What Markets Should You Use for Your Portfolio?

A couple of years ago I made a fundamental mistake: until then I had my portfolio focused mostly on index futures markets. For years I have had with this approach really nice results. But that year, I experienced how frustrating it can be, to go through a couple of periods when index markets are underperforming. That was when I have decided to work really hard and improve my intraday portfolio composed of automated trading systems (ATS).

Smooth equity isn't just about the systems - it is a smart combination of markets, timeframes, trading approaches, and, later on, also innovative position sizing. When you think about it, there is the logic behind it.

Even though in times of financial shocks and surprises there is barely any negative correlation in the markets, there are still some markets which live their own lives - and they offer us smart way for diversification.

The result is that when one of the market groups is not doing well, there is another, which compensates the losses from the first one - and makes the equity overall smoother.

What market groups you should use

This is the first question - what markets groups you should combine in order to get the desired result - smooth equity.

We have following futures groups: Index, Currencies, Metals, Energies, Bonds, and Grains. Every market group lives its own life and you can find at least one noticeable market in every group that can represent the whole group.

Personally, I have experimented with all groups and, besides currencies, I can highly recommend any combination. The currencies are, from ATS point of view, highly unstable (for example in Forex, ATS are failing really fast and it is really difficult to find profitable ATS for Forex). It also depends on how many markets you create a system for, and how many markets you trade with your account. But even with rather a small account, you can trade 3-4 markets. For such cases, I would recommend following combinations:

Combination of 3 markets (pick one market from each market group):

• Index
• Grains
• Energies

Combination of 4 markets (pick one market from each market group):

• Index
• Grains
• Energies
• Bonds

Nowadays, I trade several portfolios that are based on the 4 groups mentioned above. Here is an example of one of them (breakout strategies, 30-minute chart, 5 markets, equity for the last 8 years, trading 1 contract per system):

The net profit for all 8 years and all markets combined is 421,548 USD and the max drawdown is just 12,315 USD.

Smoothen the equity by using multiple timeframes

The second way how to smoothen your equity curve (in a combination of trading several markets from different groups) is using several timeframes for every market (ideally without changing system parameters, or with just small changes).

It is more like a final touch than smoothing the equity, but it brings up an interesting idea that it might be better to add new timeframes instead of trading multiple contracts in the same timeframe. Another option is to optimize also the timeframes (check the results of your system on several timeframes and pick one timeframe for each market - it can, but doesn't have to be the same) - but then, we need to ask ourselves how much of over-optimization this is.

Anyway, here is another example of the portfolio mentioned above, when for every market we add the second, 15-minute, timeframe. The equity is slightly smoother, the drawdown hasn't increased so much, but the profit has.

The net profit is 812,457 USD and the drawdown is 18,815 USD.

What systems to use

The best variant is to have in a portfolio both trend and also counter-trend systems. Still, it is sufficient to have a system that can smartly react on both situations (equally, if possible).

I am specialized in breakout strategies and I can say that it is all you need to have a balanced portfolio across several markets - but only if you have systems trading both long and short. Sometimes you just need a simple breakout strategy that doesn't have great performance (that you wouldn't trade individually), but in combination, you have a nice portfolio with smooth equity curve. You need to constantly focus on the performance of the portfolio - it is more important than the performance of underlying systems. Remember when there is a huge drawdown for one market (system), the others can compensate that and you can still make a profit.

For that, you need to have a quality workflow setup how to create new and new strategies, as you will need a lot of them and for several markets. At the same time, it is crucial to have a setup of robustness testing procedures so that we can add to our portfolio really robust strategies.

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Automated Breakout Strategies for Small Accounts

People often ask me if breakout strategies can be used for small accounts. And the simple answer is, yes, they can. Today, let's have a closer look at this topic and how it can be done.

First of all, it is important to explain one crucial context. If you would like to create breakout strategies for small accounts, you need to work with a low risk. But everything costs something. A low risk will practically always lead to some compromise - mostly you will make less and the stability of your equity will be lower. But, you will experience longer periods when your account will go mostly sideways. Unfortunately, in trading there aren't black and white solutions, and each advantage is redeemed by certain disadvantage. Once you decide to build strategies for small accounts, you have got to ask yourself: What is more important to you? Is it a small risk per trade or a drawdown that is the smallest it can possibly be? (And don't say both, as these are contradictory. Why? I will explain that in examples.)

Drawdown vs. risk per trade

There is a general rule in breakout strategies - the bigger stop-loss, the smaller the drawdowns. Maybe it sounds inconsistent, but the logic behind is pretty clear: Breakout strategies have a tendency to go through substantial corrections throughout a day and a bigger stop-loss will cope with this much better. You risk less with small stop-loss, but you will be out with loss more often. A bigger stop-loss will help you to stay in during corrections. So, even though each loss will be a bit more painful, the overall drawdown can be smaller and the profit and success rate much higher.

Let's have a look at one of my simple breakout systems which can be used to trade on numerous markets even with a small stop-loss.

In this system, the smallest acceptable stop-loss value is 100 USD (market EMD, 30-minute timeframe). It is possible to use the same stop-loss in ES or TF markets with similar results. Such stop-loss is indeed very low for automated trading strategy - quite often even smaller than in similar markets during discretionary trading. With a stop-loss like this, it is possible to trade a small account and losing trades won't be considerably unbearable.

How would equity and maximum drawdown look like with this scenario? The system is generating stable profits, but equity has its weak periods. The average profit is 3000 USD per annum and overall drawdown is 2380 USD. It means it is possible to trade with a very small stop loss. However the question is: Wouldn't it be worth to increase the risk a bit? I understand that for someone with a small account a stop-loss higher than 100 USD could be unacceptable, but let's see if we wouldn't actually gain more than if we used a very small 100 USD stop-loss.

And now the same system with a stop-loss of 300 USD. It sounds like a big jump to increase stop-loss to 300% of the original amount, but let's have a look at what we have gained. The average profit per annum increased to approx. 4200 USD (a 40% improvement), the stability of equity is considerably better, and drawdown decreased to 1930 USD (almost a 20% improvement).

So, the first rule when searching for ATS breakout strategies is: Even if you are working with a small account, search for a strategy with a slightly bigger stop-loss than you would normally use in discretionary trading, or a bit bigger than you would feel is acceptable.

In this case you have to perceive stop-loss only as a necessary protection. Even though individual losses will be more painful to some extent, your results will improve and profit distribution will be more stable.

How to capitalize

Once we have a system with relatively small risk (300 USD is still a very small stop-loss; I personally also work with stop-losses of 2000 USD per contract) and a small drawdown (drawdowns of under 2000 USD for an automated breakout strategy can be regarded as small), for such strategy we can capitalize with a relatively small account. The technique is simple:

1) Conduct a Monte Carlo analysis of the system (e.g. in Market System Analyzer 

 This drawdown will be mostly 25% higher than your original equity - i.e. in the above system we would have to anticipate a drawdown of 2400 USD instead of 1930 USD.

2) Think of what your maximum accepted drawdown is in percentage and capitalize in accordance to the Monte Carlo drawdown that needs to correspond with this percentage. If you decide that you are able to accept a 50% drawdown on your account, then your capitalization will look like this: 2 x 2400 USD = 4800 USD. If you decide you can accept a maximum drawdown of one third of your account, then your capitalization will look like this: 3 x 2400 USD = 7200 USD.

With a bit of patience and research you can come up with strategies that will be possible to trade under certain circumstances with very small accounts - i.e. 5000-10000 USD.

Once you have a few strategies like this, it is possible to work with small portfolios (2-3 systems). In such case you need to conduct a Monte Carlo analysis on your portfolio as a whole (program MSA is great for that) and capitalize in accordance to the Monte Carlo drawdown of the portfolio.

How to search for strategies for small accounts

So, once more... The good news is that to find a good, quality breakout strategy for small accounts is possible. The bad news is that it will take much more patience and you will always have to compromise slightly.

You have to ask yourself what is the amount you are willing to accept (such amount needs to be reasonable, e.g. 100 USD is a bit extreme, but 300-500 USD seems reasonable) and during the development of the breakout strategy, you will have to implement this as a fixed amount from the very beginning of the whole process, i.e. in search and development of the breakout strategy.

Generally speaking, breakout strategies with small stop-loss are better to find on markets like YM and ES, especially on 15 minutes and 30 minutes timeframes. However, it takes much more patience - to find a strategy for small-stop loss is considerably more difficult (but not impossible). From my experience, sometimes it is worth it to take a tested and proven strategy and to try it on other markets with different stop-loss values. This way I have found, for instance, low values of stop-loss for the BOSS system (but for timeframes higher than 15 minutes). Generally, only one in approximately six of my breakout strategies is usable with small stop-loss. This only confirms the difficulty to search for this kind of strategy - but with an account of around 8000 - 10000 USD, I can imagine to have a portfolio with three such strategies and have a decent base for further growth.

Happy Trading!

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Why Serious Traders Have A Coach

I know that you are thinking this article is about trader coaching that focuses on your trading strategies. Well, you are wrong: The five reasons why you should consider trader coaching are about your psychology, not the way you trade.

Trading is 95% mental

Similar to any high performance sport you don't win the game through action, you win the game in your mind first. Your mind is the driver that instigates right action, but only if you have primed your mind properly (trading) success.

90 % of traders fail in the long run, not because of their trading strategy, but because of their mental strategy

Here is the thing: 95 % of all traders have NO MENTAL STRATEGY

This is an extraordinary statistic. Even the majority of professional traders don't have trading psychology as their number one trading strategy. And, guess what, most professional traders don't make money.

A professional trader can hide behind the organisation though. It is good enough if the department breaks even. Unless you do something extraordinarily stupid your lacklustre performance will be tolerated, at least for some time.

The world is very different for the independent trader

If you don't make money for a year or two years you will go broke. Never mind the psychology of things, without money you can't trade, you can't survive.

Few traders can sustain extensive drawdown periods. Knowing what to focus on to keep the ship on the straight and narrow is key. Most traders focus on the wrong things.

Losing has nothing to do with market conditions and everything to do with your inner condition

If you have extended periods of drawdown the root cause invariably can be found in some value conflict, or several which you are unaware of.

I realise that you probably don't like the sound of that I have to say next "You have to clear your stuff".

Unless you spend the time and effort on clearing out the mental cupboards you will find that lasting trading success will always remain elusive.

You may have good trading periods, and even make a profit at the end of the year, but you will at some point give more back than you should.

Success does not grow on trees. If you are serious about being a professional trader who makes money consistently you have to play a very different game from the masses of traders out there.

We all have imaginary glass ceilings we need to break through

• Coaching will uncover these imaginary glass ceilings
• Coaching will resolve your deepest hidden inner value conflicts
• Coaching will make you a better, more peaceful person And finally it will make you a better trader.

A nice bonus is that your relationships with other people begin to improve as well.

So, you still think coaching is too expensive?

How can you put a value on, say spending $ 5000.00 on coaching and in return you end up making an extra 50 000.00?

The $ 5000.00 spent on coaching is cheap! The investment is compounded 100 fold when you then imagine how the rest of your life is going to improve in a relatively short period of time.

In the final analysis it isn't about the money, it isn't even about your trading. It's all about how serious you are about becoming the best you are capable of being. Coaching is about improving the quality of your entire life and living from a place of excellence not from a place of getting by.

Article Source:here