What's The Best Way To Convert This Edge Into Money?

Quote from SplawnDarts:


And while bar charts may appear somewhat fractal, the tape clearly is not.

LOL...you`ll never be an astronaut:D

there`s a tight-fisted person around,called jack hershey.i`d advice you to consult him,maybe you`ll have a chance.although,most don`t
 
Quote from SplawnDarts:

I'm pondering the automation thing. Problem is, I wouldn't be very comfortable with it trading without me nearby. Computers crash, respond badly to erroneous inputs, programs can have bugs etc.

Hard stop with every order, restrict order size in account settings, restrict maximum number of trades per day, keep only necessary/minimal capital in account (and use margin), segregate. Have a kill switch.
 
There has been a lot of sound advice, some scary advice (which I actually believe was either tongue-in-cheek or to rather challenge your rather questionable assumptions), and then we even had a real deal old vet drop by (dbphoenix) to make a clever if not cynical (sort of) non-sequitur.

All of that said, this is an easy one.

You say you have no doubt you have this edge, it is unquestionable and pretty much off the table in this discussion. Of course this is not the case, because if it was the case you simply would not be here posting this thread. You would be scrounging every corner of the earth for funding and you would be leaving your job in short order without question.

I can tell you there is nothing more dangerous than an engineering mind like yours in the markets. If you don't believe me then roll the dice with your current mindset/attitude and just let us know how it all turned out at the end of a 5 year cycle.

As I was saying, since you seem to be not totally lost to the engineering side of your brain, you have something deep inside creating a sense of doubt and caution, and you should really, really listen to that voice very carefully.

Let's think about this in pure opportunity cost terms.

You have a job that let's say totals out to 250K/year in total comp. That is a 25% a year annuity (for arguments sake) on 1M principle. How many people over a 5 year period are pulling 25% a year on 1M+ principle. Sure it can be done and there are some people on here that do it, but at what kind of risk compared to your salary????

Now given the rather terrible risk profile of professional speculation vs. collecting a paycheck, my opinion is you had damn well better be making 1M/year+ speculating for it to be worth dropping that 250K opportunity.

So what kind of capital would you need to make 1M/year with your strategy as it stands? This will lead to the realization that you are probably way more under-capitalized, and possibly not safe to scale given liquidity constraints on short term trading, than you possibly imagined...

I agree with the general sentiment here, keep the day job and work your speculations for 5-10 years straight (ideally 10 to get through 2 full cycles), meanwhile save like crazy!
 
keep your job, trade the hang seng and/or kospi when you get home from work. if you truly do have an edge, and since it seems to like futures that move, then this would be a good way to test it without doing anything too drastic life/work-wise. fwiw, this is what i did when i started.
 
Quote from onelot:

keep your job, trade the hang seng and/or kospi when you get home from work. if you truly do have an edge, and since it seems to like futures that move, then this would be a good way to test it without doing anything too drastic life/work-wise. fwiw, this is what i did when i started.

I like the idea of taking a whack at one of the Asian indexes.

Where can I get an economic calendar for Asian announcements?
 
If you don't have time to trade it full time due to your day job, then you definitely did not have enough time to put in the screen hours necessary to know what you are doing. Hence, you are here asking.

And if you have to ask . . .
 
Quote from SplawnDarts:

So here's my question: how do I best make money out of this and maximize the chance I'm set up for life? I'm ~30 years old. I've got an engineering job that pays about $200K+benefits, and I would lose a small amount of non-vested stock if I quit. Job outlook is stable to positive, but I don't really love it. I don't have to quit to trade (I currently trade mornings before going to work) but could probably find more trades if I didn't have to go in. I live in a mid-priced suburban area far away from major financial centers. I don't want to move for family reasons.

So what's the best way to proceed? Should I just trade my own capital? I could allocate about $13K right now, and quite a bit more over the next year. Or should I try to take this to a prop shop or some other institutional environment? As it stands now with a retail brokerage there's zero chance of anyone stealing my approach, but I would be concerned about it in other settings.

Trade the system while continuing to work. As it keeps working, allocate more capital. If you are making 200k you have a huge amount of room to boost your capital through living frugally and aggressive savings. Under no circumstances would I quit until you've traded the system successfully for at least 2-3 years and can net at least your current salary per year in trading profits. More realistically you should be netting 2-3 times your salary to take into account the loss of employer benefits plus massively increased 'career risk' in the event your system degrades.

The other thing is, at 200k you can be set for life in 5-8 years anyway just by saving aggressively (presumably you already have considerable 6-fig savings). So trading isn't really necessary to reach your goals, but there's no harm in giving it a try on the side.
 
Quote from SplawnDarts:

The reason you could have such long losing streaks is that your PF was only in the 1.3 range or so (depending on the ratio of 1st, 2nd and 3rd places). This has a PF over 2 - totally different ballgame.
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you aren't understanding. I'm trying to say over a 53 game period I could blow through PF of even 3. doesn't mean my PF was 3
 
Quote from SplawnDarts:

I'm willing to accept the very small risk that in such a situation I would be bankrupted - ie. if CL slipped > 1000 ticks (basically an empty book). I'd be FAR from the only one.

You made one mistake already -- "empty book". "Books" is an example of expressions that traders and gamblers use, but that engineers use to refer something else such actual books.
 
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