Thursday, December 18, 2008

What makes a good Trading Strategy?

Emini futures, electronically traded, smaller units of "full grown" futures contracts are among the most popular trading instruments out there. Their popularity is especially high among retail traders whose funds tend to be limited.

You don't need much money to open and fund a futures account these days if all you want to trade are eminis. Some futures brokers, especially those specializing in retail emini traders, offer margins as low as $500 per contract for intraday trading, which means that if you can afford $3,000, you should be well equipped to trade with 1 or even 2 emini contracts.

But to be able to make money, you still need a method to extract it from the emini market. You need a strategy or a system, the latter being basically a strategy that has been examined over a longer period of time in a systematic manner and has been determined to have a positive edge. That's what we are after: the positive edge as without it we cannot succeed.
No all emini trading systems are born equal. Some are better than other. Those that make more money over the same period of time are considered superior, to put it in a simple manner, but that's not all.
While making money is the main and practically the only goal of a trading system, there are better and worse ways way to do this. Of two really good emini trading systems that make as much money per quarter, one may still be better than the other if it accomplishes this goal in a smoother manner. To measure this smoothness, we often use the mathematical concept of standard deviation and by doing so, we way arrive at what is called the Sharpe ratio. The smoothness in question is a good thing as it translates into less stress when trading for we experience smaller drawdowns. That's one characteristic of a good trading system: small drawdowns. We also would like the drawdowns to be as short lived as possible, so by this standard, a system with more prolonged drawdowns, but the same money making power as another one, will be considered less desirable, less attractive.

We also often measure the drawdowns by the number of consecutive losing trades and the flat periods during which we are not increasing our funds, by the average time between the same peaks in the system equity curve, a line that shows how trading profits are being accumulated

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