How position sizing can affect your trading performance-

Assuming that you are trading a Trend-following system with Big RR and low win-rate.

For example, assume that you risk one percent per trade on a 100,000 account
and you have 20 straight losses.

Like humans , stocks too have different nature and if you are trading every stock the same way then this thread may be for you.

A thread on Nature of stocks and how it can help you to improve your trading results.

First start with what is the nature of stocks ?

I broadly categorize stocks in two categories-

1. The momentum stocks-

These are the stocks where most of the moves are swift in nature, or we can say that the pullbacks in a trend are smaller.

2. The AKBC stocks-

These are the stocks where most of the trending moves comes with deep pullbacks.

Examples-

So the purpose of categorizing these stocks, is that we Trade those stocks/instruments which are more suited to our style.

Say if you are a mean reversion player and you are trading in the momentum stocks category then you are more bound to lose over large number of trades.

A thread on Risk and Returns

Trader X -

Net-worth - 5 Cr
Trading capital - 25 lakh

Trader Y -

Net-worth - 30 lakh
Trading capital - 25 lakh

Trader X take risk of 2% per trade and he makes about 30-40 % Return on trading capital per month,

Whereas Trader Y only risk 0.25% per trade and he makes about 3-4 % on Trading capital per month.

Trader Y saw how much trader X is making with the same amount of capital that he has.

He is frustrated with his mediocre results as compared to Trader X, though he don’t know the fact that Trader X Is only trading with 5 % of his total net worth.

Trader X has much more risk taking ability in Rupee terms as compared to the Trader Y because he has higher net-worth.

Trader X will not have much impact when he goes into deep Drawdowns , 40-50% where as if the Trader Y goes below 15% DD , it will have deep psychological impact on him.

Even if the Trader X makes 100% return on his trading capital , turns 25 lakh into 50 lakhs ,

A thread on Pyramiding-

What is pyramiding?

In pyramiding we add on to a position when it is going in our direction. Its basically opposite of averaging down.

MOMENTUM - Success of a pyramiding trade depend on this ingredient, the more the momentum the better pyramiding.

There are many way to enter and exit in a stock-

1. ALL IN - ALL OUT
2. ALL IN - SCALE OUT
3. SCALE IN - SCALE OUT
4. SCALE IN - ALL OUT ( I use this one)

Why traders use Pyramiding ?

More than anything what pyramiding do is keep your losers small and your winners - Big.

Pyramiding in my view keeps your dd smaller as your losers are very small because you enters with only a fraction of what you would have entered Normally.

BUT, not necessarily it should be more profitable than ALL IN- ALL OUT, Where one enters all at once and sell all at once.

HOW TO DO PYRAMIDING-

There are various methods which are used by traders for pyramiding ,while keeping the basic concept of adding onto the strength.

1. PYRAMIDING AND TRAILING BASED UPON STRUCTURE-

In this method we scale in or pyramid the qty when the stock breaks above

"Don't change the trading rules after every trade."

If you do change them frequently then this thread is for you.

Let's talk about the law of large numbers and how it benefits traders to be profitable.

[Thread]👇👇👇

Most people start tweaking the rules, chart settings and the indicator settings because now they think they have found the holy grail.

But they again end up changing them after next losing trade.

If you believe in the law of large numbers then;

Changing the buying rule from buy 1 point above the breakout to buy above 5 points or any tweak like that will not make much difference in the long run.

Law of large numbers is best illustrated by the example of a coin flip :

It has a 50% chance of landing on heads.

If we flip the coin twice, we have almost exactly equal chances of any scenario happening: heads twice, tails two evenly split.

The probability of getting 5 heads and 5 tails on ten flips is just 8% but that probability keeps increasing as we increase the sample size.

If one flips the coin 100 times, the probability of getting 50 heads and 50 tails (P=0.5) increases to 70% and so on.

When the market conditions are not in favour of a strategy, it's normal that it will suffer from drawdown.

In this period most traders can't face the heat,

1/

Get a cup of coffee.

In this thread, I'll help you understand Geometric Expectations.

2/

Imagine we have an investment opportunity.

If the investment goes well, we get to double our money.

But if it goes badly, we'll end up losing three fourths of it.

There's a 50/50 chance of either outcome.

The question: is this a good bet or not?

3/

A simple way to approach this question is to calculate the bet's "expectation".

For every $1 we bet, there are 2 possibilities:

1. The lucky case, where we double our money and end up with $2, and

2. The unlucky case, where we lose (3/4)'th to end up with just $0.25.

4/

Each of these outcomes is equally likely.

So, on *average*, every $1 we put in turns into ($2 + $0.25)/2 = $1.125.

This is a *positive* 12.5% return.

Such bets are called *positive expectation* bets. On average, we expect to *make* (rather than *lose*) money on them.

5/

Suppose we could take many turns betting at these odds.

In any one turn, we could of course lose money.

But because our bet has positive expectation, *over time* we expect to make money.

On this auspicious day of #GuruPurnima, happy to share an easy to read and an exceptionally worthwhile investment. I plan to make a thread that will hopefully help us invest and live better. Thank you @awealthofcs 🙏🏻

Experience has taught me that less is always more when making investment decisions. Simplicity trumps complexity. Conventional gives you much better odds than exotic. A long-term process is more important than short-term outcomes.

And perspective goes much further than tactics. Tactics are useless to investors in a matter of days—sometimes in a matter of hours. But perspective is something that stays with the investor for a lifetime. It allows you to adapt to the changing market and economic landscape.

While keeping it simple won’t make it any easier to predict the future—no one has a crystal ball—it can give you the necessary capacity to make rational decisions, no matter what happens next.

Perspective is so important because, without it, even the most intelligent of investors can be ruined from a lack of self-awareness in their own abilities. Investors that fail to put the news or market moves into the proper context....[1/2]

A thread.

Earnings Trades Simplified.

Earnings announcements are public announcements that display a company’s earnings, or lack thereof. As the earnings announcement gets closer, implied volatility tends to increase. After earnings are announced,...

1/n

the uncertainty of what will happen diminishes, and usually we see a rapid decrease in implied volatility because of it. Because of this phenomena, we tend to stick to premium selling strategies when it comes to earnings plays. We can take advantage...

2/n

of the implied volatility crush by selling premium prior to the announcement, and buying it back after the announcement.

Earnings trades are not for everyone, as they involve high amounts of uncertainty and random movements.

3/n

Why Trade Earnings -

-Increase number of occurrences, many trades available so increases of our probability of profit.

-High IV opportunities

-Short term Binary event leading to drastic volatility crush.

4/n

Factors to consider when placing earnings trade -

1. Expected Move
2. When to place trade
3. Historical Moves
4. Strategies based on market conditions

5/n

A small thread on momentum investing and how I practice it.

I use the Nifty 500 universe for selecting my momentum stocks. Nifty 500, as the name suggests, has 500 companies in it. WRONG !!!! It actually has 501 companies. Yes, I double-checked 🙂 So, these 501 companies is

my talent pool (if you will) from which I select the 50 best candidates that I want to bet my money on.

Ok. So, exactly, did I go about doing that.

Step 1: Start with Nifty 500 universe (501 companies)

Step 2: Eliminate all those companies which have a listing history of

less than 1 year. This eliminated 25 companies (see table).

Step 3: For the remaining 476 companies, I computed their last 12-month rolling price returns (meaning, comparison of their price as on March 31, 2022 as compared to that as on March 31, 2021, and then computing the %

gain that each of those stocks have earned. I found out the following:

a) Average return of all the 476 companies was 43.27% (meaning if their average price as on March 31, 2021 was 100, then their average price as on March 31, 2022 was 143.27)

b) Out of these 476 companies

140 companies, gave a negative return.

c) Out of the balance 336 companies, 46 companies gave single-digit returns

d) Out of the balance 290 companies, 101 companies gave a return between 10-30%

e) Out of the balance 189 companies, 55 gave returns between 30-50%

Working on some execution optimisation related backtesting. I have so far been executing with market orders only. Going towards higher lot sizes, I'd like to optimise for minimal slippage.

First off, on NSE, if you place a market order, you get filled at the best bid/ask right?

If we want to optimise this, the first non-creative idea one can think of is, slicing the order into different lot sizes, and placing a limit order for each slice at the mid point of current best bid & ask.

But this requires your latency to be the least.

Why would latency affect it?

I looked at tick historical data, and there are more than 18-20 ticks in a second (auction and quote combined).

Even if you keep 10 ticks per second, your best bid/ask can shift from the time you place to the time exchange receives the order.

So, the next best thing that people can do is place tranches of orders every 1s, 3s, 5s, 10s, 15s - in their preferred time range, and get filled at the midpoint or best-bid+1/2/3/4/5 in the depth.

What you need is liquidity.

But if you're trading breakouts, then it's highly likely that your limit orders may not get filled if the action is too fast.

So, a retry mechanism is required in such cases.

If nothing works, you convert your orders to marketable and get filled at worse slippage.