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What would be the proper way to calculate this I keep track of all wins and losses and a weekly statement of positive weeks and negative weeks. As long as we have a range of 2 or more points i can have anywhere between 2-10 signals.
Click on the word expectancy and drawdown to learn their definitions, and you should be able to calculate them. Make sure you are including commissions and realistic slippage in your calcs.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I moved to live trading as soon as I could. I didn't take SIM seriously enough, caught myself doing stupid things just to see what happened, etc. I decided to open a small account, track the 6E and trade the M6E. Psychologically, it was a big difference having (a small amount of) real money on the line. There's usually enough liquidity that getting in and out isn't a problem, and I can learn by actually doing without risking a lot of cold hard cash in the process.
Do you have a solid trade plan? Do you have a journal that shows a positive outcome over, 50-100 trades? If the answer is no to either, you are not ready to go live. If you don't have the discipline to do either, your career as a trader will be short lived.
In trading, shortcuts lead to the longest path possible.
Solid plan that is in excel as well as a journal with corresponding pictures that are labled. Will be slightly tweaking the journal tho as a few of the categories are very similar but it's really just going to boil down to starting.
Does your trade plan outline your risk management? Does it outline your pre-market routine? Do you clearly know what your trigger signal is? Where do you set your targets? What do you when something unexpected happens, what your contingency? What are you going to do to make sure you don't keep making the same mistakes? When do you know it's not working?
I highly recommend you write it out as if you were presenting it to some investors you were trying to convince to invest 100k of their hard earned money. You need to have all your ducks in a row. The worst thing you want to experience is trading with live money and you come across a situation that you didn't thoroughly plan out.
In trading, shortcuts lead to the longest path possible.
pre market plan is squared away, check news release's and similar markets, and have certain webpages i always visit.
I've set my system up in a very automatic way and actually working on automating it. If we have a black swan event or lets say the s&p drops 20 points if im in a trade it will either hit my s/l or t/p then it would be a waiting game until my system shows me another signal after getting burned on trying to force markets and "predicting" ive learned its alot easier to wait for the obvious signal then be extremely aggressive. Same mistakes would be not following rules and that = done trading for the day. My plan has a set amount of losses i will allow for a day and then its just time to walk away.
i have all my plans in excel but i really like to idea of " presenting to investors concept" kinda makes you think outside of the box
List everything that can go wrong and have contingencies / systems in place to deal with all of them
There is a lot that can go wrong , trust me . Your end , brokers end , internet , computer , power blackout . the list is huge , have a plan for all of them
And of course the most important plan of all , trading plan ... measure everything , learn more from failures , find commonalities in failures to see if they can be addressed to minimize them ... Quantify Quantify Quantify Quantify
if you measure it you can improve it ... Sometimes shit happens and sometimes we make shit happen , if you can differentiate between them you can fix it
dealing with a power black out is something i have been considering, currently i have my brokers number but have never actually called and went through the steps.. might want to do that.
I've spoke with my local micro center computer gurus and what they suggested would last me about 15 minutes for my computer,screens,and internet connection. My trades don't normally last longer then 5 minutes so i would think 15 would be fine. What are you currently using ? Any reason i should look at a larger power back up?