Do you have a system or method to analyze your system/trades?

Carneros8 said:
lets say you have over 1000 trades for the course of 1yr. How do you go about analyze your trading system? Do you look at every single trade? Do you look at your best days and worst days? And what attributes do you look for among your sample to improve your system? This is usually meant for fully-automated strategies but all responses welcome!
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Concentrate on one thing only-drawdown.
I would be skeptical if you even accomplished yet with regularity positive results after 1000 trades.(that is after accounting for costs and slippage).

Do you look at every single trade?

No

Do you look at your best days and worst days?

No

And what attributes do you look for among your sample to improve your system?

win rate
 
sillyw10 said:
to answer your question as best I can..it can be beneficial to look at what you have done on your last trade before moving on to the next..if you do 1000 trades with no feedback..or even 10 trades with no feedback..how are you ever going to make the required adjustments..as adjustments will be required..that is a certainty
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100% correct.

sillyw10 said:
backtesting with sim accounts is a total waste of time imo..of course..if anyone wants to prove me wrong..fire away!!
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100% wrong.

I will give a very simple example: I want to start trading with 2 MA's crossing. I have 2 options:
  1. sim account:I do 100 trades in a sim account and see that I lost 75% of my sim capital as my sysem does not work.
  2. real account:I do 100 trades in a real account and see that I lost 75% of my real capital as my sysem does not work.
You will probably say that I missed big profits if the trades would have been profitable. Correct, but I am 100% sure that I lose 0% in my simaccount and at least have some idea about my "genial" system's performance. I will be a millionaire too but only a bit later because I did first sim. If things go wrong you will be broke and I lost nothing.

I would check losing trades to understand why I lost, and I would check trades where I only took a small part of the potential profits to see if I can improve that. After making adjustments the whole proces starts over again with testing from scratch.
 
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schweiz said:
100% correct.


100% wrong.

I will give a very simple example: I want to start trading with 2 MA's crossing. I have 2 options:
  1. sim account:I do 100 trades in a sim account and see that I lost 75% of my sim capital as my sysem does not work.
  2. real account:I do 100 trades in a real account and see that I lost 75% of my real capital as my sysem does not work.
You will probably say that I missed big profits if the trdaes would ahve been profitable. Correct, but I am 100% that I lose 0% in my simaccount and at leats ha
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there is a big difference between back testing and learning what is required in order to trade effectively..for example..in order to daytrade effectively one will require a few monitors..why. simple..practice soon reveals that one monitor is insufficient to enable effective trading..this is not simulated trading..this is getting your setups "correct" before you can even trade

once your setups are correct and you fully understand them..then..paper trading..or not risking your money..is really of no use..as your emotions will not be the same..anyone who has traded knows this..common sense

if you need to "practice" trading to improve your knowledge or dexterity..then that can be worthwhile..but to think that simulated results can be replicated with real money..well..that really is silly willy stuff!!
 
sillyw10 said:
there is a big difference between back testing and learning what is required in order to trade effectively..for example..in order to daytrade effectively one will require a few monitors..why. simple..practice soon reveals that one monitor is insufficient to enable effective trading..this is not simulated trading..this is getting your setups "correct" before you can even trade
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I daytrade since the 1990's. I started with only 1monitor. Today I trade with 1 monitor and my laptop (or sometimes my desktop). I don't need more monitors.

sillyw10 said:
once your setups are correct and you fully understand them..then..paper trading..or not risking your money..is really of no use..as your emotions will not be the same..anyone who has traded knows this..common sense
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First step is to build a system and test it. No need to do that in real trading. In fact you cannot do that in real trading as you have no system when you start and you need historical data to make your first charts (which means sim).

Next step is to go live, at least if you have sufficient prove the system works well theoretically.

Thanks to your backtesting and/or simulations you took away a big part of the financial risk. Of course real trading is not the same as sim, but in real trading you have a huge additional risk: you have no clue if your system will be profitable (read:you have no clue about the losses you can catch). That's the typical attitude of the self-overestimating newbie who thinks he is much better/smarter than all other traders.
The argument that real trading is different is no valid reason to take huge EXTRA risks by skipping sim and just go blindly in real trading without having any clue where you will/can end.

Do sim and understand that real trading is not the same, but have at least some basic information about your trading system before going live.
Or just say: hey, I am much smarter and better than all these losers, let's quickly get rich! We will see what will happen as I have no clue.

Sim is never like real. But why do people then first learn to drive, learn to do surgery, learn to fly a plane? Are all these people idiots? Should we not close all schools than and just start to work in the job we like without any education (sim is education). The world would become a real mess. I hope I would never have to go to a surgeon that is doing his first operation on me.

sillyw10 said:
if you need to "practice" trading to improve your knowledge or dexterity..then that can be worthwhile..but to think that simulated results can be replicated with real money..well..that really is silly willy stuff!!
More...

So in fact you agree that sim trading makes sense.
 
schweiz said:
I daytrade since the 1990's. I started with only 1monitor. Today I trade with 1 monitor and my laptop (or sometimes my desktop). I don't need more monitors.



First step is to build a system and test it. No need to do that in real trading. In fact you cannot do that in real trading as you have no system when you start and you need historical data to make your first charts (which means sim).

Next step is to go live, at least if you have sufficient prove the system works well theoretically.

Thanks to your backtesting and/or simulations you took away a big part of the financial risk. Of course real trading is not the same as sim, but in real trading you have a huge additional risk: you have no clue if your system will be profitable (read:you have no clue about the losses you can catch). That's the typical attitude of the self-overestimating newbie who thinks he is much better/smarter than all other traders.
The argument that real trading is different is no valid reason to take huge EXTRA risks by skipping sim and just go blindly in real trading without having any clue where you will/can end.

Do sim and understand that real trading is not the same, but have at least some basic information about your trading system before going live.
Or just say: hey, I am much smarter and better than all these losers, let's quickly get rich! We will see what will happen as I have no clue.

Sim is never like real. But why do people then first learn to drive, learn to do surgery, learn to fly a plane? Are all these people idiots? Should we not close all schools than and just start to work in the job we like without any education (sim is education). The world would become a real mess. I hope I would never have to go to a surgeon that is doing his first operation on me.



So in fact you agree that sim trading makes sense.
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yes..it makes perfect sense to learn about your software platform..it's advantages and disadvantages..it also allows you to hone your chart reading skills with DOM for daytrading..but..as we seem to agree..only fools think they can achieve the same results live as they did with paper trading..will never happen..due to the emotional side of trading..which..CAN..be the biggest obstacle to making money trading
 
Reviewing trades has to have a purpose, and that purpose therefore tells you what to record in your log.

Some of the conclusions I want to draw from my own trade reviews include assessments of -
entry pattern
rules for determination of initial SL
trailed SL rules (if any)
TP position rules (if any)
pyramid trade rules (if any)

In order to make the job manageable I set out fixed rules for a strategy and give it a title or code, with a sub-code for variations like SL's etc.. Then its easy in 6 months' time to see the win rate of all my various types of trades, and the effects of changing the treatment of the initial SL, TP etc.

You have to know what you've done in order to do it better.
 
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