As a follow up to my Time to Slack Off series, I like to report my results and what I think going forward I will do with my trading. Many doors opened this year for which I am very grateful for and that I get to try out different ideas in such a short period of time is both exciting and exhausting. It is time for me to reflect and plan for the coming year.
Transformation of My Trading
I have achieved my trading goal for myself and for my clients as a money manager back in early October already. Due to serious pile up of all kinds of tasks, I did not get the time to write about it until now. This year is fundamentally different from the years of trading I have done due to the drastic changes of my trading goals and the new responsibility of managing a completely different kind of funds.
Many readers who follow me for years know that I used to trade through the complete US market open hours. I did take breaks during lunch but I tended to squeeze as much profit from the market as possible back then. Last two years my personal trading goals have changed to a more moderate approach for which I am driving for consistent returns with much reduced stress and effort. That took a lot of work outside of trading to further improve my mechanical trading models. More importantly, I came up with an even better trading framework for handling the current trading environment.
Hence I spent a lot less time in front of the screen and more time outside of it. I now usually sit at the screen to watch the open but I can choose not to because my mechanical models would take care of the orders anyway. Even though I have open positions by 11 am (Eastern Time) I can walk away since the positions are managed automatically. In my opinion, the performance is actually better based on the relatively shorter amount of time spent in front of the screen.
My Experiment on Running a Different Type of Fund
Last year I started to manage in a small scale funds that demand stable return in low-teens percentage with a time window of 3 years (or more) of lock-in period. As oppose to classic fundamental based fund managers who bet on fairy-tale information, or those big swingers with so-called macro view that ignores the market dynamics, my approach is to day trade with mechanical strategies that I know are rock solid concepts working consistently over the past 20 years. By controlling the leverage, I make it possible to produce consistent returns without the so-called volatility swings with those funds that have overnight risk. It is a great idea that worked out very well.
In comparison, the responsibility as a money manager managing client accounts, my objective is often maximizing the return with risk precisely defined. I can assure you that it is not an easy task. Although I have been doing my part for years, it is still challenging as the financial markets evolve rapidly.
The Birth of a Private Fund
Inevitably, after the success of the experiment, I am being asked to reconsider my position to run a fund among close friends and families. It is not even going to be the size of a tiny hedge fund. It is just money that a few close friends can spare for speculation purpose (something I called burnable). Since I am so restrictive on the amount of money they should put into the pool relative to what they have and that I am imposing the same 3 to 5 years lock-in period, I am glad that they choose to keep their individual commitment small. Now that the word is out, I have requests from friends everywhere asking me to do the the same.
This is, kind of, completely deviating from my original plan. My original intention was to run this private fund with just my own money and possibly some from my partner. Once the first year return is booked, I will try to convert the individual accounts that I manage for my long term clients into the same pool so that I can streamline the whole operation. That is a longshot though, because my clients really dislike publicity of any kind. Still, I hope to convert them to believe in my new hands off approach.
Anyhow, I planned to launch this no later than February next year. Just the explanation of the risk involved in my kind of trading can take hours to each individual interested in this. It will keep me very busy until then.
Mix and Match of Trading Signals
So what does all these developments have to do with daytradingbias.com? After all I tagged this post with it.
Well, part of the trading models I developed for my private fund will also be made available at daytradingbias.com thru real-time trading assistant and other means. I have looked into many other ways to delivery the signals. The viable ones will be added one by one.
For those interested in managing their own accounts with a subset of signals picked from the set, documentation / a complete course will be made available so that they can adapt the strategies to create a trading plan that fits their risk tolerance. This is what I am planning so far but I do not know if the plan will change again down the road.
On the Road Again
I am heading to Asia as mentioned in my post back in October coming weekend. Once I have internet access there I will continue to post. I will get the chance to meet with many people from the financial industry there. If anything interesting comes up, I will definitely write about them.
