How to shut up the risk manager

BellaGeneral Comments

 

We had a meeting with a Year2 trader after the close and he did something you ought to be able to do.  Let’s call this prop trader Frequent Flyer.

Frequent Flyer has fallen in love with a strategy, that between us, I don’t love.  As a directional discretionary trader this strategy doesn’t feel like real trading to me.  It’s an effective and wildly profitable strategy for some.  And trading is more about finding what works for you and not what others, including me, deem “real trading”.  So I put my personal and perhaps wrong-headed bias aside, as best I can, and listen.

Frequent Flyer wants to trade this strategy more often and bigger.  I am not feeling well on this particular day, some bad chicken at a mexican joint not named Chipotle, and the direction of this review is making my stomach pang worse.  I want to say, “This is not real trading.  And one day this trade is not going to work and then what are you going to do?”

But I keep my mouth shut, which in this case turns out to be my most important contribution to the review.

Then Frequent Flyer does something that grabs my attention and eviscerates any queasiness about him trading this strategy and trading it bigger.  He does something that you can’t but agree that he should trade this strategy more often and bigger.

Frequent Flyer takes out his laptop and splendors a year’s worth of data on this strategy, crunched from the SMBU Performance Center, powered by Tradervue.  There is nothing but gains when he trades this strategy.  For a year.  And with very little drawdowns.

What Frequent Flyer hears from his two managers is, “Great job understanding your strengths.  And trade that strategy bigger.”  Case closed, in favor of Frequent Flyer.

For the developing trader, retail trader, new trader and even experienced trader, I ask: Can you present data like Frequent Flyer to support risk on with your best setups?

Because you should.

*no relevant positions

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