JohnP: Excellent !
1. In the history of this thread Pair Trading Strategy Jnl, many times posters recommended or asked for feedback on proposed trades. Yours is more delicate because you have made them already and some are concerning to you. I appreciate anyone who does not want to air their laundry, because we all have them and a right to our privacy. On the other hand, your attitude is very healthy, I believe, because any one observer of your trade or a consensus opinion by observers attempting to be constructive, may be helpful to you, WHICH IS THE POINT OF DOING THIS. Besides, as a newbie, you are in the honeymoon period with more latitude given to you for either less-than-good trades that may have been opened or a whole host of criticisms that any observer can give to ANY of us for our trades. I have no idea what response will be to you in terms of numbers of responses or their quality. So you are this thread's experiment....hehe. Furthermore, I suspect it could become largely subjective, the responses; i.e. don't expect there to be THE classroom solution to be served up on a platter, obvious and absolute. But it could become kool if there is one or some that particularly resonates for you. What you do from there is up to you as to whether you adopt any of the possible routes and be willing to share the outcome. A last thought on diagnosing a trade: I think it is fair criticism that this thread is not a classroom, and it could become objectionable to "clutter" it with a preponderance of posts dedicated to a trade or trades in progress, even if there is arguably reasonable value for followers of the thread, i.e. not just you but we can all learn from this style exercise. If there is interest, maybe a derivative thread can be opened for this specific purpose. Now THERE is an opening for a wanna-be thread opener. We'll just see how this plays out. It just may be a a flash-in-the pan, "We tried it, but it doesn't work out" exercise.
2. Unless there was a sizable intra-day move on the dates you initiated trade, having the date alone can be ok. But if you entered at one extreme or another in an intra-day session on your pairs, it would be advisable to share the time of entry (at least for my purpose of analysis). And thanks for understanding maybe just a few can be looked at practically. If you have favorites (among your unfavorite open trades) that you would like feedback on, send that info this way.
3. Your considerable inputs as to what influenced you to open a specific trade falls on my deaf ears because I am not wearing the software fraternity pin. The software inputs don't mean anything to me. But to the extent others find it relevant, that's great. To that end, you will find my critique probably limited. I look at these things from a CHARTS perspective, the way technical analysis is used for a TA user, but my analysis is nothing like TA. I don't use TA to examine a pair or individual stocks in a pair. Not yet. I appreciate there may be many potentially good inputs that others may use, but I don't yet. The obvious, possible, supplemental input is the software you are using. Already, I suspect many traders if not most (I don't know for sure) use combinations of resources to judge entry into a trade. My hat is off to them. I am not there yet.
4. Others are welcome to be constructive on your trades if you are ok with that, John. I would think like-minded users of your software would be in good position to understand your inputs you described. In so doing, there could be good interchange between them in sharing opinions. It's an open thread, and anyone's judgement that is negatively received may be another's significant finding.
