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Jonny
Sorry I probably did get the point:
what has the ration chart to look like??
Thanks
GG
Pair Trading Strategy Journal
- Thread starter jonnysharp
- Start date
Jonny
Sorry I probably did get the point:
what has the ration chart to look like??
Thanks
GG
Yeah sure, here is a spreadsheet with all my trades exactly as entered in this journal. Profit/loss is based on $10,000 invested in each trade. As you can see the majority of my profits have been made on the short side and my performance has improved since starting this journal.
One new trade friday;
Long GFI @ 8.23
Short AU @ 25.96
Long GFI @ 8.23
Short AU @ 25.96
Thats ok, there's no science to what I want to see, just a quick glimpse and I can tell if its ok to trade or not(just my opinion), if you go over my attachements for all my trades and look at the ratio charts you will get the idea.
In your spreadsheet you had
66 trades
45 Wins
11 the Long leg caused the gain
19 the Short leg caused the gain
15 both legs won
21 Losses
15 the Long leg caused the loss
5 the Short leg caused the loss
1 both legs lost
It seems that the long leg contributes more to the losses and less to the profits than the short leg respectively (you wrote to that effect in your post in a slightly different way).
If you would draw a chart of the 10 period EMA on your LONG P/L and SHORT P/L, you will see that the Long side started to reverse it's fortunes sometimes in mid October which coincided with the market hitting a bottom around 800 for the S&P (eventhough there was a a further drop to the 750 are - all EOD figures).
I would conclude from that, that the leg resposible for the profits is related to the overall market direction.
The question is whether this can help in improving profitability???
All the best
Gabe
Gabe - a key advantage of pair trading is the possibility to trade profitably while consistently being market neutral (in $ amount or volatility). The idea is that your profitablility will not be influenced by the overall market.
If you have a good system to determine future market direction, and this system works - you could make money with significantly less effort using other forms of trading.
If you have a good system to determine future market direction, and this system works - you could make money with significantly less effort using other forms of trading.
thanks gabe for your analysis and inputs, yes market direction does affect which side makes most of the profits naturally, its funny because ive been bearish for a long time now and it did cross my mind when I started this journal to weigh by shorts 120% to that of my longs, but decided against it because I don't want to get burnt on the technical rallies or dead cat bounces, so I decided to keep it simple, of course in hindsight everything is clear and I would have made a lot more, however like saratur said the main idea is stay market neutral and make $$$ regardless of market direction espically in this environment directional trading is very difficult.
Johnnysharp, thank you for the steady journal and sharing your results.
Looking at the spreadsheet: Average profit of 1.46% per trade, 2.19 profit factor. Pretty nice.
What was the average trade time? (.. I could probaby dig dates out of the posts, but it would be pretty tedious
).
>> "â¦. and my performance has improved since starting this journal."
The second half is remarkedly better than the first. What are the key factors you would attribute this to? Is it "eyeballing the chart" for pair selection as you described? rising correlation? signal settings in Pairtradefinder? other?
saratur
Looking at the spreadsheet: Average profit of 1.46% per trade, 2.19 profit factor. Pretty nice.
What was the average trade time? (.. I could probaby dig dates out of the posts, but it would be pretty tedious
).>> "â¦. and my performance has improved since starting this journal."
The second half is remarkedly better than the first. What are the key factors you would attribute this to? Is it "eyeballing the chart" for pair selection as you described? rising correlation? signal settings in Pairtradefinder? other?
saratur
Quote from saratur:
Johnnysharp, thank you for the steady journal and sharing your results.
Looking at the spreadsheet: Average profit of 1.46% per trade, 2.19 profit factor. Pretty nice.
What was the average trade time? (.. I could probaby dig dates out of the posts, but it would be pretty tedious
>> "â¦. and my performance has improved since starting this journal."
The second half is remarkedly better than the first. What are the key factors you would attribute this to? Is it "eyeballing the chart" for pair selection as you described? rising correlation? signal settings in Pairtradefinder? other?
saratur
Thankyou, yes I think its a combination of a few things, picking trades better based off eyeballing the ratio chart, choosing pairs with higher and increasing correlation, the release of pairtrade finder version 2 made it easier to find better trades and also I think when I started this journal the market was very tumultuous and spreads were getting hammered, especially in early October, however turned out to be a good time to enter trades with VIX > 70, I remember one week when prices & volatility stablised my pairs snapped back with ferocity into profits. Staying the course is the name of the game.
I've read all of the posts (there are a ton, it's a popular thread). Jonny your success has increased, and the size of your losses has decreased. What has changed the size of your early losses?
Through the posts many people have shared and refined some of their pairs selection criteria. I've made note of many of them, but it sure would be nice if we could see your current lists of selection criteria.
Everyone has a different set and it would be good to see those fully detailed in individual posts.
I thought I had at least a beginners understanding of how to make the selections, but after loading Pair Trader Finder, finding and saving pairs, there are so many that it's almost overwhelming.
Thanks for all of your sharing.
Walt B
Through the posts many people have shared and refined some of their pairs selection criteria. I've made note of many of them, but it sure would be nice if we could see your current lists of selection criteria.
Everyone has a different set and it would be good to see those fully detailed in individual posts.
I thought I had at least a beginners understanding of how to make the selections, but after loading Pair Trader Finder, finding and saving pairs, there are so many that it's almost overwhelming.
Thanks for all of your sharing.
Walt B