Hi,

I'm not quite sure this fits here but I am thinking I invested too much time and resources for too little profit.

I've been trading actively since about a year. I tried 15 minutes timeframe as well as others. Smaller timeframes were too stressful for me and went to daily/weekly a couple of months ago.

I am profitable but the profits are small percentage wise. I'm also struggling how to calculate profitability since I scale in the risk per trade as I gained more experience.
I started with a very small risk last year and went up to 25 times that initial risk as of today.

I am rather unsure I am doing the right thing or that I even have a working strategy but I guess what I want to ask is:
did you/do you have certain performance profits per unit of time as goals to take a hard decision or at least to critically re-evaluate?

I intend to have a re-evaluation at the end of this year and would like to learn what I should pay attention at.

Thanks and good trades!

the skill is in capturing the size of the move, not in position size. Can always size up once the confidence in milking the trend/countertrend is there.

discountedbugs 

Hi, I'm not quite sure this fits here but I am thinking I invested too much time and resources for too little profit. I've been trading actively since about a year. I tried 15 minutes timeframe as well as others. Smaller timeframes were too stressful for me and went to daily/weekly a couple of months ago. I am profitable but the profits are small percentage wise. I'm also struggling how to calculate profitability since I scale in the risk per trade as I gained more experience. I started with a very small risk last year and went up to 25 times that initial risk as of today. I am rather unsure I am doing the right thing or that I even have a working strategy but I guess what I want to ask is: did you/do you have certain performance profits per unit of time as goals to take a hard decision or at least to critically re-evaluate? I intend to have a re-evaluation at the end of this year and would like to learn what I should pay attention at. Thanks and good trades!

ELIMINATE TIME - ELIMINATE NOISE

(Red Pill moment right here)

derivativesnyc 

ELIMINATE TIME - ELIMINATE NOISE (Red Pill moment right here)

Don't want to be impolite and not answer but I'm not quite sure what you're saying!

Maybe I should have added that I am interested to (at least) beat the stock market on an annual basis. Right now, I am not, and if this persists than I need to change something - therefore the re-evaluation - or invest in an ETF and enjoy the free time I get back.

I guess I'm not the only one looking at it this way, so would be happy to learn your way of thinking.

discountedbugs 

... I am thinking I invested too much time and resources for too little profit...

We already know that many people here are not profitable. Even if we only look at the profitable traders, if we look at what they make based upon the time they invest I would conject that most of them are earning less than minimum wage, and that assumes their capital is free.

discountedbugs 

...do you have certain performance profits per unit of time as goals...

I think of it as am I making more than I would be if I'm gainfully employed and what's my return on cash used (after I deduct what I could get being employed)? I'd really like this to be 20+%*. At some point your better off investing not trading. I know that doesn't answer the risk per trade question, but I still think it's an important way to look at your results.

* As my account has got bigger, my % return has unfortunately dropped, but that's because much of what I do is capacity constrained. With 5% Fed Funds though it should be up this year.

discountedbugs 

Don't want to be impolite and not answer but I'm not quite sure what you're saying! Maybe I should have added that I am interested to (at least) beat the stock market on an annual basis. Right now, I am not, and if this persists than I need to change something - therefore the re-evaluation - or invest in an ETF and enjoy the free time I get back. I guess I'm not the only one looking at it this way, so would be happy to learn your way of thinking.

Eliminate time from your charts, see trend/countertrend clearly

SMCJB 

We already know that many people here are not profitable. Even if we only look at the profitable traders, if we look at what they make based upon the time they invest I would conject that most of them are earning less than minimum wage, and that assumes their capital is free. I think of it as am I making more than I would be if I'm gainfully employed and what's my return on cash used (after I deduct what I could get being employed)? I'd really like this to be 20+%*. At some point your better off investing not trading. I know that doesn't answer the risk per trade question, but I still think it's an important way to look at your results. * As my account has got bigger, my % return has unfortunately dropped, but that's because much of what I do is capacity constrained. With 5% Fed Funds though it should be up this year.

Yes, I think it's a good way of looking at it. Thanks!

Initially I thought I will be a full-time trader and that's how I ended up trading the 15 min time-frame. I found out that my learning is just not fast enough to make enough profits to be a full-time trader. So I went to plan B, which is work my profession and trade on the higher time frame in parallel.
And this is what I'm testing now. I will give trading at least one more year (Jan-Dec 2024) as there's a lot more I have to learn and will see how that works.

So, my thoughts here are that I don't want to give up yet, unless I see enough evidence of better ROI for my time and money elsewhere or compared to professional traders. And therefore collecting ideas on how to find and look at the evidence.

I guess, the risk per trade is a math and statistics problem, I just don't know how to express it properly. The value of risk grew in absolute terms 10 times, I am trying to extrapolate the profits to a year. In my case, similar to yours, as I grew the risk I closed the trade earlier due to fear of losing profits. So extrapolating feels wrong, since I changed the "rules". In the meantime I bought a subscription with a trades journaling software, maybe I find some answers there.

derivativesnyc 

Eliminate time from your charts, see trend/countertrend clearly

While I can agree that it helps to see the trend better, I would argue that the rate of change, that is, how fast a trend is moving in the unit of time, could be an indicator of exhaustion or reversal for that trend.
Maybe you can give some examples how it helps you?

discountedbugs 

So I went to plan B, which is work my profession and trade on the higher time frame in parallel. And this is what I'm testing now. I will give trading at least one more year (Jan-Dec 2024) as there's a lot more I have to learn and will see how that works.

I'm not sure what you mean by trading, but I know several people that trade 100% systematically and predominantly on higher time frames, which enables them to continue to work in their profession. Time required is 15-20 mins/day to make sure everything is working correctly, and as much additional time as you want/need to develop new systems.

SMCJB 

I'm not sure what you mean by trading, but I know several people that trade 100% systematically and predominantly on higher time frames, which enables them to continue to work in their profession. Time required is 15-20 mins/day to make sure everything is working correctly, and as much additional time as you want/need to develop new systems.

Yes, that is what I meant. I am currently trading on daily and weekly and will continue to do so at least until the end of 2024 while in parallel work my profession.

On a side note: I need more than 15-20 min/day now, hopefully I will improve on that.