Another weekly update of silly nonsense, continuing on... I notice trades #375-399 which is where I used an atm strat with simple rules for auto target/stop on trade entry. Bot, did that fail big time. I am way better off using the manual method of just sitting at the desk and trading things manually. So sim taught me something on days like today...If it's a huge market range with large fast swings, do it manually! Also, the nearly one-month-long soybean trade there would have worked with a $25K account, as the position went against me by ~$4K during it's life, plus the ~$9K margin required, no sweat for a margin call. Would I have done it were this real? HELL NO. I don't know much about Soy, just based that trade on Trumps trade war curtailing their demand for US soy product, and I do not follow the crop report releases. There are a couple other fails in there that would not have worked with $25K in an account, like that last overnighter in NQ on 4 contracts there at the end. The margin alone on 4 contracts is like $30K or something, so going ON into a 4 ct position would not have been possible.
Another week, another load of BS. *sighs* I think nearly a month is enough. Point proven. Look at this nonsense... I guess there is no point continuing on with this. Just dumb and stupid by now. Just too afraid to pull that drop-down menu and select the real account. I was pretty much stunned watching the market yesterday, and woke up this morning feeling disoriented. Today was similar in the last 90 minutes. Just incredible. I was surprised to wake up from my daze and notice that yesterday I actually tried to make money on a short after losing a good chunk earlier in the day, and it worked? Lol! What was I thinking even trying it? Oh yeah, I was thinking like a daytrader. Pffhht.
Since the beginning of December of last year, I have been trying the daytrader thing again, and I have been so against going live because I fear I am going to fuck it all up. But this is what keeps happening to me when I focus my concentration on trading what I see and cutting losses when it all seems to be going wrong. A typical day of daytrading for me, over the past 6 weeks, is pretty much this... And yet I continue to reiterate to myself in my head over and over that I cannot do this because it is not real. I think this psych journal has actually helped me, in thinking about it, because I realize I have been psyching myself out over an exaggerated fear for no reason. *breathes deep* Once more unto the breach?
I remember questioning your previous stats because your winners were equal to losers with very high win rate. The above stats - avg looser almost 3 times larger. That looks more realistic. So which is the norm?
Look man, I have no idea what is considered normal. The percentage numbers mean nothing to me, just the net profit at the end of the day at this point. I ain't trying to set records here, I'm just trying to make some money. What is the norm? Ninja's journaling system uses the most basic math equations to come up with it's figures I suppose, on those summaries. Here's two more...what is the norm? Are the summary pics from my live journal the norm? Hell if I know.
I don't know what is the norm, but if I see high win rate and avg winners equal to losses(holy grail), it tells me that it's either bogus or requires heavy tech to achieve. When I see a system that takes many quick profits and occasional relatively big loss, that is more realistic to me.
Heavy tech? Yeah, it is as heavy as my clicky-finger. And it is no holy-grail. It is discretion. Subjective. There is no spoon. *JUMP*!
In my humble opinion, it is not real as well. It is true that the final PnL looks good, and this is after all the most important number, but your average loss being so much bigger than an average win will, in my opinion, kill you. I took the liberty of plotting your trades so there is something to discuss. Here are the first two trades. Red dot is a short, black dot is an exit, and in further charts, green dot is a long. Your first short you held on for a very long time until you exited. Seems like you were just hoping and praying. On your second short, this too went against you almost 10 points. I just don't think you can survive taking these big drawdowns and then settling for smaller wins. An 80% win rate, which is what you need to make this combo of risk and reward be mathematically viable just isn't realistic long term. Jump ahead now to the next trades. Trade 3, the short, why such a small profit here? Unless there was a clear reason, you're going from one strategy to the next it seems where you hang on for a long time, or just take little nibbles. Trade 5, the long, is a huge problem. Here you hold through a 17 point drawdown and end with just a couple of points profit. Sure it looks good on paper since its a win, but some of these never come back, and with real money trading, these can be detrimental. Trade 6 and 7 are now just little nibbles, and if you ask me, indicative of fear, so you take what little profit is offered. The rest is kind of all over the place as well. Now don't get me wrong, I don't know your strategy, so maybe its all good from your end and as intended, but huge losses, huge drawdowns and small wins isn't profitable long term. Also, I see problems with your data or how your platform handles sim trades. Because you provided time stamps down to the second, it was easy to plot your trades. The trouble is some trades happen outside of where the market was at the time. If you're using market orders, this will of course make a huge difference. And if you're using limit orders, perhaps in the real world, you wouldn't have gotten filled. Notice how in the chart below, these two long trades are off by several seconds, as are the exits. I put the dot exactly where your time stamp indicated, but the market just wasn't there. For other trades, the time stamp lined up nicely with where the market was, but perhaps this was just because price was in a tiny range so even though it was off, there was still time for it to fill at that price. I know my data is good, and I would expect your data is good too, but why your time stamps are so far off I don't know.