Home made. Long story, I wrote over 90 automated systems in the last six years, many had a limited success rate or life span. Most of them didn't actually work at all, so they never made it to live trading. This one has been in production for a couple years now and doesn't show many signs of decay yet.
Half way through life and not close to being consistent
- Thread starter gamblingman
- Start date
Home made. Long story, I wrote over 90 automated systems in the last six years, many had a limited success rate or life span. Most of them didn't actually work at all, so they never made it to live trading. This one has been in production for a couple years now and doesn't show many signs of decay yet.
Maybe you are looking at things in the wrong way? How does your system generate an entry on 4 hour bars?
The automated system does ok, it's up for the year.
My struggle is with my discretionary trades and risk management around it. Based on the thread feedback so far I trade way too big for not being able to recognize the trend which is true.
I sell straddles or buy diagonals/ based on standard deviations/volatility and historical averages.
For example, in 2011 I was fairly neutral short straddles. Think of this as a neutral starting point. I kept selling straddles and in 2012 we've had a run up in SPX so by October I was fairly short due to the delta changes in my straddles. At that time the SPX was also up over 13% (guesstimate) for the year which is fairly high but volatility was low. Based on that I started buying bearish diagonals and increased my short position. This was done many more times in 2013 where volatility was low throughout the year (rarely crossed 20). I kept rolling my losers out to the following expiration for the straddles or re-established the diagonals. Eventually the options were to hard to fill so I replaced the deep in the money ones with futures. That's how I ended up with the mess I'm in now.
I use a very similar strategy but in 2013 but when I got too negative rather than keep fighting simply bought long call verts..OTM long call fly's short term on the weeklys while rolling the monthly short calls and banking the short puts, absolute key when playing this game is just don't get too short thinking next week the market will reverse if your selling straddles/strangles you HAVE to manage the delta's, or gamma scalp. when all else fails just take a break from trading.....thats my plan this week!
I use a very similar strategy but in 2013 but when I got too negative rather than keep fighting simply bought long call verts..OTM long call fly's short term on the weeklys while rolling the monthly short calls and banking the short puts, absolute key when playing this game is just don't get too short thinking next week the market will reverse if your selling straddles/strangles you HAVE to manage the delta's, or gamma scalp. when all else fails just take a break from trading.....thats my plan this week!
Fully agree, working on it
how come?
Its not for you, why have you chosen to trade like this?