Tuesday 27 August 2013

Hybrid versus Discretionary versus Fully Auto

Hybrid trading has a different trading profile over both Discretionary and Fully Auto.

The way I set up my Hybrid Flobot is to create the trading logic I want to use to enter a trade and test it to it's highest win rate with a minimum profit target. For the ES, this could mean that I create a Flo setup that gives me, say, a 73% win rate with a 2 tick target. As a hybrid trader I then need to manage my trades to a better profit using my skills as well as trade management such as double downs. It means that I can trade more than one market at a time without the risk of missing an entry. Also, if I am competent at trade management (as distinct from trade entry which I don't have to be good at as Flo takes care of that), I will achieve greater profitability and smaller drawdown.

A fully algo trader has the benefit of being able to trade many, many markets at the same time and benefiting from Portfolio Diversification although this has the price of greater drawdowns than both the Hybrid and Discretionary and thus capital invested. He also has the benefit of not having to sit in front of his workstation as long as he has mitigated the technology risks.

The competent Discretionary trader has the highest win rate and the lowest drawdown but requires being glued to the screen throughout his trading session. He can achieve higher profitability by trading greater size. Of course the discretionary trader can use algos to test trading theories and fine tune how he trades.

Making a choice of how to trade is a personal choice based on all thes and other criteria. Using the technology lowers the skill required to trade and no matter which you choose to be, the use of algos in any way shortens the learning curve.

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