Hi all
Given my trial change in staking approach yesterday (and subsequent 2PT loss yesterday at £50 stakes!), I have decided to end Round 8 today so the results and reporting remain clean
I will still use the £40 stake to report on the round and the results are as below:
Round 8 summary:
Period: 14th - 17th December
No of trades: 14
Stake size: £40
NET position: £177
Profit in points: +4.425
Trading Reflections:
Nervous trading: To be honest, although this was an excellent round profit-wise, it feels like I am trading quite nervously given the string of good results. A really good example of this is when I froze with an opportunity in front me as per this blog post - of course the trade when on to win and would have made 7 points at least. I read somewhere that when it comes to trading mindset, be aware of how the mind deals or reacts to:
Losing runs
Winning runs
High frequency trading easier on the mind?: It was almost easier when I was trading high volumes, as I was really approaching and trading the market like a machine, with little emotion or concern as to what the trade outcome would be. Remember, the experiment started off based on some foundational parameters of entry, both in the first and second half. By the end of the experiment, I had further refined these parameters based on the data, and also limited the trading to the second half. Which essentially created the last orders strategy that I officially started using exclusively in Round 8
Experience does really count - have I given the "pure" last orders strategy enough trading time and volume?
This is probably the most important reflection of round 8. If you recall and as mentioned in my results spreadsheet, round 8 was the very first "pure" round of the last orders strategy that was refined over the experiment.
The question I need to ponder is :
Do I continue to trade cautiously, ensuring I stop once I have a nice profit in the bag (which I believe is definitely the right approach and is used my many experienced traders). The results data also supports this premise. I have had at least 2 days whereby continuing to trade as converted a profitable day into a losing day. This has quite a serious impact on bank growth
Or, do I continue to smash every last orders qualifier to get my last order sample size to at least 500 trades (currently at 298)?
How about stakes and bank management? Bearing in mind, I am now nearing £50 stakes and if I start to make this work consistently, the potential earnings from this venture start to become a really big deal. We are talking trading paying for significant expenses such as council tax and weekly grocery bills - real stuff! Henc why I want to approach this as going forward as I would as a pro-trader. Of course, the losses if the strategy was suddenly proven to be a fluke and I lost my trading bank would hurt. From a personal finances point of view, I am only trading what I can afford to lose so need to ensure I keep my bank management and stakes as tight as possible - this is really key, regardless of which approach I take.
Conclusion and looking ahead:
Writing down my reflections has been really helpful and I am now clear on the way forward for Round 9 which starts today 18th Dec 2024:
Get some more volume of trades on busy days especially to get my last orders strategy data up to at least 500. It is obvious I am not yet trading like a machine since the pure trading started. The fact of the matter is, I have only traded 16 trades or so since I started trading last orders exclusively. The mind will need more action to get comfortable with this significant adjustment
Remain cautious and protect profit on quieter days. Moreso given it is less likely there will be enough volume to navigate variance as expected
I will also keep a record of what happens with the rest of the qualifiers that I don't trade. That way I can continue to collect data without risking any further money!
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