Fully automated futures trading

[itb]

I guess it's mainly psychological. The other psychological effect is that I look at my trading p&l every day. If I were to put my entire capital into my trading account then the daily numbers would be very high absolute amounts of money (even if I was to run at say half the vol target); amounts I'd feel uncomfortable seeing if they had a minus sign in front of it.

GAT

Anyways, back the to question. Assume you have 200K to invest, systematic trading has higher SR, and you decide to put 100% of risk in systematic trading, targeting 30% ann. stdev. Let`s also assume the cash required for margin is 60% of your portfolio, which stays with the broker, and thus you have 80K in your bank account earmarked for trading. Is there something wrong or impractical with withdrawing certain amount every month from that 80K left in the bank account as a source of income?

Hey @globalarbtrader, do you see anything wrong with my plan? Thanks

 

[Napoleon@Dynamite]

If you lever 4- 5× notionally, necessary to force 30% vol out of quiet markets, you'll eventually be crippled by a sharp, unrecoverable drawdown.

Interesting point. How do you think a max volatility threshold should be determined?

 

[globalarbtrader]

So, it is impossible to implement the ewmac rule without having carry data?

Is there a place where I can learn how to "build" the carry data file?

Is there a way to only backtest FX assets that don´t have carry data?

As a pedantic point even FX has carry. If you're trading forwards or futures it's obvious; if you're trading spot then it's the daily net interest.

GAT

 

[globalarbtrader]

Hey @globalarbtrader, do you see anything wrong with my plan? Thanks

It was me, apologies, I didn`t receive any confirmation on the blog post, so I wasn`t sure the post worked.

Anyways, back the to question. Assume you have 200K to invest, systematic trading has higher SR, and you decide to put 100% of risk in systematic trading, targeting 30% ann. stdev. Let`s also assume the cash required for margin is 60% of your portfolio, which stays with the broker, and thus you have 80K in your bank account earmarked for trading. Is there something wrong or impractical with withdrawing certain amount every month from that 80K left in the bank account as a source of income?

Ignoring the issue of whether the annual vol target is too high;

The first issue is that 80K isn't going to generate much 'income'. I guess you could put it into money market funds and earn 1.5%, i.e. $1,200 a year. I have a mortgage, five kids and a cat to feed and I need more like a 100 grand. So this works fine if you have nearly 7 million bucks spare.

Alternatively you can take capital risk on your 'income' producing asset and with an unleveraged mixture of stocks and bonds probably make 4%. I'd 'only' need 2.5 million to make this work [and in fact this is obviously pretty close to what I do].

The final problem is that your 'income' is going to be correlated to your trading performance. Let's say you lose 30% of your notional (not unlikely given a 30% vol target at some point). At that point your margin requirement is 60%*140K = 84K and you have 140K - 84K = 56K left in the bank. So now your 'income' producing asset has fallen by 30%. I don't know about you but I can't cut 30% of my income that much.

The other problem is that of the 60K we have lost we've had to cough up 40% of that from our 'income'. If we've taken capital risk with our 'income', and that's also done badly, we're screwed.

What you can't do is say assume you can draw down that 80K, perhaps over a couple of years if you need 40K a year, in the event of a drawdown.


GAT

 

[truetype]

Interesting point. How do you think a max volatility threshold should be determined?

Have you ever traded before? For a long-term strategy such as trend, your positions should be sized such that (1) you sleep soundly at night (2) you don't feel compelled to screenwatch during the day (3) [along the lines of GAT's comments] your lifestyle won't be impacted by a 1- 2 Sharpe drawdown.

 

[Napoleon@Dynamite]

Have you ever traded before? For a long-term strategy such as trend, your positions should be sized such that (1) you sleep soundly at night (2) you don't feel compelled to screenwatch during the day (3) [along the lines of GAT's comments] your lifestyle won't be impacted by a 1- 2 Sharpe drawdown.

I've been futures trend following for about 6 months at 30% volatility. I'm okay on your points 1 and 2, but can you clarify what is a "1-2 sharpe drawdown"? Thanks.

 

[truetype]

I've been futures trend following for about 6 months at 30% volatility. I'm okay on your points 1 and 2, but can you clarify what is a "1-2 sharpe drawdown"?

The past 6 months have been good for the trendies, fueled by the persistent equity rally. But the future -- who knows? Re: 1- 2 Sharpe, I mean a loss of 1- 2× your target vol (in your case, 30%) -- which can and will happen with a sub-1 Sharpe strategy such as trendfollowing. Even Cantab, widely considered a top-drawer London trendie, had a ~2 Sharpe drawdown in 2013.

 

[Napoleon@Dynamite]

The past 6 months have been good for the trendies, fueled by the persistent equity rally. But the future -- who knows? Re: 1- 2 Sharpe, I mean a loss of 1- 2× your target vol (in your case, 30%) -- which can and will happen with a sub-1 Sharpe strategy such as trendfollowing. Even Cantab, widely considered a top-drawer London trendie, had a ~2 Sharpe drawdown in 2013.

Thanks for the clarification. I feel that I could endure a 60% drawdown (or maybe I am deluding myself). In any case I could do worse just buying and holding the S&P500, right?

 

[truetype]

In any case I could do worse just buying and holding the S&P500, right?

Trendfollowing true-believers think their strategy is comparable to S&P in the long run, ½- ¾ Sharpe, so, yes, drawdowns would be comparable.

 

[Napoleon@Dynamite]

Trendfollowing true-believers think their strategy is comparable to S&P in the long run, ½- ¾ Sharpe, so, yes, drawdowns would be comparable.

So, if drawdowns are comparable to buy and hold, but upside is significantly higher (30% volatility times .8 sharpe means 24% average returns, versus about 10% for sp500), I think it seems like quite a good strategy.