Adjusting Trade Size

When I first was interested in Strategic Trade Ideas for my account, I thought it was perfect for me because I don't actively monitor the markets and trade often. Yes, I have been in the brokerage industry for 20 years, but I am not on the trading desk and I don't have enough time during the day to watch the markets. I felt this product would work for me to pick out a few ideas I liked, "set-it-and-forget-it" and check back later to see how it was running.

However, we thought it would be a good idea to blog about my experience using the system. We figured I am not an active trader so maybe I could give a little guidance (or be the guinea pig!) for those out there who are interested, but haven't jumped in yet. Thus, I am now monitoring the account and writing about it.

I am glad I did. Although, I am happy with the selections I made and like the back-tested equity curve it created, there were a couple trades I wasn't too pleased with.

On 6/11, I bought 1 share of BBVA at $10.20 and on 6/16 I bought 4 shares of BCRX at $12.36. Both of these stocks would have to have drastic moves upward for me to make any money on them. I understand they are part of the strategies and settings I selected, but I didn't see the point of the size of these trades.

I decided I don't want to trade anything under 100 shares. Now, check this out. I will show you just making a little adjustment to trade settings can affect the equity curve. 

This is my equity curve with a 1 share minimum in my Settings:

Not too bad, right? My Compound Annual Return (CAR) is 62.4% and my Maximum Draw Down (MDD) is 6.4%. The further these two numbers are from each other, the better.

I made the change in my Settings to a Minimum Trade Size of 100 shares:

Now let's see the change it made to the equity curve:

The change isn't dramatic, but I upped my CAR over 5 points to 67.7% and very slightly upped my MDD on-tenth of a point to 6.5%. 

To learn more how to adjust your settings, be sure to call our Support Team at 888-385-6293.

You can constantly tweak this system to create the back-tested results that suit you. When I got started, the support staff spent 45 minutes on the phone with me to get me to the original. Now with an adjustment of my own, I think I just made it a little better!