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I've been an options ETF trader for the past 5 years and have done quite well.
I developed my own trading systems and it worked.
2016-2018 I've been on a roll.
2019 was a complete turnover for me, especially the second half.
The stock market stopped making any sense for me, my technical analysis failed me time after time and I blew up my account.
I don't know what changed, but what I know is no longer relevant. I took a step back and try paper-trading, but to no avail. Still failing hard.
I tried devising new trading methods. Day trading, scalping, short term swings etc etc.
If I applied it back on past markets? BRILLIANT. 2019 onward? FAIL. None seem to be working because it all relies on my past technical analysis.
I'm seriously broken. Broke too.
Trading is my living, I don't have any other skills and don't know anything else. This is all I've got...
Where do I go from here? What can I do? Where can I learn working strategies to work with?
I feel like I'm on square one with no trading experience.
go back and look through all your trades during that 2 year period and then go and look at 2019 and see what changed. If you got through 2018 on top with all that crazyness towards the end of the year then you can trade anything. Something within you changed and you need to figure it out. No need to learn something new.
-P
"Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is, and you must bend to its power or live a lie"-Miyamoto Musashi
My trading system started malfunctioning by Sep 18 , the last quarter.
At that period I managed to score some quick scalp trades due to high vol but nothing like my regular system.
I wouldn't say something in me has changed, I had a specific checklist of conditions that have to be met for an entry to occur, and since then those conditions have vanished.
After that I tried to develop something else using the same technical analysis but it didn't work.
Reliable indicators I used like MACD have started to act weird. Suddenly my entire setup became useless.
Just to make my point clearer, I used to have around 75% success in catching trends.
2019 and onward? Maybe 20-30% success, not to mention times where it shifts on my a** and going opposite direction unexpectedly.
I'm seriously clueless about how I'm going to proceed.
I tried going a different route and employ a more conservative system of selling spreads. It failed too, best case I made a profit of like 15$/contract on average.
Insane frustration. It feels like I went down from a level of being a motocross riding to barely managing to ride a bike with wheels assist.
What do I do next? How do I find a decently profitable strategy that actually works in this market?
is this automated or discretionary? i could see you having a hard time from Aug-Sep 2019 but after that the indexes have been trending. What exactly are you trading and how do you trade. Explain to us all the ins and outs.
we need more info on how you were trading
-P
"Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is, and you must bend to its power or live a lie"-Miyamoto Musashi
Discretionary. I don't have experience with automated.
It's a little bit hard to explain but I'll do my best!
The markets have been trending up, that's correct, but not in a way that fit my trading style.
I used to place 2 main types of trades which are both trend style trading strategies of option buying:
- Daily-swing (if the daily move is strong enough I keep position open)
- Longer (5-10 days) trade when I could tell a strong move is ahead of us. It's basically a scaled out strategy of the one above
My main "indicator" is Pivot Points, that's how I gauge the movement potential and set my entries/exits/stops.
So it either got stuck and didn't reach the set point due to low intraday volatility, or volatility was too high but all the movement occurred outside of the PP range.
There are obviously plenty of factors I took into account like moving averages, MACD and Candlestick patterns. But it all stopped to work (if it makes sense).
My system can't predict a movement properly anymore, and when I did get a signal, the market simply ignored it. If it says "reversal now" the market continues up, if I go on bullish signals market reverses.
well I don't trade options so I won't be able to help out to much but a few things stick out to me.
It seems you are having a hard time explaining your system, if you can't explain your system to a child in elementary school then you don't really understand it.
Second if you are waiting on pivot points you are getting old info. pivots are a lagging indicator ( they all are). If you solely rely on these I would suggest you learn P/A or find a better way to look for entries.
third, you say you are taking trades of candlestick patterns, which ones work and which one's don't? Your play book could be to big focus on one trade I for one almsot take all my trades off a p/b and engulf its what I like to trade and I basically have one trade. One or two is more then enough to make some great money don't try to do to much.
forth, you shouldn't try to predict the market, you only should be trying to find entries that go with the market.
-P
"Truth is not what you want it to be; it is what it is, and you must bend to its power or live a lie"-Miyamoto Musashi
I'm a directional trader, I play the trends, I Don't use complicated option strategies, I just follow trends like a stock trader or a futures trader would do.
The exact details of my strategy are irrelevant.
There are calculations into it, but basically it's a checklist of breaking out/bouncing of a line (resistance/trend) + MACD up + breaks a Pivot point on the chart (I usually take a point extra for safety).
That's basically it. It's simple although it has some calculations I add.
Maybe it wouldn't make much sense to you, but to me it worked lovely.
I also did not try to "predict" the market per se , but when my conditions were met, *usually* a movement of my bias followed. Be it to the downside/upside.
X+Y+Z = 75% of successful trade.
Pivots have served me well until last year, their job was to gauge the volatility and therefore indicate of a trend strength.
I had only 1 system but it failed me. I'm systemless now
Maybe it stopped working because the conditions of the market changed (but I don't really see what could have changed since 2016). Maybe you never really had an edge in the first place and it was just luck (overfitting bias). Also if you blew up your account maybe your risk management wasn't that great. Did you blow up your account selling options?