Trading Journey

One thing that always interested me is how other Traders are progressing. I'd like to know how your *Roadmap* so far looked like, what big Challenges did you overcome and which Realisations paved your way?
How did you get where you are today?
My Roadmap so far looks kinda like this:

- Trading is easy. Buy low sell high. Duh. Imma build a trading bot.
- My bot doesn't bot
- *Searching for the magic indicator*
- Getting swayed by Trading Gurus
- Actually Researching the Gurus. Turns out they're broke.

- After much search, realising that there's no Magic indicator. But shurely there must be a working combination of them?
- TA Systems don't work. I'll try discretionary Trading.
- Running with my head against a wall for half a year trying to get at least an edge in discretionary trading.
- Realising that what I'm doing is completely stupid.

- Actually thinking, what it would take to make money in the financial Markets.
- Kinda get together, what a system should look like, what you would exploit, how different approaches to the market work etc.
- Testing my ideas (No strategies, just asumptions on how to build strategies, etc.)
- Finally realising the existence of Inefficienies in the markets

- Starting to build strategies in TradingView, cause I don't want to program my own engine
- Realising the importance of Simplicity
- Realising the importance of exits
- Realising the importance of filters

- After many difficulties with Tradingview (well. what would you expect) researching for better, easily programmable Backtesting engines
- Finding Zorro (great btw.)
- Reading through all the stuff
- Confirming some of my findings, getting introduced to new ones
- Finally a profitable (heavily inspired but selfbuild) strategy

- Learning how to find new ideas for strategies (by not copying others from the web but actually getting own ideas)
- Creating strategies (mostly unprofitable) with the occasional winner
- Building a portfolio of profitable strategies

Well, that's how I got where I am. Still struggling with finding filters. And beeing amazed at JCl's findings.
So how looked your journey? Where are you still struggling. Would love to kow.

Hi howardR,

Thanks for your post. I myself are about the half of your road
Actually struggling to dive deeper into programming with Zorro. Still a lot to learn.
I downloaded Zorro the first time back in 2016, but never used it for a loooong period of time.
Since a little more than a year i am forcing myself now to learn Zorro. Wish i would have done learning immediately after first download.
Wasted a lot of time with the same things like you did.
May i ask what kind of filter you are looking for?

There are so many possible choices in this field, but I don't think the actual edge difference between them is significant.
I think it's better to stick with one thing you've chosen and push it consistently and to the end, no matter what anyone around you says.
It may seem like everyone else and I have similar conditions, but we actually have different conditions to do well and different preferences.
I don't know about anything else, but I do know this. That I shouldn't get lost.

Yeah, I think (as I've experienced myself) that you should stick to one thing, especially in the beginning. Here it's best to choose something you're already familiar with. Meaning Algo-Trading if you're already able to program, longer term investing if you have experience in Accounting and Management of bigger companies, etc. Interestingly I noticed two things as I progressed.

Firstly you'll understand how others (who haven't choosen your path) trade. At some point I realized, how many long-term profitable discretionary Traders trade and why it works. But as this isn't my path it's just a fun thing to know, that you can maybe exploit later on.

Secondly, especially in the later stages (when you really know what you're doing) it seems to me, that it is actually better to look in other directions. Those directions don't have to do something with trading directly, as long as you can somehow project your learnings onto trading. There are dozens of examples of this in the trading world like Ehlers applying Digital Signal Processing and FM/AM Processing onto Prices to catch cycles.

Good knowledge in other fields will probably help you to get more profitable, but only if you've already advanced sufficiently in your path. And you should never leave your path and always come back to apply what you've learned to your path.

But that's just my experience and everyone's approach to trading is (and should be) different.


To the question above:
When I'm building strategies I'm following a plan, that seems to work quite well for me. (As I've noticed it is quite similar to JCL's Plan, definitely check it out). Meaning that I'll search for Filters (one to two at max) to apply to my signal. Sometimes I use ones I already found/developed, sometimes I develope/search for new ones. Since every strategy you trade should be different not every filter will fit every strategy. I'm not struggling with finding a particular filter but sometimes it is just a bit difficult to find ones that are fitting.

But in my experience you get better at finding them with time (just as with signals) and if you don't find a fitting one, that may mean that you're idea is just not working. Document the idea and move on.