Every three months I look back at my trades from the quarter previous to the last one, so that the trades are in the middle of the chart. It’s a good way to study entries and exits.
I was summing up my second quarter of 2022 today. I didn’t open up every single chart as my automated daytrade system had 231 trades in Q2, but I looked at the performance of the strategies from April to June. During this period of the ongoing bear market, I was 50-90% in cash, but still took trades long and short based on my signals.
Here’s a list of categories with their performance to the overall portfolio (Apr – Jun):
- Sector ETFs (short) +0.4%
- S&P 500 futures (long) +0.4%
- Swing (short) +0.3%
- Daytrade (long) -0.7%
- Trend (long) -0.8%
- Momentum (long) -1.1%
- Swing (long) -1.5%
- Open profit (long) -5.4%
Q2 TOTAL -8.4% (USD)
The benchmark S&P 500 index ($SPX) lost -16.5% during the same time period. I try not to pay too much attention to the benchmark or other traders, because it’s an unnecessary psychological weakness to compare oneself to others. But it helps to understand if the long-term results are in line with expectations, though in short-term it’s often random whether a trader underperforms or outperforms the market.
I keep track of my trading business in USD, because I trade US stocks and the dollar is my base currency. While living in the eurozone and talking to local traders I’ve noticed that most people here calculate their performance in euros even for US equities, so it’s worth mentioning that my USD portfolio gained +5.3% against EUR in Q2.
It was the worst quarter to date in my trading and I had three consecutive losing months. That’s totally fine after several years of strong results, and I know it’s a matter of time when strong performance returns. After studying experienced traders I’d come to understand they’re vulnerable to weak market conditions just like everyone else, but the difference lies in sticking to the trading system and not jumping around looking for the holy grail.
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