After you have spent 15 hours a day for a full year or two,
come back and tell us your really out of ideas.
If your already out of ideas this quick, your toast.
You have to realize, your competing against entire
TEAMS of programmers hired by wall street looking
for a mechanical edge. For every 15 hours you put in
each day they are putting in thousands of man hours.
Not to mention all the independent traders out there
doing the same thing with far more experience than you.
Anything which can be figured out in 10 days, 15 hours
a day has already been done and has been optimized
right out of the market. The market is already efficient
in that manner. Unless you just get lucky and stumble
across something no one has ever thought of.
Think hard about this. Your expectations are way
out of whack. Mechanical systems are TOUGH, and take
much more work and research to achieve than you
have put in so far. The road ahead of you is far longer
than you will ever imagine.
Good luck. Tenacity is key.
peace
axeman
Quote from vanilla2:
I'm a new trader with good programming skills. I did discretionary etf trading for a month, but got frustrated after a month of hovering around breakeven. I set up tradestation to enhance my research about 10 days ago and have quickly reached programming proficiency on this platform. Unfortunately though, I haven't found a strategy with good results yet working 15 hours a day since I got the software besides fading MA crossovers (which is pretty weak). I'm stumped.
I started out optimizing the gammut of canned indicator crossovers and slopes. Predictably no good. Then I introduced stop loss, pullback and profit taking exits. Surprisingly, still no results. I see potential in a few good areas, namely adaptive MAs, fractal efficiency, double screen systems, NYSE $UVOL and $DVOL data, and SR levels... largely inspired by this board. Still, I am struggling to make these work and feel like I've tried everything. I would greatly appreciate direction from writers of successful mechanical systems who want to give back and help out a beginner.
How do mechanical SR systems work? What works?