Category: Mental Game of Trading

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Successful backtesting in FX

Good Morning / Afternoon folks

A lot of people are willing to teach you their trading style, yet it’s not because I’ve watched cooking movies I’m a chef

(but fuck, I do like Burnt)

I can tell you the entries many strategies available for free are profitable. Heck, if I shared this strategy, which is pretty darn straightforward you could generate a profit

Yet, I can guarantee you that if you were to implement it straight out of the box without testing it & trying to develop a few filters & figuring out a clear exit plan you won’t go far.

Now, before I start diving into it, I shall mention one thing:

A technical analysis/trading plan to enter trades isn’t the only thing you need to develop to become a good trader.

  • You’ll need to develop clear exit rules.
  • You’ll need to develop a strong mental understanding of your strategy.
  • You’ll have to come to accept that you will lose money (from time to time).
  • You’ll have to continually work to either refine or even only execute this strategy.

Where to look for potential reversals

To make it easier we’re going to look at a daily chart with an indicator I have developed

This removes all discretion and we can be sure that every single zone will be created following the exact same rule

The chart represents the Australian Canadian Dollar from August 2020 till today with a single indicator.

Now before going on too far, let’s just explain what I am trying to highlight with my indicator

The indicator objective is to highlight areas where the price is likely to reverse

The logic behind their creation is to find days where the price saw quite a lot of hesitation in terms of direction (creating wicks that are bigger than the body of the candle) that are then engulfed on the following day

You’ll probably notice that it happens quite a few more times than where my boxes are created. Some appear to have been “missed” the reason for that is that I want those zone to be created either close/below (for demand zones) to the HMA to avoid having zones created when the run is rather extended and in need of a pullback.

This logic was to reduce the number of zones & improve their likelihood of success.

On this chart you can notice that out of the 16 zones that were created since August 2020 9 of them showed a rejection or at least a small reaction.

That doesn’t mean too much, it may only be Aussie Canadian Dollar that is as successful, but it highlights that the areas created are interesting.

The aim of these daily zones is purely to highlight potential areas of reversal

I am not looking to take a trade purely based on these boxes my indicator creates.

This is where multi-timeframe analysis comes in.

Using multiple timeframe analysis

While it is perfectly fine to use only one timeframe to find areas and potential entry levels, I personally prefer to use a different timeframe to find the confirmation I am looking for.

This enables us to ensure that all the timeframes are “speaking” the same language.

If the daily shows that price has reached an area of reversal (a box) that is great, however, I’ll only know that the level has been respected a few days afterward.

Instead of waiting multiple days I prefer to dig into the hourly (or even 4hour) chart

Using the hourly chart, I decided to use a rather simple indicator showing highs and lows according to a formula as to keep it as mechanical as possible (this however has a delay of three candles for a confirmation)

Let’s pop up the hourly chart on the main screen to make it easier for your eyes

As you can see each time a cross is created we can see that the high or low was respected for a few candles afterward/before.

Since we already have areas on the daily where we are interested in a potential reversal, I will be using these highs/low as my entry method.

A break and a retest is a nice quick and dirty set-up to analyze so let’s dive into it.

(If I wasn’t using my daily chart to find areas of interest, this strategy would require a lot more fine tuning to be profitable, that’s why multiple timeframe analysis is key)

My daily chart shows potential areas of reversal

My hourly shows a break in the current pattern of lower highs / or higher lows.

Both indicate that a potential change will take place in the market. That is the strategy I am looking to use.

Backtesting requirements

When I backtest I want to be as precise as possible with details, to be able to

  1. Find flaws in my model
  2. Find potential filters to increase the average return / strike rate
  3. Understand if I can change my target method or exit strategy
  4. Get as much data as possible to build a true probabilistic understanding
  5. Have clear rules once I implement it live

For example, in my recent backtest, I decided to add 3 filters based on the daily chart.

The hourly is still relatively new so I wanted to build a large data-set and let my unconsious learn as I went before diving back into it and adding filters.

Here’s an example of how I set-up my initial excel (or google sheet) before I start adding comments / screenshots / analysis of my filters etc.

It then tends to look like this

Yep, removed the dates, you guys can do sonme work!

As you can see, I track the set-up, the daily filters and the return, I’ve personally stopped taking screenshots since it reduces the speed of my workflow, I find it easier to look back on the charts (Alt G) on TradingView.

These trades represent price action since 2018 till today.

A few examples

Now I’ll be honest, I do not want to go into too much detail about my targeting or stop placement or even trade management.

I’ve spent over a hundred hours into this so far (my regular trading plan is over several thousands of hours)

So if you want access to the really detailed information I’ll invoice you the number of hours I’ve spent on this with my consulting rate 😉

However, you’re able to notice a rather clear multi-timeframe breakdown

On the daily we reached an area of interest for a potential reversal

On the hourly we broke below one of the crosses which enabled me to place a short order

The two timeframes were sharing the exact same information, the same story so I felt comfortable executing a short.

We can see that it successfully ran 1R, actually 2.2R if the stop was at the high

It doesn’t mean the trade was a success in my trading plan, however, it does show the potential.

This was only one example, the most recent area of interest on the daily, so let’s look further back

Daily was interesting but the hourly failed to confirm the edge so no trade

Let’s look at the one before that?

Daily fit the story

Hourly (took a long time and went quite far before pulling back) also fits the same story, another 1:1 if you were to execute it and decide it was worth placing an order even tho it had ran quite far

The previous one?

Daily fits the story

Hourly fits the story as well, another 1:1

I’m not going to go all the way back, my objective isn’t to show you if the strategy works, and if I use a 1:1 set-up, the objective is to show the importance of collecting data

Using filters

While I was testing a few other things while collecting data here’s a breakdown of the numbers I collected

The breaker 3 set-up is the one that is of interest to us.

You can see I collected 151 trades

For a return of 80.5%

And an average return of 0.53%

If you recall the different filters I mentioned previously (it depends entirely on what strategy you are testing so don’t just copy the same ones as I am)

I tracked three different filters:

Zone nbr

Confirmation

Before/After

You can notice that using no filters whatsoever I had an average return of 0.53 so it isn’t really worth using the confirmation or before/after filters since they don’t have a big impact on the average R:R they just reduce the overall return and compounding

However, using only trades from the 1st zone I can see that my average return would go from 0.53% to 0.67% and only lower my returns by 7% over the four years while making me take 40 trades less (which means fewer commissions/fewer carryover fees/ less exposure to the market risk)

Using that filter appears to be worth it.

From there, I decided to look at the impact of combining the filters together in different combinations (there were a lot of combinations possible so I won’t share all of them)

An interesting combination for instance was having a valid confirmation and remaining in the 1st zone

This increased the average return from the original 0.53% and 0.67% for using only the zone as a filter to 0.74%

A return of 50.8% vs. 73.2%

You may be saying to yourself, why in the hell would I accept to “lose” 23.2% that’s nearly 50% of the return

Well, that’s entirely upon you.

Your average return & strike rate matters

I’m assuming most readers of this blog have a trading capital of 5,000$-100,000$, which means they want big returns and not necessarily “safe” ones

However, that also means that a lot of you are going to be using a “prop” firm to finance you, which is going to have a maximum drawdown.

I personally use the 5ers

Which is a great service, has a great team, and has always paid me when I invoice them very quickly. (P.S. They also have several scaling solutions I find interesting)

Anyway, this isn’t a blog post about how great they are (they are, just trust me, DYOR)

That means I have a maximum DD that I can accept before they cancel my funding

This means my strike rate is actually rather important. I do not want to have a large drawdown, hence a higher strike rate and a higher average return can be beneficial, even tho it may mean a lower overall return.

That being said, I want to use a caveat (is that the right word) here?

Do not search for the strategy that gives you only 5 trades a year with a high strike rate and high average return, well, you may, but the idea here is that the more trades you take the more compounding you’ll be able to achieve.

Using the exact same data

1 filter applied = Only zone 1 = 0.67% avg return

2 filters applied = Only zone 1 & valid confirmation = 0.74% avg return

Well, fuck that doesn’t illustrate well my example of reducing my maximum DD by increasing my strike rate, ugh. Anyway, IT USUALLY DOES!

The market isn’t perfect clearly ahah

However, you still see what I mean, the returns added up where respectively 73.2% vs 50.8%

Once you start compounding, a greater number of trades makes the compounding do its magic

Using one filter, you can see a 43% growth in the returns thanks to compounding, in the second filter, it’s “only” 28% growth from their starting numbers. So let’s keep in mind that compounding is magic, but it works only on a lot of trades, if you take nearly no trades there’s nearly no compounding benefit

Anyway

All that to say

You want to collect a LOT of trades

To have more data

To know if your strategy is profitable

To know if it’s worth using filters

To know the exact benefit and drawbacks of each filter

That is how you end up with a trading plan.

Data is king

But keep in mind it’s not because a strategy was profitable in the past that it will necessarily be profitable in the future

Your next steps

  • Find a mechanical way to look at charts on two timeframes
  • Create a first set of hypotheses of stop placement & target (you’ll probably change them)
  • Figure out a few filters you’ll want to track
  • Use the replay button on trading view
  • Spend hundred/thousands of hours working
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The 4 Principles that Drive Elite Traders Performances

Even tho it sounds gimmicky these 4 principles really do drive success for traders. At least, I can attest it for full-time FX traders – others, I can’t say, that’s not my edge.

  1. Performing from your sweet spot
  2. Acquiring and building a skill
  3. Being able to deliver whenever there’s opportunity
  4. Remaining on top

Those four topics are the pillars for trading success, you want to become a full time trader – focus on those four, in that order!

I’ve just listened to an amazing podcast on chat with traders – Aaron Ffifield had James King on and the conversation was amazing that I’ve decided to make a blog post about it.

You can find the link to the podcast here:

You can also find James A King website here:

Now that we’ve shared this information, let’s dive into it!

What drives elite trader performances?

Ambition? Hard work? Talent? Yeah… But…That’s not the entire story

Neither is the 10,000hour rule, which I guess is rather reassuring for quite a lot of you?

In the point James King shares he makes it clear that he sees excellence as a pyramid, that has four core levels:

Screw using PowerPoint pyramids, might as well use a real one!

Those four principles are key to your success as a trader. As always, the first one, performing from your Sweet Spot is the most important. Since it’s the base, without it, everything would break.

Performing from your Sweet Spot

So what’s a sweet spot? Is it in the kitchen next to the candy jar? Nop, sorry to disappoint! I’ve got bad news, worse than the joke I just made, I actually can’t tell you what your sweet spot is.

You’ll have to ask yourself some questions, but we’ll come to them afterwards, let’s first address why do we need to perform from our sweet spot – it’s easier to perform when the goal you pursue aligns with the quality that makes you unique.

I’m not chasing someone else goal – I’m unique so I’m chasing my own goal and it’ll be way freaking easier if it aligns with things I’m good at.

So what’s your sweet spot? It will depend on your strength, interest and values – and those are not necessarily related to trading at all, it could be things you used to excel at when you were a kid.

What comes naturally to you? Do you like spending time reading news and staying up to date with what’s happening in the world? Are you better at solving puzzles? Are you always up to date on everything?

Once you’ve figured out what comes naturally to you, it could define your trading style, if for instance you love reading news and understanding how countries are being governed, then maybe trading the macro/fundamental side of things could be something you’d be better at that trading technicals? If on the opposite you hate watching news (#WelcomeToTheClub) but you like trying to solve puzzles, build stuff and have a strong imagination it’s likely you’d see better results in your trading if you were a technical trader.

If you are interested in technical analysis and trying to find levels where price is likely going to reverse and can spend a lot of hours without having to be motivated by someone else it’s a good sing – because the truth is, you’ll have to put in the time. So if trading gold interest you more than trading currencies or even equities you should focus on that side of things.

To find your sweet spot and to know what you should focus on to become an elite trader ask yourself, where have you excelled at in your life? What have you been highly responsive to training? What personality do you have (btw I highly recommend doing the Meyer Briggs test, it can help you find your strengths as well as your weaknesses, which is rather important!) What are you always motivated to do? What type of asset class are you the most interest in?

All of this leads to the question what are your values, what’s the most important to you? Is it money? Is it fame? Is it time? autonomy? etc Based on your values you may discover that working at a prop desk or a hedge fund doing research may be a better place than trading your own capital.

Find your sweet spot – and execute from there.

And yes, we’ve spent all this time not even talking about trading or performance but just about figuring out what we want to focus on.

Skill Acquisition

Here’s the good news, you probably won’t need to spend 10,000 hours working your ass off before you master a skill, if you do, it’s probably not your sweet spot or you’re following a shitty methodology 🙂 Let’s dive into the 7 key factors when building a skill to excellence.

Start with the comprehensive foundation

You don’t have to do extraordinary things – you have to do ordinary things extraordinarily well –> think about our friend Bruce Lee 🙂

You want to master the basics, without a mastery of the basics to stand on you’ll go nowhere.

Apparently in Tennis 85% of points are made in the service / return and return service – yet most tennis players only spend around 15% of their time practicing those skills.

You want to find what are the big levers for success, don’t focus on tiny marginal gains, focus on the big levers. That’s where the value is at. In trading it’s probably around entry / stop sizing and exists. That’s where the money is made, it’s not about anything else.

Practice over theory

It’s what you can do not what you know that matters – knowing how to kick a ball the most precisely as possible but not being able to do so in practice is useless. You’re better off not knowing the theory behind it but be able to hit every target that’s set.

Turn your learning into practice, don’t spend too much time on theory you have to think, do and produce –> once you’ve practiced enough you can articulate what happens then that’s fine, but practice over theory.

It’s all on you

I don’t really care if you end up super mega successful, your neighbor doesn’t either, it’s only on you, it’s your future. Don’t expect to be given the answers (well, that’s kinda what I’m doing here on a daily basis) you have to figure it out for yourself.

People can explain to you a strategy, but it’s on you to understand it and develop it. Advanced skills need to be discovered they can’t be taught.

Take responsibility over your future.

We need challenge to change

If we remain in our comfort zone we won’t evolve sadly, heck I wish sitting in my hamac would enable me to improve my 5k time, sadly I need to push myself to be able to build more muscles.

We need to spend as much time as possible in a challenging zone to be improving, you need to be absolutely focused on what’s happening – if you’re thinking about what you’ll be eating at dinner tonight when practicing you might as well stop straight away!

Get uncomfortable, learn to enjoy being challenged, but if you’re at a point where you’re starting to panic, you can take a break 🙂

If it doesn’t happen when you’re competing, it doesn’t matter.

There’s no point in practicing things that will have absolutely zero impact on your trading results – so many kids dream of becoming a football star, they go home and start practicing tricks with the ball, the problem is, being able to do fancy tricks with a football probably won’t win you a championship – being able to shoot straight, run faster, control the ball, tackle is what matters. Well, I think, I’m not a big football fan.

Create uncertainty

It’s nice to practice when you’re comfortable at home with zero stakes where you control all the factors, however you want to have uncertainty. You need to train in the conditions you’ll be executing – and then imagine even more extreme conditions – for instance for traders you may want to focus on extremely hard to trade markets, periods with drawdown, making decisions with a time limit, it’s all well having a backtest tool that you can pause to make a decision, but in live market conditions you’ve don’t have all the time you want.

Learning is the mindful search for solutions

It’s not mindlessly repeating a solution, it’s a mindful search for a solution repeated over and over – for instance think about your phone, to be able to unlock it with your finger you have to scan your finger several times, in different angles / positions –> what it’s doing is that it’s learning through variability to be able to recognise it whichever angle you end up using.

If you only gave your phone 1 try to collect your fingerprint I’m willing to bet your phone wouldn’t open as quickly as it does now, it would reject you quite often as well just because you didn’t train it with different conditions.

Out of every successful trader I’ve met (and the ones James has met) it’s very rare for them to rely on 2 extraordinary things – instead, most successful traders have mastered the basics and just don’t do mistakes that cost them their career.

Anyway that’s enough for our second point – the skill acquisition to become an elite trader.

Delivering on demand

Being able to execute your strategy whenever the time calls for it even tho you’re under pressure is key.

I remember Josh Waitzkin in the art of learning was talking about the ability masters have to switch on and off – for him he could just listen to one song and be pumped up ready to fight.

Outliers are able to flick a switch to regulate their emotions and execute. You want to be able to enter a flow state and have access to all your knowledge and training.

You need to spend time building your skill of getting into the zone – it’s a skill like all the other ones.

Your thoughts + Your actions = Emotional State

If you realize your are in a suboptimal state, think what are you doing, thinking, how you’re sitting, breathing etc.

Your thoughts and actions will change your emotional state.

The sea won’t always be calm. You need to be able to get comfortable even in the worst weather.

If you feel overwhelmed try to break the feeling down – is it because you’re in too many trades? If so only take 1 trade at a time until you’re comfortable. Is it because you’re trading a new asset class? Trade with a smaller risk!

A nice short section, but it’s so key.

Josh Waitzkin recommends listening to a song every single time before practicing – for instance before every single workout for a month listen to the same song. After a few months of that habit it’ll probably pump you up as soon as you hear it.

Sustaining Success

Let’s start this section with dark reminder: More people die going back down Everest than going up.

It’s actually got a name in climbing, the “post summit peril”, you’re tempted to bask in the view, enjoy life, congratulate yourself and switch off your focus really enjoy the moment. When you go back down….

There’s two key biases we need to keep in mind

  1. Continuity bias – We believe the future is the same as what we’ve experienced, we down play the risk since we’ve made it so far, it’ll just remain the same.
  2. Illusion of personal control – We downplay the rate of luck / variance in our success, we forget we were lucky because we had a favorable backwind – it makes us complacent because we believe it’s 100% thanks to us, we forget the circumstances were in our favour.

Those two key biases probably won’t impact us immediately it’s a slow process that will definitely lead to your long term demise sadly.

Although we want to strive to become the best, you can never allow yourself to believe you’re there –> when you’re second you have the drive to keep moving forward, when you’re first it’s easy to loose all motivation.

To do so, develop a comprehensive understanding of what it’ll take to win and a comprehensive understanding of where you are –> that will enable you to find your weak spots and what are the important levers you want to focus on.

If you really understand what is holding you back, the solution will probably fall into your lap 🙂

If you look at the best teams, for instance the All Blacks when we think of rugby, they don’t focus on being the best in the world in their sport, they look outside of their “industry” they are competing to get the best win rate in every sport. They’ve set bigger targets.

Standing on your own success won’t be enough. You need to keep evolving

What you need to keep in mind is that you’re basically evolving in a ever continuing circle of improvement – even tho you’re at the top of the current cycle, you’re not at the top of the mountain, you’re only in a transitional moment towards the next cycle.

That’s it for today!

I hope you enjoyed this one!

Oh and, James A King released a book I’ve just ordered on Amazon so I can’t speak about it, but the podcast was fantastic, you can find it here

Once again;

You can find the link to the podcast here:

You can also find James A King website here:

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You don’t really trade the market

Everyone thinks that we trade the market we’re invested in, would that be FX, commodities, stocks etc etc

But is that the case? I mean a market is a market, it’s nothing at all.

It’s not as if you go to a counter and ask for two dozens oysters and some nice smelly cheese, that’s something we can eat and enjoy.

No, we only trade our beliefs.

Currencies are only worth X because of the belief/trust we have that they are worth that much, because someone told us it was the case.

Trading is only a matter of showing our belief that a currency is going to become more valuable / trustworthy for others

Don’t focus on trying to understand how a market moves, it’s only the sum of all the beliefs of the participants.

Instead, try to understand how you come to believe something, and how others change their minds.

If you’re able to understand a change in the mind of the other traders/investors before it takes place you’ll be well off.

You don’t really trade the market. You trade your beliefs about the market. 

~ Van Tharp

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Reading habits

The highlight of being self employed and having a large amount of “free” time is the ability to read.

I love reading.

A lot of very successful people recommending reading too, so I’m sticking to it, and would highly recommend you to do so!

But if you don’t currently have a reading habit… Here are a few recommendations I would give myself

Don’t force yourself to read “smart” books

Read to enjoy yourself, don’t force it, you’ll get to a point where picking up a book becomes a habit and you’ll want to learn something new!

Start reading for the fun of it – don’t start reading complicated investment / psychology books if that’s not your cup to tea.

You’ll get to a point where that’s what you want to do,

don’t force it!

However, if you like reading here are a few of my favorite books as a trader

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Mental Game of Poker (1&2) by Jared Tendler

The way to Love by Anthony de Mello

Seeking Wisdom from Munger to Darwin by Peter Bevelin

Inside the House of Money / The Alpha Masters / Market Wizards (great collection about hedge fund managers)

There’s no need to read thousands of books

Instead find books that open your mind and read them, make sure you assimilate, take notes, go back, re-read them etc

Don’t rush the process

Don’t read to show off and be the smart ass that tells everyone he speeds read a book a day but doesn’t apply shit

You don’t even need to read books, there’s loads of great blogs

A few blogs I like to follow:

Macro-ops

Collaborative Fund

Paul Graham is a legend

Farnam Street

Does twitter count? There’s a few amazing accounts there!

P.S. Currently reading: The Invisible Hands top hedge fund traders… Steven Drobny

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The four pillars for trading success

The four pillars for trading success

We all wish trading came naturally to us; after all that would’ve meant saving countless hours, (a lot of) money, friendships that were broken after having a shitty day in the market

Oh and these reflect my personal views and experiences, I am sure you could argue for something different

What are those four pillars?

(Wish their was like a way to drop a curtain or something)

  1. Persistence
  2. Risk Management
  3. Psychology
  4. Trading Edge
Image

Let’s break these four pillars into a section each:

Persistence

Trading is difficult. Like any other skill it will take time to master, the only way to through the deep water is to preserver, if you haven’t given up you haven’t failed.

As long as you get back up after being pushed back down there is still hope.

That being said, having fallen off (many) horses it does take persistence to get back up on the horse, the same goes with trading, there will be losses, there will be mistakes, but there is a need to continually get back up and get ready for another try.

There is also an undeniable need to spend countless hours in front of charts in order to develop and test an edge and persist until we feel comfortable with our own strategy

Trading is all about survival, protecting the assets we have, making them grow, without getting killed. Keep that in mind.

Image result for persistence quote paramahansa yoga

This point is rather straight forward so there’s no real value spending too much time dealing with it, we are left with

  1. Risk Management
  2. Psychology
  3. Trading Edge

Risk Management

Risk management is probably the first subject new trades should look into, we can break it down into two topics: protecting the initial capital and an understanding of probabilities.

Protecting the initial capital

One of the best ways to screw up your psychology and give up is by taking huge losses that will destroy the size of the trading account

In order to protect the initial capital, it is key for traders to understand how to size their positions and (ideally) maintain a constant risk profile.

Why is it so important to avoid large losses?

If a single trade isn’t properly sized, it is possible for a trading account to be blown – by that I do mean, it is possible with one trade to lose all the money (and potentially more) you have in the trading account…

Let’s dive into “smaller losses”:

Image

A 10% loss requires you to make 11% back in order to get back to the starting point, which when we think about it, isn’t that bad, it could be worse… However, if you take a 50% loss then you will need to double your account in order to bring it back up to the starting size…

Yep…. Here’s the example:

10,000+10,000*(-0.5) = 5,000

5,000*X=10,000

X= 2

(Mainly wanted to show the benefits of getting a university degree, I can do maths now 😊)

The key lesson here is:

 MAKE SURE YOU DON’T SCREW UP THE POSITION SIZE

The likelihood of you preserving and not screwing up your mental game after such a loss is extremely low so… If you want to have a career in trading, make sure you size your positions correctly.

Image result for it's not about being right or wrong soros

Understanding probabilities

Now this one may seem a bit more obvious, but over many discussions I’ve realized it may not be the case

There will be winning trades, but there will also be losing trades, this is a given, anyone that promises you a 100% strike rate is either into high frequency trading (and works at a huge fund) or is trying to get your money, and the likelihood of the second far outweighs the first…

Now it’s let’s dig into why I think it is key to understand your trading edge and your numbers (more on that afterwards)

If you are a trader you may have a 45% strike rate (it is possible to be profitable with a lower strike rate, as it is possible to be a consistently bankrupt trader with a higher strike rate)

As you can see on the following image, you have a 72% likelihood of taking 6 losses in a row over 50 trades taken, yep a 72% likelihood, that’s freaking surprising eh

The likelihood of taking 7 losses in a row is at a “more acceptable” probability of 49% (which is still super high!?)

Image

Knowing the probability of taking 7 losses in a row is close to 50%, no better than flipping a coin, how much should you risk?

If you risk 5% per trade, you shall be down 30.2% (assuming you adjust your $ risk after each trade) that means you’ll have to make back 43% to get to the level you were before this losing strike… A rather big number if you ask me – however if you only risk 1% then you’re only down 6.8%

Let’s say you’re trading a 100,000$ account, I would highly prefer being down 6,800$ instead of 30,200$… Can you imagine the impact on your psychology? I would be devasted with a 30.2% loss

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Don’t forget, trading is a survival game, and you can only survive if you protect your initial capital and risk the right amount… Don’t show off… Now onto

Psychology

Probably the less fun part of trading for most of us (I’ll admit, I actually love it!) but you’ve probably heard it from many people psychology is key for traders, it may even represent 80% of the work you need to do to become a profitable trader

Now what are common traps we can fall into

  1. Sticking to our bias
  2. Trying to prove we know better
  3. I can’t lose so risking more
  4. I just need to get even
  5. I’m just one trade away from being profitable this month

I always used to get told off for doing more than five bullet points but there’s so many other examples!

So how can we have a profitable psychology?

  1. Focus on the process – they do not care about being right or wrong
  2. Understanding the numbers linked to your trading strategy
  3. Having strong opinions weekly held and being willing to flip sides
Image result for psychology trading quote

The most important part of trading is understanding that the market doesn’t care about you, and you shouldn’t really care about it. Instead focus on the process, be willing to jump ship and understand nothing is guaranteed in the market.

Instead, focus on yourself, spend time off the charts, recharge, meditate, empty your mind, and execute your trading plan

The worst enemy you have is yourself – and sadly you’ll never really get to beat him to the ground, even the famous Greek philosophers sometimes had urges (some were also doing the exact opposite from what they preached…)

Image result for conquer yourself zeno of citium

Truly believe I can’t make a better point than Yvan:

Confidence is not “I will profit on this trade.” Confidence is “I will be fine if I don’t profit from this trade.”

Yvan Byeajee, The essence of trading psychology in one skill

Try calming your mind, ideally empty your mind from all greed hesitation and passion, instead remain neutral and in control. The best way to do that is to meditate, and if you refuse to do that, go for a thirty minutes walk without your phone, just paying attentions to your thoughts, it should help you drop all those negative charges.

Tihbo puts it beautifully

Now I could spend an entire day ranting about the importance of psychology but I believe this is a journey you alone can take since it is deep inside you and no matter how many quotes I put in front of you the decision to let go and become present is yours.

Having a trading edge

Yep, this is the last point… Not necessarily because I believe it’s the less important, but you can make money with so many different markets and in so many different ways, you can skin the cat yourself.

However, it is extremely important to have identified your trading edge and be able to prove it exist in the historical market without having to adjust it, that’s one of the main problems quants are faced with, they adjust their strategy so it provides great returns in the past but does not work when the market conditions change

So what do you have to do?

Back test your strategy over several years and several pairs, forecast possible moves, use your trading plan with a reduced risk for the first few months in order to make sure the edge is there

Understand that even a profitable strategy will have losses

Here’s an example of my go-to set-ups after having backtested it over a few pairs for 2019

I have come to realize, that two of my favorite set-ups are not very profitable for me (the 3rd rejection and the hover) therefore I will have to adapt, another key point is understanding that my strike rate (without including BE) is of 34% however as you can see the returns are profitable, because my average win is a lot bigger than average loss.

Keep on working, keep on testing your strategy and never become over confident, because that will be your end.

The end 😊

Before I ask you to like this post and share, I would like to thank both Tiho Brkan and Yvan Byeajee I most of the data I used came from their tweets!

What do you think are the key pillars for success in the FX market?

Hope you enjoyed this article!

Onwards,

-Max

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The right questions

That’s a bloody heavy title… Definitely not going to be able to address it within one blog post, but…

I just listened to an enjoyable podcast with Warren Berger and Shane Parish on Fs.blog and they talk a fair amount about questions…

Here’s a quote from Warren Berger that explains why I believe asking the right questions is key

Now, yes, that can easily be understood for engineers, for entrepreneurs and scientists, but what about traders?

Questions for traders

What is the market?

It helps to think about the entire market, what is the stock market? why does the stock market (on average) go up? Why do currencies exist? Why are there several currencies? Why is the price of a certain currency worth more than another one? How can I forecast that?

Now this won’t improve your trading 10-fold I’ll give you that, but having a larger understanding makes the next steps a lot easier…

Plus, the more you learn the more intrigued you’ll be trust me, I’ve fallen into a dark rabbit hole more times than I wish to admit

Why FX?

You can easily ask yourself, why do I trade FX? Why do I trade this way? Why do I need a trading plan? (I hope by now you know why you need one!!!! Otherwise this blog has failed you I’m sorry! :S ) What are the positives and downsides of having a trading plan? What will I learn from my trading plan?

(A previous blog post about trading plans can be found here!)

Knowing the answers will give you the motivation to build one? You can ask yourself the same questions about anything btw, would that be why you want to trade full-time, why you need a routine, why you should eat healthy etc

How do I trade?

How do I build the right foundations to become a full-time trader? What is the process I should follow to achieve my goals? What set-ups am I allowed to trade? Why can I trade those set-ups and not others? Why is limiting the number of trades I take good?

Those questions will probably make you understand that sticking to your plan has way more benefits than downsides, you will understand that the only reason you trade those set-ups is because you are playing out an edge with a positive expected value and you definitely don’t want to start playing around because that will costly…

So many question marks…

What questions to ask?

Now I’m not going to list hundreds (I easily could) questions instead here are a few questions I like to ask myself

Why did I take this trade? Does this trade fit my trading plan? Did I forecast it?

Why will the price go in that direction? What is the structure telling me?

Should I stay out? Why shouldn’t I pull the trigger on this position

What would my mentor say if I took this trade?

Would my mentor take this trade? Does it fit with his previous “behavior?”

Why would this trade turn out to be a loss?

How will I feel after taking this loss?

Am I still happy taking this trade?

Hope those questions help you.

I truly believe that everyone has the answers to the right questions (yes even you!) you just need to ask yourself the right questions…

If you can’t answer a question, then dig into it? Ask yourself what do you need to know in order to answer it?

Ask yourself questions and the following questions

How do you make money trading while traveling?

I trade currencies

How do you I make money trading?

By betting that a currency is going to be worth more than another one

Why are currencies worth something?

Because it’s a store of value

How do we know what value that is?

Ugh… I’m not digging my own hole, I’d need an entire semester to debate this

How can you analyze that one currency is going to be worth more than another?

Well, there’s fundamentals, news, technical analysis, etc

I use technical analysis…

What is technical analysis?

It’s looking at the historical movement of price and forecasting that it will do something similar in the future

How do you forecast it?….

You get it by now right? I can stop this game?

Please.. Say yes…

Ask yourself the right questions and your trading and life will improve. Sometimes those answers will force you to look up something else to be able to answer it but in the end you’ll be better off

It’s easy to make something sound complicated, the truly hard part is to make something that’s really complicated sound simple

Eheh, didn’t use Einstein for this one!

Once you are able to explain your trading strategy, why you take certain trades and not others you’ll have truly mastered your trading plan, and that’s exactly what successful traders do – it makes executing it a lot easier!

It’s only with the right questions that our lives can improve

Most of the biggest discoveries started with why or how, so get used to those two words and use them!

Anyway, I will definitely fall into a rabbit hole if I keep writing this post, I hope you enjoyed it! If you did, please do leave a like or a comment 🙂

Onwards

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Fear

Fear in the FX market

Now, it may sound strange, why would a trader be scared? I mean, it’s not like he’s risking his life (Well, make sure you manage your risk…If you don’t then yep… I guess)

A good FX trader executes his trading plan with no fear.

A losing trader does not execute his trading plan BECAUSE of fear

Have you ever not taken a trade because you were scared? Scared of losing, scared of being wrong, scared of not being good enough, scared of losing money, scared of what other people will think of you etc?

Hell, I have…

The main idea behind this blog post comes form the book “Way of Warrior Trader” in it there’s a great section about fear

The book

According to the author – there are three instinctual fears: fear of loss, fear of pain and the fear of the unkown

I mean, why are we scared of getting killed by an alligator?

1- Afraid of the pain you would experience while getting chewed up by the alligator’s jaws

2- Afraid of losing your identity as you’re being digested in the alligator’s stomach

3- Afraid of not knowing where you’ll end up two days later after passing through the alligator’s guts

Way of the Warrior Trader

Makes sense right?

I mean I wouldn’t want to be killed by an alligator (well, definitely would be interesting)…

So why are we talking about this?

(Nearly) all fears we are faced with are either anticipatory or reflective in nature

Fear of the future

We are scared of the unknown, the unknown we are all faced with is the future.

We don’t know what will happen today, and even less so in the markets since we don’t control them (kinda wish we could manipulate them for my own benefit…)

Not being an author I’ll quote the book again because he puts it better than I could:

To render repeated attention to issues that are currently outside our perimeter of control is a waste of life force and a distraction away from the situations we do have an element of control over in the present moment.

Way of the Warrior Trader

Instead of being worried about what will potentially happen in the future, focus on what you can control – and that is the execution of your trading plan.

So what are a handful of tips to control your fear when it comes to placing a trade?

1- Forecast every single morning, and only take the trades you forecasted

2- Have a trading plan – and know the strike rates and expected return every set-up has

3- Backtest, that’s the only way to do the first two points, so keep backtesting

4- Focus on your breath – try to breathe deeply into your abdomen, it’s linked with the vegus nerve that will make you more calm (and also reduce heart beat I believe)

5- Meditate (eheh you thought I’d have given up on this one by now) it will make focusing on the present moment and push away all thoughts a lot easier

Scared of success?

Being scared of succcess, may sound like a strange thing, but it happens to a large amount of forex traders and is one of the main reason why traders blow up their accounts

Ed Seykota is a smart dude.

We all get what we want from the market in the long run

The biggest challenge you will face in the FX market is your mental side. Make sure your mindset is in the right place.

Once again, I swear this is (probably) the last time I quote him for this blog post

Nothing can weaken your resolve to follow through with a plan more than the lack of genuine desire to achieve the end result.

Without such a plan, you can be assured that one or more of the four poisons of doubt, fear, confusion and surprise will eventually infect your mind. Effective planning will always help to minimize (if not eliminate) these poisons.

Way of the Warrior Trader

Accept the loss, understand that you don’t know the future and you’re just playing out an edge, take the position and be happy whatever happens next because you executed your plan.

Executing your plan is the goal, ignore the end result.

Cool video by AK Fallible about fear in the market! Love his channel, definitely would reocmmend

Make sure you’re not afraid to take the trade if it fits your trading plan

Yep, a trading plan, backtesting and forecasting is key, what can I say 🙂

By having a trading plan you outsource the trading (to you) so you get to delegate the responsibility! Definitely checkout the last part of that video tho – one of my fav. scenes in Billions hands down ahah

If you think that it’s the mental side that’s holding you back definitely check out the book, I did enjoy it and hit me up with your questions!

I love digging into peoples brains 🙂

Anyway, have a good one, I hope you enjoyed this blog post! Let me know in the comments if you want me to do more post like this!

Onwards,

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Forecasting is key

Forecasting, backtesting and having a trading plan are the three pillars of successful in the FX market.

Do you have a forecasting routine? If so, keep it up! (let me know what it is)

If you want to become a full-time FX trader, you will have to develop a trading plan, backtest it, and forecast potential moves.

That’s (more or less) everything you need.

What is forecasting?

Figured I probably should do a quick explanation of what I mean by forecasting…

It’s basically “guessing” where the market will go next and how…

Sounds rather easy right? It doesn’t even take that much time

Forecast for EUR/CAD on the 11th of September

This is my forecast for EUR/CAD, I just drew on trading-view the potential scenarios that could happen, I know there are many other potential ways the market could evolve during the day, but in my view, this is the most likely.

You could use different drawing colors based on “I’m willing to take this scenario” & “Not willing to take this scenario” (that’s actually a good idea, I should do that)

If it’s this easy what’s the benefit

Let me start this section with: I go a lot more in depth with my forecasting process, just scroll down if you already know the benefits

There’s five key benefits for a trader, but I was lazy while building this infographic so here’s 3 key points...

1- It will increase your confidence, you are able to track whenever or not your forecast actually took place, which in turn will increase your confidence in your ability to be a few steps ahead of the market (which is key to be profitable)

2- You’ll be prepared, doing your forecasting is basically drawing out all the possible/probably scenarios – you’ll be able to decide ahead of time what price action you’ll want to see before taking a trade – all you need to do is execute your plan

3- It’s easier to profit, having done your forecast in the morning you are a less likely going to miss a trade during the day since you are able to place your alerts at all the key areas. Plus, it also increases the likelihood of you sticking to your trading plan

And the bonus two…

4- It will decrease your emotional attachment to potential trades, and trades you are currently holding: by drawing out several possibility you know that there is no guarantee that the price will do exactly what you want it to, it doesn’t care, instead it makes you realize, we are only playing an edge

5- It allows you to switch from analyst to a trader.

It’s really important to be an analyst when it’s the weekend and when doing your forecasting, however, when the markets are live, and there’s a potential trade set-up in the making you need to become a trader, not an analyst. Having done the analysis that morning will help you execute.

Here’s a video explaining it if you don’t like reading…

My forecasting process

Now let’s dig into my process, that’s probably why you’re here (sorry for making you wait)

I recently did a tweak so here’s a breakdown of what I used to do and what I do now, not a huge difference, but really happy so far

I used to draw at least three possible scenarios:

  • Two potential entries, so how the price gets there and where I’d be interest
  • One scenario where I wouldn’t be able to take the trade, either the market goes in the opposite direction or just impulses through everything I was eyeing up

That was done first thing in the morning and last thing before going to bed, because that way I would force myself to think about the possible, the probable and admit, the price isn’t necessarily going to go where I want it to

In the morning it was to plan the day ahead, at night it was to have my subconscious think about the market while I was sleeping, and once again, forecast where the price would go over the next seven/eight hours

It was a really cool exercise, but I wasn’t getting the most out of it…

Now I do my forecasting somewhat differently

I use my trading journal to track those morning forecasts (I keep everything in my excel file, from reason to trade, to monthly asr, to journal, to forecasting etc, I like having everything in one place)

Here’s this week example

So to quickly explain, I track the day of the forecast, the pairs I’m interested in, the direction, then three potential scenarios that could play out (out of many), a screenshot of the potential moves + drawings.

Then here’s the addition, I then come back the next morning and figure out which one happened, sometimes it was a fourth option, that happens.

But here, you can see I had forecasted the move 12 times out of 15 – not picture perfect but pretty darn close.

How do you think that makes me feel? How would that make you feel?

More confident in your skill? Yes

Happy because you get to collect more data? Yes

More likely to execute the next time you see a trade set-up? Yes

I highly recommend you to do the same

It takes less than thirty minutes in the morning, yet you have the entire day planned ahead

You know what you want to see before taking a trade – that’s key, it reduces your hesitation to trigger a trade, and avoids you from taking low quality trades

You are also able to be “free” and that’s one of the main reasons people start trading, they want to have free time. If you don’t know what you want to see in order to take a trade you’ll just stay in front of your computer, and basically be a slave to the market.

Don’t be a slave to the FX market: Forecast in the morning

Anyway,

I hope you enjoyed this blog post! If you did, please leave a like or share it? ❤ Would mean the world to me!

Onwards,

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Building a Trading Plan

Having your own trading plan, is (probably) the most important part to become a successful trader, would that be stocks, FX, commodities or whatever you want to trade.

Why is a trading plan so important?

It gives you the opportunity to write down exactly what you can do and how you should do it.

It’s like a cooking book, the only way to really improve a receipe is to know what ingredients to use, the amounts and how long you should cook it for.

I’m awful at cooking (Really bad, my old roommates refused to eat anything I cooked)

I know how to make salads tho, that’s the only thing I’m decent at!

Why do you think I spend so much time in cheap countries where I can eat out three times a day?? (Maybe it’s because I don’t need to cook)

Anyway, back to the subject at hand…

Becoming a good cook is relatively easy, you just follow instructions, it’s the “chef” that makes up the dish and writes down how to do it properly.

You can work in a great restaurant and make a lot of money if you’re a really good cook, especially if you work well with a famous chef.

Trading, is rather similar to working in a restaurant (not talking about the insane hours, but sometimes…)

The only way to become a chef (a really really good trader) is to become a cook (someone that can implement a trading plan), it will take time, but the more practice you get as a cook the easier it will be for you to become a chef.

Ask for help building your first trading plan

You become a good cook by learning from others how to cook, would it be your parents, siblings, a cooking book, youtube videos, an online course, a bootcamp etc etc

It’s the same with trading.

Learn from someone else

Find yourself a mentor, whoever that is (not me) and ask them if they can explain to you their trading style and share trades they took.

Once you know how they look at the market, the trades they took you can break it down.

Bring a bottle of coke to a lab and they can reverse engineer it.

You could know the exact ingredients Coca Cola use for their famous drink.

Do the same with a trading plan.

Create your first trading plan based on someone else, even better, if you can copy it. My mentor shared his to all his students, that’s what I used at first.

I knew:

  • The entry types
  • What he wants to see in order to take a position
  • How he manages trades
  • How he records them
  • His risk profile

That’s all I needed, I more or less copy pasted it at first.

Once you have a trading plan, backtest it

Now it’s time for you to work, you can’t let someone else do all the work for you…

You know what set-ups your mentor looks for so go and backtest.

Try them out, figure out their results and ask yourself

  • Do they have a good strike rate?
  • What is their average return?
  • Do I like trading them?

Based on those questions and the answers you have for them you can quite easily make your mind up, should you keep those set-ups in your trading plan? It’s up to you.

Those are my results with a backtesting exercise I did earlier this year.

I was able to figure out which trade set-ups I prefer and how I wanted to manage them.

It also gave me a lot more confidence in my trading, I saw what was possible, and it became way easier for me to execute on my trading plan.

Once you’ve backtested your plan you can then decide what to edit, what to change, what to ignore, what you want to focus on etc…

Make it your own.

Make sure it becomes your own, don’t copy the exact same trades if they don’t fit you, adjust the trading plan to your own personality – and backtest it once again – it’s all about refinement,

To go back to the cooking comparison, a chef will try out so many variations of the same dish just to make sure he has the perfect mix of flavors, smells and texture.

It’s the same with trading, just keep trying it out.

Tweak it until it becomes your own, your precious, your trading plan.

Now, you can easily argue that you don’t need to write it down, it’s in your mind, or you can easily draw it.

But…

The best way to learn is to teach someone else.

But you don’t need to teach someone else, you just need to be able to explain it on a word document.

Take screenshots of your favorite set-ups

Write down what you want to see before being able to take a position

Explain how you are going to manage your position once in the trade

What are your rules in term of taking a second trade once you got tagged out of a position, are you allowed to re-enter? Once? Twice? Three times?… Create rules and put it in your trading plan.

If you want a video about creating a trading plan, check-out this interview on Chat with Traders, I’ll admit, I have only watched it once, but Chat with Traders is hands down one of the best podcasts out there for anyone interested in trading.

Now I feel like I’m probably rambling… but…

GET YOURSELF A TRADING PLAN.

Honestly, I truly believe it’s the best way to improve your results if you’re in the FX market.

Copy someone else trading plan, (or spend countless hours trying to build one)

Backtest it (it’s worth doing the work!)

Refine it

Make it more personal, something that fits your personality

Backtest it again, keep updating it

Write down your rules

Stick to it.

The only way you can improve your trading is to have a process, otherwise you may just be lucky or unlucky but you wouldn’t know because your trading is not consistent.

Being consistent with your process, will turn you into a consistently profitable trader.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this article, if you did it would mean the world to me if you could share it! Or let me know in the comments what you would do!

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Not doing shit is key.

Let me rephrase: Not taking trades is key.

Yep, you read that right, I’m here to say that doing absolutely nothing is (a hell of a lot) better than taking trades every single day.

Okay, this subject is mainly going to be about trading and investing, but it may apply to over industries too…

Do you know why you shouldn’t take too many trades? (Think about it for a few seconds)

Just wanted to give you a few seconds to think – I’m not addicted to pineapple photos!

There are three key reasons you may have thought about:

1- Trades in your trading plan don’t happen every single day so you definitely shouldn’t be taking more trades than what your plan tells you to. (Absolutely agree with this one)

2- Your broker commission, hell, I enjoy trading with FXCM, I don’t have (too many) issues with them, yet I’m still paying 5% of the risk I am willing to take per trade on average… (Fuck… I just realized it, it’s way too much )

3- Focusing on quality trades instead of just average trades.

I’ll mainly focus on this third point (even though the commission one just pissed me off ugh)

The importance of focusing on quality trades & not over-trading.

This may sound pretty obvious, but sadly it’s a lot harder to actually follow this rule. Mark Hutchinson (from Falcon Trading) brought up an interesting concept.

80% of the trades taken should be high probability trades and the other 20% can be valid trades.

You want to wait for those high probability set-ups before putting a trade on, but sometimes you can have a gut-feeling the trade will just go in your favor before you see the perfect set-up and you should still act on it.

I really like that rule, usually my trading follows a very similar breakdown between valid and high probability, and I do believe it’s really beneficial for me.

That being said, I didn’t stick to it last month (July) and I ended up having a negative month… Yep… It happened I have no shame, I committed a few mistakes, anyway, that’s not the subject.

You may know of Michael Marcus (he was one of the traders interviewed in Market Wizards) who, in less than 20 years, managed to turn 30,000$ into $80 million trading commodities.

I really like this book…

One of the quotes of his I really enjoyed is:

“One of the secrets to trading success is cutting down the number of trades you take”

When someone with his track record talks, I tend to listen, and that advice, is (I think) spot on.

Taking too many trades reduces the quality of your portfolio

Now let’s think about an investment portfolio, your returns will be the sum of all the trades and opportunity cost is really important here (in FX too due to leverage requirements) …

If you take trades that have a lower expected value you’ll reduce your overall yearly return and therefore make less money while increasing your risk, is that something you’re into? (I’m definitely not, I want the opposite)

I came across a cool website by Safal Niveshak – which I would highly recommend checking out (especially if you’re into investing)

The last article he posted was: Is your stock portfolio a warehouse or a museum?

In it he argues that we want our stock portfolio to be a museum and not a warehouse, which makes sense, so do go and check-it out

In it he quotes Jason Fried book Rework (a book I really enjoyed) :

“You don’t make a great museum by putting all the art in the world into a single room. That’s a warehouse. What makes a museum great is the stuff that’s not on the walls. Someone says no … There is an editing process. There’s a lot more stuff off the walls than on the walls. The best is a sub-sub-subset of all the possibilities.”

Jason Fried – Reword

Makes sense when explained like that? Right? We want our trade portfolio to be a “sub-sub-subset of all the possibilities” and only the ones where we truly believe to have an edge in.

From there, he picks the explain of Costco v. Walmart

Yep a screenshot, I’m lazy

We want to focus on returns on invested capital, 28% sounds a lot more attractive to me than 12% (which is still good).

Less is better – quality over quantity.

Now in this part of the post I’m really tempted to bring up Bruce Lee quote about not fearing a man that practiced a thousand kicks once, but fearing a man that practiced one kick a thousand times (see what I did here?) but that won’t be my main focus.

Instead I’ll just pick a recent example

One of my friends (Aldo) realized that taking better trades is not only more enjoyable but also doesn’t necessarily reduce your trading returns. Especially while traveling and not being able to spend as much time on trading.

That being said, I’m kinda forced to bring it up, I mean I love the guy…

Bruce Lee has another quote (not about the number of kicks this time)

He probably didn’t say this quote thinking about investing or trading, but it applies to everything in life.

Anyway, I hope this was helpful.

If this was useful and you enjoyed reading it, it would mean the world to me if you’d leave a like or even commented 🙂

Cheers!

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