Neke where did you learn how to do all this???? You are one of the best traders ive seen. I am relatively new to the market and am very young. I want to learn. I have a lot to learn. I need some kind of guidance. 1. Do you have any tips, sites, books that will hlp me? 2. Is it too risky for me to invest at this time?
The biggest impediment to significant profits for me has been not sticking to my plan once in the trade. You are right you wait and wait for a high probability AND high R:R set up to occur (one where you know almost immediately if you are wrong on the trade with a small and defined loss), that is the easy part. Getting stopped out is easy too. The hard part is stopping yourself from ringing the cash register too soon and having the guts to wait for your targets. If you have done a lot of back testing it will give you some confidence as you know that over all your strategy will produce optimal results if you risk giving back on some trades to be sure you reach your targets on others, the ones that end up making the signifiucant diference in your equity. Manging the trade can also help with waiting for targets to be hit, for example taking lower time frame signals against your core position so that you don't feel so much heat on pull backs against your postion. Say you are long QQQQ puts based on a signal from the weekly chart and are only 20% of the way to your taget on the trade and are getting a strong buy signal on the daylies you can go long the NQ so that you can protect your profit and position rather than get stopped out or have the fear of giving back force taking profits prematurely. One thing that I have found to turbo charge returns is that you then take these a portion of these profits and average up on your longer timeframe trade. Sometimes it fails spectacularly but overall, and this is what counts, it does very well and allows for significant gains. Check out Anekdotens AHG thread, even though it is primarily focusd on intraday scalping it has many aspects that can help with timing on larger time frames and also with the short term hedges. Yes I only use futures and options (options on equities and futures). One other peice of advice is to cast your net as widely as possible as far as what you consider trading and filter the best set ups by way of the liquidity and by the ability to have a liquid and well correlatd hedge as needed. Good trading to you.
would it be correct to say that you lost about 20% ( from top) of account in the last 20 weeks ? Good luck in 08 , neke
Neke, I wish you only the best of luck, my friend. I look forward to making frequent visits to this thread to see how you're progressing.
the people who say it's doable are living in fantasy land. to get 5% per week, you must take enormous risk. all it takes is one 30% drawdown and your annual goal is toast. you think you can string together 52 straight wins @ 5% each? GOOD LUCK. and psychologically, losing 30% of 150k is entirely different than losing 30% of 850k. if/when you have that much, will you have the fortitude to continue taking the risks necessary to return 5% per week? i predict first massive drawdown by april 2008 at the latest. this is nothing more than a gambling journal.
The risk tolerance is developed over time. It basically involves looking at your "edge": list of trades, and asking yourself the question: could I have increased returns by taking on more risk/more leverage. The answer in some cases is yes, but with greater expectation of drawdown.
The automated trading is only stocks. The principal strategy AUTOTRADE1 that I used for a long time was long stock only. It delivered impressive returns in 2005, 2006, and the first part of 2007. However, when the deep volatility started in the market from July, I suffered serious drawdown until I had to shut it down. Looking back, I am not yet ready to re-activate it. There are other automated strategies in the works (programming/testing) right now. I use Java to do my programming, connects to Ameritrade with QuoteTracker API: I learnt Ameritrade has its own API right now.
I have a position monitor that automatically closes my excess positions, limiting my exposure, and also stops out my losing trades. I have not yet found an automated way to help me press when the odds are in my favour; It is what I am still trying to do on my own.
Neke, Why not take your original investment out once you double your cash and place it away in a semi-safe interest bearing account? I know how you feel about the "edge", but when you hit 240k last time then you tumbled back down. Eventually you ended up with a great return, but you were still way down off your high. You want to be a showman here on Elitetrader and reach your goal, but dont be foolish.