SIUYA

do those returns take into consideration the cost of rolling contracts every month and paying for the contango, or are they the spot prices?

most people will not have enough money for retirement - they get sold on the idea of driving off into the sunset to spend their money. newsflash - 20 years of retirement money disappears very quickly when you have a speed hump like the GFC, your promised double digit returns only come in at 6%pa, inflation is at 4%, and you actually live for 30 years.

QE2 is still going????

you people are freaking out my inner self

you blokes think the US has it bad....look at Europe....the Germans are paying for the retirement and spending policies for Greece, Portugal, Italy. etc; One of the great things a past government in Australia did was force superannuation (basically a self funded pension system) on us.....mainly as most people are too lazy/incompetent/cant be assed/ selfish/living in the moment to save money for themselves. So sometimes the governments get it right (not often ) Even if the returns are not great - its something.

I also think there is a fundamental disconnect between what people think they are risking and what they are actually exposing themselves to when looking at returns on capital. eg; take $5,000, start trading an equity market contract or FX contract say.....often the real exposure you have is around $100,000. So ...is the return at the end of the year based on $100,000 of exposure or $5,000???? I would always argue that the true return calculations should be on the $100,000 but most often people think its based on the $5000. If you are a hedge fund manager....how much will you charge your customer the 1.5 to 2% - is it based on their deposited amount leveraged 20 times, or the leveraged exposure???? Each to their own of course, but if you are looking to scalability, sustainability and not just making the most out of the leverage offered by a future then you need to be comparing apples to apples etc; To also put it in laymans terms - buy a house with a deposit of 5% - whats the exposure, and when you sell the house, do you count the return based on the deposit or the cost of the house???? (the above are all rhetorical questions...I look at the amount of exposure, or I will at least look at and understand the amount of leverage employed.....why is it day traders think 30+ times of leverage is great when recent events have shown 30+ times of leverage helped cause a lot of the expert institutions ("banks") much grief)

my 2c -- problem with that MM is that there are too many participants to know exactly who is doing what. The ASX used to show who was buying and selling by showing the broker designation, they then got rid of that as they found too many people were waiting to front run orders, and as everyone knew other people and they talked. Has it changed the market, stoppped people from trading etc; etc; no. It just got rid of the few people who relied on order flow to front run (sort of like the current court cases in the US ) After working on a floor, it was handy for short periods of time, only. I have plenty of stories whereby blindly following others and not following your own ideas ends up costing. Nowdays the algos make up a lot of the market, and what is it that they are doing - many are merely executing an order over the day and splitting it that way, and often you can pick up variations of those early by tape reading - but personally I dont think it matters if it is people initiating new trades or exiting. I am with blowfish here. For me, it is more important as to what the market does after I initiate a trade. The only thing that I care about is that others follow me in the the same direction (or am I just following them ??)

Very true - some trade better with a salary and OPM and cant handle the stress of running their own money. Others hate the idea of being responsible for OPM. Horses for courses. The best guys - and there are plenty of these around, are those that use OPM to make plenty for themselves and none for the OP. :haha:

Regardless of what you are looking for, thought is needed. Just looking and staring and looking for answers wont help (thats what the magic of TV is for ) look to test ideas, look to confirm ideas and look to see when things work - and dont work, based on your theory of the markets and for why you think they should work.

put a bunch of highly educated people into a room - lets guess they are all lawyers, doctors, bankers, academics etc; people who might have more idea than your average punter Tell them that 50% of the people in the room are below average intelligence for the room. watch the incredulous looks and denials that 1) this is true, and 2) each individual will believe they are above average. There are always winners and losers depending on the measure.

AUDUSD - for patriotic reasons, and the fact it is one massive uptrend (thinking AUDEUR, might get interesting - just a gut feel)

brokerage will kill you, plus assuming you only trade longs=heads or similar a large run of heads or tails in a row can still take you out, or at least set you back enough that it will take a long time to recover if ever. But I guess if the return is always 2 to one, then it makes sense. Maths geeks are better at explaining it than I but I think you need to run the profits longer.

Dont get too hung up of definitions as that is an endless argument about the differences between tape reading and price action, I think Tams in his unique way is saying ---- spell out precisely what you are looking for the system/platform/program to do and then.... dont just give it a name that has different meanings to many different folks. there are threads here somewhere discussing this. Sierra Chart is another - uses C++ - it has a version using TPO (i think - might be worth a look) Ultimately each system is different and each has their advantages and disadvantages depending on what you wish to achieve....and you need to trial each and see what you like....often many people start with one and switch.

this a random selection of actual trades I keep in excel. does it mean anything to you? tradesList2011.xlsx

Tradewinds - please take this in the right manner. you seem to be wanting easy or very precise answers to everything...... the only person who will work out what works for you is you, and with the number of posts all around the place you are jumping around everywhere. If you you dont know whats wrong with trying to pick tops and bottoms, and what the other option is then you are not thinking about it. No-one is critising your strategy/ideas and most people realise that there are plenty of ways to skin a cat, and what works for you may not work for others.....but there are certain truisms I think that over many many years and many different types of traders ....and one of those is bottom pickers get smelly fingers.(similarly for tops), and the trend is your friend. I and others who (may or may not actually be able to trade, or may or may not make money) offer ideas and possible solutions to make you think.......they are not designed necessarily to give you an answer to questions that are subjective and open to different interpretations by different people......you have to tailor it to yourself. If you are wanting to have evidence of someones prowess in trading then I thinking you will be whistling dixie as what you will find is a whole rabbit hole of fraud. statements can be made up and often those who will provide these will often provide select statements, and will then often offer a payment service of some sort after this. All the traders I know who have been profitable give their services of mentorship or advice for free - if thats what they choose to do. You even mention that once if you become profitable you may have better things to do......and if you dont become profitable then what? Personally I have periods of success and failure and often this can involve long periods of frustration of going to BE, lots of losses and a few big wins. This can often take months. By the sounds of what you are looking for these types of returns are not for you. Seeing someone elses returns are no tangible proof of what they are thinking. you write - Give pros and cons about methods of entry and exit. This is what I am looking for. This information is already available in plenty of places.....but what you see as a pro or con is not what others do. are you are scalper, are you swing trading, trend following, a fader etc; etc;?? It seems you dont have a strategy yet, you are only sim trading and flicking from idea to idea.....your statement of I dont want to limit good potential implies this to me. there is nothing wrong with searching for ideas and opinions, but unless you form your own and are able to take advice when offered then .... I may be a complete idiot, I may be a hopeless communicator, I may be lots of things, but I do have a lot of trading experience and offer this advice for nix on a free and open internet - this is either priceless or worthless. I have only worked for a company and not for myself a total of 7 of the first years out of twenty - all of it trading and the markets....Get what you want out of it. This also applies to everyone who posts on the net - thats what makes it so good.. take this the right way - it may seem harsh or critical....but if you cant take this then good luck to you. it is meant to help. .... you started the thread saying you wanted to eliminate a few bad trades, by cutting your losses, and then quickly jumped to new taking profit rules, I offered a simple question to you that seemed to get a response that has prompted this from me in reply......do you know what you want? (I may regret sending this but life is full of them)

I think there are a few ways to make money in various businesses, and are roughly summarized here when in comes to trading..... you can leverage your own money - great freedom, highly risky you can leverage OPM - either as a broker or a trader - less freedom, less risky, generally more profitable - even if you are wrong. you can leverage other people - by investing in them, employing them etc; - variations on the risk and freedom aspect Many traders working at instos cannot trade (due to restrictions) and generally due to different skills sets, their own money and hence maxmise what goes in their pocket by trading OPM. There are lots of ways to do it but for my two cents if all you are interested in is the money, then trade OPM. It also could be seen as a safety net. would you rather trade your 10,000 for a 100% return where you keep 100% or trade OPM and amounts of 1 mil, for a 10% return where you keep 25% of the return?

yes you could - you could also trade gold using an oil chart.....but it would probably not make sense. Spot FX is not a future....suggest you learn the difference otherwise it might start getting costly.

as a suggestion if you are scalping - ask yourself - are you are trying to eliminate a handful of bad trades, or trying to improve your profit taking. The handful of bad trades are usually the ones which either your entry was so poor that you were trying to pick tops or bottoms, and never gave yourself a chance, OR you did not cut them when clearly you were wrong. It seems you are still worried about taking profits, when thats not the problem.

opp - yeah you know me. A sign of our ages! goggle O.P.P. (song)

error number one - you are in a bad trade - get out. Instead you stick in an order to get out for a one tick profit......that to me is insanity, because you have already decided its a bad trade. If it finally becomes a good trade - through luck/chaos/randomness.....you decide to exit. This is a plan designed to keep losers and exit winners. you would be better off working out how to exit quickly- when the trade goes badly, and then being prepared to re-enter....and not sit there and think as many do - "well the market screwed me again"

nicely put Qiman - its like base jumpers and the such. They are risk loving but at the same time very focused on the management and minimization of the downfalls to taking those risks. Now weather or not its based on emotional issues or just the plain lack of stopping and thinking about things before hand - it is always still amazing how even for simple things people dont think about it first.....this applies to many many issues and everyday things in life. eg; why do people drive around in busy car parks looking for the rock star park, when they could go straight to the spots that are highly likely to be empty but slightly further away? Its actually a very interesting thing to watch people spend ten minutes of frustration driving around to save a 2 minute walk.

taking away all the sayings we know and love - eg; dont fight the market, be flexible, the market does not care, the market is always right, etc; etc; and adding into the mix the various descriptions of ego and the ideas associated with what ego is, and how we relate to it. my two cents.... Ego and trading dont mix. the market is not a place to find your self, but the market will definitely find you out

as a suggestion - open another account for your punting/gambling/no rules trading, and keep your strict rules based boring but profitable trading separate. One issue with this idea is that you will want to favour the strategy that makes you money on the days its profitable and possibly it will re-inforce some bad habits....but as you have those already and this is about trying to separate the "why" as opposed to much else it might be worth while. This works for me in that I have various accounts and strategies. It does not stop me from making mistakes, but it keeps me focused, and any actual drawdowns get compartmentalized and dont blow up the account.

an edge - one of the most over rated/ over used/ miss used comments in the whole industry. No one will sell you an edge - you have to create it. As an (ex) options market maker we used to have a built in edge, around a theoretical fair value - and even that was theoretical and only relevant to me at that point of time of trading, assuming I could then offset the risk and hedge against another option that also theoretically had some edge, and even then it was just a hedge. Then the next day the theoretical fair value may have been different again.....thats the market. Often as pointed out by others - its an edge that suits your personality and can involve such things as patience, consistency, context, risk management. Equally so dont think the edge is all mental....that just another element.

I actually think this is a common misconception depending on the strategy. People could produce plenty of simple back tested results that look good over a period of time and they hit all the right statistical measures. It does not mean they will work over all types of markets. I would ideally like to see how well something performs in a market that does not suit the strategy. It is when things are doing badly that the mistakes creep in to make things worse. Even short term day trading systems often work better in one set of markets, or instruments than others. So unless you are truly and accurately testing a trading system over a portfolio of instruments or over many types of markets, backtesting is just that, a theoretical bunch of assumptions that tests and possibly curve fits the data available. Not that backtesting is not relevant, but just because it is statistically relevant does not make it real life relevant.