Saturday, November 25, 2006

Trading profit & loss - frequency of profits & losses


The chart shows the frequency of trade returns in dollars for my portfolio. There are a total of 129 trades in the results. Looking at the chart 38 trades lost between $0 and $5000. 58 trades lost money out of the 129. The results are based on portfolio status up to the end of October.
One trade lost more than $15,000 - a lesson about trading whilst on holidays and double checking everything. I got the position sizing very wrong with this losing trade and suffered more than double the loss I should have. If you trade more than one portfolio make sure you don't place an order in the wrong portfolio. Overall though the chart is nicely skewed in my favour.
HumbleMoney inspired this post http://www.humblemoney.com/?p=140
Stevo

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Stevo,

I have discovered your work a year ago and learned a lot with all your posts from 2003.
You are really doing a great job!
Thanks a lot to share it that way.

I'd like to suggest that you give your results in percentage on this chart rather than in $. I think position sizing and the evolution of your portfolio size may affect the results. Moreover it would help to compare with other systems or currencies.

One more question: you said that the last trades taken into account were open positions, do you calculate your profit on the last quote or on the last value of your stop loss?

Regards.

Nick Barcelona

stevo said...

Nick
Open positions are valued at the last close. The final exit price may have litle relationship to the lat close or the stop value. I have posted a % frequency chart.

Stevo