Why working on yourself is so important

We know we cannot change the past - what's done is done.

We also know that we don't know what will happen in the future - it doesn't exist, and anything (or anyone) can do something which may influence what will occur in the future.

So, what are we left with? We can only react and respond to the moment of now.

Sticking with the process

My historical win rate is about 30%, so with the majority of my trades generating losses, I have learnt to accept losing money along the way.

To me, what is far more important than the monetary outcome of any one trade is whether I am sticking to my process and my execution:

Another example of a nasty price gap

If you subscribe to the Mark Douglas theory that in the markets anything can happen, at any time, then you will know and accept the potential effect that sudden or unexpected announcements can have on price of a stock or instrument.

Seemingly you can be comfortably sitting in profit on a trade, even with your trailing stop above your entry price, only for a price gap to occur against you, resulting from the reaction to such an announcement.

It is for this reason why I never take into account open profits for position sizing purposes. A profit or loss on a position is not known until the trade is closed. Open profits can disappear - seemingly overnight with little or no warning, and your trailing stop may be rendered worthless.

New testimonial

A couple of weekends back, while on the train to London, I posted this up on Twitter:

The traders I was going to meet were Craig and Aaron, and our catch up marked the end of working closely together for three years.

Following that, Craig has now kindly forwarded the following note:

My biggest loss in 4 years

So, let's not beat around the bush. This morning I suffered my largest loss on a single trade since the summer of 2013.

As of yesterday's close, the position was +1.13R in profit. Within a few seconds of the market open, I was stopped out for a -1.95R loss.

S*@t happens. Let's look at the chart:

Controlling your losses, good trades and bad trades

Good traders continually worry about trying to minimise any potential downside. By the same token, they try to avoid placing any restrictions on the potential upside.

Take the four possible scenarios on any individual trade: 

• Big win; 
• Small win; 
• Small loss; and 
• Big loss. 

Good traders try to avoid the big losses at all costs. If you have a robust trading approach that has a positive expectancy, then the small losses can easily be recovered from.

2016 - a losing year

So that's 2016 in the book, and a losing year at that. This is my first losing year since 2011. The fact that I have lost less than five years ago shows to me that the changes I put in place in the early part of 2012 helped to limit those losses - together with the additional experience and education dished out by the market!

As I talked about here, even the most successful trend followers suffer the occasional losing year, so I am totally relaxed about it. It is what it is. I can't change what has happened, or the decisions I made - I can only go forward.

Trend following, unrealistic expectations and a look into a fund's performance

Some people have unrealistic expectations when it comes to trend following - and trading in general, for that matter. 

I remember a trader contacted me once about some mentoring and essentially was looking for some assurance that, if he adopted a trend following approach, he would be able to make a +100% return over the next year.

Gearing up for 2017

In recent months, one of the most popular posts on the blog has been 'Trend following is dead - apparently...'

I wrote this back in 2010, based on the fallacy that every few years, people talk about how trading trends no longer works, trend following is so 1980's, etc. All this talk usually coincides with a period of poor or non-performance.

We know that markets always go through different market 'states' - either trending or non-trending, stable or volatile. What we don't know is when they will move from one state to another. And when they do start to trend, we can never predict the magnitude of the resultant trend.

Trading and the butterfly effect

Have you ever considered how you could come across two or more setups that are seemingly identical, and yet one moves in one particular direction, and another moves in a totally haphazard manner, and possibly start to move in completely the opposite direction?

Mark Douglas gave the best answer to this question in Trading in the Zone. Basically his explanation was as follows:

A reality check - looking at drawdowns

Quite often I meet or correspond with people who seem to think that they can pull a certain amount out of the market on a regular basis. This is impossible - particularly when using a trend following method. 

Depending on your timeframe and parameters, you can easily go weeks, months or even years before new equity highs are made. Therefore, you will actually spend the majority of your time stuck in a drawdown. 

For a lot of people who may be attracted to the potential overall returns of a method, the reality of what you have to go through in terms of drawdowns (both in monetary and time terms) to achieve those returns can be difficult to accept.

Unrealistic expectations

Someone who decides to trade using a trend following approach should expect to achieve a win rate between 30% - 40% across a large sample of trades. Depending on the parameters used, this could cover a period of several years.

If this were the case, then the sample would automatically cover the mixture of different market states, be it trending or non-trending, stable or volatile. You may also include in that period a sustained trend in a downward direction as well as an upward direction.

Reckless risk - and back to square one (again)

A while back, I talked about a long-time friend of mine and his battle against repeatedly losing all his hard earned gains in his own trading account (the original post is here).

I had not spoken to him for a couple of months, but he called me yesterday. Sadly, he had done it again. So what had he done this time?

Longevity is the key to success

For a trend follower, the lack of decent trends over the last couple of years or so in the stock markets was perhaps expected - 2008 on the downside, followed by 2009 and 2010 on the upside were fertile periods to profit from price trends. 2011 was a difficult year for me, whereas 2012 and 2013 offered favourable conditions.

Bill Ackman and Valeant Pharmaceuticals

The big news this week was the bloody nose that Bill Ackman and his Pershing Square fund received regarding their investment in Valeant Pharmaceuticals.

Following a dire update, the stock plunged to levels not seen since 2011, and has dropped almost 90% (yes, you read that correctly) from its all-time highs above $260 back in August.

Some thoughts on stops

There are some inexperienced traders out there who seem to have a strange attitude towards the use of stops. A stop should be based on a price level where:

a) their trade idea should be proven to be invalidated;
b) the loss incurred tallies with the pre-determined amount they are prepared to lose on that trade.

Don't just work on your method

Studies have been carried out proving that, even with a completely random entry, traders can make money by adhering to good risk control and cutting losing trades quickly. In his book Super Trader, Van Tharp talks about one such experiment with Market Wizard Tom Basso.

Yet, when you talk to inexperienced traders, nearly all of them continuously focus on some form of 'holy grail' to get them in right at the start of a price move - be it based on fundamentals, technicals or some thermo-nuclear indicator they have developed.

For 99% of traders, concentrating on the twin pillars of good risk and emotional control will help far more than continually fussing over how to get in a trade.

Talking in terms of R - updated

Note: this post originally appeared in July 2014, and has been updated to reflect performance since then.

1R is the amount you risk on each trade. Profits or losses are calculated by taking the result and dividing by the initial risk. For example, if you risk £100 per trade, and you end up with a profit of £500, that's a +5R profit. If you lose £80, that's an -0.8R loss.

Accepting the bumps along the way

If you think you can adopt a trend following approach, and then guarantee that you can pull X% out of the market each month/quarter/year, then you are very much mistaken. Your performance when utilising a trend following strategy will go through peaks and troughs. There may be periods when you are fully invested (up to your own portfolio risk limits), and there may be times when you are fully in cash.

Look at any performance record of a trend follower and you can quickly identify these peaks and troughs. Why do these happen? Very simply, trend followers need trends in whatever markets they are trading to appear. If they don't, then a trend follower will struggle. That you have to accept.

Dale Carnegie and thinking about losses

These days I am a voracious reader, not so much of books directly related to trading, but to those dealing with the mind, attitudes or psychology. 

Interviews with, or autobiographies of top sportsmen or women are a good resource as well. When reading these, my mind automatically thinks about whatever is being discussed, and whether it can be applied to trading, and my own approach in particular. In that regard, I am always open to new or different ways of thinking.