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A good question to ask would be: where does a holy grail start ?
Many people say I am not looking for the holy grail. But they do.
If I ask in my trading room what do you expect from a system, then the vast majority says: I am not looking for a system that would make profit all the time or holy grail but a system that would produce +/- 70% hitrate and an average winning trade that is 2 x as big as a losing trade.
They don't realize that this is a holy grail.
Important is also that they wish that the winning trades and losing trades would be nicely scattered around....2 winning 1 losing...3 winning..1 losing...
Wich is again impossible.
Only people who done a zillion backtest on 100's of systems are fully awere what to expect from a system.
Each and EVERY system can be placed on a spectrum between trend following systems that have a low hitrate from +/- 30% to 45% to the over-bought over-sold or contrair systems that score between 60 and70% (or the synthetic ones that have a small profit target and big stoplosses)
The trend following systems that have a low hitrate will ALWAYS have avg winning trades that are severall times bigger then the losing trades. But people suffer under the low hitrate. Because with these kind of systems you can have easely 10 consecutive losing trades.
On the other side of the spectrum (above 50%) you have the systems that ALWAYS have avg losing trades that are many times bigger then the avg winning trade. People like these systems at first but they complain that a couple of losing trades eat up all the profit of a nice streak of winning trades.
They think that they only need to find then a system that has the best of both worlds. And there starts their quest for the holy grail.
They don't realize or don't want to accept that EACH and EVERY POSSIBLE system is sitting or on one or the other side of that spectrum.
The middle of the spectrum is a +/- a 50% hitrate and a winning trade that is +/- equal to the losing trade.
If you deduct spread and slipage one realizes that also this is a losing system.
The trend following systems are the best to follow. But they have the tendency to perform bad over longer periods when price is not trending. And price is most of the time not trending. So people can mentally not cope with that FACT.
The systems that have high hitrates have the tendency to perform good most of the time but a few losing trades over a short period of time destroy the winners that were made over a longer period of time. People again can not cope with that FACT.
Needles to say that the 50% systems are not realy helpfull.
So one of the elements of a holy grail is what you expect from a system.
Is that making money or is that mental satisfaction....The holy grail seekers want to have both.
The only serious difference or edge you can give to a system on each side of the spectrum is the MM.
Again the vast majority does not have any clue what so ever what real MM means. Even the ones who red books about it.
They think that MM is equal to counting the losses and profits you made at the end of the day. Or beeing carefull to not be overleveraged.
Or think, if I find a realy good system then I don't need to bother about all that calculations after each trading day.
Or think , profit is profit and loss is loss, so if I can find something that makes more profits then losses then it is clear that I need to make money.
If I ask in the room at the end of the day who have placed all his trades in a spreadsheet so they can keep track of their drawdowns the R/R ratio the avg winn/loss ratio the MAX DD etc....I can be honest..no one...Reason ?..they had a couple of losing trades and they want to forget about them as soon as possible. They don't want to be confronted how bad they did that day.
Even some of the people don't have any clue what so ever how excel works. So there the MM should start but there it also stops. (I did not know how excel worked but I learned-- because I felt that it was absolutly nescessary if one wanted to trade in a professional way).
The ONLY difference or edge you can give a system where ever it is placed on each side of the spectrum, to make it more profitable, is true serious MM.
Never never never will there be a indicator that will tell you to go short on a top or to long on a bottom. Even not something that will come close to this.
If that would be possible then that indicator is a Madam soleil or cristal bal.
The moment that one accepts that he needs to work with the low hitrate but high avg winn/loss ratio or the high hitrate with the bad avg winn/loss ratio but make the difference with the MM, ONLY then he will stop his search for the holy grail and realize that he has to be patient and look to the results of trading over a long period of time. And also realize that losses are connected to trading as breathing is to life.
A lot of people would benefit a lot more from realy learn how to trade, learning how to implement MM in their trading instead of wasting all that energy in their quest for the holy grail.
And that learning is programming , develloping, backtesting, trading, calculating, studyng over charts 24/7 weekens included and this for all possible indicators, the leading indicators the laging indicators, the combination of all possible indicators, the price patterns, the overall TA, the breakout system, the trend following systems , the imaginairy systems (as eliot wave), the grid systems, the different time frames ..etc..etc...That way they would come to the conclusion that only MM and discipline makes the difference (that was at least my holy grail).
iGoR
Last edited by iGoR; 06-21-2008 at 07:52 PM.
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