first good question all thread i think that's safe to assume was the case, and he never violated that risk parameter oct 6 82 -0.17, back to 0.33 for the month- just got stuck in ty's today, they were so weak and the fy so strong it makes me think that we were either covering everything from the selloff or positioning for a rally to come after the number. i kind of think the later. i also almost got screwed by the ty but converted into fy stuff and was able to get out by the skin of my teeth for a bit of profit, whereas he got stuck all day long and just took a small loss- had he waited another hour though he could have gotten out slightly green.... the market often rewards the patience! to get around his hesitancy to put anything but the best levels on i told him every day next week when he sits down he has to put something on immediately- let's see how this works out he has today off- no trading unemployment for the first at least 6 months.
Damn, I didn't know we were being graded....Puts lots of pressure on me... Anyhow how does his trading compare to yours in September??? If your results are not much better than his, than he is just as good as the master!!!
here are my results for the year so far: 3.35 jan 6.36 feb 4.84 mar 1.52 apr 0.24 may -6.23 jun 3.17 jul 7.68 aug 0.58 sep 4.90 oct my bad sep though was due to shooting myself in the foot twice- i passively take my loss at -1 dvar and aggressively take my loss -2 dvar (so maybe my dvar is really a lie, but it only gets me about 2 times a year on average this year it got me 3 times so far june, august and sep all had 1) but i say i shot myself twice in sep because one day i was up a full dvar and then ended up losing a full dvar. i passively puke at -1 dvar because most of the time i wait until it is all edges -1.05 or so dvar and then try and work my way out -.9 or -.8. i usually puke 2-3 times a month so if i can save myself .1 or .2 that ends up being we'll say .4 dvar / month or 4.8 dvar / year from passively puking so i'm fine with running the risk of -2 dvar a couple times a year because it is still profitable for me to do that. and yes my october has started off in rockstar fashion! made a dvar in 14 minutes 56 seconds today after unemployment and i was fully hedged the whole time- none of that amateur scalping bs going on here. and my june was terrible imo because that was the real beginning of market changing direction- i truly view my performance as the best leading indicator for the market making huge momentum shifts. that was the month where vol really started to increase in the bond market imo. (was actually my largest drawdown by about 50% in my history of trading if you add that i had 2 losing days to end may and another to start july into it)
10-Oct 254 0.35 biggest winner so far today- too bad 1/2 of it was from not hedging himself properly and being a bit overly short zb for a few minutes where zb dropped before realizing the improper hedging. that being said he also had a mistake before that that was a penalizing one that almost canceled that out. still just happy to see his best winner so far today. as per the plan he put 2 positions on instantly when he sat down which represented about .1 or so of the profits. we'll see how long til they bite him in the ass.
11-Oct 87 0.17 12-Oct 126 -0.36 13-Oct 183 -1.01 14-Oct 87 0.16 17-Oct 61 0.15 18-Oct 122 0.11 19-Oct 142 0.24 20-Oct 61 0.16 tot: +0.29 still not making enough on his winners, but profitable nonetheless on the month. just have to work on those winning days going forwards. and an update on myself- as normal once i proclaim my awesomeness i suffer from epic drawdowns- last two weeks were not nice to me at all and i'm slightly red for the month now, lol.
well i had to let him go, he just never got anything going. he lost about .75 pukepoints in each of dec/jan/feb and then got smoked for 4 puke points in march and with no hint of a rally anywhere we decided to throw in the towel. as to myself here is my 2011 and start of 2012 jan 3.35 feb 6.36 mar 4.84 apr 1.52 may 0.24 june -6.23 july 3.17 aug 7.68 sep 0.58 oct -2.64 nov 4.08 dec -4.54 (got smoked for -3 on terrible decisions i should not have made) jan -1.88 (traded to aggressively a couple days should have really been a scratch month) feb 3.46 mar 2.72 all-in-all 2011 was a terrible year for me, although i ended up +18 pp, i had 4 drawdowns of 5-6.5 pp. my goal for 2012 is to have no drawdowns in excess of 3.5. i just don't want any piece of that kind of volatility in my p&l- so although i'm still trading quite aggressively, i'm trying to play both aggressively and defensively in how i'm executing and adding to positions. a couple of my losses in dec/jan i rushed into positions too quickly and then couldn't take much heat before i puked. this year i'm focusing on not repeating that, especially with the recent bond market sell-off and reintroduction of a bit of volatility.
So....what are you actually doing?(If you don't mind me asking, or PM me to describe if you want) just spreading 10s30s and 5s10s etc? Based on what? Relative value, when one gets pushed out from order flow or mean reversion or have you got a more mechanical approach/system? Do you leg in manually or use the Autospreader? Was a good thread, pity it was so short