.

  1. Although it is not the only thing you need, everyone should start paper trading their systems. If it does not work on paper, it will NEVER work with real money.

    Then you graduate to small amounts of money, and get to the point where you regularly make money.

    Then you can start ratcheting up. But greed and impatience kill many.

    A large account does not guarantee success, because many traders ramp up their leverage
     
    #31     Feb 26, 2009
  2. In the past I used this program called market system analyzer to compute the correlations in a basket of systems. Works decent and you can monitor equity curves as well. My systems run about the same edge as yours basically 60 percent with equal target and stop. Good luck
     
    #32     Feb 26, 2009
  3. travis

    travis

    lpchad, you are right. What I do think is that the majority of traders lose, that is widely known, and since the majority of traders are also discretionary traders, we can assume that the majority of discretionary traders lose.

    ----------

    TraderZones, paper trading? As I said, my systems definitely do work for a few months, so after seeing that they work for a few months I trade them. I can't wait all life. Plus all I lose is 4k each time I am wrong. Because that is the money I start with. To me anticipating financial freedom by 6 months is worth the risk of financial ruin.

    "greed and impatience kill many" - yeah, I have a lot of greed and that is what made me do discretionary trading. I don't know if we can call it an addiction - it's the greed that motivated me to do it, hoping to make even more money, but it never worked for me. I win 2 times out of 3, but the 3 time I lose more than I made the other times (no stoploss).

    "ramp up their leverage" - yeah, same reason - greed and impatience.

    Well, I see it this way. Once I'll have over 20 working systems, I'll let the best ones run, and once so many systems run, I won't feel like helping them out with my discretionary trading. Look, I know I am not doing things perfectly, but I am trying my best. If I get to a point where I doing something that will not work for sure, but will most likely work, then I'll be happy. After this second "ruin", I learned one more thing - even being at 13k of capital and using only my systems does not guarantee I won't get back to zero.

    ------------

    greysquirrel, thanks, good luck to you, too. I am glad to know that 60% wins can work. Regarding the software, I am not good enough to get that complicated. I gotta keep it even simpler. I can only go as far as Profit ratio and win ratio. If I take it any further, my reasoning won't be as reliable. Like for example I don't use the RSI, because I don't really understand what it is. The Range I do use, because it's clear to me what it is.
     
    #33     Feb 27, 2009