Losing Model Trade and Trading Badly

The downside didn't last long... Model switches back to long this morning. The short trade lost the model 0.4%. Due to bad timing - closing my long at pretty much the low point of the down move and going short, I gave back almost all the profits I'd made for the month so far. As a result, I have gone back to trading just one contract until I can get my act together properly.  So, back to Stage 2 of the process, after attempting Stage 3...

The NQ equity curve so far this year (starts at net profits from previous years):

The problem with tactical trades is that I then need to follow the market to see whether to open or close a tactical trade. But they're not necessary for getting a good long term return from the model. It probably would be better to diversify to trade more than one market first instead, as that will result in fewer losing days if the correlation between the markets is low. So, I did recently start to build a model for oil again, though I was a bit stuck in coming up with good decision rules so far.

Turkey Turns the Outlook Bearish

The down day on Friday in response the Turkish crisis switched the model to short going forward. Based on the 3 hour stochastics, there could be a bounce on Sunday evening (US time) continuing the bounce into the close on Friday. This could be a good opportunity to go short.

Looking Bullish

The model state is almost identical with that on 10 January this year. That's presumably pretty bullish for the next week or so... Of course, anything could happen.

Backtesting and Hedged Portfolios

So, I backtested for all of 2017 using the latest model rules. The model makes money for the year, but there are several losing months, and the model underperforms the market. I could quite easily predict which months would be more profitable and which were more likely to be money losing by looking at their volatility. So, that idea works out of sample.

 

The graph shows the NASDAQ 100 index (close) for 2017 and the model return. The interesting thing is that a hedged portfolio of the market and the model, tracks the market quite closely. The hedging strategy would invest 75% of net worth in the QQQ ETF and use 25% of net worth to trade NQ futures with 3 times leverage according to the model. So it is 1.5 times leveraged with 50% of the total exposure long and 50% traded. Of course, you wouldn't really want all your portfolio into the the QQQ ETF. At least I wouldn't. But this is a step towards seeing what a realistic strategy with investment and trading would look like. Now if we look at 2018:

The hedged portfolio tracks the model, which vastly outperformed the market, closely instead now. It seems that you can get the best of both worlds with this strategy.

Soybeans

To try something different I tried a soybean daytrade. Made $107 in 17 minutes, so not bad :) But I only got the beginning of a much bigger move, so I need to be more patient in future trades i this commodity.

Volatility and Return

The graph shows the average true range (ATR) divided by the closing NQ futures price for all 14 day periods in 2018 so far and the average daily NDX model return over the same period. The correlation is very strong. The model tends to make lots of money when the market is volatile and potentially lose money when the markets are not volatile. This is why the model would have lost money in early 2017 for example and probably why the NASDAQ index produces better results than the S&P 500. Clearly, noise dominates signal when volatility is low. However, the correlation between recent volatility and future returns is quite weak. So, this isn't yet a useful tool for deciding when to trade and when not to trade on a daily or weekly basis. But if you were losing money for a while and volatility was low it would make sense to get out of that market and trade something else until volatility appeared to return.

I'm still holding the strategic long contract. It's up around $4k at the moment. I did a couple of tactical trades netting $215 and $980.