Grinding it out, day after day

Quote from shortie:

if you have an open mind you can learn from the way he makes money and from the way he loses money. to me it is actually more interesting to talk about things that went wrong and if/how they could have been prevented because things do go wrong in trading. had lescor only reported on his successes it would have been a boring journal and not as educational.
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What way did you learn? <b>That he continues to trade after losing?</b> Thats part of the business man.
Seriously think about it, you didn't learn anything.

Its just more relateable because he's losing, and you think "I'm losing" as well, Its OK, if LESCOR lost $80k , Its fine for me. Wrong mindset, this way you will never step out of the sheep mindset.
 
Quote from coolweb:

I've noticed a lot of traders or should I say losing traders, trying to "relate" to lescor's loss.

Its not something that you should try to relate, or even feel remotely wowed by, Its something you want to avoid as far as possible. Fat finger mistakes that is.

Relate to how he wins his trades, not how he loses his trades, Thats the only way your trade can improve. Problem is, lescor trades very systematic, so theres a very low possibility you can even relate to his trades. Everything is calculated beforehand. He's just executing what his percentages tell him whats a better trade.

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equivalent to losers relating to rocky when he takes 300 punches to the face, You want to relate how he WINS, thats only way you can learn how to WIN. Not how many punches you take to the face.
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Did you notice the comment lescor made about how he analyzes his system after a mishap? He gets smaller on position size until a recovery is evident or not. A key point.
 
Quote from coolweb:

What way did you learn? <b>That he continues to trade after losing?</b> Thats part of the business man.
Seriously think about it, you didn't learn anything.

Its just more relateable because he's losing, and you think "I'm losing" as well, Its OK, if LESCOR lost $80k , Its fine for me. Wrong mindset, this way you will never step out of the sheep mindset.
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actually, this is not what i learned. what i learned is that an undisputed expert on openings who does them every day for ~6-8 years has maybe one day/year when he gets filled >10X extra orders due to some or other sort of mistake.

i do openings myself and i tell myself: "if this happened to lescor it will likely happen to me eventually". the next thing i tell myself: "try to understand what went wrong with lescor's setup and see if it may happen to me and if it can be prevented". next thing i tell myself: "if despite my efforts i do get hit with 10X orders, could i run a few scenarios in my head NOW to be able to deal with it better if/when it does happen".

it is not about relating to losing, it is about learning and hopefully improving your own trading.
 
Quote from ytr30:

Can you break it down by the individual strategies you are currently trading without naming them.
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90% of my gains this week came from one strategy. Another one accounted for 20% and the rest were flat or down a few percent.

Quote from Gabfly1:

Impressive week, lescor. How many trades per day did you average this week, ballpark? Also, you noted that you're risking $500 per trade on your swing trading approach. Can you put an approximate dollar figure on the risk you undertake for your other types of trades? Just curious.
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I don't keep track of trades per day, but it was busier than average. I'd estimate 40 to 50.

My swing strategy is the only one that I actually use hard stops on and calculate risk ahead of time. The others I will stop out based on time or my subjective read of the trade and the market. My $ risk is unknown at the time of entry. Some strategies the average loser is very small with the occasional whopper. Others the average loser is over $500, but it varies widely. Since this is a new strategy I picked a number that let me trade enough size that I could scale my positions the way I like, but small enough that I could endure quite a few loses as I refine things. I would anticipate risking about double that amount after a couple months, assuming the strategy is performing as I hope.

Regarding the subject of fat fingers, or more accurately, avoidable operator error, if you trade long enough you will experience it. Every trader starting out experiences it to some degree. Have you ever hit the buy key instead of sell? Accidentally keyed in an extra zero on your order size? Try to enter a stop order and mistakenly send a limit and get executed right away? Every trader makes these mistakes and they will almost always cost you money. But as your size and frequency increases, errors carry a bigger and bigger risk. So it's a good idea to think about scenarios ahead of time and have a game plan to deal with it. This all becomes much more important if you use any kind of automation in your trading, there are just so many things that can go wrong, many of them instantly. It should be a part of any well written trading plan. If you are a newer trader, you have a written plan, right?
 
I've been trading the opening for awhile and am diligent in removing news and other stocks in the same sector if I feel the news is important enough...earnings..upgrades etc......

Oddly i've been tracking over the earning season and I have found if i don't remove any stocks due to news I would have performed better. A lot more fills and fills with far higher envelopes occur but on the whole they have made up for the "bad stocks"

this led me to test other markets such as Europe and asian markets...since i can read japanese...no need to remove stocks.....strategy has stood up with about a months worth of data.

you think this is an anomoly or is there something there? have you tested new york without removing news?
 
Lescor,

Not counting your fat finger day, what % of your profits come from OPG? What % of your profits in 2009 was from OPG?

Achinnes
 
There's a lot of variance in "news". It covers a wide spectrum from earnings, upgrades, lawsuits, other people's opinions, etc. There is a lot of subjectivity on how to handle it. My experience is that it does tend to go in cycles from working trading news to not working. But that's just based on how I trade it, and everyone's experiences will be different.

Opg's are probably about 20% of my take, on average.
 
Quote from dumguy45: you think this is an anomoly or is there something there?
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I remember someone who shorted BUD or Inbev on the OPG and the stock shut up 10 or 20$ in seconds or minutes. This was 2 years ago or something. There was an article in the wall street journal about a potential buyout. So you can consider this as a worst case scenario that wont happen in your one month forward test but may happen over time. This is way over 4 standard deviations from you OPG PnL distribution. IMO you may need hard stops. (sorry about the innacuracy of the details, I can't find the post)
 
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