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Actually I've been part of Tribe since 2002 but when I began I was concerned about what personal issues were preventing me from doing the work of making good systems. Once I resolved some of those issues I was able to create systems and still no nirvana... I felt crappy (guilty, disliked)...

I started trading equities in 1997. I started trading futures and have only traded futures since 2003. Although I have had years where I traded every day, I have never relied only on trading income. I have always had income from one or more other businesses that I owned. I have typically...

Two concepts: 1. Knowing what you are doing 2. Doing it without fail The second is by far the more challenging. Over the last 20 years I have had periods where I have made 2-15% every day for 20 - 45 days only to have a 30% drawdown on day 46 because of mania and associated lapses of good...

I agree. All of my large drawdowns have had nothing to do with the markets and 100% to do with me. Thank you for the feedback and for pointing out that consistent profits come from consistency. By that I think you mean: Consistent profits come from consistency ( consistent discipline...

I'm definitely not convinced that posting here is a good use of time which is why I have posted so infrequently since 2002. Backtesting and researching tendencies has made me money as a discretionary trader. If I felt that it was not part of a profitable approach, I would not do it.

TLDR: Before I backtested I had really terrible market feel. I think it boils down to having a way to get a feel for what's working now, what's been working recently and what has worked (or not) in the past. Again, I agree with MrScalp that the human mind is good at recognizing complex...

I agree with the above segments of what you have said. My 8 step process is: ------------------------ 1 Look at charts/place trades 2 Come up with an idea/recognize a pattern 3 Codify the pattern 4 Run a crude test to see if it does better than random 5 Test different types of entry/exit...

Which part? I consider testing ideas part of the cost of doing business.

My objective for this thread is to contribute ideas for people to consider and check out if they like, to think out loud and receive feedback. So far the most meaningful feedback for me has been that the posts are long. I do not believe there is a right/wrong approach to trading without an...

I do not know. I do have interest in receiving your feedback if you would like to tell me which lines jumped out. Thank you, Alex

Yes. Odds are stacked against everyone including those that are successful. That said, someone will win. People with bags of money and the willingness to crack it do crack it. That said, the find it and automate it part is not hard for me but finding a system that produces results I can...

In the mean time here is the kind of things I document and trade: LEAD LAG I look for correlated markets that seem to be in sync . I try to identify the leader/laggard with respect to the individual markets trading at or through a reference point. I then trade the lead lag relationship like a...

Ok, back again. In keeping with the feedback, I'll keep it short (er). - After an initial shock that my plan was crap and that I was not going to be making markets I started to dig in to TA and read up on systematic trading. I used Tradestation to automate some of what I developed and to...

MrScalper - Yep. Thank you for the feedback regarding being long winded. The short take away for me on backtesting is that whatever I assume about fills and slippage is only that, an assumption until I try something IRL for reference.

TLDR: Overestimating/underestimating fills, commissions, slippage can result in trading results that don't match the back test or system generated trades. For me, it works better to penalize a system backtest with high assumed costs and if it still looks good, try it in real life. ^ I agree...

I remember wanting to own a copy of Perry Kaufman's Trading Systems and Methods that was essentially behind the help desk at the UWS Barnes & Noble. I stayed across the street at a friend's parents place for a couple weeks in '97 and my change of pace was to make my way down town to the Borders...

^ This! In a recent podcast interview on Chat With Traders, the guest implied that Tudor Jones had a group of traders that worked for him trading their own methods. It is told that he had real time or near real time awareness of their positions, their recent trade history and an awareness of...

Yes. It was crazy but consciously so. The win rates on a few of the methods I used were higher and the aggregate of all approaches was what you see in the stats. Even so it's streaky so most of the time I bet at 1/4 Kelly unless I was carried away or had reason to believe I had dependency. My...

Obscene risk: In my case was excessive position size and open drawdown relative to account size and eventually as you point out, smaller and smaller (per contract) wins relative to the potential risk of each trade. I started out risking 5% of the account per trade, then 10% of the account per...

No kidding! I was an inexperienced kid in 1997 and got all kinds of assurances that the simulated fills were accurate... Until fairly recently there were also not many backtesting tools available to a retail trader that did a good job simulating limit orders.