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is not indicative of future performance or success.
There is a substantial risk of loss in trading. You should therefore carefully consider
whether such trading is suitable for you in light of your financial condition. You should read,
understand, and consider the Risk Disclosure Statement that is provided by your broker
before you consider trading. Most people who trade lose money.
Thank you for all the assistance here and the community.
As a new member who is observing and watching systems,
I am sure there are many members like me who would like to hear
real experience from a long time users of Real Trading Accounts.
I have prepared the questions which will be helpful to a lot of us.
How much time are you trading in real account? How was your experience?
Did you have systems which were always profitable for years?
Did you have any black days which deleted all the profits made?
Are you in overall profit in the long run?
What systems do you recommend from your experience?
What system you do not recommend from your experience?
What are the main factors to check when applying a strategy?
What would you recommend for someone who wants to get in?
Any other recommendations besides Collective2 Like AlgoTrading or any Auto Trading?
I could spend an hour on each question, so I’ll just start with Q1. I wish I had forums like this when I started.
A1. I have traded as an amateur and professional for over 40 years, so I’ll start at the beginning. I started when I was 16. I saved up $2,000 of my summer job money and opened a stock account, found it slow and switched to futures. I was too young to open an account and my father knew nothing, but he allowed me to try, so he opened an account in his name for me and I put my money in there. I had to trade out of necessity. The problem was my parents hadn’t saved any money for my college, so it was my only shot to go to school full-time. I started trading Maine potatoes, because it was the lowest margin ($300) the commission were $120 round turn. There was no news service or quote service, just the New York Times I would buy as the truck came around at midnight or in the morning. During the day I would carry around a pocket of dimes and use the school pay phone between classes to call the broker. I lost it all in 4 months. I took a summer job again and earned another $2,000 and I bought gold. It was around 1978 and gold had just breached $200. I carried it and got out in 1980-81 near the top. I sold, not because I was smart, but only because I needed the money for college, but I realized I loved it…not the money, but the action and real-world analysis. I applied for a bank job on a trading desk when I graduated. The commodity metals desk hired me because of my story and I officially became a “career professional”. The moral is: You have to embrace the journey; it’s real life, it’s a business, not a game that you play and it never stops. Even after 40 years I’m still learning. If you keep working at, learning, reading, your goals will come, because there are a lot of different ways to trade, so there is a “style” for everyone in every situation, you just have to find what works for you.
I actually got a like on my last reply. So I’ll try Q2.
Q2: Everyone wants to know the “right” system. Your question is really about time horizon and consistency which is defined by money management not just a systems entry and exit point. For example, if you started in 1981 when interest rates were over 25% and bought bonds (or stocks for that matter), you could have built a very successful career, (as many of my contemporaries have), simply by making the same investment decision for 40 years. Yes, the stock market has had crashes and bonds have pulled back, but your original capital would not have been impacted, so that is successful “system” for most of the investment industry. Or consider the Turtle Trading system which is publicly available. It would be very difficult to implement as the strategy will suffer a 2 year drawdown, Two years is along time to wait for a recovery and most would consider that approach to unsuccessful, yet because they made so much when it was working it’s considered to be great. Everyone wants to be long when going up and out when going down, but anyone with a retirement portfolio will tell you that if you can survive a crash without selling at the bottom you will be successful. The Moral is this: focus less on entry and exit points, (yes they are important) but also consider the capital-at-risk. Trading is about survival, not big returns. That is why so many choose to trade intraday. If you have a successful approach then you want to find as many trading opportunities as possible with as little capital risk as possible. It’s the opposite of “Buy and Hold”. The secret is to risk a little on each trade relative to the reward, so that you survive the downside with enough capital to make a good recovery when it happens, so your returns are a by-product of your risk controls. This is especially critical when using leverage, which magnify’s losses. You cannot predict the future, so you cannot predict your returns, the only real control you have is over your risk.
Thank you for the replies and detailed explanation @HorderPhelps
I am sure other members will be love to hear more experience from a lot of other members
Use the many features already avilable on C2 such as the ‘grid search’ for those systems which are over 360 days old / 10%+ profit etc. You’ll find that many of popular ‘mature’ systems have ( for me) unacceptable drawdown levels, which highlights this is a very personal journey - what is not acceptable for me may be OK for you, and you have to make your own choices. My focus has moved from focusing on performance to risk - ie how much do I stand to lose if he loses ten consecutive trades? How much is the trader risking per trade? Many systems here still use a form of gridding ( doubling down or whatever you want to call it) which is a major no-no for me. Set strict account loss limits and stick to them. Good luck!
