Well the FTSE All Share ended 1.7% down for the week, so lets take a look at how the two accounts performed during the same time.
Account 1: Pro tips strategy account
I had plenty of stops taken out during the week in this account as I've already mentioned. The account decreased its value by -2.5% this week to £1737, it could have been alot worse aswell so overall I'm not too concerned really. Didn't buy any of the pro recommendations this week as most of them were stocks I already have positions in or I considered the risk was just too high because of the high value of the shares recommended wouldnt allow me to have proper stops in place. I do have some possible trades lined up for this account over the coming 5 days though. Available free trading funds have now increased to £400 in this account.
Account 2: Tony Loton's 'position trading' strategy account
I just realised that last weeks figure was a typo, I had written that the account had gone from 1136 to 1331 "just £5 down on last week". Of course that figure was meant to read 1131 NOT 1331 (I've edited last weeks post now to reflect that change). The account fell again by around 4% to £1083. I had one losing trade all week which was in Partygaming. All the rest that stopped out actually banked a profit so I can't complain. The decrease in the FTSE brought some of my positions down hence I cant be too concerned with this weeks results.
I had a few positions end prematurely this week which I was dissapointed with. This has caused me to re-evaluate my auto trailing stops. I've decided to completely abandon auto trailing stops and go with manually adjusted stops once a week. This gives me more time to re-evaluate positions over a weekend plus gives a share price the proper opportunity to move up and down naturally during the week without triggering automatic trailing stops that have just nudged up higher as the price action suddenly drops.
On one particular share I missed a 20% share price rise on the day after it had stopped out because of the automatic trailing stop.
Hopefully this is something that will improve the account slightly. I'm still learning really and slowly tweaking things here and there should increase potential returns.
In my Position Trading book I suggest using manually trailed stops in preference to automatic trailing stops, so your change to manually adjusted stops should in fact bring your trading in this account closer to the documented strategy.
ReplyDeleteThe problems with automatic trailing stops is that they do not allow you to make trailing stop judgements based on support / resistance levels or price gaps; they just trail blindly at the % distance you set.
Tony.
www.lotontech.com/positiontrading
Thanks for dropping by Tony. To be honest when I first started I was trailing stops manually but I found I was unable to do this as often as I liked due to work commitments at the time. So I switched to auto trailing stops, which as I have discovered and written about here are less effective. Therefore to maximise profits and as you pointed out to more accurately represent your documented strategy I will from now on adjust all stops manually. I placed 8 new trades this morning and none of them have an auto trailing stop in place.
ReplyDeleteCheers!
I prefer manual stops based on technical layout of the market.
ReplyDelete