If you have a plan, and it isn't too complicated to follow, just automate the damn thing and forget about it.
Trading the Plan
- Thread starter studentofthemarkets
- Start date
I tried on Ninjatrader. There are too many parts of my strategy that I can't define in the strategy builder. I might be able to put more of what I do into the strategy if I knew how to code, but I don't.If you have a plan, and it isn't too complicated to follow, just automate the damn thing and forget about it.
The graph below shows that one form of my strategy came out nicely when running an optimized backtest. This graph is only from May to November of 2021 (the graph was also created back in November).
Unfortunately, it stopped working.
Results were completely negative when I ran it on recent data. It's probably because the strategy is longs only and the 6E has been dropping recently. Another reason could be because I ran it on a 15 second chart for several months and I have absolutely no idea if the data was even accurate. Reading up about backtesting on the 15 second time frames I concluded that it wasn't accurate although I did use the high resolution setting. Most of the attempts I had when making this strategy ended up losing, so this is definitely better than those. A strategy that comes out ahead of other strategies when all were run on unreliable data would probably work better on live data than the other strategy variations.
Reversing the criteria to be a shorts only strategy also ended up losing.
Which means my beautiful green graph is absolutely worthless. Recently, I spent over a day trying to come up with a way to make it work again and came up with nothing that is consistently great.
Even if I had had that same strategy currently producing results like it did in the screenshot of the green graph it really isn't worth trading because it made money slowly and has drawdowns. It was run over a 6 month time period and only made just over $2,000. That is not making much money per day.
Also, if you look at the graph, there are only a few days of being positive and those days go up fast. The rest of the days are losing days, sometimes for about a month. That's a long time to be losing.
I don't want that with real trading.
The strategy is "dumb" in the sense that it isn't really reading what the market is doing. I can read the market much better than it can. The strategy is only useful because it follows rules and that is what is hard for me to do.
One of the reasons for trying to get a good plan and checklist is so that I will trade more like the automated manner of a computer.
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I hear ya. I went through the same dead end for awhile myself. But in the process I found that a minor tweak, rather than a complete overhaul of the system, can make a drastic difference to the bottom line. I would go over the parameters and see if it can be optimized in any way and also check for any signs of hiccup.
Be that as it may, even if you're trading discretionary (no automation), I advise you to write your trading strategy down on paper/computer as you would with a business plan. Bullet point every line of rules that would make up your trading strategy.
- moving average crossover --> go long or short
- volume must be above xxx
- it must be a 3-bar reversal
- etc, etc
Thanks. I will keep working at automation even if it's only occasionally.
I like your ideas of short phrases and bullet points. Currently my checklist has a couple points that that are paragraphs and those need to be simplified to just a few words.
Checklist manifesto cliffs notes
https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/interesting-search-terms.365486/page-5#post-5606678
I'm sorry, but I didn't understand your post. I didn't see anything about checklists in your thread.
Your thread, however, does have a lot of "interesting search terms."
Including:
Selling eggs might be more consistently profitable than daytrading.
I'm sorry, but I didn't understand your post. I didn't see anything about checklists in your thread.
Your thread, however, does have a lot of "interesting search terms."
LOL. Got a good laugh out of that ending up in your thread.
Selling eggs might be more consistently profitable than daytrading.
God hates chickens.
I'm not going to watch those videos. Disgusting!
So God is disgusting? You gotta' accept your deity in all it's form!
You either accept your God in all His Glory, or you reject Him totally. There is no in between. One day, in your head, you will be mature enough to understand your folly.
I don't want to bring discussion about God into the trading journals section. I was referring to the chickens being eaten as disgusting.