DSchenk
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Posts posted by DSchenk
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Since this is still my all-time-favourite thread, I've decided to continue here 😀
Admittedly, haven't logged into this forum for about a year or so. Just had my head down and was grinding.
Countless of hours in front of the screen working on my craft. Read about 50 trading/investing books, hundreds of articles in the internet, forum posts, blog posts, youtube videos. Thousands of hours of thinking about the market.
In any case, it just so happened yesterday, that I finally broke above break-even on my account. Guess IG is going to close my account soon now, they can't have that lol 😉
So here's a quick recap:
- First trade in this account on 02/03/2018
- 1345 days of trading (well not really, cause of weekends and stuff, but that's the timespan in between then and now 😉)
- 1956 trades closed
- 945 profitable (48%)
- Total Profit of profitable trades: £19.4k
- 1011 non-profitable
- Total Loss of non-profitable trades: £18.5k
- Net Gain: £900 (Or £600 according to the analytics tool below, not sure what's correct, transaction log shows £900)
- 2018: -£544 Net Loss, 447 Trades
- 2019: -£1413 Net Loss, 860 Trades
- 2020: -£1223 Net Loss, 292 Trades
- 2021 (so far): £4077 Net Profit, 357 Trades
Interestingly, in 2020 I came really close to Break-Even once, in fact just £26 short of BE, but then lost it all again and some more. I was on a better track back then, than before, but still not the right track.
Really only since April this year is where things started to look better and I got some consistency in the game. Since April I only had 2 loss-making months (Aug, Sep), but these were only small losses compared to the gains before and after.
So where does the journey go from here?
I obviously hope to stay in the profit zone and finally add some serious profits to this account. Steadily growing the account until I'm at a point where I can withdraw part of the profits each quarter to invest into other ventures.
Key Learnings from 3.5 years of trading:
- Forget about trying to make 20%, 50%, 100% gains per month. You might pull that off once or twice, but the amount of risk required to do that is ultimately going to blow your account. I'm aiming for 10% return per month now which I'm confident can be achieved on a long-term basis
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Forget about trading on 1min or 5min charts for the most part and closing out your trade every hour to put on a new one (daytrading).
I'm not saying ignore the 5min chart all-together, I sometimes put on positions on the 5min chart, but only to find a good entry point. My analysis is done on the hourly and daily chart and I'm holding my position until the hourly/daily chart would suggest otherwise. -
Forget about trying to pick one market or one subset of a market and only trade that day-in and day-out. Like I hear people (including myself back in the days) say all the time "I'm a forex trader" or "I trade US equities" or "I trade the gap-and-go set-up" or "I'm a trend-follower".
Nowadays, I trade everything across all asset classes: Stocks, Currencies, Commodities, Indices. Whatever is moving and has a valid set-up. I trade trends, but also counter-trend movements. I go long, I go short. I buy into fundamentals, but also do pure volatility plays. I hold positions for weeks and months, but sometimes only for days. Rarely, if ever for less than a day. - Forget about looking at a trade in isolation. I now build portfolios and manage those. I have about 10 long-short positions open at a time and use portfolio management techniques to manage the risk on a portfolio level instead of on any one individual trade. That way, if a trade goes against me, I don't lose my ****, but can apply counter-act measures to re-balance my portfolio.
- Lastly, forget about what day of the week it is or day in the month or your running PnL and trade according to that. Like, some (including my past self) might take a profit on a position because it is the end of the month and they are still short their monthly profit target and closing that trade would take them above it. You're missing the bigger picture. You rather want to have a month with smaller profit or even loss-making than getting out of that trade too early, when the market doesn't suggest that yet. Always trade the market, never your PnL.
That's it from me folks.
@dmedin @nit2wynit Hope you guys are doing great, too. Catch-up soon ✌
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My royal dutch shell dividend has been removed via CONTRA divi now as well. Thanks IG 😁
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Now I have received my BP Dividend, but the CONTRA BP Dividend still remains, so essentially I come out at 0
What is going on @CharlotteIG?
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I just had this happened yesterday, but not with Royal Dutch Shell, but with BP.
But Royal Dutch Shell I seemed to have recieved the same dividend again, as I already received on 17/12.
IG never stops surprising lol - how weird is that
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you can just pull this yourself via the API - that is if you know how
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Isn't this the old roulette "strategy" where you bet on red or black.
Bet $1, lose $1.
Bet $2, lose $2. Total Loss: $3
Bet $4, lose $4. Total Loss: $7
....
Bet $256, Lose $256. Total Loss: $511
Bet $512. Win $512. Total Win: $1
Works 100%, except when it doesn't and red comes out 50 times in a row, whilst you are on black
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On 18/10/2020 at 18:38, jlz said:
It is a c# script, the Visual Studio project is at
I'm not so good with C#
Are you using the IG API datafeed or something else entirely?
I've built a few VBA applications using the IG API - didn't help me turning over a profit though
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Would it not make more sense and be much quicker if you backtest this, instead of forward testing?
Who wants to wait til June 2021 to see the outcome ha
And with backtesting you could easily go back to the 1950s, not just do 1 year
I like what @jlz is doing there - what platform/tool you using for backtesting?
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23 hours ago, jlz said:
His buddy DSchenk
Hey, who said we're buddies
I'm just somehow seem to slip through the net of insults, probably cause I'm just popping into the forum once every couple of months, then going back undercover - doing the actual work lol
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Anyway, I think my decision is made.
1) Going back to UK market. Two reasons:
a) More familiar with the market as I'm also an investor in the UK, so I roughly follow what's going on with the general market sentiment
b) Daylight saving time is coming soon, meaning US market open is here where I live at 10.30pm at night (back one hour from 9.30pm). While trading from 9.30-10.30pm is reasonable, trading from 10.30-11.30pm is quite a stretch. While UK market open is around 3pm/4pm (with DST) which seems a better time
2) Identifying tickers with the following fundamentals
- Either unprofitable or PE ratio > 20
- Book-to-market ratio well over at least 2
- Price up at least 100% in the past 12 months
There won't be many tickers at a given time available which meet that criteria plus are eligible to trade with IG. Looking at a stock screener I see 36 tickers which are 100%+ up in the past 12 months right now on LSE. Probably about 5 are tradeable with IG.
3) Technical Entry
- Established high of the current move
- Trading on hourly and daily chart (opposed to 1min and 5min what I'm doing right now)
- Entry on red daily candle making a new low vs previous day or bear flag or flat bottom break-out
4) Technical Exit
- Stop-Loss at high of the current move + Spread
- Taking profits at 1:1 risk/reward ratio
- Moving stop-loss to BE when 25% of target price is reached
I just exercised this through for BATM Advanced Communications.
This one would've met the fundamental criteria since May 2020 and I count 7 trades which met the technical criteria since.
The result (starting with a £1000 account and assuming I would've only traded this, which obviously wouldn't be correct as there were other similar opportunities in the market since then):
£2048.30 in profits over 34 days invested in the market (out of 109 days in that timeframe, that's 31% in the market)3x would've been out at BE, 4x in profit.
Marked the 7 trades in the chart below.
What do you think?
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21 hours ago, jlz said:
I always create chunks of the size that I am planning to risk and I keep sending portions of that size every time I am wrong. The result is a segregated entry into multiple levels in the way that if I was right the first time I let it run and if I wasn't I have more funds to try again. In one of your example you mentioned that you could use 12 points in a trade. I would divide the usual market range, simple highs and lows per day, by that number (12) and consider 1 as the current market level. I could try again 11 more times at multiple levels in case I am wrong in the first place.
I separate those portions into distances that divide the usual volatility of the market into the numbers of chunks that I am able to send. This could be very familiar to Fibonacci grid traders, and at all times I never trade anything that would make the account pass 30% of its equity.
For me, creating some kind of a multi entry position is what made it to work, up to a point that I was able to remove indicators and ignore fundamentals. Since I am not able to prove myself right anytime in my analysis I am just not using anything else than pure risk management.
Yep, something similar worked for me earlier this year in May/June.
I was entering only 25% of my full position first, then added another 25% on the next signal and so on until being fully invested. What I also did was, every time I added another 25%, I moved the stop closer to my entry as well as the profit target.
So for example first entry at 400, stop at 600, target at 200. (Short)
Then second entry at e.g. 450, reducing stop to 500, target to 300.
Third entry at 400 (when it is going down again), stop now at 466, target at 333.
Last entry at let's say again 400, stop now at 450, target at 350 and I ride it.
That way my £ risk/reward was always the same, I just moved it around depending on how much I scale in.It worked very well until it didn't and I lost half my account within 3 days in early July. Essentially, I had 3 open positions and all went simultaneously against me and took me out.
Since I was searching for a slightly adapted system, that is less prone to taking half my account in a short period of time.-
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Ha, and who did you remove from your view, sir?
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And last one for today: Fresnillo
PE: 74
Book-to-Market: 4x
Up 100% YTD
High of the current Move: 1379
Current Price: 1343
Target Price: 1000
Trade
Entry on the break of the Flag which is currently building
Stop: 1407 (above the high of the current move)
Target: 1010
Risk-Reward: 1:4
What do you think?
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The good thing is, with trades like this you only really need 1 to play out over 2 months and you already got your 50% account growth avg per month.
Problem is, how to protect yourself from losers, but in theory I would move my stop-loss to break-even as soon as it trades outside my entry range.
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Another example: BATM Advanced Communications
Fundamentals:
PE Ratio: 162
Book-to-Market: 5x
Up 213% YTD
Fundamentals indicate this is about to go down
Technicals already showing signs of a downwards pattern, making lower lows and lower highs
Current Price: 116
High of the current move: 150.75
High of the latest push-up: 138.5
Target Price: 85 (former low, around 200EMA on the daily)
Trade
Go short on break of current flag it is forming
Size: 35 (£1000 margin)
Stop: 143 (above latest high)
Target: 85
Risk:Reward: 1:1
What do you think?
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Let's take AO World for example. IG let's you go short there for now, so that barrier is removed.
Fundamentals:
- Not profitable
- Trading on 18 times book value
- Up 240% YTD
Fundamentals indicating this is heading downwards rather soon, we just don't know when yet
Current Price: 300
Target Price: 150
All time high was when they floated in 2014: 413.5
With a £1000 account you can go short 12 per point.
So what would be the trade here now?
Option 1
Go short straight away with full size.
Stop 425 (above all time high)
Target 150 (that's the 200EMA on the daily)
Risk Reward: 1:1.4
Option 2
Wait for the first daily candle to make a new low vs the previous day and enter short then. Stop above the high of the current move (not all time high). Let's assume it would already do that on Monday, then the high of the current move would be 308
Stop 315
Target 150
Risk Reward: 1:22.6
But possibility of false break-out and then hitting stop afterwards.
Option 3
Go short straight away with 10% of full size, then scale in further either as it goes higher towards that all time high or once it breaks lower (new low on the daily like in Option 2 described)
Stop 425
Target 150
Risk Reward depending on how we can scale into this. Somewhere between 1:1.4 and 1:10
So, how would you play this?
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So let's break down what our options are here lads, ey
(How Billy Butcher would say it - who else watched the show?
)
100% Technical
Pros
- Immediate results, cause the entry happens when the move happens
- Risk can be reduced by not holding any positions over-night
Cons
- Difficult to consistently pull off, cause of lots of false/misleading/contrary signals
- Trades may hit stop before playing out
- Missing opportunities due to lack of speed on the entry (By the time you see the signal and get ready to enter/work out risk, target, entry size, the move has already happened and it's too late to enter)
- Missing opportunities due to not scanner not picking up the signal
- IG restricting a lot of tickers from trading which have high momentum potential
100% Fundamental
Pros
- Trades can be prepared well in advance, which makes risk management easier. Entry, Stop and Target can be defined long before the trade actually takes place
Cons
- Trades may take a very long time to play out
- Trades may first hit stop before actually playing out
- Trades may not play out at all, because the market doesn't follow the fundamentals
- IG restricting a lot of tickers from trading which have totally rubbish fundamentals, esp. on the short side
Fundamental, Technical Mix
Pros
- Trades can still be prepared well in advance, which makes risk management easier.
- Entry is timed to a technical indicator, which makes trades play out quicker than 100% fundamental, but still slower than 100% technical
Cons
- Trades may still take a long time to play out
- Trades may still first hit stop before actually playing out
- Trades may not play out at all, because the market doesn't follow the fundamentals and the technical signal was a false signal
- IG restricting a lot of tickers from trading which have totally rubbish fundamentals, esp on the short side
So looking at it like this, it makes me think the Fundamental, Technical Mix might be the way forward. Pretty much what Anton Kreil always says.
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In regards to funds, I agree. They won't be able to do 50% returns every month, not even close, because of
a) they have way too much capital. You can't pull off any momentum trading strategies if you manage $100m+ funds
b) Restrictions set by the industry as mentioned by others above
c) Also they need to adhere to certain risk limiting factors. They can't just dump their $100m fund into one ticker one morning (even if it was possible from a volume perspective) to ride some upwards momentum, then get all out back in cash by 10am. The fund manager would get sacked by 12 noon if he would do that
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11 hours ago, jlz said:
These guys claim to have a method that is strongly based on fundamentals.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_jCCnr85pc
If you watch their videos their don't trade any time-frame smaller than the daily ticker. They go through company reports, forex driving macros, macro economics news and so on.
Many people call them a fraud but they seem to be running the business for a long time. Who knows, maybe they are an example of how to do it. They are all pros with a long trading career, maybe what it takes to make fundamentals to work is to get hit and fail during years to understand them.
Yes, those guys Anton Kreil and his gang are great. All ex-pro trades at Goldman's etc
They are doing 80% fundamentals, 20% technical trading style if I'm not mistaken.
Everyone who says they are a scam just doesn't understand anything about the industry. Period.
They are indeed one of main the reason, I'm thinking of trying the fundamental based trading system rather than looking 100% at technicals.
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6 hours ago, jlz said:
The more I look at those comments the more they look like posts coming from a forum booster.
No one would spend that much on a site posting like that, not even a mad one.
Makes a lot of sense. That's how he funds his trading account which he constantly blows up
We got you dmedin, we finally got you 😎
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5 hours ago, Bopperz said:
Have you completely given up on technicals?
Nope, not quite yet.
5 hours ago, Bopperz said:The problem with fundamentals is the very long timescales
That's the thing which is putting me off from even looking at it.
Surely I could research now 10 companies, which in theory are massively overvalued.
But only because they go bankrupt eventually, doesn't mean I can contain a short position over an extended period of time, esp. not when the price spikes up for literally no fundamental reason at all
Currently, thinking of going back to indices. Did a bit of trading indices last year in Jun-Sep or so, until @nit2wynitconvinced me to go back to equities
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Love how you comment on your own comments dmedin
True passion there
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Yes, it's possible. That's called private equity.
If you have at least 50k to invest, then you can participate in so called Seed rounds, where private companies sell shares to private as well as institutional investors (so called VC, Venture Capitalists).
Once a firm has exhausted all their seed rounds, they typically do a Series A fund raising (and Series B/C), where they raise a few million $ before the big IPO, where you typically raise north of $100 million up to several billion $.
Easier option is to go directly to a Venture Capitalist firm, give them your money and tell them to invest it in private equity. But again, need 50k+ at least, before they even start talking to you.
Is spread betting for fools?
in New to IG Community
Posted
You mean April & November this year?
Yeah, in April I was re-starting with a fresh mindset, process and approach to the markets. Essentially incorporating the learnings I noted earlier. Stopped "day-trading", started looking at longer timeframes, stopped looking at positions in isolation and instead started building a portfolio with up to 10 long/short positions.
And November (this running month), there's a strong spike-up in the PnL because I closed one of the positions I've been holding for a few weeks, which was my largest winner to-date.