Ed Mamula.com

This week’s results: 

Cable Glider — 2 wins , 2 losses

Euro Ranger — 1 win, 1 loss

This week, the account had a net loss.

This month, the Cable Glider is showing a net gain.

This month, the Euro Ranger is showing a net gain.

This month, Euro Ranger has been more profitable.

I’d like to get back to posting my results on a weekly basis.  I’ll post charts like the one above whenever possible to show the entry and exit points of each system.  This simple, stacked view also allows us to study the correlation between the two markets and systems.   It may be difficult to see at times, but red dashed lines indicate losing trades, and white dashed lines indicate winning trades.

In Monday’s session, both systems went long and suffered a loss.   Cable Glider went short on Tuesday and suffered a second loss, while Euro Ranger went long and had a gain.  Euro Ranger was idle for the rest of the week.  Cable Glider had a long side winner on Thursday and a short side winner on Friday.  Both systems had net losses this week.

I made a slight tweak to the Euro Ranger system, removing one of the disaster stop mechanisms.  If this rule had not been in place, the system would have had 1 win and 0 losses.

Hopefully, with time, I’ll get better at formatting and posting images to this blog.  I know that they are much easier to understand than words alone.

Wins/Losses :  5/5

Total Return: (1.4) %

July was a very choppy month, and my account finished modestly lower.   On paper, the Euro Ranger system and Cable Glider systems showed a combined return of positive 2%.  I missed execution on two positive trades in the Euro, and I had the British Pound system shut off the entire month.  I also made a minor tweak on the Euro Ranger system;  the code change manifested itself only once in July, and unfortunately it also had a net negative effect.

Recently, my work on trading systems has been influenced by David Aronson’s book, Evidence-Based Technical Analysis.  The most important insights I’ve gained from this book are the ideas about recognizing and quantifying data mining bias, and the ideas involving adequate trade sample size.  As a result of ever-more rigorous testing procedures, I feel much more comfortable about the long term profit generating prospects of the Euro Ranger system.  I am heavily biased by the fact that most of my actual historical profits (and losses) have been generated by the Cable Glider system, but objective testing is showing me just how much much riskier (and lucky) that strategy has been.

 In August, I will continue to strengthen my testing procedures, and look for more satisfying adaptive rules for turning trading systems off and on.  It’s a very unglamourous time of much study and not much profit, but I do feel that I’m making progress toward my longer term trading goals.