Naif's Trading

Watching the system shoot into greater profits after I exit the trade does tempt me at times to follow it more aggressively but I will stay steady. As for slippage, my entries and exits already take into account slippage. The entries and exits are not valid unless the price is exceeded by one tick. For example, a short trade entry price of 720.20 on the ER2 would not be considered valid unless the price hit at least 720.30. The same thing goes for the profit targets and so forth. The only point where I think slippage may be a problem is my stop losses since those will most likely not get filled at the exact stop price. I am currently working on patching up this hole.

The problem I have now is getting more intraday data for eSignal. They only have 120 days worth of intraday data and I can't seem to find a place that provides more data. I will call them tomorrow to find out if they have anything. If not, I might switch over to Tradestation which has more data. The only downside is I have to learn the new programming language and recode the whole thing but I'd say its worth it if the data is significantly greater in terms of how far it goes back compared to eSignal.

If anyone knows of any sources to get more intraday data for eSignal, it would be greatly appreciated if you let me know.
 
Had a bad day today. I tried to expirement with my trade settings and I messed up the coding on my strategy which resulted in a trade showing up that shouldn't have. Cost me about 2.5 points in loss. I feel horrible because it wasn't even a due to the strategy not working, it was because I made an error in the code. I am very, very thorough when it comes to my work but I am going to get even more strict after this.

I took away the upgrades I made to the system recently which doubled my monthly profits. Although the backtest results showed that it was safe, after further thought I feel that the upgraded system had too many weakpoints which would ultimately result in a lower accuracy rate. I will be working to fix this but until than, I will be trading the system as it was before I upgraded it this past weekend.

As it turns out, I cannot get further data for eSignal so I will likely transferring to Tradestation soon to improve my research capabilities.

In other news, trading has been sort of driving me nuts - even with a system that is over 95% accurate thusfar. My account size is so small that I am more or less always 3 to 4 trades away from devastation. This not the proper way to trade and I feel that I should increase my account size before resuming trading. After some further testing if my system is still holding up this well, I might consider selling it until I build up my account to the point where a few losses can no longer scare me. Since this is a system that has actually been working well, it is something that I want to keep for myself but I guess if needbe, selling it might prove to be a more logical option given my circumstances.
 
Test it in real-time with a real account and watch your system not perform near what the back-tests are.
It is very easy to wrongly write your code and the performance come out looking peachy.
 
I do trade it real time with a real account and I have been getting almost exactly the same results as the backtest results indicate that it should. I say almost exactly because I exit early to scale down my profits since this system is still being tested. However, even after I exit my trade the system has been getting its intended profit target or ending in profit if the trading day ends before the profit target has not been reached. The code has been tested and all the entries and exits are possible so their is no problem with that. As I have stated before, the only thing the system is not coded to automatically do is when I get stopped out, it should add a slippage factor of 2-3 ticks since it is not a limit order. This is something I will be adding this week. Other than that, the code is stable.
 
Keep up with the development. You could also try to get some capital from others so you are not on the brink of closing out on every trade. Just keep up with the performance and backtesting and when you finally do have the proper capital to trade it you will be light years ahead. You should also switch to TS as well, its great for backtesting and historical data.
 
Interesting day today. ESZ is up by about 4.25 points. Had two trades, one of them with 4.5 profit and exited the second one wearly with a .25 loss since it was the endof the day and the FOMC report was screwing up the market. ER2 lost 1.8 points due to the FOMC driving the market down towards the end. Overall, the system still ended the day with good profit. I took 2 of the 3 trades and exited early on both leaving me with profit as well.

Although this system is doing good so far, I am going to start developing a new system today. I am creating it using a shorter time frame so each trade stays in the market for less amount of time and also to increase the quantity of trades. I am looking for about 4 trades a day and right now I am at about 1 trade every 2-3 days.

I am expecting the new system to far surpass this one in profit generated and the accuracy should be above 85%. I will still be trading this system until the new one is complete.
 
Up by another 2.25 points today on the S&P. The new ER2 system is coming along fairly well, already at $4,000.00 after 2 days of development but I want to get it to around $20,000. In other news, my limited account size is really proving to be a barrier for me right now. As I see it, I have three options:

A) Keep trading the system and develop my account at a gruelingly slow pace (risky since I can hardly tolerate loss given the size of my account)

B) Sell the system to multiple clients for a monthly fee

C) Take on an investor

Choice A is not really a safe option at the moment so it is between options B and C. I have already had several people already make serious offers to invest in the system so that is a possibility. I have also devised an effective way to be able to send my trading signals to a web site automatically in real-time so I can sell the system like that as well. It is something I will have to decide upon soon.

In the meantime, I will now be posting my trades in real-time on this message board. Naturally, I have to take the trade first so there will be a delay between the time when my system gives the trade and when it is posted. I will be posting the time the trade was taken, the entry price, the stop loss price, and the profit target price. My signal also gives risk exits meaning it tells me to exit if a significant chance of a trade failure is detected. For this reason, I may sometimes have to exit before the profit target is reached. I will be posting these risk exits as well. Please note that since this system is still under development, I do scale down my profit targets for any trades that I actually do take in real life with real money.

Just to make something clear:

I am not recommending that anyone take these trades. I am merely posting my trades so others can keep track of what I am doing. Once again, the trades that I will be posting are merely for record keeping purposes and are not intended as trading advice. I cannot emphasize that enough. Any losses that you may suffer as a result of what is being posted in this thread is not my fault.

Sorry for going all lawyer mode on you guys. I just wanted to make sure I was legally covered. I am very paranoid when it comes to things like this. Anyway, now that I have that out of the way, let's continue..

I am not trading everyday since I do have class to goto (still in college) so I will not always be able to post the entries. Also, if I choose to take on an investor or I start selling the system, I will have to stop posting my trades in real time and will only record my gains or losses for the day or week. I hope that you can all understand why I would have to do this.
 
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