Traders' Roundtable

Where it gets confusing is that my daily data quotes 165.50 but IB quotes 1.655.
So it’s important to check the contract value to make sure you are placing the correct order & to ascertain the correct BPV's

I have this issue with RJO as well. It's web trading platform uses no decimals ...

I have and indicator that when it reaches a threshold it goes long and then exits when it reverses to another level.

Double checked and yes it is entering and exiting how I'm instructing.

So then I am confused about why you are confused. :-)

If it's doing what you want by following the signals ...

Well, how are you instructing the system to exit trades? And when you look at the trades tab, is the system exiting based on how you expected it to?

Amazingly, I can recall having these same discussions/arguments back in ~1994 during a seminar. Eighteen years later, one can only guess at the humongous sums that have been lost chasing stuff like Sharpe ratios or "managers" or "programs."

Chuck,

so what would be the right thing to chase in ...

I used a VERY simple strategy of buying the top 5 CTAs in 2007 as measured by their Sharpe Ratio.

I then compared that to my results five years later at the end of 2011 to see how I did. (below)..

In a nutshell, it failed miserably. Performance fell apart, the out of sample Sharpe Ratios fell ...

I am moving my futures trading to Wisdom Financial and I am trying to decide between RJO and OEC for my FCM (ok, OEC isn't a clearing firm itself). I lean toward RJO given their exclusive focus on futures, their size and (seemingly) well respected reputation in the industry. But I also like OEC's ...

I would love to revive this thread and ask, 3 months after the MF Global mess started, what are people doing? Have people found methods of account management that provide an acceptable trade-off between safety and convenience?

Thank you!

If I may ask, if you are happy with Oanda, why are you considering those others? Diversifying brokers post MF Global?

Thinkorswim/TDAmeritrade.

So who is "reputable"?

I don't trade forex much but recently put on a few trades and I noticed that the amount of positive carry that I was making on positive interest rate pairs seemed far less than the amount of negative interest I was losing when I had on negative interest rate pairs. After some digging, I discovered ...

Saying that this "positive expectation system" has been "killed" by being forced to "skip" trades isn't really a useful analysis of the real-world situation and is a waste of time IMO.

Just providing information. People are free to value it as they shall.

The paper is attached. Turns out it ...

I read a study once, which I'll link later if I can find it, that said skipping valid trades due to capital limitations (or other reasons) can kill a system with a profitable expectancy because it adds a random element to the system (the ability to take the trade) that degrades your edge. Greyzy ...

I also trade ETF's and ETN's when futures contract sizes are too large. One trick to avoid soaking up a large chunk of capital is to use a "synthetic stock position" with options. To go long, buy a call and sell a put at the same strike price, and to go short, buy a put and sell a call at the same ...

Perhaps this advice can be applied to the current situation. If you worry that the markets have changed in a way that severely damages your trading method's profitability, perhaps the thing to do is reduce position size. Reduce it to the point that lets you sleep again. For some people, the ...

More stupid than ever ?


Today just takes the cake. A 3+% rally based on yet more empty promises without details? Really? I don't buy into conspiracy theories about market manipulation, but I wonder if there are big money banks and funds that have figured out how to catch a large number of market ...

Stepping back a bit, the issue you raise points to an unsolvable trading dilemma, which is that there is simply no 100% sure way to know if the pull back in your uptrend is just a short-term pull back prior to trend resumption, or whether it is the end of the trend (there may be ways to handicap the ...

Oh Great Socrates (dig your handle!):

Me, I'm a bit stubborn. I like the full-sized contracts. Had a long talk with the wifey and we upped our investment to $165K. As we speak that allows us to trade 6 contracts of EuroDollar, 1 contract of Corn, 1 contract of Soybean, and 1 contract of Canadian ...