The Evolution of an E-mini Trader

Those are some pretty wide stops you got.

 

it is call negative re-enforcement, I think.

 

Very dangerous way to trade ...

 

he aint got stops. I think theres a word for it, gamblin.

Professional gamblers aren't actually gambling... they are very much like professional traders. They are willing to except a loss when they are wrong, and they never take too much risk.

Unprofessional traders are just like unprofessional gamblers, they don't use risk managment and so therefore rely soley on luck.

 

I actually trade 5 ctxs since this is a daytrading system.

Yes, it's got drawdowns, however I take the good with the bad.

The system does well historically, so I don't complain. The correlation of my models traded is very low, so while this single system did draw down, others usually make up then some.

Here are the performance report. It's been traded for 3 months now ... twenty real trades under the belt.

The report is over 12 months. I've tested this thing back to mid-1999 with over 250+ trades. Performance has remained fairly consistent with little deviation (the last 4 months it has performed quite well).

 

While on the subject, here is another NQ model (daytrading) that I use. This model looks for the opposite situation of the other model, so they are (virtually) mutually exclusive.

Again, the drawdown is a little steep (it actually occured after 10 trades).

 

Coincidentally (or not) another guy who just started posting named canadian_dude uses about the same sized stop (8% or as I infer about 17 NQ pts) for the NQ. I guess different strokes for different folks.

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=6158

 

rcreal,
I had to laugh when I saw your initial post, cuz I knew what was coming. Most of the people who have posted on this thread are discretionary traders and/or scalpers. "Cut losses short, etc" 17 point loss = deer in the headlights for them. Fasten your seatbelts when they see your max loss of 30 points ROFL!

You are playing a different game than that. Longer timeframe, higher risk, higher reward, more clearly defined trading parameters. A scalper will never suffer your 30pt loser (ideally), but neither will he hold for your 120 point max winner.

Just keep skinning those cats

 

Never could get the gist of scalping the e-mini. Hence the fall-back to defined risk/reward.

The models don't have a stop ... they take a trade and close at end-of-day.

I experimented with several types of stops ... fixed, variable, trailing, you name it. All they did was hurt performance.

I do have one system for the es that uses a parabolic trailing stop. Over a large data set, it reduced profits by 10% while reducing drawdown by 50%, so this was an exception to the general rule that stops effect performance in a negative matter (in my models, anyway).

I don't use the above system as increasing the threshold of the trigger/filter produced better results (less profit overall, but trade results were more consistent).

Anyhow to each his own. Good luck to scalpers, swing traders and all!