March quarter, systems and competition

I thought I would look at how my portfolio was performing in preparation for the end of another quarter. I plotted my closed trade equity curve and discovered that the equity curve hadn't done much at all since I last posted one below.

I couldn't see any difference because there has only been 2 closed trades since the last posting at the end of January and the gains and losses have been so small that they had little impact on equity.



I have mainly been trading one system for the last 5 years, although I have tried to introduce new ones at times. I keep coming back to a system that I am comfortable with, although in testing it may not be as profitable as some others. A few others trade my favourite system and to reduce competition against them I developed yet another system, currently called 50%, although I will change the name soon. I basically took my favourite system and stripped it of the bells and whistles.

Competition in the market against others probably isn't that big a problem. For starters there is some discretion in stock selection and this has resulted in quite a bit of variation in portfolio makeup. This has resulted in my brother being up around 15% (including open trades) for the current financial year, whilst I am struggling to get 5%. He has IPL and CEY in his portfolio from October last year, whereas I don't.

I will keep my favourite system for my super fund and make the new 50% system the system of preference for the portfolio reported here. I tested both systems combined and weighted trades towards the new system. So the 50% system has priority and, if any money is left, it goes to "old faithful". I am finding that I will make more if I trade a little more, although the ride will be bumpier.

Since I nearly went to cash it's like starting up the portfolio again. System startup is always a difficult time.

Happy trading,

stevo