Long-term for me is anything traded on EOD-charts and above TFs. For my current trading, which is always coordinated after market close, I'm buying and holding long-term, using observations, foundational logic, backtest and automation to buy & sell when history shows selling is more favourable...
Good PDF-link about probability and trading. Trading probability is not readily visible on a naked chart:
https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/how-do-you-trade-channels-for-price-action-traders.309232/page-3#post-4452306
;)
This cannot be stressed enough. Nothing can really prepare you beforehand for this, but you should be as prepared as possible anyway.
If you've ever experienced situations where you've lost all direction and suddenly become clueless to the situation and what to do and have nobody to ask for...
If you have a system that has done well and the reasons are well-understood, congratulations for finding something which means something to you. The low frequency part sounds like part of the edge, and few here would argue with that, though it can also provide "lucky breaks" which lessens...
A practical definition of mean-reversion : Trading in the direction toward a mean. That mean is relative though, since it may depend on conditions like the timeframe and period/method used to calculate it.
So two traders trading mean-reversion could actually be in opposite directions of one...
I know one thing that's harder than trading... (drumroll)
Communication! :banghead::D
It starts with respect, but sometimes impossible to do properly anyway. And always takes at least two sides!
Misinformation, false knowledge, false expectations, false sense of entitlement, overtrading, wrong understanding of the process, daydreaming, too much greed, too little greed, vague success criterias
The trading logic should do that for you, as ie. the stop-loss need to be realistic and even include slippage. Statistically you can easily do it by either filtering above 90% percentile or using 3 * stddev above average to filter. However, in reality, the real higher returns may be those trades...
For medium/short-term have you considered costs of commissions and spread as well? Liquidity also important to include as backtest need to be realistic, not hypothetical. Ie. check if some outlier-returns are unrealistic, find ways to weed them out.
When the backtesting code is realistic...
This is a good thread as it may put some expectations in-line with reality. Personally, I'd consider anything above 20% per anno (non-compounded average, not Warren Buffet-like returns) as good returns. But this is more of a goalpost at this stage since positive yearly returns are still...
Websites and datafeeds may freeze due to many circumstances, sometimes technological reasons, other times trade-related reasons. Trading may be halted for particular stocks or markets as well. If you can't get through the phone to your broker, you will get screwed in adverse situations, which is...