Recently I decided in order to get a larger $ return on my time, I would trade a greater field of stocks. That is, have more stocks in play from what I would normally do. This obviously carries additional risks, the more balls in the air, the greater the attention required during the day. Today was my first attempt at trading iron ore but I kind of made a blunder, there was some faulty data supplied and I came up with a wrong interpretation. Regarding Iron Ore futures 62% Fe CFR Jun '17 (TRM17) The intraday data supplied did not coincide with the EOD data. My EOD data showed a last price of $65.95 Intraday showed a last price of $60.28 Lesson: Supplied data can be faulty, it pays to double check the data prior to firing off orders. Especially if it is the first time using. What lesson have you learnt today?
Never to trade Iron Ore, I don't believe this has high enough open interest to get involved in which makes it way too risky. Is it only traded in China? The only charts I find have very spotty data and many gaps. I lean on the side of checking top ten of markets that have lowest losing percentages and adding more lots or shares to have higher exposure than branch out into markets that know very little about. Of course I can be wrong and they heavily traded in China?
I was having lunch with some guys I used to work with; one of whom is now COO at a modest sized fully systematic CTA (~800m). He asked me what action I intended to lower my risk this weekend. I asked him what was so special about this weekend. The French Election. I'd forgotten about that. I said I was, as usual, intending to do absolutely nothing about it, and let my system run completely unimpeded. This morning I am up 5.5%. Which might not seem much to many, but is roughly 5.6 times my current expected daily standard deviation of returns. Of course had the coin fallen on 'tails', and the vote come out with the 'wrong' answer, I'd have been down 5.5%. Painful, but bearable. So not so much a lesson learned, as one re-learned and reinforced. GAT
The market decline friday lastweek, followed by market bounce on monday. Almost erasing lost position.
It's actually substantially less risk (caveat for interconnected instruments that track the same market indicator). More balls in the air is still more balls in the air if one or two drop.
Yeah, it's like being raised in a religion, outgrowing it, then have doorknockers at your house trying to convince you need to go to church in order to be saved.