Thursday, January 12, 2012

Reviewing the Coin Flip account

Yesterday morning I made a video as I was reviewing my demo Coin Flip account and decided to make a video on it...

EDIT: At the time this blog entry was posted I had a Youtube video here. That has been removed but I want the rest of my content to be remain. Nothing hidden no past mistakes ignored. All out in the open.


Analyzing my trades individually and then collectively is important to me. What story do they tell? Am I getting out of trades too early or too late. Is my stop loss at the right size to protect the account. Am I missing something.
Most experienced traders I have talked with state the importance of this post trade review. Its not unlike how sports coaches reviewing tapes repeatedly to see where the  mistakes were.

This video was made yesterday morning from the time of this blog entry. Youtube took far too long to process my video for me to stick around and wait. So when you watch it keep in mind it will not have the same stats as on the trading page.

In the video I misspoke that a $3 would be 0.33% loss. Based on a $1500 account that would actually be 0.20%. A tiny difference in and of itself but if my weekly cut off was a 2% portfolio stop the difference turns from 6 losing trades into 10 losing trades. Not so small a difference now.

I bring this point up for a reason beyond public admittance of a mistake, which I do feel is important. I bring it up because when analyzing our numbers there are so many ways to look at it, even in this small statistic. If I can do 6 failing trades before I stop I could do one each morning and not hit my portfolio stop regardless off accuracy. At that point I would not need a stop. I would still have one in case of a string of large losses however if my averages hold I wouldn't stop trading. So I have room to increase the stop loss here to fit my account. Or I could increase the order size for bigger winners and bigger losers.

On the other hand with 10 losing trades I know open up the possibility of doing a trade in the morning and a second one of the day when I get home. My average time in a trade is 12 hours so its possible.

Just a few more ideas on what information we can not only find in our trading system but in what we do with that information.


Disclaimer: The investments and trades in my videos and blog entries are not recommendations for others. I am not a financial planner, financial advisor, accountant, or tax adviser. The financial actions I talk about are for my own portfolio and money and only suited for my own risk tolerance, strategy, and ideas. Copying another person's financial moves can lead to large losses. Each person needs to do their due diligence in researching and planning their own actions in the financial markets.

No comments:

Post a Comment