Well said. Humans have been conditioned to 'needing to win' eg winning at sport or academically. In trading this trait causes us to take profits early ie bank the win early in case it turns into a loser and to let losing trades run because we don't want to accept we were wrong eg price must come back and turn the trade into a winner. Traders focus too much on the win % and not enough on the trade expectancy, position sizing and adding to winners.
Steve, vast majority of calls are posted very shortly after having placed a Mo, so just check time stamp vs the chart and you will gain understanding what I am doing here using 30min es chart.
I think that what this test shows is that this is one strategy that doesn't have a well-behaving, upward sloping, zero-draw-down equity curve i.e., the kind that you might expect to obtain market-making, but still probably has positive expectancy over the long run after transaction costs. 2 months might still be somewhat of a short time period to really get behind, but still. however, even during the test period there has been a 30 point draw down. and most people aren't going to be able to stomach a 30 point draw down (depending of course on what capital they're working with), even if the system were to be completely black box. executing this strategy per plan has as much to do with its current success as anything.
Thanks for the post JJ. If you consider value of 1 ES contract and trade without using leverage (as one ought to strive for), then this 30point drawdown represents a drawdown of around 1.4% of capital, which is quite acceptable. I do realise that a lot of retail traders won't be able to stomach that sort of drawdown.
i'd wager that there are a lot of strategies of this "type" that most won't trade because of its risk profile (not to mention, again, that once in a draw down, it'd be hard for most to stick with the system)