Daily trades – March 2020
| ES | Oil | Gold | Net | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | -$1,200.00 | -$300.00 | $1,110.00 | -$390.00 |
| Week 2 | -$1,200.00 | -$600.00 | -$1,200.00 | -$3,000.00 |
| Week 3 | -$300.00 | -$300.00 | -$300.00 | -$900.00 |
| Week 4 | -$1,200.00 | -$600.00 | -$600.00 | -$2,400.00 |
| Week 5 | -$300.00 | $370.00 | -$600.00 | -$530.00 |
| Total: | -$4,200.00 | -$1,430.00 | -$1,590.00 | -$7,220.00 |
| Total - March | -$7,220.00 |
Note that these are results for the overnight system trades only. Subscribers monitoring the market during the intraday trading session had very different (and much better) results.
We warned our members at the beginning of March (here) to stop using the overnight system trades because the wild increase in market volatility made normal support and resistance levels unreliable.
Too true. We followed the hypothetical trades produced by the system for March: 36 trades total, 2 winners worth $2980 and 34 losers worth $10,200. Disastrous results.
It was easy to understand why the system broke down. The huge increase in the daily range meant the stops we were recommending were constantly blown out.
The system could be made profitable again by manipulating the stops. But in the chaos of the moment there was no way to know what stops to use.
For example, increasing the stop on gold trades to $500 turned a loss of about $1550 for March into a profit of about $1750.
But raising the stop on the ES trades to $500 just increased the loss for the month by about $2,200, The optimal — back-fitted — stop for the ES in March was $1,200, which turned a $4,200 loss into a $4,400 profit, by keeping trades alive that ended the day in the green.
Hindsight can make any system profitable. But for real-life trading the best alternative was to stay home until the shooting stops, which is what we advised our overnight traders to do at the beginning of the month.