I am starting this journal to share my systems trading drawdowns with the world.
I believe learning to live through drawdowns is the one of the most important aspects of systems trading, much more than talking about entries and exits etc.
You can find countless good entries and exits from countless trading books. I am not going to be posting anything related to that kind of stuff or even which markets I trade.
My ego is not tied to the individual losses I incur in my systems trading (I wish I could say the same about my discretionary trading)
In this trading account I auto day trade a basket of different futures markets.
I use very aggressive position sizing, up to 5% of my account per trade and take upto 4 trades a day (depending on how many set ups I get).
I scale into positions so I donât always expose myself to 5% loss on each trade, but in theory I could lose 20% of my account in one day. In reality though less than 10 days a year should be losers exceeding 10%.
I realise some people will think 5% risk per trade is excessive, however as this account is relatively small (less than a million USD) I am willing to be aggressive. And anyway 5% is only used when the account is near its all time highs, when its in drawdown the per trade risk is reduced.
These money management rules mean I could lose as much as 60% of my account during a worst case drawdown and such an extreme drawdown could last over a year in duration before the account recovers back to its previous peak equity.
However these extreme drawdowns are statistically unlikely (but not impossible, and actually 100% probable if I trade long enough).
Simulations predict 95% of drawdowns should be less than 30% from peak equity and 95% of drawdowns should last 3 months or less.
The account is already up well over 200%, so all future drawdowns are going to come out of profits (the markets money) and wont be as hard to endure as a drawdown in the original starting equity.
I believe learning to live through drawdowns is the one of the most important aspects of systems trading, much more than talking about entries and exits etc.
You can find countless good entries and exits from countless trading books. I am not going to be posting anything related to that kind of stuff or even which markets I trade.
My ego is not tied to the individual losses I incur in my systems trading (I wish I could say the same about my discretionary trading)
In this trading account I auto day trade a basket of different futures markets.
I use very aggressive position sizing, up to 5% of my account per trade and take upto 4 trades a day (depending on how many set ups I get).
I scale into positions so I donât always expose myself to 5% loss on each trade, but in theory I could lose 20% of my account in one day. In reality though less than 10 days a year should be losers exceeding 10%.
I realise some people will think 5% risk per trade is excessive, however as this account is relatively small (less than a million USD) I am willing to be aggressive. And anyway 5% is only used when the account is near its all time highs, when its in drawdown the per trade risk is reduced.
These money management rules mean I could lose as much as 60% of my account during a worst case drawdown and such an extreme drawdown could last over a year in duration before the account recovers back to its previous peak equity.
However these extreme drawdowns are statistically unlikely (but not impossible, and actually 100% probable if I trade long enough).
Simulations predict 95% of drawdowns should be less than 30% from peak equity and 95% of drawdowns should last 3 months or less.
The account is already up well over 200%, so all future drawdowns are going to come out of profits (the markets money) and wont be as hard to endure as a drawdown in the original starting equity.