Successful Trading and Compounding

Status
Not open for further replies.
Alright, so here is the summary for my scalping operations. 7 days have passed since I started, and so far it has been working. positive on all 7 days. Encouraging - no doubt, however, still early days....I don't want to become too happy before I have around 30 days of data.

Monday
# Trades: 25
% Win: 68%
Total pips w.o comm: 16.5
Total pips with comm: 4

Tuesday
# Trades: 23
% Win: 83%
Total pips w.o comm: 33
Total pips with comm: 21.5

Wednesday
# Trades: 24
% Win: 83%
Total pips w.o comm: 60
Total pips with comm: 48

Thursday
# Trades: 27
% Win: 74%
Total pips w.o comm: 56
Total pips with comm: 42.5

Friday
# Trades: 15
% Win: 87%
Total pips w.o comm: 40
Total pips with comm: 32.5
 
Quote from younouss:

Congrats!!

Very interesting journal! :)
More...

Thanks for your kind words. It is still early days though and I have to make sure that I don't end up in trouble again. Lots of ground to cover, hopefully I won't be lax with my risk for next few months.
 
Quote from younouss:

Do you think forex markets behave differently compared to indices? How do you explain you are loosing money on ES ?
More...

Thanks for very good question. Honestly, I don't know how ES is different from forex. I am myself trying to understand this, and hopefully will have an answer in a few months.

Now about why i am losing money on ES:

1. My total screentime with forex is around 3 yrs (1yr full time) Vs around 2 months for ES. So, I am a complete newbie with ES.
2. I am too under-capitalized to trade 1 ES contract. A small stop like 3-4 points loses me 150-200$ loss, and I bleed because small stop gets hit frequently. If I loosen the stop to 6-8 point on ES, each individual loss costs 300-400$, which means losing more than 10% of account in one trade. I have a feeling that my ES trading will improve once I become better capitalized.
3. Forex is one underlying, representing relative strength of 2 countries/economies. S&P500 is a composite of 500 stocks. Basically, I am saying ES has some specificities/pecularities which I don't understand yet.
4. I hope I will be successful trading ES also - but that has to wait for few months. Right now, my focus is to prove to myself by making and retaining dollars that I am doing good on Fx trading.
 
Quote from gmst:


1. My total screentime with forex is around 3 yrs (1yr full time) Vs around 2 months for ES. So, I am a complete newbie with ES.
2. I am too under-capitalized to trade 1 ES contract. A small stop like 3-4 points loses me 150-200$ loss, and I bleed because small stop gets hit frequently. If I loosen the stop to 6-8 point on ES, each individual loss costs 300-400$, which means losing more than 10% of account in one trade. I have a feeling that my ES trading will improve once I become better capitalized.
3. Forex is one underlying, representing relative strength of 2 countries/economies. S&P500 is a composite of 500 stocks. Basically, I am saying ES has some specificities/pecularities which I don't understand yet.
4. I hope I will be successful trading ES also - but that has to wait for few months. Right now, my focus is to prove to myself by making and retaining dollars that I am doing good on Fx trading. [/B]
More...

1- I guess technical patterns are same and you can apply them to any market. So Forex and ES are technically the same. Maybe ES behaviour is bit different. Have a look at the DAX or Euro Stoxx. It might be interesting.

2- I think you are a scalper (I saw the number of trades and average pips/day). Maybe you have to adapt your trading style to ES. I don't think it's a matter of capitalization. I don't know, just my 2 cents guess :-)

3- I don't agree. I think ES behaviour is quite easy to understand compared to DAX (more volatile) Stoxx (50 stocks on eurozone) or CaC40 (french indice). If you want to trade the Cac 40 you have to understand banks movement and Total (almost 30% of the indice)... See!

4- Keep an eye on other indices or bonds markets.

5- Do you trade always the same pair on forex?
 
Quote from younouss:

1- I guess technical patterns are same and you can apply them to any market. So Forex and ES are technically the same. Maybe ES behaviour is bit different. Have a look at the DAX or Euro Stoxx. It might be interesting.

2- I think you are a scalper (I saw the number of trades and average pips/day). Maybe you have to adapt your trading style to ES. I don't think it's a matter of capitalization. I don't know, just my 2 cents guess :-)

3- I don't agree. I think ES behaviour is quite easy to understand compared to DAX (more volatile) Stoxx (50 stocks on eurozone) or CaC40 (french indice). If you want to trade the Cac 40 you have to understand banks movement and Total (almost 30% of the indice)... See!

4- Keep an eye on other indices or bonds markets.

5- Do you trade always the same pair on forex?
More...

I primarily trade Euro, AUD, JPY, and CHF - so trading majors only and sometimes crosses like EURCHF. For scalping purposes I am trading EUR and AUD only. If I see an opportunity in any other ccy pair like NZD or GBP, I will trade that also - but its rare.

I have thought more about why i am not successful trading ES, I think its just that I haven't done sufficient research and don't have sufficient screentime with it. I am confident with some more time, I will be profitable trading ES also.
 
Update for week 18 ending Dec 2, 2011 :

+100$ for the week. Week started with a scratch on Monday, followed by a loss on Tuesday. Thing that really set me back was Chinese reserve ratio cut followed by dollar swap rate cut by G7 on Wednesday. It was a double whammy on the same day and at one point I was down 2000$ for the day!!! Fought back hard to end the day down 1000$, and then made money back on Thursday and Friday to end the week slightly positive.

I was 99% sure that this week will be negative after the Wednesday disaster. So, very pleasantly surprised withe the end result. Being able to come up from a bottom of -2400$ for the week sometime on Wednesday to close the week +100$ on Friday, shows that I am maturing as a trader.

This Week's Stats:

Withdrawal: 0$

1. Week PL: +100$
2. Start Equity: 5.4k
3. End Equity: 5.5k
4. Maximum equity run-up: 5.5k
5. Max Win day as % of that day's start equity: 17%
6. Max Loss day as % of that day's start equity: -19%

Below stats are from Journal start day:

Withdrawal: 1100$

1. Total PL: -800$
2. PF: 0.97
3. RoI: -10%
4. Max. DD: 82%
5. Current DD: 18%
6. # of winning days 51%, # of losing days 49%
7. Av. win day: 17%
8. Av. Loss day: -14%
 

Attachments

Update for week 19 ending Dec 9, 2011 :

Posting after 2 weeks, it was bad the first week, so was a bit depressed that's why didn't post.

-1700$ for the week. Pretty bad week in all honesty.. Lost money on 4 days. Wow!!

Have stopped scalping as I was doing 2 weeks back, I think it costed me. Going back to scalp again. But honestly market was crap this week. I primarily trade Euro and it didn't move at all. Had I used only my trading strategy (that would have resulted into 5 trades and all losses). So, I won't blame myself really - just part of the business. However, it did set me back though, coming out from my DD.

This Week's Stats:

Withdrawal: 0$

1. Week PL: -1700$
2. Start Equity: 5.5k
3. End Equity: 3.8k
4. Maximum equity run-up: 5.5k
5. Max Win day as % of that day's start equity: 7%
6. Max Loss day as % of that day's start equity: -19%

Below stats are from Journal start day:

Withdrawal: 1100$

1. Total PL: -2300$
2. PF: 0.91
3. RoI: -32%
4. Max. DD: 82%
5. Current DD: 38%
6. # of winning days 49%, # of losing days 51%
7. Av. win day: 17%
8. Av. Loss day: -14%
 
Update for week 20 ending Dec 16, 2011 :

+500$ for the week.

Very interesting week, first 3 days were fantastic, I actually made back all I lost last week and actually more. Last 2 days were not good - gave back 77% of what I had made in first 3 days. Frankly, bad trading in last 2 days. Reflecting on it, I should have really reduced my trading in the last 2 days, after having been up > 2k in the first 3 days of this week. This is a good lesson - once I am up quite a lot of money in first 2-3 days of week, I will slow down and aim at protecting those profits for the rest of the week. Should help consistency.

This Week's Stats:

Withdrawal: 0$

1. Week PL: +500$
2. Start Equity: 3.8k
3. End Equity: 4.3k
4. Maximum equity run-up: 5.9k
5. Max Win day as % of that day's start equity: 22%
6. Max Loss day as % of that day's start equity: -17%

Below stats are from Journal start day:

Withdrawal: 1100$

1. Total PL: -1900$
2. PF: 0.93
3. RoI: -25%
4. Max. DD: 82%
5. Current DD: 32%
6. # of winning days 50%, # of losing days 50%
7. Av. win day: 17%
8. Av. Loss day: -14%
 

Attachments

Now, I have 20 weeks of live trading performance data. I did largest loss analysis again.

Week 1 to week 10, 13 days I lost > 10% of my account in one day. My average largest daily loss when it was > 10% was -23%.

Week 11 to Week 20, 12 days I lost > 10% of my account in one day. My average largest daily loss when it was > 10% was -21%.

So, it is clear that all the plans I made after 8-10 weeks for controlling my LL (Largest losses) have gone into a dustbin. Statistically, I am just as bad as far as controlling my large losses are concerned, as I was before.

I will do a more thorough study of it tomorrow, going back and looking at my trades for those days and try to figure out a way to deal with this problem of reducing my largest daily loss size.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top