appleinvestor

Finished April flat after getting on the wrong side of AAPL earnings, with a huge comeback and now in positive territory for May.

The system booked a little over 8 points, then went short at about 528 and change this morning. So far gaining approximately 39 points in April. Come Join the Live Hangout and Watch the System Apple Automated Trader LIVE - YouTube

his will chronicle my Double Bollinger strategy which officially started trading on April 17th with a Long position. The strategy trades with 30 minute bars and is iTuned to Apple's explosive nature. The strategy employs two Bollinger bands, trades are opened when the outer band is breached, and closed when the inner band and moving average are breached. A Double sized position is taken with the opening trade, followed by two half-sized tranches to close the trade. The signals are based on breaches and regressions of volatility levels. The strategy runs on Tradestation and can be viewed on my daily YouTube Hangout from 9am to 4pm right here. The chart shows a consistent performance over 5 yrs, with very little drawdown. Commissions and slippage are included in the backtested results. The first tranche was taken today with an 8 point gain.

As I said earlier, you need to have the proper equipment for the job. My minimum workstation has 16 cores (Westmere processor), 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB SSD drives, with 2 terabyte RAID backup. My top end system has 24 virtual cores, liquid cooled, 32 GB RAM SSD and large RAID drives connected via Thunderbolt. By the way, I'm all Macintosh and run TradeStation on Windows 7 using both Parallels and VM Ware. I also do parallel processing with XGrid and can create a compute environment (essentially a supercomputer) with as much resources as I need for specialty tasks.

I too am a statistical trader, using a mean reversion strategy trading futures with Statistical Arbitrage, and I have also tried the same platform as you. I'm compelled to support the other platforms, like Sierra Charts, and ToS, because members of my Trade Room have committed to their platform. But the support I can offer is limited due to the inferior charting and indicator support compared to TS.

It is not unusual for people who cannot turn a profit (losers) to find anything but themselves as the underlying reason for their problems. And I'm sure I'll get blasted for this statement, but the undeniable fact is that 90% of ALL traders lose, 5% break even, and 5% make money. That includes everyone on this board...you know who you are. I used to be a loser and would try to blame everything other than my own ignorance, lack of preparation, no quantifiable or definable edge, and poor discipline. So I speak from experience.

I trade futures pairs using a mean reversion strategy called Statistical Arbitrage (StatArb). And the processes is highly dependent upon divergences from an equilibrium that is usually caused by some market event or interruption. This energy has the effect of reverberating through through price correlations and causing a divergence, which I wait until that divergence has statistical significance and then bet on its reversion to the equilibrium. During times of low volatility, like now, with the VIX below or near 20, these divergences, let's call them bumps, are much smaller than when in higher volatile markets. The other problem is runaway markets, like the Nasdaq, which complicates matters even more, by skewing these bumps and reducing opportunity. How do you adjust your strategy to accommodate these aberrations?

You are incorrect in your assessment. I am a far heavier user of TradeStation than you are judging by your stated usage. And My Analysis Techniques usage tax TS to the limits. The key is the computing platform that you're using. If you're truly serious about trading then you'll invest in the best possible platform. The new TS 9.1 takes advantage of it and is quite stable. My minimum system has 16 cores with 16 GB Ram, the fastest processor available with Solid State drives and RAID backup. Admittedly TS 9.1 isn't all it could be, but it is a better charting and automated systems engine than anything else out there in its price class.