Tim’s Journal

[TimothyStrickland]

Feb 2021 Results:

MRV HFT: +11.8%

NDX Momo: -5.4%
NDX Aggressive: -6.7%

[TimothyStrickland]

Mar 2021 Results

MRV HFT: +15.4%

NDX Momo: -7.25%
NDX Aggressive: -11.5%

[TrentRothall]

Nice MR Tim!

[TimothyStrickland]

April 2021 Results

MRV HFT: +7.5 % (+43.6% YTD)

NDX Momo: +11%
NDX Aggressive: +19.5%

[TimothyStrickland]

April is around the time I usually re-adjust my strategies but so far the systems that I am running are performing near the best of optimization parameters that I could test them for. My initially tested strategies were:

Tested CAGR during inception
MRV HFT: 28.5% CAGR

NDX Momo: 32% CAGR
NDX Aggressive: 45% CAGR

Actual CAGR since inception (2019)
MRV HFT: 46.74%

NDX Momo: 42% CAGR
NDX Aggressive: 66.28%

Most of the gains made were last year for my momentum systems and the end of the year (early this year) for my Mean Reversion System. I don’t plan on adjusting the systems at this time.

Goals this year is to create a short system and WTT which I still haven’t gotten around to doing (due to work etc).

I am so glad Nick advised me not to turn off my MRV system when it was struggling in 2019.

[Nick Radge]

Boom! Great effort Tim.

[TimothyStrickland]

May 2021 results:

MRV HFT: +2.3%

NDX Momo: -4.4%
NDX Aggressive: -17.9% (ouch), its not all fun and games. Losses mostly due to YELL

[TimothyStrickland]

I have been thinking about a few things over the past month and today I have decided to take my trading more seriously. Almost 6 years ago(6 years in October), I took a free class on trading at Online Trading Academy. This class wet my apatite for trading and learning about the stock market in general. However the marketing(looking back now) stretched the truth and painted an unrealistic picture on what was possible. I dropped 55k on the “mastermind” course a few days later in the hopes of trading for a living. I was obsessed by the idea that I could make a living just trading. I spent a few weeks on the SIM but then jumped into live trading with my first 5k and lost all of it. The reality hit me that this wasn’t easy lol. I then hired a trading psychologist because I knew my emotions were out of control. This helped immensely and it took me much longer to lose the next 5k haha. After losing little bits of money over the next 2 years, my love for trading had diminished and I faced the fact that trading just wasn’t going to work for me. I probably spent another 150k on courses to learn other business ideas etc, namely Real Estate and Amazon selling. Looking back now, I probably could have gotten all that information from just reading books, it may have taken me longer, but it certainly would have been a LOT cheaper.

in 2018 I found Nick’s site, I can’t remember how. I think I had given up on trading all together but was willing to give it one more shot and so glad I did. The course was life changing for me, got me interested in Software Engineering due to the coding part of the course, taught me more about the market then I ever learned in the other course and made me Lots of money to date, about 400k which allowed me to pay for all my previous courses and then some. Nick never painted an unrealistic picture and was always up front in the beginning, letting me know that trading for a living and relying on it as income would be incredibly hard and that trading in general was not easy. This lined up with my experience that I had already went through for the last 2 years so I ended up trusting Nick in the end.

Seeing my systems work day in and out even when I am still tempted to trust my gut makes me trust my System even more. I started the course being highly skeptical and when not seeing my systems work for awhile, I wasn’t surprised but I didn’t give up. However, I also wasn’t focused on it either, I just followed what Nick said and let my systems do the work while I focused on other things. In the meantime I have been running an Amazon, and Real Estate business as well for about 3 years and the trading has far and away outperformed the others. Based on this It makes sense to focus on the one that is working and forget about the ones that aren’t. One of my mentor’s suggested this as well. It is better to focus and get good at one thing then to be mediocre at many. At this point in my life I have decided to try and learn as much as I can about Systematic Trading. I am still taking college courses in programming so that I can even expand my knowledge outside of what the course has taught me, looking into other markets, trading on different time frames etc. I also transitioned to a Software Engineer at work which comes with higher pay and more benefits. I plan on getting a Master’s Degree in Data Science with a focus on creating trading strategies. Overall though, I will always rely on the robust strategies that Nick has taught me.

My plan is to close 2 of my businesses, leaving 2 left, the trading business and the real estate business where I have a partner. My partner is the deal maker and I just fund the money, this business is mostly to help a little with diversity in asset classes that way I am not 100% vested in the stock market only.

[TimothyStrickland]

Looking back at my Systems performance since inception (early 2019) in Total Returns:

MRV: +145.39%
NDX Momo: +125.06%
NDX Aggressive: +223.57%

I am a little surprised my MRV outperformed the NDX Momo since the momo had some really big gains, but my MRV has just been consistently churning out smaller gains for a long time which is really adding up.

[RobertMontgomery]

Tim, Thanks for sharing your story and the progress on your journey. I agree with the strategy of concentrating your focus in a common area with your day job and trading skills overlapping. I am hoping to get accepted into my companies data science program next year for the same reasons you mentioned.

[TerryDunne]

Hi Tim,

Your story is very impressive on a number of levels, but I particularly like the bit where you hadn’t given up even when you were telling yourself that you had. I also like the idea that you are creating clarity of purpose from a muddle of ideas (I hope you don’t mind me putting it this way, no offence intended).

All the best mate, I hope we are both here for a long time so I can follow your progress.

[Nick Radge]

I love reading these types of posts! Epic – thanks Tim. Very inspirational.

Completely agree on focusing on the core things you’re good at. They tend to be the one’s you get more enjoyment from, which in turn makes you do it more and then voila! makes you better.

[TaranveerSingh]

Amazing experience Tim. Lovely to know you kept at it. Not finding success in trading initially is really frustrating and the uncertainty is cruel.. Hoping to see you prosper even more mate.

[TimothyStrickland]

That is awesome Rob and makes sense. Yea, I think I was spread out “too thin” mainly because I was worried trading wouldn’t work, I needed a “backup plan” so to speak.

And as Nick said, I get more enjoyment out of that anyway. I didn’t even really like working on the Amazon and Real Estate business that much.

New chapter of my life where I am laser focused on trading.

[KateMoloney]

Thank you for sharing Tim

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