Pair Trading Strategy Journal

[samueldoernte]

Quote from knocks420:

Interesting. I too am sticking with intraday trading reversion but I will keep overnight and possibly add to positions if it aligns on a longer timeframe.

It seems that you convert your pair into a directional/dispersion trade should the market start making a move? I think I understand, if you'll humor me:

Say your short XYZ/long ABC, you see the market breaking out, will you add to ABC OR perhaps cover XYZ and re-short at a higher price? Or some other combination? Thanks in advance.

Correct, however i usually like to add to the position rather than take off a position since i am probably in the position at a good spread price, I'd rather not jeopardize that good position by taking one side off in case im wrong. This strategy only works well when your spread is far enough out that you feel comfortable adding to your position.

 

[yobo]

Couldn't resist this pair trade...

Long MOS 40.94
Short MON 80.58

MOS is taking it on the chin. I'm a little bit early on the trade, but we'll see.

 

[knocks420]

Quote from samueldoernte:

Correct, however i usually like to add to the position rather than take off a position since i am probably in the position at a good spread price, I'd rather not jeopardize that good position by taking one side off in case im wrong. This strategy only works well when your spread is far enough out that you feel comfortable adding to your position.

Nice, how did you make it today?

Today I had even worse day then yesterday although nothing catastrophic! The unrealized losses are slightly heavier today, the longer term spreads continued slightly wider much to my chagrin. I looked back and made some changes to my indicators - to be more conservative. I would assume that this will cost me if my thesis is right and we get a little more 'normalcy' in spreads next week after the decision however I would rather be patient.

 

[jonnysharp]

Opened one new trade today;

Long CE @ 22.87
Short APD @ 64.04

 

[jonnysharp]

Quote from mousejockey:

johnnysharp,

Thanks for the journal, and best wishes for continued success! I am currently paper trading the signals from Pairtrade Finder, and I wonder if I could bother you for some software details. Have you changed any of the default Preferences settings in the software? Specifically, I'm wondering if you have changed the correlation and standard deviation lookback settings from their default of 100 days? The reason I ask is that I am not getting some of the signals you have posted, although I seem to be looking at some of the same pairs. One more: What criteria did you use when you were deciding what symbols to enter into the system in the beginning? Thanks in advance for any suggestions you might have.

mousejockey

Yes I have changed the settings for how the signals are generated. Ive tweaked around with them and backtested different settings and for my trading I came up with the following parameters;

Correlation lookback 100
Stdev lookback 20
RSI lookback 20
Ratio lookback 14
Stretch lookback 14
Pair Stretch 2.00

I setup different stock groups for different sectors using the yahoo finance stock screener, i added all stocks above 5billion market capitilisation into each group and then ran backtest's in pairtrade finder to find highly correlated pairs, I then added all pairs with avg correlation above 70% to my watchlists. They recently updated the program with the ability to add stocks from 53 international exchanges, so I'm thinking of trading LSE stocks aswell for some diversification although I'm looking into NYSE small caps atm.

regards.

 

[yobo]

Quote from yobo:

Couldn't resist this pair trade...

Long MOS 40.94
Short MON 80.58

MOS is taking it on the chin. I'm a little bit early on the trade, but we'll see.

Talk about having to scramble on this pair. Was underwater for most of the day. The pair at one point was profitable for about 5 minutes. When the Bill was passed MOS started to turn south. Luckily I had a stop put in on that half as it was the profitable half and got out at 41.85.

I then doubled down on MON at 87.60 and scalped it twice. Made a sweet sum, but it was too much work.

I just wanted to post the experience as it has become common practice on many pairs of mine to have to work a little bit harder intraday to make money.

Anyone else experiencing the same thing?

 

[jonnysharp]

yobo, I think everyone is feeling a little pinch from the un-precented turmoil currently present in all markets, however just like a good pair though things will return to normal and make us some money on the way, we just have to ride out the storm. Like the joker said in the dark knight ''the night is always the darkest just before dawn''

Just closed my best pair trade today for good profits;

Sold OMC @ 35.96
Covered TV @ 19.36

Opened one new trade today;

Long ALTR @ 18.84
Short XLNX @ 22.02

One thing I'm starting to notice is that the bad trades are when you trade against the ratio trend. In my attachment you will see the ratio chart in the top left hand corner of the charts, I think I want to always trade in the overall direction of that chart unless its ranging then I want to buy support and sell resistance. That way I'm always long the technically strongest stock and short the technically weakest stock.

 

[Trvlwanderer]

Sorry, I haven't read all 6 pages yet....

Why is there not a software review of the "pairtradefinder" as talked about in this thread?

Site looks decent and I will take a look at the free trial, but I'm surprised at no reviews...unless I missed it.

Thanks.

 

[jonnysharp]

Quote from Trvlwanderer:

Sorry, I haven't read all 6 pages yet....

Why is there not a software review of the "pairtradefinder" as talked about in this thread?

Site looks decent and I will take a look at the free trial, but I'm surprised at no reviews...unless I missed it.

Thanks.

Do you mean a review in this thread or a review in the software section of elitetrader?

 

[Trvlwanderer]

Quote from jonnysharp:

Do you mean a review in this thread or a review in the software section of elitetrader?

Hey, thanks for the response. I just finished the entire thread....so a review in ET software reviews. I checked the web name and the licensing name..... Thanks.