A Retail's Day Trading Experiment

I

ironchef

Amateur retail, retired, "full time" trading since 2010. "Full time" because that has been my daily activity most days since 2010, even while vacationing out of the country or on cruises.

Day trading for two years starting in 2010 with terrible results so switched to options in 2013 and never looked back.

Because of a life changing event, I left trading and ET in 2021. Returned to ET, trading this year. Re-read a few favorite old threads and decided to give day trading another try.

This Time Is Different?

1. What was not obvious is now obvious.
2. I am getting religious about capital preservation, cut my losses early, let my profits run, don't average down... All are in standard day trading bibles that I finally paid attention to.
3. I got rid of all indicators, trade only using price charts.
4. I am now a trend follower, thanks to @murray t turtle, and others like @deaddog, @savoir, @Redneck .....

Results Of The Experiment

These are real time paper trades:

Total days: 48 including today (quit prior to Powell)
Total # of trades: ~1500
Win/Loss Ratio: 48.8%, i.e. slightly more losing trades.
Winning day vs losing days: 85.4% (41 win days out of 48)
Average daily profits: 1.2%
Cum profit %: 57%
On a notional $50K capital, cum profits = $28.7K

Comments are welcome.

Thank you.
 
Are slippage and comm included?
How good, or close to real money trading, is the paper trading environment that you are using?
What was your Max DD?

These stats with real money and not too high DD would be excellent.
 
ironchef said:
Amateur retail, retired, "full time" trading since 2010. "Full time" because that has been my daily activity most days since 2010, even while vacationing out of the country or on cruises.

Day trading for two years starting in 2010 with terrible results so switched to options in 2013 and never looked back.

Because of a life changing event, I left trading and ET in 2021. Returned to ET, trading this year. Re-read a few favorite old threads and decided to give day trading another try.

This Time Is Different?

1. What was not obvious is now obvious.
2. I am getting religious about capital preservation, cut my losses early, let my profits run, don't average down... All are in standard day trading bibles that I finally paid attention to.
3. I got rid of all indicators, trade only using price charts.
4. I am now a trend follower, thanks to @murray t turtle, and others like @deaddog, @savoir, @Redneck .....

Results Of The Experiment

These are real time paper trades:

Total days: 48 including today (quit prior to Powell)
Total # of trades: ~1500
Win/Loss Ratio: 48.8%, i.e. slightly more losing trades.
Winning day vs losing days: 85.4% (41 win days out of 48)
Average daily profits: 1.2%
Cum profit %: 57%
On a notional $50K capital, cum profits = $28.7K

Comments are welcome.

Thank you.
More...

1) What’s your R:R and
2) Max # of consecutive losses?
 
rb7 said:
Are slippage and comm included?
How good, or close to real money trading, is the paper trading environment that you are using?
What was your Max DD?

These stats with real money and not too high DD would be excellent.
More...
Appreciate your feedback. Thank you.

Schwab has zero commission. I used StreetSmart Edge, the same platform I use for trading options. Executed the buy/sell like a real trade. Buy-sell: market (buy on ask sell on bid). I think it is almost real except execution time lags but I cannot be 100% sure until I go live.

Max DD day: $1181 out of $50K
Max DD trade: ~$200
 
Jzwu2017 said:
Paper trades just don’t count, seriously. My advice is don’t spend more time on it.

If you really want to try it, reduce the paper trade size by 10x and use real money to do real trades. Then we can look at the data.
More...
Thanks sir.

Paper trade has its value, especially when I am still tweaking.

1. $50K is not a lot.

2. I will go live when I stop tweaking.
 
Last edited:
ironchef said:
....
Winning day vs losing days: 85.4% (41 win days out of 48)
........

Thank you.
More...
Alarm bells for that.

Also how do you determine where you would have been filled, both on entry/exit?

By software of some sort ... or eyeball?
 
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