Some thoughts on tick data for long to medium-timeframe trading

1/n

Having now taken a few days to digest the detail of the UK-EU agreement, here's a couple of observations from me on the deal, what it means, how we got here, & where it might take future UK-EU relations.

(A long thread)

First, let's be clear that negotiating a deal in 9 months, against the odds, and in the middle of a pandemic, is an achievement. It's too easy to underestimate the difficulty of negotiating over the screen for 4 months, from Mar-June, and under enormous pressure. /2

Both @DavidGHFrost & @MichelBarnier and their teams, deserve a lot of credit for sticking up with it in hard circumstances, often with lacking political clarity, & high stakes.

This shouldn't preclude us, or MPs and MEPs, from looking critically at the deal on the table. /3

That we have a deal is a result of the UK & EU having found a way to protect their core defensive interests.

From the EU's view, integrity of the single market is preserved with level-playing field obligations which go virtually beyond any other 3rd-country (even the Swiss). /4

For its part, the UK has negotiated down EU ask on dynamic alignment on state aid; eliminated any references to EU law; removed any role for the ECJ (NB not in the whole future relationship, due to EU law in NI Protocol); and preserved its right to control access to waters. /5

Working on some execution optimisation related backtesting. I have so far been executing with market orders only. Going towards higher lot sizes, I'd like to optimise for minimal slippage.

First off, on NSE, if you place a market order, you get filled at the best bid/ask right?

If we want to optimise this, the first non-creative idea one can think of is, slicing the order into different lot sizes, and placing a limit order for each slice at the mid point of current best bid & ask.

But this requires your latency to be the least.

Why would latency affect it?

I looked at tick historical data, and there are more than 18-20 ticks in a second (auction and quote combined).

Even if you keep 10 ticks per second, your best bid/ask can shift from the time you place to the time exchange receives the order.

So, the next best thing that people can do is place tranches of orders every 1s, 3s, 5s, 10s, 15s - in their preferred time range, and get filled at the midpoint or best-bid+1/2/3/4/5 in the depth.

What you need is liquidity.

But if you're trading breakouts, then it's highly likely that your limit orders may not get filled if the action is too fast.

So, a retry mechanism is required in such cases.

If nothing works, you convert your orders to marketable and get filled at worse slippage.

Many traders have no consistency when sizing their positions.

The pros have this down to a science.

Here's my dead simple, 3-step guide to position sizing (and to outperforming 99% of other traders in the process):

Step 1:

Define how much of your account you're willing to risk per trade.

Personally, I never risk more than 1% of my account equity.

If I have $100,000 account, I will never risk more $1,000.

This ensures I will never blow up my account on one single trade.

There are successful traders who risk 2-3% of their account per trade, but I find it most calming to risk 1% or less.

The first step in this process is completely up to you - only you can dictate how much risk you can tolerate.

Step 2:

Look for entries & exits that are within 5% (preferably less) of each other.

This means if I buy a stock & have a 5% stop loss, I can put a 20% equity position on & still be risking 1% of my equity.

Your account will thank you w/ 20% in a stock that goes up 100%.

Step 3:

Position size using this formula:

Total equity (100%) / Trade Stop Loss %

So, if your stop loss is 4%, here's the math:

100% equity / 4% stop loss = 25% Equity Position Size

(assuming 1% equity risk).

Here's another hypothetical calculation:

Saturday Thread Time.
Re-Read interview of Ed Seykota from @jackschwager
book "Market Wizards". It's the most philosophical interview among all interviews. Needs to re-read it over and over.
@vivbajaj Sir, a re-tweet would be highly appreciated.

1. Systems don’t need to be changed. The trick is for a trader to develop a system with which he is compatible

2. The key to long-term survival and prosperity has a lot to do with the money management techniques incorporated into the technical system.

3. The profitability of trading systems seems to move in cycles. Periods during which trend-following systems are highly successful will lead to their increased popularity.

3.1 As the number of system users increases, and the markets shift from trending to directionless price action, these systems become unprofitable, and undercapitalized and inexperienced traders will get shaken out. Longevity is the key to success.

4. In order of importance to me are (1) the long-term trend, (2) the current chart pattern, and (3) picking a good spot to buy or sell.