The first few weeks

Beginner's discipline

One of the enduring problems of a trader is the laxity in discipline that creeps in with success. My initial success rate of over 65% has dropped to below 50%. Some of this can be attributed to necessary experimentation, but not all of it. At least half should be attributed to overconfidence and a misplaced self-assurance that I can overcome any losses easily. In general, I try to design my experiments such that losses are minimal. However, for many goals such as figuring out where to fade an overlap, there is no practical way to do it.

Many of the big down days were wednesdays, trying to figure out how to extract maximum value from news events. I have given this up as an unreasonable and expensive goal.

My current goal is to redesign experiments such that even with losing trades, I wont have any losing days.

Plateau

Its possible that I have hit a plateau. The big losing week is especially bothersome and has reminded me to be more disciplined. I need to take care not to let my uptrend in the equity curve turn into a down-trend.

I will post with increasing frequency in the coming days now that I have a baseline to compare my performance.