What are the most useful / best metrics to measure you trading success? Some I can think of include: -equity curve vs. benchmark -drawdowns -sharpe ratio -percentage of time profitable vs. benchmark (consistency) what have you guys found most useful?
Smoothness of equity curve, low percentages of drawdowns, benchmark-what is that? who's benchmark, Indexes? If you can shorten your drawdowns to half or 80% less than the Indexes, you won't have to concern yourself with the money. Most people get it wrong and give themselves ulcers by try to make the most money, but if you work on losing it less, you can margin and/or do commodities with much less fear. Hedging works for me, have no fear now.
The longer I trade the less tolerance I have for draw-downs. I never want to be more than several trades away from making new equity highs. I am risking only a small % of my capital at any given time on open positions. That makes it very sustainable and I like that. My main focus is time it takes to make new equity all time highs.
I'm a simple guy. I just basically look at the % return. -- The bottom line trading performance metric , 2018 ET You can look at deviations, statistics, high/low, sex, equity curve, espresso, hedging, tolerance, sharpe, ratios, benchmark, theories, algo, pekelo ukulele, trading academy, kim klaiman, part fart part science, Sweet and Sour, etc etc, Johnny Pot, 1997 forum, beagle divorce -- but that's all just talk at the end of the day.
How do you derive/calculate equity curves and drawdowns? Does the platform you use provide this? Also, how did you establish positive expectancy being a discretionary trader?
What about measuring the risk taken to achieve that % return? If I had two trading accounts and each used a different strategy, the higher return isn't necessarily better if there are larger issues such as consistency or max draw downs. Does anyone track measures to take this into account?