Quote from SethArb:
my input on what you wrote ...
A: For ES mini Spoos 2 points = 8 ticks not 4
B: the odds of you not having been stopped out
2 X in a row at 2 points ( handles ) in 10 yrs
of trading e mini Spoos is almost impossible.
-My stops are at 2 points (4 ticks). But most of the time when i lose i get out before the stops have been reached. Until now i never had to take 2 consecutive losses of 2 points.-
The most important thing is not making money but NOT LOSING money.
The first thing i do is preserve my capital. So i do not accept losses. As trendfollower i have statistical prove that more than 90 % of my signals are never stopped out because they almost never go 2 points wrong. This is simply to explain: i take entries at extreme moves against the trend. So i wait until i get a situation were the quotes are way to far in the direction opposite to the trend. At that point 2 points is enough to not get stopped out. If i hesitate i get immediately out, sometimes to fast, which means that i miss a profit. But if i can get in all the time for free ( because i don't accept losses), i can try many more times than most traders.
The best thing that ever happened to me was when i wiped out a 50 000 $ account when i started trading. I changed my strategy from trying to make big money into trying to avoid losses. If than you're a trendfollower profits will come automatically because you are always in the direction of the trend. If i get stopped out at 2 points the first thing to do is take back 1 or 2 points with the minimum on risk. This means that at that moment i don't trade my system from buysignal to sellsignal. The only thing that matters than is getting back the 2 points.
The expert that asked me how many ticks there are in 1 point (4 ticks or 0.25, if i wrote something else than it was a mistake) should know the answer himself, especially if he sells an "expertsystem".
I don't sell anything, and if you don't' believe what i say, no problem. Everybody is free to do what he wants with the information that can be gathered. Some throw it away, some study it and some say that per definition it is impossible. I don't care.
I clearly said that i started trading the S&P in 1995. At that time it was at 500$ a point. I traded than at a margin that can be compared with 2000$ per Emini. So at that time my drawdown was always smaller than 8 points, not 4. But i remember that after the Eminis started trading i could switch to a 2 points stop and 4 points drawdown. I don't know the exact date anymore, but it was several years ago (i think before 2000).
May I send you e-mail?