First World Problems

your profit can be deceiving
track records of 4 months is not enough to measure someone's trading skill
and dont use it to calculate your annual returns

your i-can-double-my-account-every-year mindset is dangerous
be careful buddy
 
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Smart Money.
This is just MY o-p-i-n-i-o-n, O-N-E opinion, so do not take this personnally.

* first it is great you did not blow out. Very well done.

* Now generate less than 300$ with a 7k account: seriously? and how long did it take you: 4 months?
Now, you could shop around brokers, to get a 200% welcome bonus, thus getting your account to 21k.
That would get you to 1200$ in 4 months.
After 4 months, make sure you keep in regular "contacts" with the broker's people. And 4 months after,
just explain to them you are a VERY conservative trader, and would like to know if they could loan you
300% of the amount in your actual account. Thus bringing your account to around 80k.
If you are indeed very consistent, you're in for 4800$ profits every 4 months.
4 months after, start pestering them again because you are extremely CONSISTENT.
Just know that some brokers have very deep pockets. During the CHF drama, some retail brokers
lost 60million$, and they did not go bust. So if you are on the winning side : it is really up to you to ask them for more capital.
What brokers fear most is the people on hot "streaks" who out of nowhere blow up their accounts.

You talked about working the method over this decade: what have you done regarding the psychology?
 
Actually instead of wasting your time with under 100k accounts, why not check the prop shops.
If you bring in 7k, there is no reason you can't start with an account with at least 70k-150k.
Then, after proving to them your consistency, there is no reasons why they would not multiply it even
by 10 within one year.

What you have to understand, is that good traders are extremely rare commodities.
Then good traders with capital problems are even rarer.
And good traders with capital problems who can't "attract" the capital is very unusual.
In the first world, capital is not an issue.

May I ask also : the 300$ returns: what was the maximum "heat"? I am asking because
one trader once posted 140$ profits, with a heat of 4000$.
 
I know this is going to sound like whining or bragging, but it's not, and you guys are the best people to understand this.

I swing trade. I started doing it about 15 years ago. I'd do it with little or no leverage, and for years mostly broke even. It was like playing Blackjack, and it was entertaining. But once in a while I'd get burned on a trade pretty bad and drop out for a while. Sometimes even a year, but I kept coming back.

Over time, I got better and better at it. I spent a lot of time studying what was supposed to work in text books, learning what doesn't work (the hard way), and kept going. I got better at it. I kept trying to find a holy grail, but in the end, I realized that I was better off screening a bunch of stocks, and then selecting the one that fit the best based on liquidity, fundamentals etc. I'm trying to say that what I do might seem like it could be automated, but I do use enough discretion to say that experience plays a role in what I do.

Now meanwhile, I was invested heavily in real estate. And my family was growing, and my day job income wasn't keeping up. Over time, I had to spend more and more of my trading funds just to make ends meet. Now, by the Grace of God, my wife just got a real job, and we'll be able to fund that account and crawl out of a financial abyss. But meanwhile, I find myself in this situation (1.) I have less than $10K to trade with and (2.) I've gotten really good at trading. I've put together a track record over the last 4 months that solidly demonstrates I can double my trading account every year. IMHO, I feel my method is finally polished enough to where it is consistent.

But here's the thing. To the outside observer, it doesn't look like much. For example, since the beginning of the month I took my biggest account, and made $216 off of $7K. And I still have to contend with the T+3 bullsh-t. $216 doesn't sound like much, but I made it safely, and consistently, just like the last 4 months. Go through the math, and you either understand that this will double an account annually, or you don't. And I have to contend with T+3 trading rules and I can't even put in a conditional sell signal with my crappy broker because I'm trading in an IRA.

Now, I've written about the loneliness of success on this forum a couple of times. But I find as I get better, it gets worse. I've really got it figured out now. And I should be happy. I am happy in one way, but in another way, it's depressing. I feel like I have some really rare knowledge that I'm proud of, but I'm a long way from doing anything serious with it. I'm 50+ years old, and comfortable, but by the time I can prove anything, it will probably be too late. My dream is to work on Wall Street, running a fund, or assisting with it. I know I'd be good at it, but all I have is an outstanding blotter with an assortment of accounts totaling $10K. Dang it, I can make money easily now. But it's going to take forever to build anything big...even calculating doubling time. It's going to take forever to get recognition that would get me hired. Meanwhile, I make a really good wage in a job I find boring as hell in a different field.

I guess I'm just venting, but I feel like I have something wonderful, but it's too little too late and nobody close to home understands it. I've invented the lightbulb, and my friends are like, "why don't you just use a candle?" Does anyone out there understand what I mean? Don't flame me. I'm being very open here.

Here's is the problem, trading daily charts you need 15-20years of history, a generation. The mid-timeframes most are not too interested in these days except retail, too much push/pull from the higher and lower timeframes meaning negative return on time vs capital. The lower timeframes such as 10s and 1mn you are getting in to HFT but your track record can be months.

The issue is that most cannot process the amount of information quick enough at low timeframes to make rational decisions on the trade, part of the reason algos took over from floor traders. The advantage is intraday compounding leads to 300-500%+ returns per year in the short term.

Trading follows a simple method: -4σ summary (the entry); +/-0σ detail (the whipsaws); +4σ conclusion (the exit). The summary and conclusion should match, you have stops if they don't, but 95% of the effort is put in to the detail following the trade at -2σ to +2σ. It's exactly the same process as fishing, golf, et al.

You either need to find the extra capital from another source, or you need to lower your timeframes. Can put you in contact with some people who license institutional grade technology to eradicate the -2σ to +2σ, but you would need a compelling case as the access cost would be too high for you, otherwise you will need either time or capital to offset your situation.


fZWlJm2.gif
 
aren't paper accounts wonderful? That's the stuff dreams are made of.

I don't know...never tried one. I've always bought stocks outright, and the only leverage I ever take on is an occasional 2X ETF. It's like playing Blackjack. I can go to a casino and play for hours and not really make any progress. No need to papertrade in the game of Blackjack because the odds are almost dead even. But after playing Blackjack for more than a decade, I think I'd know when I had an edge....like if I went to a casino and they paid out triple on some types of hands (for example). I'd see the difference in the flow of money. For the last few months, I've been winning 3 out of 4...and the 1 out of 4 loss is minimized.
 
Actually instead of wasting your time with under 100k accounts, why not check the prop shops.
If you bring in 7k, there is no reason you can't start with an account with at least 70k-150k.
Then, after proving to them your consistency, there is no reasons why they would not multiply it even
by 10 within one year.

What you have to understand, is that good traders are extremely rare commodities.
Then good traders with capital problems are even rarer.
And good traders with capital problems who can't "attract" the capital is very unusual.
In the first world, capital is not an issue.

May I ask also : the 300$ returns: what was the maximum "heat"? I am asking because
one trader once posted 140$ profits, with a heat of 4000$.


Interesting advice. I can't take offense at any feedback if it is well intentioned...even if it is blunt. I don't know if there are any prop shops in this area, and my question is whether there are any that will let me trade on-line. I'm a swing trader, so the time spent trading is negiligible...I average maybe 1 trade a day. I'm ashamed to say I don't know what you mean "heat", but I'm guessing from your context that you mean the size of each position? I was mostly just working with one account that was $6600 3 months ago. I split the money into halves, and at any given time I would buy about $3300 worth of stock, hold it for 1 to 3 days, then sell it and wait 3 days until I could trade it again. I almost never use leverage. I turned that $6600 into $7200+ as of today (3 months and 7 days). So I guess I made an average of about 10% with each $3300 position after fees in 3 months. This month, I found a new secondary screening method which seems to make my trades much more accurate. It backtests well too. My backtest was to look at my losers over the past month or so, and run them through the secondary screening. The secondary screening catches all of them, but lets my winners work. I am not currently in any position right now, seems dangerous to be long right now.

Edit: Forgot to point out that my gains have been consistent. $30 here, $50 there, lose $20, make another $40, etc. If I didn't have to contend with the T+3 rule, I'd have made at least 20% in the last few months. No position was held very long and I didn't have one sky rocket, though I did stubbornly hold onto one position where I lost about $150 early on...then I implemented a new rule to protect myself from my own stupidity.
 
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Here's is the problem, trading daily charts you need 15-20years of history, a generation. The mid-timeframes most are not too interested in these days except retail, too much push/pull from the higher and lower timeframes meaning negative return on time vs capital. The lower timeframes such as 10s and 1mn you are getting in to HFT but your track record can be months.

The issue is that most cannot process the amount of information quick enough at low timeframes to make rational decisions on the trade, part of the reason algos took over from floor traders. The advantage is intraday compounding leads to 300-500%+ returns per year in the short term.

Trading follows a simple method: -4σ summary (the entry); +/-0σ detail (the whipsaws); +4σ conclusion (the exit). The summary and conclusion should match, you have stops if they don't, but 95% of the effort is put in to the detail following the trade at -2σ to +2σ. It's exactly the same process as fishing, golf, et al.

You either need to find the extra capital from another source, or you need to lower your timeframes. Can put you in contact with some people who license institutional grade technology to eradicate the -2σ to +2σ, but you would need a compelling case as the access cost would be too high for you, otherwise you will need either time or capital to offset your situation.


fZWlJm2.gif
Thanks. I understand bell curves. Doesn't seem like much of what you're posting here is relevant to me. I just make sure the percentage of winners times the number of wins exceeds the percentage of losers time the number of losses. Further, I'm not looking for a holy grail that works all of the time based on 20 years of past history. I am just using what works today. I'd argue that trading today is so different than it was 20 years ago that putting older data into any kind of holy grail number cruncher would make it less accurate. I just "tune" my method to fit the stock I'm working with and look at the last year of data or so.
 
Now it makes sense why you are stuck, fair enough.

he is not stuck, the man is just looking for someone to take the risk of the system that he thinks works

nothing special - regular, normal Wall Street approach

they have tons of people in Wall Street who are looking for OPM for their system that they thing work, at least for now...
 
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