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Rob M post=13104 userid=5369 wrote:I hope the best for your surgery Kate, the markets will be here when you are ready. I recently took a week off to help my mom recover from knee replacement, it gave me a lot of peace to focus on her needs and place my account on hold for the week.
Thanks guys.
That is great advice Rob re: taking time off and finding peace with it. The market isn’t going to go anywhere
Operation went a lot longer than expected and it has really knocked me around this time. It has been really nice to take time off from trading.Julian Cohen post=13112 userid=5314 wrote:Don’t have FOMO because the massive up day that often happens after a big down day hasn’t happened…..yetNo FOMO here Julian! Tell me when the red clown show is over
Sharing some lessons.
Still on the mend post op, so had a lot of time to reflect on things. The wound dressing inside my ear throws my balance off and I get confused with words / conversations….. so I will not be trading until next week when the dressing is out. After that, I will blame my blondeness for the dumb things I sometimes do !
Day trade update
In terms of the day trade strategy, when I started it in Nov 2021 & Jan 2022, I anticipated not making any money for the first 8 – 12 months. Based on a back test I did during the GFC, the strategy made roughly a 5% total return on capital in the first 8-10 months of trading. My rule was if my initial capital went into a drawdown of 35% then I would stop trading and evaluate the strategy.
Given the recent market of late (!) I am grateful for my past thinking around protecting initial capital VS dreams of making a tonne of money as a trader in the first year.
Whilst Lambos and “too the moon” would have inflated my ego, I don’t like Lambos and crypto moon BS talk is for the get-rich-quickers.First day trade strategy is currently in a drawdown of 29%.
Here’s the beautiful part. The strategy made unanticipated profit in the early months, which gave me a profit buffer to handle the current market. My return on my initial capital is 0.13%. So the market basically let me play for free over the last 7-8 months, learn about myself, learn about trading. All I “lost” was my time.Second day trade strategy is in a drawdown of 35% and the drawdown on initial capital is 19.16%. All survivable, all within my emotional comfort range and expectations for a bear market (based on backtests/stress tests).
Some mistakes
I made a mistake a few weeks/months back where I made an error with one of the settings and was trading on that error. I do daily backtests and reconcile all the trades daily, so when the error showed up in real time trading, I picked it up right away. I felt pretty embarrassed about it (still do), but I am in the process of working on it/working through it. My mistake with the settings oddly rattled me more than the $ loss & drawdown.
The situation also revealed to me that I can handle $ losses fine, but when its piled on with other major life events eg surgery, death, flooding, then my ability to cope with trading losses diminishes. For example, last week I was in the hospital trying to diagnose, unpack and learn from my trading errors 30 minutes before I was due for surgery. Of all the dumb sh*t I could do, that was the dumbest thing I could be doing in that moment. Now my rule is take time off … before.. during and after….
OPM (Other peoples money) …
My Dad has a lot of mates who are cashed up ex dairy farmers. Earlier this year, he told them what I was doing and I fielded countless offers to trade their money. I turned all those offers down because I wanted to master my own money + emotions before taking on someone else’s money + emotions. In hindsight, I am glad I didn’t add that additional pressure so early in my trading career. I think as a new trader the focus needs to be on longevity rather than profitability. Any move that challenges your ability to be sustainable should either be sidelined or pushed further down the road until you have the experience to handle it.
It is easy to run through a back test or stress test, but you never know how you will actually handle something until you have real skin in the game.
Feb 25 & this last week have been defining moments for me as a trader, in terms of understanding where my limits & weaknesses are.Trading truly is a psychological game above all else. I grew up on a dairy farm, where I was taught that you work ‘rain, hail or shine’, including and during difficult life events. The cows needed to be milked twice a day, seven days a week, you just couldn’t take time off. What I realise is that belief system in trading does not serve me and I didn’t realise that I had that belief until I was in the hospital focusing on trading instead of a major surgery.
I’m sure there will be many more lessons to come from trading
– lessons that won’t reveal themselves unless I keep showing up and putting skin in the game.Finally ….
Just wanted to express my gratitude for this community, including Nick and Craig. Being able to be transparent and share a space with people I trust has made the journey so much more rewarding. THANK YOU.Haven’t traded since the surgery. Had hoped to be trading this week, but I’m on day 9 of a really bad flu. Doing some research on my systems, but the brain fog and dizziness has slowed me down. It might be another 2-4 weeks before I’m ready to trade again.
max DD since 2005
Been thinking of the game plan moving forward. I don’t want to make a knee jerk emotional reaction and change my style of trading, or not trade a system because of a challenging month. Will leave the decisions for when I’m feeling better.
ASX Momo, US Momo, TLT & Growth Port – 100% cash
MOC 1 – 17.43%
MOC 2 – 17.55%Hopefully this uploads with higher quality … most recent daily P & L on the backtest.
I was lucky to miss some of the downside (the upside to surgery & being sick….). Funnily enough in early June I was starting to research Index filters for the MOC strategy, starting with a basic MA index filter and then looking at volatility index filters. Haven’t done enough research to come to any conclusions yet, but it will be interesting to see what it comes to.
Has anyone else played around with this for MOC strategies?
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