Topic: Goomboo's Journal - page 47. (Read 281461 times)

For me, it works to the extent that I can remove myself emotionally from the market while still
having the long term goal of profiting from it.

I like the idea of not over-thinking the technical analysis, using simpler longer-trend indicators,
and testing them out. It's a valid approach.

Im a bit embarrassed. I consider my self a programmer... I guess its all the math and statistical equations that look scary.

Yea gotta say Goomboo your trading formulae is very simplistic but hell so far it works

Awesome.  PM sent.

How do you typically gather new data?

R is a programming language that is used by most statisticians today.  Even if you don't know how to program you can use the tools available to analyze data.  There are some versions with GUI but I prefer working in the global environment.

No, the free version is the same as the full version.  They are identical except you can't place live trades with the free version.

I'll just go ahead and post this.  Here's the data to import.

http://tinyurl.com/7nhd9ql

-Create an instrument in the instrument manager called BTC
--Make it a stock, set the exchange to NASDAQ
--Add it to the default list by clicking the arrow key to push it over there

-Add historical data through the historical data manager
--Import the file from the zip

-Backtest is under strategy analyzer
-When charting, be sure to chart daily data

The dates are meaningless, I just copied some from another currency just to get a "quick fix".

How do you import the data into ninjatrader?  I might be retarded, but I cannot figure it out. 

I know the free version is a little neutered...

I'm a system trader - I don't sit there looking for opportunities, I wait for them to come to me.  When I have some free time to spend on the forum (tonight), it's mostly spent talking about trading concepts / systems / fielding questions.

So yeah, even though the markets are going crazy right now, I'm not trading - I have my position.


“And right here let me say one thing:  After spending many years in Wall Street and after making and losing millions of dollars I want to tell you this:  It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting.  Got that?  My sitting tight!  It is no trick at all to be right on the market.  You always find lots of early bulls in bull markets and early bears in bear markets.  I’ve known many men who were right at exactly the right time, and began buying and selling stocks when prices were at the very level which should show the greatest profit.  And their experience invariably matched mine – that is, they made no real money out of it.  Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon.  I found it one of the hardest things to learn.  But it is only after a stock operator has firmly grasped this that he can make big money.  It is literally true that millions come easier to a trader after he knows how to trade than hundreds did in the days of his ignorance.”

-Jesse Livermore

http://www.amazon.com/Reminiscences-Stock-Operator-Investment-Classics/dp/0471770884/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327637856&sr=8-1

When do you have time to trade with all these posts...  Maybe you are a fast thinker.  When I make a post it takes me at least 30 minutes... including this one

If you examine the results, you will see that only 103% of the profit came from short trades.  Look at the three columns and their headings.  The far right column is only short trades.  The long trades would have occurred as advertised.

Would the results of the historical test be affected by the fact that you couldn't reliably short BTC until recently?

Would the market have been affected by this? 
(If so, how?)

Still short from $6.28

+17% unrealized PNL on the trade

Prices could go to 0 or they could reverse and stop me out at a loss - it doesn't matter, I have a robust system that I have tested in the most competitive financial markets in the world and I will follow this system.

Do you?

For you who are desiring to become traders,


Do you see how hard this job can be?  I am asking you to turn a cautious and wary eye towards one of the most beautiful things you may have ever seen in the markets: The Holy Grail.  If you want to be a trader, you MUST be objective above all.  If you think of how much money you can gain or lose, you shouldn't even trade.  The whole idea of trading is that the only reason I'm not parking my money in a risk-free security is that I believe that I have the ability to generate a risk-adjusted return on my capital greater than my alternatives.  I'm not thinking dollars, I'm not thinking wealth, I'm thinking consistent growth which I can scale across multiple markets.  I'm not after emotional satisfaction, admiration from others, or a cool job title.  I am after consistent and scalable profit.


If you want to design a system which works in the BTC market, here is an idea how you should go about it:

-Start your studies in the "real markets".  By real, I mean a market in which the other side of your trade is a regimented professional who has done this for 30 years and is out to win.  Pure competition.  Learn from the school of hardknocks, not the school of wistful thinking.

-Begin with a general concept: what are you after?  Trading with the trend or against it.  Do you want to scalp or follow the trend.  Move to specific:  across what timeframe?  What is your patience level?  Can you really only trade 5 times a year?

-Test and prove this system in the "real" market - if it can stand the test of regimented professionals and trillions of traded dollars, then it can surely stand in the BTC market of "weekend" and "couch" traders.

For more specific instructions on testing, please see one of the earlier posts.

I suppose now is a good time as ever to explain what "Profit Factor" is on the charts above.

Profit factor = gross profits / gross losses
-If the number is above 1, the system is profitable
-If the number is below 1, the system is not profitable

-A trader can do very, very well with a profit factor of around 1.5.  The idea here would be that you have a marginally profitability strategy that you trade across many, many markets - think Black Jack.  If you can beat the dealer consistently, you should be at every table in the world at once.

-An figured we quote in the industry for profit factor is 5.  If a trading strategy has a profit factor of 5 or more, we consider it to be curve fit.  Curve fitting is basically staring at the chart, seeing anomalies that probably won't repeat in the future, and creating a trading strategy that exploits them.

A practical example of curve fitting would be:
-If the year is 1995 -> buy the S&P 500
-If the year is 2000 -> sell your S&P 500 position
See how worthless this trading strategy is?

Remember our simple moving average crossover strategy on the EURUSD that we backtested across 10 years?  We took daily candles and took the trades no matter what?  That system had a profit factor of 1.4.  It outperformed the market, was robust, and I have full confidence trading it in the future because I know that it has proven an edge for decades and captures the essence of the concept of trend following.

Meh.  I was worried about posting backtested results.

"Goomboo has a system that made 5000%!!!"
-Goomboo didn't make it
-It's a concept that I'm trying to teach through a system, not a system
-Those results aren't happening again - tough for all of us!

I'm not going to tinker with it to find the best results - please understand this - they are meaningless.  This is backtested a trend-following system across a bubble.

Wouldn't you have just looooved to be long tulip bulbs in the 1600s?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

Backtest that and use it as a justification for raiding the florist

Just backtested the EMA for validity's sake - earned a 5067% return with a MAE of 8.85%.

The actual return would be a lot more - would you only buy 100 BTC when the price was .86?  The correct answer to this question is: how much does my risk-management methodology tell me to trade.

But I think it's a really, really good idea to realize that these results DO NOT represent the future.  This is why I didn't want to backtest - it's meaningless!  Don't look at these results and go "ooooh" - it's going to happen again.  "But what if...".  No.

***Anything you backtest across this data will be silly - THIS IS NOT HOW MARKETS CONSISTENTLY BEHAVE***

Yeah, ignore the dates - I didn't feel like working with the correct dates so I just pulled my dates from another currency pair and pasted them over them...so the dates are absolutely meaningless :p...it doesn't influence the performance one bit though

Monthly profit, ~30%. Cumulative profit ~4700%. That's uh.... Completely nuts. 

Is that the first or best strategy you backtested?
How did the 10 / 21 hourly EMA fare in comparison?

Looks like the proof is in the pudding with the performance table.

If your start/end dates were for the last 6 months instead, would that provide better numbers?

Looking over these backtest results does give me something interesting to talk about.


Look at the MAE (Max adverse excursion).  We've said this in a previous post, but it's basically how far the price moved on average against you before the trade ended for a profit or a loss.
-MAE of 10%.  This means BTC price moved 10% against you on average in each trade.
-Imaging using 10:1 leverage :p
-You're guaranteed to be wiped out...mathematically!