Close to Quitting Trading? Listen to this first...
By Dave Mabe
In this week's episode of Line Your Own Pockets, we discuss a question I received from a reader named Sridhar.
He recently went live with 8 automated trading strategies - and it's not going well.
In his words (used with permission, excerpted for clarity):
Sridhar:
Hi Dave, I'm struggling at the moment, and you're the person whose judgement I trust most on this.
In less than 2 months, I found up to 8 intraday strategies, each with >1.5 PF, each researched to a locked backtest.
The results don't match the effort. I'm down about $16.8k net of commissions since mid-July, and I've been red on 22 of 35 trading days.
I hope things can turn around, but honestly, I'm losing spirit a bit. The process and the engineering are strong, and I'm still losing money. I'd really value your perspective.
We discuss this in detail in this episode, with concrete steps to improve and identify the mistakes.
Topics include:
Start with 1-2 strategies rather than 8
Trade tiny at first - you can learn a lot with minuscule size, so you can avoid "paying tuition" to the market
How to plan for drawdowns before they happen
Don't "build the pedestal" - use established backtesting software and focus on the important thing: the strategies
Only scale after the market has given you concrete feedback that your process is sound
And much more...
If you're frustrated and close to quitting, this episode is a must-listen.
-Dave
P.S. Do you have periods of trading success, only to see your strategy give it back? What would it look like to get rid of the biggest losing trades from your strategy? With MabeKit, you can. Get Instant Access