[TimothyStrickland]

Mike, sounds like a good strategy for you! For me, if it wasn’t for Nick, not sure I’d still be a trader right now. Seems to be getting easier for me (from an emotional side) as I keep following the system everyday.

[TimothyStrickland]

Hard to trust your system in times of drawdown. I added more money to my system as Nick has suggested in the past. It is a challenge to do this as we can be afraid of losing more money. It is precisely times like these that seperate real traders from wanna-be’s! I added money anyway, despite my reservation, I think I am starting to get the feel for disconnecting from the money but it has been a long process.

Oddly enough my MRV has gone straight up every single day this month. The string of winners and losers happens a lot it seems.

[TimothyStrickland]

MRV: 0.585 x 1.24 x 0.88 = 0.638 FAIL
NDX Aggressive: .67 x 5.49 x 2.75 = 10.12!!!???

[TimothyStrickland]

It was a little tough for me to pull the trigger this time around but I kept hearing “Next 1000 trades” in the back of my head = ).

[TimothyStrickland]

Jun 5 MRV went active again and so far starting to climb out of its huge draw-down, will see how this month goes, today alone was a 4% gain.

[TimothyStrickland]

Looking forward to it, would love to have your insight

[TimothyStrickland]

Good points Nick,

I went to go see a trader psychologist a couple of years ago after blowing up 3 small trading accounts. Oddly enough, we didn’t talk about trading that much but about my limiting beliefs and everything else you mentioned there. It helped a lot and after that I stopped sabotaging my trades.

The feelings never went away, self doubt, FOMO, comparison to others but at least I have learned to calm them enough to do what my system says ANYWAY. Sometimes its harder than others, for instance last month it got tough again.

I still think my biggest issue is FOMO. For instance, momentum system went to cash and I watched the market skyrocket the last few days which was frustrating to watch. Fortunately, I heard your voice in my head, “Next 1000 trades”. I can still get tempted but I rarely act on it anymore thankfully!

[TimothyStrickland]

Nick,

I was thinking about signing up for the sale you were having. I let everything expire because I run my own systems now but I am really looking for something I can put a chunk of my money into for retirement. Right now its sort of my 401k but I’m running the 10 month MA strategy on it (hasn’t performed well recently though).

What are the metrics on that system? you were getting 12.5% CAGR? MaxDD?

Thanks!

[TimothyStrickland]

Agreed, I would see any short term system hard to meet that, I will test mine when I get home tonight and let you know.

[TimothyStrickland]

Some great ideas. I have been pondering some ideas as well after my MRV took such a big hit last month not really changing my MRV but just creating more systems to spread out my risk and profit to more consistent results. I am working on my MOC system currently and I am learning how to apply the buy on open sell on close, so this is a fairly new concept to me. So this is an extremely relevant topic for my current trading journey right now.

Julian, you brought up a good point about being unable to capitalize on the 4x leverage during the overnight session since after the market closes we would be back to the standard 2x leverage. I am still going to see if I could figure something out, I will test both ways during my design phase and see what would make the biggest difference.

I guess the biggest questions to test are does the 4x leverage still outperform the fact that the market performs better after the close. I am also setting myself up to overnight risk (not a huge deal but something to consider).

[TimothyStrickland]

Great results Said. I am with Julian as my MR system decided it wasn’t going to perform this month.

[TimothyStrickland]

lol Julian!

[TimothyStrickland]

I wanted to be candid about what I was really thinking during this month as I’m sure everyone else had been there before.Thanks guys for the encouragement and your email Nick. I honestly don’t see how any new trader could do this without mentor’s. It is tough even with my mentors and the help of everyone here, I couldn’t imagine going at this alone.

I did some more testing updating variables but just as I suspected they all performed badly which made me more confident that I followed the process layed out for me here, I let self doubt creep in. I will not be making any adjustments to my systems and will continue to plug away. I have been embracing the process for over a year now, I will continue to embrace it!

[TimothyStrickland]

Monthly reports:
MR HFT: -15.1% Currently in a -23.8% drawdown. Took some really nasty trades this month.
NDX Aggressive: – 7.8% (I think most of this can be attributed to XLNX) and of course the malaise of the market. Drawdown is -7.8%
SPX Momo: -6.6% (Currently in a -18.8% Drawdown now due to the October 2018 fiasco)

YTD:
MR HFT: -14.3%
NDX Aggressive: +5.3%
SPX Momo: -2.8%

Overall Account: -19.1% This is from a combination of tradelongterm, some of the Power setups and my own systems.

All systems go to cash on Monday morning as all my filters have triggered.

Transparent Thoughts: I am getting suspicious of the Mean Reversion system since it is now in it’s 2nd worst drawdown the system has ever experienced in 25 years of backtesting history, is this just bad luck? The system did take some nasty trades this month which really brought it down quickly, QCOM and XLNX being 2 of the bigger ones. Nick reviewed the system and also suspects I have just landed on the wrong side of probability as well. I will go back through this system and do some research on parameters and see how they would have performed over this time period just to make sure I haven’t missed something.

I am undecided how I feel about my systems exiting now, After the October drop my systems exited and the market recovered so fast the systems could not take advantage of it. These are all emotions that I am dealing with now and I’m sure everyone is dealing with. As always though, I cannot trust my own gut. I have debated on just allocating a lot less capital to the systems or using the sim for awhile until I get a few years of proof of concept under my belt but then I would just be pissed off that I missed a 40-50% account growth in that time. Damned if I do, Damned if I don’t. As Nick says, I am just going to continue taking my trades and let the chips fall where they may! Some big traders have been in drawdown for several years, If I am going to get the results I want, I gotta deal with the tough times as well. Next 1000 trades!

[TimothyStrickland]

Yep. I mean compared to some of the other great investors the drawdown for us is mild. Bill Dunn experienced nearly a 50% drawdown right from the start and even Warren Buffet has weathered 2 50% drawdowns and several 37% ones. it is a part of the process.

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