This is excellent and exactly how small traders should be trading. Keep going.Steven W,
Congratulations on what you have done!
The reason I'm posting this is that I have had almost the same results as you (just multiplied by a factor of 2). Here's my daily total NAV for the time since the US presidential election, which is when I started doing this:
2016-Nov-08 53,207.93
2016-Nov-09 89,054.65
2016-Nov-10 99,006.30
2016-Nov-11 107,388.65
2016-Nov-14 122,711.32
2016-Nov-15 128,570.64
2016-Nov-16 135,887.10
2016-Nov-17 142,962.25
2016-Nov-18 153,030.17
2016-Nov-21 166,248.24
2016-Nov-22 174,831.18
2016-Nov-23 160,708.89
2016-Nov-24 160,708.89
2016-Nov-25 126,914.02
2016-Nov-28 125,076.67
2016-Nov-29 117,411.60
2016-Nov-30 159,656.58
2016-Dec-01 140,948.22
2016-Dec-02 167,541.28
2016-Dec-05 153,307.38
2016-Dec-06 159,025.89
2016-Dec-07 171,632.58
2016-Dec-08 173,988.62
2016-Dec-09 171,100.64
2016-Dec-12 181,553.39
2016-Dec-13 161,571.03
2016-Dec-14 175,112.57
2016-Dec-15 181,753.71
2016-Dec-16 189,788.18
2016-Dec-19 197,936.51
2016-Dec-20 199,541.77
2016-Dec-21 200,774.46
2016-Dec-22 211,707.77
2016-Dec-23 205,904.61
2016-Dec-26 205,904.61
2016-Dec-27 210,480.47
2016-Dec-28 213,382.96
2016-Dec-29 221,790.94
2016-Dec-30 231,829.27
2017-Jan-02 231,829.27
2017-Jan-03 237,232.42
2017-Jan-04 245,886.75
2017-Jan-05 223,379.63
2017-Jan-06 229,960.46
2017-Jan-09 234,868.50
2017-Jan-10 240,150.66
2017-Jan-11 239,501.22
2017-Jan-12 224,171.87
2017-Jan-13 244,830.05
2017-Jan-16 244,830.05
2017-Jan-17 254,513.90
2017-Jan-18 262,608.64
2017-Jan-19 269,798.10
2017-Jan-20 266,037.59
2017-Jan-23 265,635.71
2017-Jan-24 270,262.76
2017-Jan-25 218,904.13
2017-Jan-26 229,999.77
2017-Jan-27 215,699.01
2017-Jan-30 231,136.43
2017-Jan-31 237,551.82
2017-Feb-01 237,086.13
2017-Feb-02 250,071.18
2017-Feb-03 265,681.74
2017-Feb-06 275,294.38
2017-Feb-07 280,263.97
2017-Feb-08 291,705.61
2017-Feb-09 299,785.37
2017-Feb-10 294,060.27
2017-Feb-13 289,488.74
2017-Feb-14 265,549.91
2017-Feb-15 249,539.68
2017-Feb-16 264,575.46
2017-Feb-17 251,376.98
2017-Feb-20 251,376.98
2017-Feb-21 258,452.35
2017-Feb-22 280,028.31
2017-Feb-23 224,512.55
2017-Feb-24 279,765.36
2017-Feb-27 288,394.40
2017-Feb-28 266,684.88
2017-Mar-01 276,840.80
2017-Mar-02 310,389.71
2017-Mar-03 322,280.69
2017-Mar-06 325,145.73
2017-Mar-07 334,748.06
2017-Mar-08 242,401.32
2017-Mar-09 208,321.05
2017-Mar-10 232,213.56
2017-Mar-13 249,679.73
[I withdrew $28,000 in December and $30,000 in January, so I'm actually up more than a quarter million as of right now.]
Anyway, at some point on March 9, my NAV was down in the 170s. I never felt like it was a big problem, to the point where I would question whether I should quit, but I have been thinking on how to possibly avoid those huge losses in the future. Interestingly enough, my answer so far has just been to take more entries (rather than fewer).
In case you're wondering, I trade futures, hundreds of transactions a day. I don't have a system. I input all my orders manually, and my decisions are based 100% on intuition. (I spent over a decade looking at the markets, sometimes more than full time, and losing small amounts of money almost every year until I finally started going for it right after the election.)
With my kind of reckless trading style, I know full well I have to expect to blow out my account once every couple of years, maybe even more frequently, but does that really mean I should quit now? It does feel weird to lose about as much as one would need to pay cash for a house, within a few minutes, just because I haven't figured out how to better control my risk. Then again, just like you, I've made a lot more than I've lost, so it's not totally unreasonable to continue, is it?
Serious: Last year I turned my account from 25k to 150k. Now my account is down to 90k.
- Thread starter Steven W
- Start date
Lol. When a trader destroys his account, apparently the right thing to do is to congratulate and encourage him.
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This is obviously just an aside, but even though I'm not rich, I don't have much use for money. I mentioned before that I've withdrawn $58,000 recently, and all I have done with it is a couple of thousand in charitable donations and bought a watch for myself, and not a $5000 watch either. The rest is sitting in my savings account earning 1%. I like to have somewhat of a buffer that way, but $300k is neither enough to retire on, nor make a meaningful difference (once you have housing, food, transportation taken care of), so I choose to throw it at the markets instead.
On a more serious note, is there one really good text on risk management to get me started? I don't want to spend weeks reading all kinds of books if there's people on here who have already done that and figured out what actually works.
oh well.
The OP never reported these figures. It seems like every other poster in this thread is disoriented.
You are correct, reply edited to reflect a semblance of sanity here. (Teehee)
lol, yes, it is edited! No worries! omg real-time editing can cause confusion.