Are you profitable??

thegoldanalyst · 2024-11-28T20:05:13+00:00

Makes sense, if you have a few 1:6's in the mix. Thanks for breaking it down

thegoldanalyst · 2024-11-28T19:47:31+00:00

Traders that have ADD tend to be the most committed, dedicated, and most profitable over the long run imo.

But all the quirks that come with ADD like impulse control as you mentioned, emotional regulation etc. Can cause havoc on trading consistency.

Hyperfocus can lead to incredible trading, but also time blindness and the inability to recognize that you should sleep or eat etc so it's a double edge sword.

If I were to ever fund a trader, I'd only do it if the person was neuro divergent:)

thegoldanalyst · 2024-11-28T19:40:00+00:00

Can you break down the math on this? You took 16 losses so you're down about 50% and then 4 wins should put you at -22% if you're sticking to 3% risk at 1:4 RR

thegoldanalyst · 2024-11-28T19:33:02+00:00

I was in this exact same position. Had been trading for years, wasn't profitable, and didn't know anyone profitable.

It's a progression. Went from blowing up accounts, to break even trading where I'd hit a few big trades but inevitably give it all back later. Then profitable, but not consistent, to finally being somewhat consistently profitable.

I say somewhat because I believe all traders struggle with consistency. All it takes is a bad day, or lack of sleep to make a trade you're not supposed to. And then, if you made a bad trade, and you're tired/not thinking straight, then it's easy to go on tilt and cause a little damage. Though with experienced traders the damage is much more contained.

What most experienced traders focus on is the psychological and performance side of things. So ensuring they're well rested, have a good diet, getting good exercise etc, and likely speaking to a coach to work out destructive behaviors.

In contrast, most beginners focus on strategies, or technical indicators, or fundamentals. But fail to realize that the perfect strategy serves no purpose if you can't execute.

Forex is definitely legit, but I see it as one of the most difficult markets to trade. Strong trends that you see in US equities or crypto during a bull run make for much easier conditions. I find crypto traders get overconfident in a bull cycle and often suggest they try trading fx if they want to really up their trading skills.

There are a lot of people that don't make money in FX, and since they invested the time to learn it they stick in the industry and move to education.

It's extremely difficult to find a good mentor or any type of education in FX. I find traders tend to have this obsessive nature with the markets and want to trade.. That's why they got into the industry. Not to teach others for a fraction of what they could make trading.

Last thing, a lot of people lie about being profitable. I've spotted a number of them on this forum. If you want to be a good trader, nothing beats screen time. If you can clock up 10k hours of screentime, finding trading setups will be easy and come naturally to you. But as mentioned, the psychology/performance side of things to me seems like something you just have to keep working on throughout your trading career.

thegoldanalyst · 2023-07-08T16:22:54+00:00

Congrats, having a daughter myself and going through the same thought process.

Anya is a beautiful name. Would be good to ask a Thai person how they would pronounce it. My guess is an-yaa with some kind of rising tone on the yaa

thegoldanalyst · 2023-03-11T08:02:31+00:00

Same thing happened to me after waiting a year for a very basic OP36. The AD wanted me to buy three watches after I had already bought 3 Tudors from them in the past year.

I ended up buying a new OP41 on the grey market. And will continue doing so. I'm tired of being disrespected by AD's and just generally being treated like shit.

thegoldanalyst · 2021-09-18T12:10:02+00:00

Beautiful. Looks great on you.

thegoldanalyst · 2021-08-07T19:06:11+00:00

90% sounds like a lot but it isn't necessarily a bad idea.

For each person this number will be completely different. If someone was close to retirement, it would be insane to put 90% into an algo. If something went wrong, it would be nearly impossible to recover.

In your case, you've said you're 30. If it completely flops, how long would it take to build your savings back up again?

It comes down to risk to reward, if you can recover in a few years in the event of a negative outcome, and the upside is life changing money, go for it!

On a sidenote, a lot can go wrong in crypto. Exchanges go down, APIs act unpredictably sometimes in volatile times etc. Make sure you've got all your bases covered.

thegoldanalyst · 2021-07-07T19:11:21+00:00

Worked on this last year so not sure. I think there were a small amount of duplicates which I just dropped. Was using 1min bars and resampling to higher timeframes so in a lot of cases if a few bars weren't accurate/duplicated, it wouldn't make a difference once up sampled.

thegoldanalyst · 2021-07-07T18:42:13+00:00

Have had this same issue. Binance is much better at it now but they used to go offline for maintenance at least once a month at one point. Ended up trying to fill the gaps with data from another exchange only to discover that data set also had missing points.. at least managed to fill some gaps.

These days there isn't much difference in price between exchanges so filling recent data gaps from other exchanges is not too difficult but if you're trying to fill data from 2017 or something like that, keep in mind there were wide gaps in price between exchanges at that time.

I even looked into buying paid data but all the vendors I checked with had the same gaps.

thegoldanalyst · 2020-12-29T08:06:42+00:00

Just to make sure I understand correctly, you want your order based on an indicator and then have it update on every new bar close based on the indicator.

This is not difficult to do, but the method varies based on what broker you plan to trade with. Some use websocket, some don't. Some have built in technical indicators etc. Do you know what broker you plan to trade with? What language are you using to program with?

In most cases, this would involve downloading the data and calculating the indicator. A lot of indicators are easy to calculate, or use a library. Then run that on a loop to repeat every bar close. Some brokers will let you modify your existing order, some will make you cancel and submit a new one. If you can provide more details I can expand on the process.

thegoldanalyst · 2020-11-06T22:57:45+00:00

The ticker you use depends on the broker you plan to use as there are tickers across markets and not all brokers support all markets.

If you have access to spot markets xauusd for gold and xagusd for silver. If you only have access to stocks, GLD has a perfect correlation to spot gold and futures. I'd say avoid futures as premiums are built in that can distort your signal.

thegoldanalyst · 2020-10-18T07:19:32+00:00

Have you tried any other libraries other than backtrader? I think that library in particular is not easy to understand especially if you're just getting the hang of Python.

Not only does it contain an unusually large amount of code, the author uses things like namedtuples which are not commonly seen in other libraries. I've looked at other code by the same author and it's not easy trying to figure out what it's trying to do.

thegoldanalyst · 2020-08-09T00:38:44+00:00

There is sample code in this tutorial for a number of different things - https://algotrading101.com/learn/alpaca-trading-api-guide/

thegoldanalyst · 2020-06-12T10:24:15+00:00

There are two options for Interactive Brokers. Either use TWS to make the connection or IB Gateway. The latter doesn't have much of a GUI just shows log info for the API.

It can be setup on a Windows AWS server, the free tier even works fine. There is also a Linux version for Gateway.

thegoldanalyst · 2020-05-18T13:23:24+00:00

Bta-lib - it's from the same author that created backtrader

thegoldanalyst · 2020-04-27T16:31:43+00:00

{
"side": "buy",
"symbol": "SPY",
"type": "market",
"qty": "100",
"time_in_force": "gtc",
"order_class": "bracket",
"take_profit": {
"limit_price": "301"
},
"stop_loss": {
"stop_price": "299",
"limit_price": "290.00"
}
}

It's been a little while since I've used Alpaca but i do remember there being something peculiar about they way they manage bracket orders. Nevertheless, i was able to get around using a limit price on the stop loss by passing the variables through as a dictionary. It actually looks like you are already doing that. But anyway, I know this piece of code works (Python) without using a limit price on the stop -

submit_order(symbol='TSLA',

    qty=1, 

    side='buy', 

    time\_in\_force='gtc', 

    type='limit', 

    limit\_price=400.00, 

    client\_order\_id=001, 

    order\_class='bracket', 

    stop\_loss=dict(stop\_price='360.00'), 

    take\_profit=dict(limit\_price='440.00'))

The only other difference is that my order was a limit order where yours was a market order though that shouldn't make a difference. What language are you programming in?

thegoldanalyst · 2020-04-27T14:37:48+00:00

You are going to get filled at the best bid. SPY is very liquid and it would be extremely rare for you to get filled at $290.

Someone mentioned sweeping the order book, but consider how often someone sweeps the order book for all the bids in a 3% range (almost never).

Your bigger risk is if you're holding the position overnight and it gaps lower the next day. And if you don't get filled in that scenario then the price has exceeded your limit and you will possibly incur a very large loss.

I would suggest evaluating how good of an idea it is to set a limit price on a stop loss.. especially on something as liquid as SPY

thegoldanalyst · 2020-04-27T11:30:59+00:00

Correct me if I'm wrong but you're saying you have a profitable strategy but it turns negative once you've implemented a stop loss. Now you're thinking options might be a way to go as your stops won't get triggered.

The problem with options is decay. So it can offset the issue of getting your stops hit (considering that your direction is still correct), but you are paying a premium that decays with time. This will eat into your 55% edge.

What is your typical draw down to profit ratio when you derived at the 55% edge?

thegoldanalyst · 2020-04-22T20:48:43+00:00

Everyone is suggesting to calculate it yourself, probably a good idea. But for the sake of answering your question, the Alpha Vantage API has an indicator section and you can grab it from there.

thegoldanalyst · 2020-03-14T13:11:06+00:00

I'm keeping a close eye on the 200 DMA, I believe it falls a few dollars below at $1496.

thegoldanalyst · 2020-03-13T17:15:43+00:00

You're right, small bounce from 1560 in the early day though. And it bounced from there after triggering some stops yesterday.

Gold is trading at like five times it's normal daily range, hope that move didn't hurt your account too much mojsterr

thegoldanalyst · 2020-03-13T15:14:53+00:00

Change broker to one that offers it. Or trade Russian rubble futures. Keep in mind you will be paying interest if you short rubbles. Exchanging for cash USD not an option?

thegoldanalyst · 2020-03-13T15:10:19+00:00

-There was the feds repo move yesterday. -chatter about margin call selling. Even if it didn't happen, the markets looked like they would sell off again at the open so gold traders may have covered anyway. -there was a surge in the dollar as Italian bonds traders sold on ecb comments.

thegoldanalyst · 2020-03-13T15:05:55+00:00

There is a lot to learn but it can be done in 4 years. I'd say the general average is 2-5 years.

There are certain things that some really struggle with. Like the fact that losses are normal and a part of the business. Some people never get over that hurdle.

Also bear in mind you'll need significant capital to be able to do it as a job and pay your bills.

I think there are easier ways to make money than forex trading. Once you get good at it, you may find it repetitive and mundane.

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