100k or Blowout - My First Discretionary Day Trading System

[themickey]

I've been algo trading for quite a while but over the last year I've tried to focus more on discretionary trading. I started live trading a new trend following system....

......Week 11/5-11/9
Starting Capital: 18k (fully leveraged as part of a larger PM account)
P&L:
11/6: -787
11/7: -538
11/8: -988
11/9: 327 (easy day, obvious movements)
Weekly P&L: -1986
Double weekly P&L: -3972
Starting Capital for next week:
18k-3k9 = 14k

What do you mean algo trading? You had an algo and were trading systematically strictly by rules and perhaps robotically automated type?
So now thrown algo out the window with its rules and you trade on what....hunch/experience/trend lines/indicators...?

Can't work out your sums, your writing is sloppy.
What is 3k9?

 

[Turveyd]

Good to see some honesty, i too had a sucky week, 2 bas trades ruined my week down badly, tough game.

 

[Mysteron]

Why why why would you go from algos to discretionary? It makes no sense.

Because algos don't always work, even when backtesting shows good performance, although losses will be contained so disipline isn't an issue

The human brain is more flexible than algos and can see opportunities and failures that are hard to code, but the difficulty for the human mind is maintaining discipline.

 

[d08]

Because algos don't always work, even when backtesting shows good performance, although losses will be contained so disipline isn't an issue

The human brain is more flexible than algos and can see opportunities and failures that are hard to code, but the difficulty for the human mind is maintaining discipline.

Does discretionary trading always work? There are no periods of losses?

 

[sysdevel99]

So now thrown algo out the window with its rules and you trade on what....hunch/experience/trend lines/indicators...?

Can't work out your sums, your writing is sloppy.
What is 3k9?

3k9 ~ 3900 (or in this case it is exactly 3972)
My algos still run and trade the majority of my capital. The discretionary trading looks at price action/patterns and tries to capitalize on them. By doubling the weekly P&L and incorporating it into next week's position size this will either result in a short failed experiment with ~ 10k (10.000) $ loss or it will eventually move money from the algos to a higher return strategy.

 

[sysdevel99]

Easy then, just go to higher time frames if the underlying logic allows

For my algorithms time and accuracy have an inverse relationship. The further you go out from now the less accurate they become. The same is true for longer timeframes.

 

[themickey]

3k9 ~ 3900 (or in this case it is exactly 3972)
My algos still run and trade the majority of my capital. The discretionary trading looks at price action/patterns and tries to capitalize on them. By doubling the weekly P&L and incorporating it into next week's position size this will either result in a short failed experiment with ~ 10k (10.000) $ loss or it will eventually move money from the algos to a higher return strategy.

You lost 11% of trading capital in one week. That's a huge loss in anyone's language.
Suggest start small until you have bedded down the strategy.
Winning should be the goal, not how much profit, but ensuring that your system wins.
By surviving you have a better chance of success, forget about size of $ profits, concentrate on staying in as long as possible and that means trade small.

 

[schweiz]

The human brain is more flexible than algos and can see opportunities and failures that are hard to code, but the difficulty for the human mind is maintaining discipline.

That's the reason why I cannot fully automate my trading. But apparently programming experts on ET seem not to understand that.
I have trained thousands of hours just to optimize the discretionary part of my trading. Trying to see quickly opportunities and failures and know the optimal reaction to the problem.
Concentration is sometimes still a problem as most of the day I am just waiting. That waiting takes away my concentration after 1-2 hours.
I deleted already all the games on my laptop to reduce the temptations.

 

[Overnight]

...
Concentration is sometimes still a problem as most of the day I am just waiting. That waiting takes away my concentration after 1-2 hours.
I deleted already all the games on my laptop to reduce the temptations.

You just admitted to the biggest reason for your failure thus far... Games on your trading machine?

No comment.

 

[themickey]

You just admitted to the biggest reason for your failure thus far... Games on your trading machine?
No comment.

Years ago I deleted my games, therefore I am too a trading failure.