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June 8, 2023 at 8:04 am #102264ScottBiltonMember
Hi all, I’m Scott, been with Nick in mentoring since Feb, so now it’s a ripe time to start journaling. I think it’s going to be useful to write down my thoughts, and record my monthly results.
A bit of background, I’ve been trading full time for the last 3 years. I took an early departure from 20 years in the oil business, and have been smiling ever since. I’m married with 3 kids, and we live in Singapore.
So straight to the action.
Nick and I have been talking regularly and it’s been a blessing to have him as a mentor. Thanks Nick!
We’ve discussed a number of systems together, in fact many systems. Now I’m stuck with deciding which ones to deploy. For the month of May I was running a R1k long/short MOC pair, and a weekly rotational strategy. And guess what? Both systems didn’t do well in May.MAY 2023:
R1k MOC: -11.3% (its worst month in 14 years, haha)
Weekly US MOMO: -4.5%I was already trading the R1k MOC in March -1.0%, April -2.2%. Now the horrible May result, most of which was caused by the short side of the pair, I’m re-evaluating holding shorts and thinking about just deploying the longs in it. I’ve put the MOC pair on paper trading for May.
I’m ok with the result for the weekly US MOMO as the backtest shows positive results for March and April, I just wasn’t trading it then.Nice to meet you all, please feel to drop into my journal to comment, or add the latest movie or TV Series you recommend.
I’m recently watched the Banshees of Inisherin, it was ridiculous. A socalled black comedy of depressing proportions, so that’s more of an avoid than a recommendation. What I’m enjoying at the moment is the Conor McGregor documentary on Netflix. While he’s got a brash personality, he’s also full of incredible wisdom, much of which can be applied to trading.What’s on my plate? ASX MOMO + working out VPS setup / alternatives to run my systems while on an 8 week summer vacation.
June 8, 2023 at 10:09 pm #115620Nick RadgeKeymasterGood to see you here Scott, and its been great working with you.
I just finished the McGregor doco. I was never a fan, not sure I am now, but a good inside look into the ups and downs of a professional athlete. Lots of parallels to trading.
June 20, 2023 at 12:21 am #115638RobertMontgomeryParticipantWelcome Scott, I’m 25 years and counting working for big oil … so I look forward to the day to trading full time.
As for movies, just finished “Muster Dogs” on Netflix … I’m sure you can find some good parallels to trading. Put the work in, good herding should look effortless, …
July 1, 2023 at 4:27 am #115621ScottBiltonMemberThanks Rob, I’ll check out Muster Dogs, this one didn’t cross my radar.
Continuing with my biographies, I watched Arnold (Schwarzenegger) on Netflix. Again not a huge fan of the guy, but he’s very inspirational. He comes from humble beginnings and sounds like he wanted to escape his home town and his father. The key take aways for me:
1) Have a vision for yourself – a picture of the future you want, think deeply and often about achieving it / living it
2) Work your ass off to get thereI also found Blackberry (on Amazon Prime) really fun to watch. The pump and dump story of the famous phone.
During June, I’ve designed a ASX WTT, and ASX MOMO with Nick’s help. I’ve got several systems that look good, I just need to control the build up in an orderly manner so that I can manage my confidence.
June 2023:
Weekly US MOMO: 6.6%
paper-trading (watching)
R1k MOC: 8.3% (lesson to be learnt here: don’t quit a system after a bad month even if it’s the worst in 14 years?)July plan: ramp up allocation to US MOMO, look at the logistics of deploying ASX WTT while on vacation. I’m going away on 8 weeks of vacation with my kids, so won’t have much time to deploy new stuff or write here.
August 1, 2023 at 8:02 am #115622ScottBiltonMemberHaving some nice weather camping on my hols with the kids. They love the campfires and playing with cousins.
I’ve cranked out the daily MOC trades and weekly MOMO. I’ve also switched TWS to classic, so I don’t see my PnL or balance every day, and have decided to look at it only at the end of the week. This suits me better and helps to forget about the money (until I hit a drawdown!)
July 2023
Weekly US MOMO: +9.7%paper-trading (watching)
R1k MOC: -0.8%August plan: ramp up allocation to US MOMO.
September 1, 2023 at 7:29 am #115623ScottBiltonMemberBack from my hols, in which I had the discipline to execute my trades on a daily basis. Naturally August results had to go red as I ramped up investment after a good July. The break away from the coal face of strategy research did me some good, let’s my mind decompress, and taught me that it’s only entering those trades that matter. You don’t need to make this feel like a full time job just for the sake of it.
The movie: Oppenheimer, did you all see it? I sat for the 3 hours, and since I already knew the general history of it I have to say I found it slow going. I give it a 7 out of 10.
I went on to watch the below documentary a few days later, and found it more interesting than the movie and half the time!
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt28240284/August 2023
Weekly US MOMO: -5.4%paper-trading (watching)
R1k MOC: -1.4%September plan: ramp up allocation to US MOMO, and generally get back on the saddle of research after several weeks away. It’s amazing how quickly the mind loses momentum with the coding when you take the finger off the pulse. As well as watching the R1k MOC above, I’m also watching the out of sample results of a few other systems I coded.
October 1, 2023 at 4:39 am #115624ScottBiltonMemberI’ve finished my regular 1on1s with Nick, and I’d like to thank him wholeheartedly for all of the support. The mentoring (long may it continue) has been a step change in pushing me to treat my trading like a business, and to have a firm hand with strategy selection/testing. As he said to me, the area where I’ll need help is going to be the psychological side when the bigger drawdowns hit. I hope to get that help from all of you on this forum too. August was a bit of a rollercoaster for my US MOMO, luckily with a few up days at the end of the month it clawed back some of the losses.
I’ve been reading up on volatility, here’s a great article for the newbies who want to understand the theory better. A quick tip to remember: it’s better to feed volatility formulae with daily PnL data, even if you want to calculate weekly or monthly volatility of returns (I’ve run into a few people elsewhere who say for monthly you should use monthly bar data which is nonsense). The volatility metrics are handy to compare the ride of my strats, and give you a rough idea of what you’re systems might bring in the future.
September 2023
Weekly US MOMO: -0.7%paper-trading (watching)
R1k MOC: 2.7%October plan: US MOMO now has a decent chunk of capital: stick with it as is. I will start trading a full US market long MOC that I’ve been tracking for the last couple of months.
November 1, 2023 at 1:38 am #115625ScottBiltonMember
I’ve decided to make my results clearer for my journal. I’ll be including this table from now on (populated with the systems I’m trading with real money).OCTOBER 2023 RESUTS:
This month was disappointing, as the markets declined for a 3rd straight month, no surprise that my US MOMO would too, but it caught a few stocks that did much worse. It was a tough ride with the amount of cash I have in this system. And for the first month of deploying “US ON” it naturally had it’s worth month of the year so far. Sod’s Law.
November Plan: keep same level of equity for US MOMO and US ON. Deploy a US Short System I’ve been watching for months. Develop All Weather ETF system.
For those following the SBF Trial, I’ve nearly finished the book “Going Infinite” by Michael Lewis: a fun read about the whole sage. Lewis just so happened to meet SBF at the right moment, to join him, get to know him, and catalogue his journey. One of the crazier facts is that they were running their company’s billion dollar finances on QuickBooks.
December 1, 2023 at 1:57 am #115626ScottBiltonMemberNOVEMBER 2023 RESUTS:
It was good to break the cycle of losing months. 3 in a row is historically the worst for my US MOMO. The result for US MOMO was still disappointing though. I had an unusual Monday with only 1 entry for the system, and scratched my head a bit, but didn’t investigate the cause. But now as I progress Real Test is showing the strat as being fully loaded, so I missed a bunch of entries thanks to either my error or a Real Test error. I’m investigating this.
December Plan: ride out the year with systems as is.
What I learnt this month: if a strategy doesn’t do what you think it should, then dig in and investigate, rather than brush it off.
January 4, 2024 at 9:46 am #115627ScottBiltonMemberDECEMBER 2023 RESUTS:
Another up month. Nice and steady result for 2023, overall I’m satisfied.
This is very much a mental game, with emphasis on confidence management. I’m managing that just as much as I would manage my equity. If you’re confidence is hit, you’re screwed.
Target for January: get organized and back in research mode. My line of research is to diversify my returns away from stocks.
February 1, 2024 at 6:03 am #115629ScottBiltonMemberJANUARY 2024
January came and went by fast. The wife and I saw Coldplay in concert, absolutely awesome night out, then back to normal life. Now I’ve got the parents inlaw visiting for 3 weeks, God save me!!
Trading-wise I was up decent but then got hit with bad earnings on TSLA and TER. If I was discretionary trading these I would have pulled the plug on the day of earnings, but you have to follow the system, and I did. This should balance itself out in the long run.
February plan is observing my ETF system that I developed, and assessing my R1k MOC, I’d like to turn on a more tamed down version. I’m leaving allocations the same for the month.
March 1, 2024 at 3:27 am #115949ScottBiltonMemberFEBRUARY 2024 RESULTS:
Feb came and went. Things going nicely with crypto and discretionary trading.
I broke up 3wk the inlaws visit with a trip to Bali. If you go there I recommend Nusa Dua area if you’re after a relaxing stay in a great resort, great beach, great food, and plenty of local stuff to see. I’ve been to Bali a few times and cutting out the horrible traffic made this visit the best. You need a VPN to get TWS working in Indonesia for some reason.
Feb was a light handed approach with strategy developments, and a solid consistent application of my strategies, happy to have beaten the SnP this month with the majority of my mechanical-style invested cash.
March: have lots of non-trading related things to sort out, but I have a few new systems that are on watch, nearly ready for deploying in April.
March 29, 2024 at 2:52 am #115630ScottBiltonMemberMARCH 2024 RESULTS:
Slow and steady wins the race. With less volatile returns my confidence and consistency are boosted. With the amount of money in the market, I’m not willing to swing at the fences, and I’ve got a lot of personal matters to attend to at the moment. The last thing I need are the markets keeping me awake a night.
For April, I’ll be dropping R1k MOC off the radar, that needs some bodywork before I’m interested again. In it’s place I’m going live on a strategy I’ve been watching for months: US L/S MR.
Netflix: just for it’s pure ridiculous characters, about a UK Duke who inherits a dodgy business from his father, I recommend: The Gentlemen on Netflix. It’s a marmite type flavor though.
March 29, 2024 at 8:11 am #116056JulianCohenParticipantnothing wrong with Marmite
May 1, 2024 at 5:11 am #115631ScottBiltonMemberAPRIL 2024 RESULT
US MOMO caught a cold this month, and hit a streak of losers. Nothing out of the normal, but I may be getting too old for this kind of volatility .
The new US L/S MR had a good result, and my other over night long hung in there ok. Onwards…to the next 1000 trades.
Netflix: Baby Reindeer, a must watch, and interestingly my wife was on for this one too. Very dark.
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