DislikedHey Marc! I've read a couple of your posts across the forum and appreciate your input and thoughts. I'll be keeping an eye on your journey here. Just a suggestion, I'm sure you've already considered this but adding more pairs would increase the potential trade setups. I trade off dailies and watch 25 pairs or so. Of course many are closely correlated or inversely correlated but it allows you to either diversify across them with a similar setup or go with the best looking option. I believe you stated on a different post you only have a 56% at a 1:1...Ignored
Welcome to this thread. Many thanks for your kind words and comments, you cover a lot of ground! To try to answer in the order you mention them:
1. More Pairs:
Yes, of course, more pairs = more opportunity, so, ideally, the more the better. I started with lots in my intraday trading but found I couldn't cover them all properly so I resolved to cut it back to the smallest number that amply provided enough opportunities for me each day. Turned out that three was enough so I stuck at that.
That said, based on my early experience here I think I could cover a lot more pairs on the daily scale, but as one of the core aims of the experiment is to see if my intraday methods work on a daily scale I thought I'd stay consistent with the same three pairs in both timeframes. Down the line, I may well look at more markets here if all goes well, your views do make a great deal of sense.
2. 56% Success Rate:
My success rate trading intraday has been quite consistent in the 55%-60% range for some years; it is one of my regrets that I'm so far not able to improve it further. I live in hope. However, it is more than enough to make a living as I generally take 600-800 trades pa (equating to just over 3 per day on average). The maths works like this:
Say 700 trades at 56% at 1:1 average reward:risk gives c.80 net winners pa
If I risk 1% of the account per trade that's c.80% pa uncompounded return on opening capital given consistent position size. I start each year with a small six figure account (would be nicer if seven...) which makes a big enough contribution to my needs, if not the wife's!
3. Fund Management:
For many years I worked in the City of London as an institutional equity manager running variously life company funds, unit trusts and pension funds, across equity markets worldwide. It is very different to my forex trading now as that was all fundamental analysis with longer term portfolios strictly tailored to client risk profiles and investment objectives. Now I trade forex, intraday, with no restrictions (apart from the ones I put on myself), and purely on a technical basis. To be honest, I enjoy both in their own way but I moved on because I was getting a bit stale after many years portfolio managing, and I hankered increasingly for a somewhat more independent and flexible lifestyle. I still personally own a few shares here and there, just to keep a tiny bit in touch with the old days!
1