Use Breakeven Trades in your Data Collection

Although this doesn't solve the problem of screwing up your risk reward ration and win%

 

Thanks Gotcha,

I agree MAE and MFE is only for time in trades. Therefore, I also calculate MAX Win and MAX loss if stopped out or Breakeven and price goes in my favor. Call it Max trade potential. I do this to eventually track the potential of a winner. I don't record it if price goes way beyond stop loss for a loss I can not tolerate per my max capital protection.

However, once I enter a trade, I do not like to play with the trade. If I stop out, that is just how it goes. All I have in my favor is my past history performance and my notepad open for ideas to consider "later" to improve results or just try another idea. But first thing first is to make some money with what I got. I am not too worry about optimizing yet. Besides moving my breakeven up 1 tick to cover commission cost from now on. And even that may skew the data.

 

It's money.

 

Handle123, so if you take the tick in ES, would you count this a win in the win column of your spreadsheet or whatever you use to track your performance?

Thanks

 

Yes, it is either a plus or negative. And should it somehow end up exactly 0, I count it as losing trade. Reason why is you are paying each day for equipment, rent/real estate taxes, leasing, electric etc., I don't trade to make nothing.

 

Handle123,

Thank you for response.

I didn't think of it that way.

In my stats so far I have 54 breakeven trades for $3 round trip commission, where I breakeven at a loss profit of -$3.

So now I take those 54 losses and add to the total loss column count. So number of losses goes up by 54?

 

What are you trading for a 3 dollar commission? ES?

 

Can you go to grocery store with the 54 trades and buy anything? At how many trades at losing $3 will buy you are new car or your kid's college? You see it as 3 bucks, I see it much larger. If you not doing this to make the most money you can, you trading for wrong reasons. What would a ten lot be and you take 10 trades each day and loss 'just" $3 bucks. Roughly $78,000 a year.

 

Thanks algofy,

I am trading CL.

 

Thank you Handle123,

It makes sense now. I get it now. A loss is a loss, regardless why it loss money. It counts as a loss and should be used in performance metrics.

Thank you.