i have a solid system. i'm looking for help - collaboration to trade it.

[rtw]

Math PHDs and physicists that are coders are your competition. Are you even making an attempt to compete?

i have developed hundreds of strategies. i have backtested all of them to be able to tell what works and what doesn't. retail traders have a good chance to make good money with rather simple strategies on high enough time frames. as long as prices continue to be bought higher and sold lower in continued trends in the same way they have been for the last 50 years these systems will continue to work.

i'm a trained econometrist and statistician myself, i can tell you that your fear of the bogey phds is unfounded. some of them go on to develop winning systems but a lot of them never do.

 

[rtw]

I would colaborate / use / sell your system if I could run tests to make sure you have an edge and manage your risk. But the "discretionary adjustments" part rules this out.

Then again I've tested other guys strategies and found them to be no more than coin toss gambles. Excellent system if on somebody else's money where you share the wins and only they cover the losses.

i have previously exchanged messages with Aquarians, he's a cool guy. i will send him an email with further information about the system i have in mind. he does know how long options are priced and how risk is perfectly defined in that kind of positions, so that shouldn't be an issue.

the discretionary adjustments are simply position management and not letting a favorable position give back too much profit after a big gap in one's favor is reversing strongly. it would be no problem to just disregard them.

 

[rtw]

It is unclear how you backtest your system. If you cant automate it how do you backtest it? When you are backtesting how do you know what fill you are getting?

i can't backtest the systems in positions in options, but it is possible to backtest how the systems would have performed if trading equities and then just make an approximation of the resulting value of options.

 

[CHolmes]

I am attaching my CL trades from the U contract. I (cherry)picked this month as it represents what I am saying. Z and X have > 50% win rate and don't support my statement well. V was more 50/50 but profitability was also closer to 0 (+47 ticks for the contract). This is trading.

Regarding the U contract trades. The win rate is 34%. The loss rate is lower than the win rate. As I mentioned, the V contract was 50/50 (38.5% win and loss with the rest scratched). If you look closely at the PL of the individual trades you will find that 3 outliers made over 100% of the profit for the contract, the rest of the trades combined were a net loss. Again, this is how trading actually works. Not every month mind you and not for every period of measurement, but often is works like this. The average return versus risk is just .29 (includes scratched trades, because there was risk on with these trades also). Excluding scratches the average return versus risk is still only .54. So, using this higher number, I made $3,370 per contract traded with a 34% win rate and an RR per trade of either .54 or .29 depending on whether scratched trades are included (they should be).

Many new and unprofitable traders gravitate to high win rate "systems" or strategies. This is because it feels better to win more often. Invariably people try to use a high win rate strategy with a tight stop loss. In my experience this cannot work, except maybe in an institutional HFT algo, co-located server type situation. Maybe there are rare exceptions, but I'd think they are VERY rare. High win rate will generally mean low profit targets and high stop losses, so losers will be big and hurt. There's no free lunch in the markets, there is a trade off for everything you choose to do and how you design your strategy. That is reality.

 

[JSOP]

This is not true. Many profitable systems win less than 50% of the time. That does not make them a coin flip. Win percent is only 1 part of the equation. You also must include RR ratio. A system that wins 50% of the time will make money if the winners are 2x the value of the losers. You win 2R and lose 1R and win 50% of the time...this is a profitable system.

A much better critique would be with the sample size. 20 trades is nothing. I can show you a block of 20 of my trades where there were 0 losers. I could peddle this in the same way...anyone could. It's just cherry picking a favorable trading period. The reality is that hundreds of trades are needed (at least) to make the sample size potentially relevant. Give me a sample size of 2,000 trades and then we can talk.

I said specifically "Just from the sample trades that your profitable and robust trading system has generated", I was just looking at the quality of his trading system as how he presented it, wasn't really "critiquing". And honestly at this point, I don't really need to look at a larger sample size yet to "critique" yet. If he can't even demonstrate a high win rate or win amount even just with 20 or 30 trades, why would I need to see further? Waste of my time!! If he had demonstrated a high win rate, a consistent 100% win rate like you said then I might want to see how the system works with 2000 trades or over a longer period of time.

And for me, win rate of 50% is not what I consider a "profitable and robust" system. I am not going to lose 50% of the time even though that when I win I will win 2X as much just to trade. I could have a series of losses until I have hit a win and by the time I win, I have already blown up my account or ran out of money to invest. Won't help me that the next time I toss the coin I am going to win all my losses back. People value win rate for a reason because they have limited amount of funds. They need to accumulate enough funds to invest and they can't afford to keep losing. Yes it's true that win rate shouldn't be used as the only metric to evaluate the quality of a trading system but when it's too low it's not worth it.

 

[CHolmes]

I am not going to lose 50% of the time even though that when I win I will win 2X as much just to trade. I could have a series of losses until I have hit a win and by the time I win, I have already blown up my account or ran out of money to invest.

This is where risk management comes into play. You should know going into live trading what your worst case scenario is and trade accordingly. If your strategy has a 20% win rate and you risk 10% of your capital on each trade then you're a fool, and will be a broke fool very quickly. However, a 20% win rate will absolutely work if your winners are outsized and you risk say 1% of your capital.

"Profitable" and "robust" have nothing to do with win rate. You have a lot to learn...

 

[rtw]

if you're looking for someone to join your team of one, they're hiring you as much as you're hiring them. would you hire someone for a job that freely admits to struggling to show up on time?



all that aside, you seem pretty set in your mind that you've got a rock-solid trading system that you need someone else to execute for you because you can't be bothered to get up on time. As a mostly neutral third party almost every line in your post is a red flag that you're full of shit whether or not you realize it.

i'm looking for help - collaboration from strangers with a shared interest in trading, i chose to be open and honest about all the relevant factors in this case from the start. i am indeed a hard worker, i hold two university degrees, i speak 5 languages going on 6, i'm passionate about finance and have spent untold hours researching and developing trading systems. it's just that i have never been a morning person and lately i have been struggling mightily with this even when i have robust systems that just need to be executed properly. i have tried everything i could think of, i have tried taking melatonin, but still i haven't been able to solve this on my own. fortunately, the world is full of resources and reaching to third parties is one possibility that could work great.


i'm only thinking about win - win arrangements. there might be people out there who either have some trading capital but not a dependable system or who have no problem trading for all market hours or both. if we choose to go into a collaborative setup and they are making nice profits and are satisfied with everything they could choose to continue the partnership, if there's anything that was not to their liking they could stop at any time they want.


then again, there are other possible solutions i could take like hiring a person to sit in front of my computer and follow my systems or if it was possible to program automated strategies to reliably trade options that would be something magnificent as well.

 

[JSOP]

I am attaching my CL trades from the U contract. I (cherry)picked this month as it represents what I am saying. Z and X have > 50% win rate and don't support my statement well. V was more 50/50 but profitability was also closer to 0 (+47 ticks for the contract). This is trading.

Regarding the U contract trades. The win rate is 34%. The loss rate is lower than the win rate. As I mentioned, the V contract was 50/50 (38.5% win and loss with the rest scratched). If you look closely at the PL of the individual trades you will find that 3 outliers made over 100% of the profit for the contract, the rest of the trades combined were a net loss. Again, this is how trading actually works. Not every month mind you and not for every period of measurement, but often is works like this. The average return versus risk is just .29 (includes scratched trades, because there was risk on with these trades also). Excluding scratches the average return versus risk is still only .54. So, using this higher number, I made $3,370 per contract traded with a 34% win rate and an RR per trade of either .54 or .29 depending on whether scratched trades are included (they should be).

Many new and unprofitable traders gravitate to high win rate "systems" or strategies. This is because it feels better to win more often. Invariably people try to use a high win rate strategy with a tight stop loss. In my experience this cannot work, except maybe in an institutional HFT algo, co-located server type situation. Maybe there are rare exceptions, but I'd think they are VERY rare. High win rate will generally mean low profit targets and high stop losses, so losers will be big and hurt. There's no free lunch in the markets, there is a trade off for everything you choose to do and how you design your strategy. That is reality.

That's WAY too low for me. It's great it's working out for you but I won't be able to trade that. To lose 35% of the time just to hope the next one is a home run?

 

[rtw]

That's WAY too low for me. It's great it's working out for you but I won't be able to trade that. To lose 35% of the time just to hope the next one is a home run?

you have been shown a couple of actionable, profitable, credible trading systems and couldn't be bothered to approve of any of them.

let's see your superior, unbeatable systems then. show us better results on the qqq for the weeks i sampled or stop wasting everybody's time. show us your systems with high winning rates, high returns and high profitability or stop wasting our time.

 

[CHolmes]

That's WAY too low for me. It's great it's working out for you but I won't be able to trade that. To lose 35% of the time just to hope the next one is a home run?

Psychologically that is too low for many people to deal with. Mind you I did cherry pick that contract to illustrate my example. Over time the win rate has been close to 50%.

And there is no hope involved. I backtested over 1,000 trades before I sim traded, and did that profitably before I live traded. I knew the math well before hand. I have periods where my draw down is over $1,000 per contract. I know this will happen because it has happened. I also know that I just keep following my plan and at some point the math will turn around. I know this will happen because it has and does.

If you trade based on hope you can be sure that you will lose your money to those that know.