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Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,049 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,391
Thanks Received: 10,208
For under 100 trades he says
sqrt(#Trades) * mean / sd
For over 100 trades he says
sqrt(100) * mean / sd
which is
10 * mean /sd
With regards to SQN ask yourself two questions
1) With regards to SQRT(#Trades). Why cap the number of trades at 100. Is a system that does 120 trades no better than 100? Why is a system that does 100 trades only 15% better than one that does 75, but one that does 75 is 22.5% better than one that does 50?
2) With regards to mean /sd, ie the Sharpe Ratio. Modern finance has shown that downside volatility is more of a concern than upside volatility. It’s very easy to illustrate 2 systems where A has a higher Sharpe than B, but everybody would agree B is the better system.
I believe Van Tharpe has since moved on from it.
Trading: Primarily Energy but also a little Equities, Fixed Income, Metals and Crypto.
Frequency: Many times daily
Duration: Never
Posts: 5,049 since Dec 2013
Thanks Given: 4,391
Thanks Received: 10,208
Van Tharpe specifically - i do not.
With regards to Sharpe Ratio/Downside Volatility there's been lots of research, much that looks at the greater moments of the underlying distribution. Lots of work showing that given equal mean and standard deviation you would want the highest skew. The Omega Ratio is extremely interesting. Unfortunately, it and many other alternatives are not as easy as the Sharpe Ratio. With Omega you have to defined a desired rate of return*. Different rates yield different returns so its very "desired rate" dependent.
*Omega Ratio with desired return set to zero is the same as Sortino.
Honestly, it's a bit of a hack. If you have less than 100 trades, then you don't have enough trades to give you a good measure of your system. Similarly, if you had 900 trades, you can get a great looking SQN for a not so great system.
So, Tharpe says you should cap your number of trades at 100 so you don't get abnormally large SQN values.
The whole point of the SQN is to compare one system to another over the same time period to determine which is better.
All other things being equal, systems with 100 or more trades in the same time period are better than ones with fewer than 100 trades. The SQRT(# trades) helps to capture that to some degree in the equation.
Quote from p. 38:
"There's some analytical value to this exercise, but remain cautious of normalizing small trade sample sizes up to 100 because the resulting SQN 100 score can be quite misleading...As a system acquires more live trade results it's a near certainty that the standard deviation also goes up, which then reduces the SQN score."
I want to go out on a limb here. A few years ago a few guys from Sweden came to our office to experience the US trading floors, first hand. These were bright guys, accomplished in business that had their mind set on creating a black/gray box system.
I liked them and the idea so I got involved with both time and money. My issue with one guy (expert programmer) was that EVERYTHING had to be fully verified as Van Tharp approved.
Has Van Tharp ever actually done anything trading?
Van K. Tharp, Ph.D. Professional Coach for Traders and Investors
In the unique arena of professional trading coaches and consultants, Van K. Tharp stands out as an international leader in the industry.
Helping others become the best trader or investor that they can be has been Tharp’s mission since 1982.
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Over the years, Tharp has helped people overcome problems in areas of system development and trading psychology, and success related issues such as self-sabotage. He is the founder and president of the Van Tharp Institute, dedicated to offering high-quality educational products and services for traders and investors around the globe.
While Van Tharp’s expertise is in the area of finance, his mission is to touch people in a way that changes them for the better. In his books, courses, and workshops, he uses the financial metaphor to do so.
Tharp’s Background
Tharp uses a combination of skills and education to fine-tune his strategies to coach, consult and teach traders and investors. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Oklahoma Health Science Center in 1975. He is a certified Master Practitioner of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), a Certified Master Time Line Therapist, a certified Modeler of NLP, and an Assistant Trainer of NLP. He has used his expertise in NLP to create the successful models of trading and investing upon which so much of his work is based.
Author, Publisher, and Educator
Dr. Tharp is the author of Trading Beyond the Matrix: The Red Pill For Traders, published by Wiley & Sons, in addition to four acclaimed books published by McGraw Hill: Super Trader, Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom, the New York Times Bestseller, Safe Strategies for Financial Freedom, and Financial Freedom Through Electronic Day Trading.
Tharp is the only trading coach featured in Jack Schwager’s best-selling book, The Market Wizard’s: Interviews with Great Traders.
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Dr. Tharp has collected over 5,000 successful trading profiles by studying and researching individual traders and investors, including many of the top traders and investors in the world. From these studies, he developed a model for successful trading and investing in which other people can adopt and learn. He has developed a five-volume Peak Performance Home Study Course, teaching the results of this ten-year study.
He also developed the Investment Psychology Inventory Profile to help people better understand their strengths and challenges in relation to trading or investing.
He also has developed a course on How to Develop a Winning Trading System That Fits You, and written and published The Definitive Guide to Position Sizing™.
He published the Market Mastery newsletter for over 10 years, and now publishes a weekly e-newsletter, Tharp’s Thoughts. Dr. Tharp wanted to get the vital information that traders needed to as many people as possible; therefore, he decided to offer his newsletter at no charge. Before that subscriptions to his newsletters were as much as $249 per year.
Speaker and Presenter
The Van Tharp Institute offers workshops year-round to help traders improve performance. In addition, Dr. Tharp has designed special seminars for banks and institutions and has presented these throughout the United States, as well as Paris, Italy, Singapore, Sydney, Melbourne, Venice, London, Vienna, Stockholm, Frankfurt, Nuremberg, Hungary, and numerous other places throughout the world. He has toured Asia as a guest speaker with Dow Jones and was the keynote speaker in 2011 at the largest investment conference in Poland.
He has conducted workshops for floor traders at the CBOT, the CBOE, and the CME. He is also a regular speaker to portfolio and hedge fund managers worldwide. He was a member on the distinguished Investment Advisory Panel of the prestigious Oxford Club-a rare honor only half dozen or so individuals have received.
Dr. Tharp is also a highly rated guest speaker at expositions and conferences throughout the world. Click here if you’d like to book Dr. Tharp as a speaker.
So has he 'ever actually done anything trading?'. Based upon that, you have to think no.