I remember reading "Trading for a Living" by
Alexander Elder back in 2005 when I was just starting to dabble in trading
systems. I can't remember if it was in
that book or in some article I read or in some conversation with a trading
mentor but the prevailing idea has always been that 95% of people that attempt to
trade (usually middle aged guys [and it's almost always guys isn't it], say
40-55, with a technical or professional background in engineering or software or law or
medicine who think that success in one field logically and necessarily translates to the
next…maybe a little like Michael Jordan trying to play baseball, for example. I fit this profile, too, btw.) fail when starting to trade and they usually
fail three times -- the first time with their own bankroll, the second time with
someone else's money and the third time with the last few desperate pennies
extracted from the tightly closed fists of friends and family. The idea out there was also that there was some kind of
multi- year process where it took something like 2 years (maybe more) to lose money, then 2 years (maybe more)
to break even, then 2 years (maybe more) to make a modest profit, and thereafter it is supposed to work out OK. Keep in mind I am talking here about retail traders that are doing it solo without the institutional support and
systems and mentorship that can make corporate 20-somethings wildly successful
and rich. I was also advised once that
since people can't expect to become a successful engineer or a cardiologist or an attorney
without sinking some serious time (years) and effort and money (100s of
thousands in those examples) into education, apprenticeship, and career development, they can't then expect to just step right up to a computer and shake a stick at a few moving
averages and make a mint. I, of course,
believed none of it. I thought that, like
an alchemist looking at a chunk of lead, I could unlock riches just doing a
little magic here and there.
Ok, so now that it is 2016, more than 10 years after I started thinking about this, I can look back and see how it
went. To keep it simple and brief: the
wisdom was right, of course. I was wrong. I realize
now that it takes a long long time, much longer than I thought. Let's say for the sake of argument that I started to apply myself
seriously in 2008 or 9. How'd it go? I more
or less broke even for at least five or 6 years, maybe longer if you include
some of my dabbling years. At least I
never really lost a ton because I took a lot of time and effort to manage risk
but I definitely slogged away year after year without much to show for it. I
realize that there are more than a few examples of people that are smart and
that can figure out how to trade profitably really, really quickly but a) that is not me, and b) I also
think they are rare[1] or more likely lying. I have no data to support this, of course. On the other
hand I actually do think that active retail trading can be learned and that it can
create at least some minor value over passive investing (or at least before
taxes come into play). It's just that I think it is hard work and a big
investment of time and mind and money.
The following is a summary of my own effort which may represent nothing
other than that I am a slow learner.
Here is the basic timeline:
- 2005 - Start dabbling. The first trade was a big win. That was a curse.
- 2006-08 - Read a lot and experiment with real money,
- 2008-09 - Apply myself seriously and get training and mentorship,
- 2010 - (Coincidentally) invest in and participate in and own part of a hedge fund startup,
- 2014 - Codify knowledge and ruthlessly eliminate what doesn't work and obsessively scale what does, automate and analyze everything like crazy. Take crap about being overly analytical all along the way.
This, then, below, is what it looks like. It is not a P&L. It is a comparison of just
one strategy of several against a benchmark where the benchmark is a rough kind of a
representation of a passive 60/40 portfolio which itself is then a kind of a
representation of what I might theoretically be doing for myself as an investor with my own
portfolio in retirement if I "did nothing" but asset-allocate. There are other
strategies but this one, conveniently for me, has a decent (and maybe lucky) hockey-stick
left turn during the time frame of the point I was trying to make. I won't call it cherry picked myself but you can. The red dotted line is an attempt to show how
I felt the difference between active and passive went when things changed in 2014. Note that liftoff (as it were) in that year,
as I mentioned above, is when I decided to codify and integrate everything and pressed myself forward hard after maybe six years of not-perfectly-focused work. This could all collapse tomorrow,
of course, and the red line might then go from upper left to lower right, but here is the visual while it still looks OK:
So far so good, right? To what do I really owe that lift in '14 --
assuming that it will continue, which is perhaps a little over-bold? Well, that's
probably a much longer post or story but I can at least summarize some basic points if
it is helpful to anyone except me who thinks they want to go down a similar path. Since I only have one reader these days I
probably won't expound on this much more in the comments section but if anyone were
to be seriously curious I'd be happy to flesh this out some more in private. These points that follow are a few of the
things that I think helped me turn the corner in trading, at least for now anyway. We'll see what happens next year with a new president and maybe some central bank changes. And keep in mind while I am showboating that we are talking
pretty small beans here. This trading stuff probably adds a little to my asset efficiency on the margin, of course, but it does not make me wealthy
beyond maybe some additional groceries here and there or a few extra months more of
retirement without going broke or maybe a few more presents for my kids at the
holidays… On the other hand those small things
really are a type of big wealth if you think about it correctly. Here goes, in no particular order:
- Read a lot; invest heavily in the human capital side of trading and markets.
- Experiment with real money on the line.
- Get a mentor.
- Track your data obsessively; keep trade logs.
- Codify knowledge and ruthlessly eliminate what doesn't work and obsessively scale what does.
- Manage risk/return obsessively.
- Stack reasons for higher probability trades obsessively. Use a minimum number of reasons to take a trade. I use three as a minimum.
- Build and use productivity tools. Invest in research and automation.
- Keep costs down…obsessively
- Know your own strengths and weaknesses and use that info to your advantage and to find a strategy with proper fit.
- Chain your trading to a "purpose" bigger than money…like family or independence or charity.
- Don't lie to yourself or others. Do not hide losses from yourself
- Use longer time frames like days weeks or months rather than 5 or 15 minutes
- Stay as close to "price" as you can in analyzing thing vs. use of random lagging indicators. Know the fundamentals underneath.
- Use studies that a large number of traders use because then you can get a bead on the behavioral quirks of other, usually retail traders, and get an edge when you finally can see it.
- Internalize and do not ever stray from "the formula:" trading success is a function of: a) risk-return and b) the probability of that return (the Scalone rule).
- Trade less; don't force trades, let them come to you rather than the other way around
- Stay as detached as a Zen master: neither love nor hate losses and wins. Or, maybe, if you hate losses you must also hate wins. Ignore individual trades; let the system run with no emotion. Eliminate systems without compunction that have no or negative expectancy. This is a business not Vegas.
- Take on bigger risk sooner than you think you should
- Acknowledge that trading is part of a much bigger picture: your life and your family and the long run success of both.
- Learn to trade and use options sooner than you want or need.
- Focus on the "target" returns necessary to reach goals rather than some theoretical super-max home-run uber-cool return.
- Get to know all the "other stuff" in markets: order types, exchanges, how institutional investors and traders work, etc.
- Learn the art of the negative scalp.
- Add to positions going up vs. adding on the way down. Double down is a no-no.
- If you want to backtest, either make sure you use out of sample data to validate or just forward-test as an ongoing form of capital development experiment.
- Find a strategy that fits who you really are.
- Realize trading is not somehow magically divorced from good stewardship of the family income statement and balance sheet. And if you have neither of those documents, create them. Now.
- Realize trading is not somehow magically divorced from portfolio theory and capital allocation choices. The chances you will make a low risk million off of a thousand dollars is pretty low and remember that whatever you commit to the enterprise might be more productive elsewhere.
- My
best guess: more than 99% of trading systems, if they were to be tracked over an arc of 40 years,
probably couldn't beat a passive and un-traded and well-allocated portfolio. Which is really where I should be.
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[1] If I haven't already made the point, remember that I am really talking about entry level retail trading here. Institutional traders are a completely different
story. They are trading large size with
other peoples money. They get institutional support and training and mentorship.
They have access to data and technologies I could only dream of. On the other hand, they, in turn, often overestimate their skill I think. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that these trained sharks often stumble when deprived of the safety net of the institution. I can't back that up, yet the anecdotes
always seem to pile up like snow drifts in Minnesota
in January. For the retail crowd here is
the best way I can explain the rarity of trading success without any data for support but at least with experience my own eyes have seen. I once spent about 18 months, maybe more,
hanging out in a currency trading education and quasi-bucket shop for which I
had maybe paid for 6 months. At any
given time there were maybe 50 or 80 or more traders learning and trading and
trying to make money. A little of this was backed with their own capital/fees and some with the shop's capital. Those 50 to 80 people turned over every month or two so I saw
maybe at least a couple hundred traders or more come through over close to a couple
years. First of all, note that this was almost
entirely male. Or at least 99% male. The
ages ranged from something like 20 to 70 with no small number of ex-professional males age 35-55, the demographic I mentioned in the post. Here's the bottom line. Almost every last one of these people, with a
few exceptions, bragged, and bragged loudly and often with an
aggressive meathead-like voice, about their genius and their success and their money
making prowess. One guy even pressed on all of us, persistently, very very persistently, his
blindingly-genius 100% success rate. This was a guy with charts so thickly
adorned with indicators and studies one could barely see the price. The problem I had with all of this was that I once was given a
chance to look at the trade data for the whole group for the whole time. Of all of them over all that entire time, not
a single one of them was profitable. Ever.
Except for one and he worked there so I'm not counting him.
One person mostly broke even and that was me. In addition, and I found this surprising, not one of those people consistently kept
their own electronic data base of trades to analyze what was working and
what wasn’t. Well, except me as far as I know.
That 100% guy? He lost orders-of-magnitude more than the next highest-loss trader over those two years and I feel like I can say he probably lost more than all the others
combined. He was a pilot for a major airline, by the way. The other
traders thought he had lost his mind. I have not flown his airline since. This story is the basis of my sense that most
retail trading systems and the people flogging them are more BS than not and that stories of success, if
they exist, are either flat out untrue or, if true, suffer from one hell of a
lot of survivor bias. This story is also
the start of my militant position that one absolutely should not lie to oneself
or to others. All trades, good or bad,
need sunlight. Lying or ignoring or hiding does not help. The losses are at least if
not more important than the wins. For
that matter, the "system" within which trades operate is more
important that the individual trades a point often forgotten. For
that matter, the capital deployment decisions that are consistent with modern
theory and practice are more important than the trading system, a point I almost never see being made. I can't even imagine the amount of capital
that has probably leaked from retail traders over the last 100 years to the "other
side of the trade." Billions?
Trillions? More? Don't lie.
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