I will execute my plan in 20 trade sample sizes at a time. The idea is to flawlessly execute my plan with no discipline loss or mistakes. No changes to my rules or position sizing between the 20 trades. There will always be internal resistance to doing this as the human mind loves to seek short term comfort by breaking trading rules that are designed for longer term success. System stats: Single trade win%: 50%. Probability of being profitable after 20 trades is approximately 80%. Probability of being profitable after 40 trades is approximately 90%. Probability of being profitable after 60 trades is approximately 95%. etc. Market conditions for my system are very challenging at the moment. So flawless execution is more important than ever. In a good a year with more big moves the system could net up to 100R in one year. In the current market conditions it is more closer to 25R. Minimising mistakes and maximising discipline is vital when there is less profit potential in the markets.
Based on back testing on current market data, each 20 trade sample P&L result should fall between -5R and +15R. Obviously the results could be outside this range, anywhere from -10R to +30R could be possible outlier returns, and these have been seen in a much longer back test run, but i really dont expect to get a +25R or +30R sample in this current market which is pretty quiet compared to markets we have had over the last 15 years.
Trade #1: -0.34R Perfect execution on trade #1. The first trade lost money but i am expecting 50% of trades to be losers. Perhaps the next 5 (or even more) trades will all be losers too. Some readers will be wondering what instrument(s) i am trading. For this journal it doesn't matter what i'm trading, the focus is on trading flawlessly and never diverting from my rules during each sample of 20 trades.
Hi, Nice thread, being disciplined about risk management is the key. Could you elaborate a little more on how you are managing exits. From what I read it looks like you are trailing exits?
Sadly, I abandoned this system after just 4 trades, 3 losers and one winner. Have found a better system, trades much less frequently but has a higher profit factor/expectancy. Actually the new system is a subset of the signals given by the system i used on this thread. Im going to filter out some of the poorer signals. They were positive expectancy but had a profit factor of only 1.5. They are going to be dropped. Only taking signals with back tested profit factor >2.0 going forward. I discovered this rule that drops poor signals over a year ago, and it has held up in forward testing. Will start a new journal thread after i get my next signal, i now trade about 5 times a month, will be interesting to see how many trades i do with this one before i abandon it? Hopefully i can break my current record which is 4. Need to be able to reach 20!!