The 5 biggest business mistakes I’ve ever made

In today’s article, I will give you 5 very simple but very important tips that are helping me get better results from my ATS today. I didn’t do any of these things at first and it was a huge failure, you must avoid that mistake.

1. Regular re-optimization: I wasn’t doing it.

Some time ago, I did an interesting analysis of several of my systems and it showed me a really important point: the difference between regular re-optimization and long-term trading of fixed parameters can be really huge, especially at times when your systems are down. running. well. In my case, some of the low-performance strategies showed an improvement of up to 80% for 2014, if re-optimized at the end of 2013. The results were really significant. For example, one of the weaker strategies experienced a loss of $ 5,000 in 2013, however the re-optimized version had a much more acceptable loss of $ 900. I can really say that regular re-optimization helps improve systems performance, especially during bad times. Personally, I re-optimize about once a year. It was a big mistake not to have applied this concept of regular re-optimization from the beginning.

2. Smart use of 2 contracts (or even a number of contracts): I did not know this simple trick for a long time.

There are certain situations in the markets that are extremely promising for good profits. One of the simplest examples can be the day of the week. I’m sure you have some strategies in your portfolio that work better on a certain day of the week than on other days. I use these situations to change the number of contracts, that is, I trade twice as many contracts as I would otherwise trade, to make the most of this situation. You’d be surprised at the positive impact these simple tricks can have on the equity curve: Equity is often smoothed out. Of course, you have to be creative and think of new situations that you could use to change the number of contracts.

At first, I didn’t use these simple tricks, I underestimated them and learned them after a while. But they can really dramatically improve the overall stability of your portfolio.

3. Try swing strategies. I was too hesitant to add them to my folder.

If you prefer the daily trading ATS, don’t focus too much on them and try some strategies that don’t close positions at the end of the day. You can add a certain profit target to them and leave them open for several days. I’ve found that strategies like these can really help with diversification. Even in 2014, which was a pretty bad year for index breakout strategies, swing strategies were doing really well, compared to intraday. Personally, I use a combination of both. With some systems, I close half of my contracts at the end of the day and the other half close with a fixed profit target, even though it can take days to reach the profit target. Or, for a less stressful, enjoyable, and relaxing weekend, I can close the position at the end of the day on Friday.

If I had swing strategies in my portfolio early on, I would have fared much better, especially during bad times. Today I know that having only day trading strategies in my portfolio is not enough if I want to have a quality profit distribution.

4. Even a very small diversification is a diversification.

This is one of the things that I have been doing right from the beginning. I am adding you to this list just to point you out and to protect you from making this mistake.

Diversification in more markets is absolutely crucial and even micro-diversification counts and is really important. For example, if I have a small account and I have to decide between two systems for two different index markets and the same system dealing in two totally different markets (an index market and a grain market), I would always prefer the second option. Two different markets will help you diversify much better than two, even low correlation systems that trade the same markets. This is my experience and this is what I do. Diversify in any way you can.

5. Work together. I didn’t, but working with other traders helps me move forward much faster.

This is my last tip, although it is slightly different from the previous ones. It’s simple advice: work together with other ATS traders. It will bring you better results and make progress faster.

A couple of years ago, I met a merchant from Australia and I was surprised that he shared with me, the first time we met, his best know-how. Of course, I did the same. The result is that we are “growing” together for some time because we continue to share the best we know, and we both get richer. The important point is that the exchange traders must be on the same level, otherwise this idea does not really work.