What metrics do you use to measure trading success?

[tiddlywinks]

What the hell. I'll play, certain to take shit, because this is ET loaded with old dog narrow-minds, self-medicated, self-serving, self-righteous, self-important Elites.

As an intraday trader, aside from real PnL, at the end of the trading day I use the daily range to determine my success. The linear H/L range. What percentage or multiple did I capture/extract? A $1000 profit day when YM has a 500pt linear range isn't great. Money-wise it may be "satisfying" but from an intraday trading view, not so much. Conversely, a $400 profit from NQ, when the NQ has a linear daily H/L of 15 points is damn fine!

The key from an intraday trading standpoint is understanding the difference between the linear range and the actual number of points traveled throughout the day. The intraday travel is where the real intraday money comes from! There is ALWAYS room to improve your trading.

 

[Scataphagos]

What are the most useful / best metrics to measure you trading success?

Only 1.

"When you quit and you have a big bag of the market's money."

Until then, it's like a poker game. ("You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table... there'll be time enough for counting when the dealing's done" -- Kenny Rogers)

 

[Xela]

How do you derive/calculate equity curves and drawdowns? Does the platform you use provide this?

Now, yes - it does everything (including making the coffee, I think

) ...

Also, how did you establish positive expectancy being a discretionary trader?

"Discretionary trader" is a relative/opinion-based term, hello ...

Originally, I just followed the advice I was given at the time ... which was that when you're able - twice over - to analyze and collate the results of 300+ consecutive trades with a PF significantly above 1.0 and with no peak-to-trough drawdown bigger than 5%, you're ready to go (this arguably assumes that you also have reasonable risk management skills and haven't "just been very lucky", I suppose, and maybe it also even assumes that you're not picking up nickels and dimes in front of a steamroller, too?).

I've passed this view on to various others, but to be honest when I do so (here) I normally change the "5%" to "7.5%" and leave out the words "twice over", too - partly through the feeling that nobody much will take me seriously, if I don't.

I never did anything particularly complicated or difficult or sophisticated: I just (gradually, eventually!) learned to do relatively simple, regularly repeatable things very reliably, very well and very consistently.

My experience is of really limited value to others, in some regards, not least because I was trading (sometimes for only around 20-25 hours per week and at other times much more) on demo for four years before I ever even opened a funded account (being under age at the time) - and who's going to be willing to do that?!

I think threads like this tend, however, to highlight something significant about the subject, which was why I wanted to draw attention to and express my agreement with the two posts from which I briefly quoted, above: if you ask the really big group called "traders in general" the OP's question, you're going to get a really wide range of views including some things that I regard as "complicated and difficult", but if you ask the same question of that really small group called "people who've been been making a steady living for years, through their trading" you may see a very different consensus of opinion, and it's perhaps going to be a more simple one that pretty reliably mentions the word "drawdown" in the first sentence. And there's a reason for that, of course.

 

[lovethetrade]

What metrics do you use to measure trading success?

Opportunity cost.

How Do Professional Traders Define Profitablity

 

[tomorton]

I'm most interested in profit/loss per quarter or per year, plus % capital growth. I do mentally note if I am getting a string of losers in a month (though I couldn't ever tell you my rolling win rate) and re-examine the set-ups and entry/exit patterns used. But when you're long-term trading, a month is too short really as an accounting period.

 

[tiddlywinks]

I'm most interested in profit/loss per quarter or per year, plus % capital growth. I do mentally note if I am getting a string of losers in a month (though I couldn't ever tell you my rolling win rate) and re-examine the set-ups and entry/exit patterns used. But when you're long-term trading, a month is too short really as an accounting period.

I actually review my equity curve at the end of each day, for that day. It shows me strings of gains and loses, as well the a variable called time of day. Of course, no single trade, and no single trading day means anything in the scheme of long-term profitability. But for ongoing, current environment analysis, the simple "intradaily" equity curve shows me when I am in tune, or gives me a basis on how and when I may need adjustment.

But yea, weekly, monthly, and annual profit/loss numbers are what life REALLY revolves around.

 

[volpri]

1) Win rate

2) Average win larger than average loss

3) Biggest win larger than biggest loss

4) Percentage of daily range captured. That can be done with one trade or over several trades. If not trading all the session then the percentage of the range captured during time period in which I was engaging the market.

5) the amount of trades I was able to compound within the range traded.

6) average time in the trade

7) net profitable at the end of the session after commissions

 

[volpri]

What the hell. I'll play, certain to take shit, because this is ET loaded with old dog narrow-minds, self-medicated, self-serving, self-righteous, self-important Elites.

As an intraday trader, aside from real PnL, at the end of the trading day I use the daily range to determine my success. The linear H/L range. What percentage or multiple did I capture/extract? A $1000 profit day when YM has a 500pt linear range isn't great. Money-wise it may be "satisfying" but from an intraday trading view, not so much. Conversely, a $400 profit from NQ, when the NQ has a linear daily H/L of 15 points is damn fine!

The key from an intraday trading standpoint is understanding the difference between the linear range and the actual number of points traveled throughout the day. The intraday travel is where the real intraday money comes from! There is ALWAYS room to improve your trading.

That is correcto.

 

[digitalnomad]

“Success in the markets is not about instinct, divine inspiration or spontaneous intellectual combustion. It is about intelligent data processing, sound method and the management of risk and resource that is both effective and adaptive to change."

 

[volpri]

“Success in the markets is not about instinct, divine inspiration or spontaneous intellectual combustion. It is about intelligent data processing, sound method and the management of risk and resource that is both effective and adaptive to change."

Are you trying to say you gotta look at the data and be flexible? Sounds like you are turning onto the discretionary highway. Have you made a wrong turn? Best make haste and get back to the arctic circle and the frozen algos. LOL

PS happy trading!