How can you take this level of risk with a descritionary method is beyond me. I know your 'sure' your methods are positive expectation but you get evidence on a consistent basis that you make mistakes sometimes huge ones, how can you be so sure the market wont change and your mind now will produce bad trades all over the place?If you were using a purely mechanical method then I would have nothing to say
You're still up 114%. That's money, too! Keep going and simply stop averaging as it doesn't seem like something you can manage well. Go with the trend, do not fight it and profits will come.
Yes, the idea to automate the position sizing, position monitoring and stop-loss component is borne of the fact that so far I havent been able to do that consistently myself. Hopefully that will make it reasonably mechanical.
Then why you dont talk about those things instead of just results numbers, not trying to criticize but you could make this journal more useful by talking about your trade reasoning and things like that. I dont think your audience is big enough to influence your results, just look at don bright sharing his opening strategy for years and still making money on it
He actually HAS shared his strategies (at least one of them) through reporting his weekly profits/(losses) and talking about his trades. Basically, his favorite tactic seems to be to enter a trade against the current trend and average down as the position moves against him. This technique can work well when the market is trading in a range, but when it trends you're going to be roadkill. I really don't recomend this particular style of trading, but it's nice that he's sharing his info. Hope neke turns it around, I know he can, and I'm sure he will. Good trading, Jimmy Jam
The Holy Grail to making a fortune in the markets is controlling drawdowns.. If this is not done THERE IS NO HOPE. Therefore one must be obsessive about this.. Also.. POZN's average volume under 500k couldn't support a 25k share trade.. they saw you coming..
the holy grail is a system with positive expectation, if you cant handle drawdowns then you belong to a psychologist chair not a trading room
Bro -- averaging down is the devil. Don't do it. There will always be that one time it doesn't turn. Anyways -- I'm sure you'll turn it around -- be a little bit more conservative for the time being until you get back on track. Good Luck.
Just a thought about averaging down on position that is already losing $. To make an averaging down model works, it MUST average up on winning positions too. That will balance out the sizing issue for the winning positions. Absolute stop on disaster scenerio (i.e just like what another reply says - on strong trend day, you will become roadkill) must be there too. If the system is well designed, you can expect extremely high winning % with positive returns. But then, do expect extremely bad drawdown when you are on the wrong side of a strong trend day.