I have always been a discretionary Trader. Have made several attempts at trying my hand at System Trading but somehow have never cottoned on to the idea mainly for 2 reasons. Firstly, the concept of backtesting goes against my core beliefs.
Unlike others who have attained great success with backtested Strategies, my belief is that every moment in the Markets is unique and just because a certain Strategy worked in the past doesn't guarantee it will work in the future
Secondly, I find the idea of accepting big- and I find 10% huge- unacceptable even though the end result may be a huge payoff in the long run. Trading high Probability Options Strategies has spoilt me and I rarely have losing months let alone drawdowns.
On the flip side, my upsides are limited because I take much less Risk and also I have difficulty in deploying Capital beyond certain levels or scaling up. Have dipped into System Trading in a small way and even deployed funds with good System Traders but have pulled out early
Read a lot of books on the subject and tried many things but to no avail. Now got my hands on 2 books by Robert Carver- Systematic Trading and Leveraged Trading and will see whether I can implement some ideas.
The main reason is that the new Margins have greatly reduced my Capital Requirements and my Position Sizing guidelines make me uncomfortable deploying more into my present Trades. Hoping I can work out a low Risk, high Probability mechanical System with a low potential drawdown
