Add in some dividends and bank interest and it's an ok year for me, at least when compared to the indices. Otherwise it was a very tough year. The Small Ords is down 20% and the All Ords is down around 14%. Unrealised profits in the portfolio are ok at around 16%, so I am not hanging onto any big losses.
A couple of sells this week. PAN (the old SMY) was exited on Monday for a loss of 20% & WSA realised a little over 50%. Position sizing meant that I bought roughly 30% more of WSA than PAN.
I think that I learnt that consistency and perseverence pay off this year, and it's been a good walk forward experience. The current trading systems I am running have stood up quite well and I am very glad that I have them.
stevo
7 comments:
Hi Stevo,
From your 150-odd trades that you have completed over the last few years trading your current system(s), do you think it would be true to say that the big winners are the ones that often start running relatively soon after entry?
Maybe its worth investigating the idea (perhaps you already have) that if any position has not made X% profit over y weeks then you should exit?
(where X is a very small number and Y is a relatively larger number) eg. 5% profit in 10 weeks.
What are your thoughts?
Nizar.
Have you tried it? I assume that the aim is to reduce drawdown and to put money into something else with more potential. I don't want to make an easy to manage long term system into an unwieldy short term system.
I have developed a system that just exits after X weeks from the buy signal and it works well in backtesting. I passed the concept on to someone else and I believe that they are trading it, but it's early days.
I cobbled together some rough code and did some quick opts on it but I am getting results that don't make sense - might be worth pursuing for that reason alone!
stevo
Hie there,
We have recently launched a new finance blogging portal and would love to discuss the possibilities of having you onboard as one of our contributors. We basically offer a platform for authors to promote their websites by publishing their writings to the online aussie audience. Would love to hear from you soon. Contact us at admin(at)ourfinanceblogs(dot)com
Cheers!
Hi Stevo,
I'm actually quite suprised that this year is going to be a break even year in closed equity for your system.
I would have thought that the big drops in July 2007 would have closed out some big big winners from the previous months/years and boosted closed equity considerable. I thought its actually during the corrections where LTTFs make money ie. when the trend ends.
And then your switch would have kept you out of the next several months perhaps?
Maybe there's something here that I don't understand...?
Nizar.
Nizar
I am actually very happy with this performance. I don't want to fool myself or others in terms of performance, that's why I post the equity curves. Maybe sometimes I am more optimistic than I should be in my posts.
During the July / August market weakness I was in the Whitsunday Islands at a very intense conference (considering that it was on a tropical island!) and did not get to the sells first thing monday morning! By the time I actually acted on signals sometime later in the week I had been hit quite hard. But I took the trades.
Interruptions to my trading week, like a conference or an overseas trip for 5 weeks in December, or all day meetings, are one of the reasons that I designed a longer term weekly systems.
My expectations are that, occasionally, a year will come along that will be tough. It's the long term I am interested in. It's possible that my stops could be a little tighter, my systems could be better, and my discipline could also be better. But I am not trying to survive short term on my trading efforts! If I can average 20% return over the long term I will be very happy.
I'll do a better analysis of performance once the year has ended. As I type the Small Ords is down 23.34% from the week ending the 29/06/07.
If there were a 1000 stevo clones trading away there would be many that would have done better than the original Stevo and some that did worse :)
Got to get to work - no sell signals this week.
stevo
Nizar
Just checking the realised gain numbers in a spreadsheet versus the report that I got out of Stockmaster.
It appears that Stockmaster adjusts the realised profits to account for profits in the previous financial year, but I am not 100% sure. So any unrealised profits gained in the previous year are not included in the realised gains for the current year. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me!
I am still trying to understand the Stockmaster report, but I know that the raw data spreadsheet is correct. Fortunately my accountant does not require the Performance report from Stockmaster!
So rather than a breakeven result for the financial year it looks like I made a reasonable sum of money in terms of realised trades.
I will post quarterly performance since 2003 when the year ends. Quarter 1 of 2008 was the bad quarter, versus substantial gains in the last 2 quarters of 2007. It's difficult to put into % terms since the capital base is far from static.
stevo
Hi Stevo,
Yeh it makes more sense to me that you (or anyone else who has been trading a LTTF on the ASX) would have made significant profits on closed equity this year.
From my understanding, its because of how LTTF systems work. They pretty much only make money on closed equity during downturns and corrections. Obviously prolonged bearmarkets is a different story.
You would be happy with 20%p.a. over the longer term?
You and me both!
Nizar.
Post a Comment