Welcome back, Bentra. Since our last conversation, your portfolio has reached new highs. Big congrats to this, you are starting having quite long trading track-record. A lot of happened since our last interview therefore I am glad for your willingness to share your trading journey with us today.
Bentra verified results by darvinex.
Last two years you absolved two totally different stages of portfolio manager. Several month long drawdown followed by significant grow and equity high.
Could you compare these two periods?
Oh really not much changed for me, these dd can and will happen. I’m always trying to diversify more though.
How did you managed your emotions? Did you updated your portfolio composition during the drawdown? Do you have any mental tools which helps you cope with these different periods?
I am always re-optimizing and removing losers and attempting to add new ones in DD or profit. For my emotions, I am lucky to have a 5 year track record I can step back and look at as a whole so I can see a 7 month dd is just a small thing. But it’s good motivation to go back and double check everything, re-read books. run more tests. invent more strategies.
What symbol you consider as the most profitable?
It looks like USDJPY has been doing well but I look at 30 years of past data and there are periods of time where EURUSD was best for my breakout strategies strategies.
Do you have any specific trigger/semaphor for removing strategies from your portfolio?
I’m considering many things but the top money losers in any month $$ get my attention. I will check profit factor isn’t too far off from typical OOS during WF. I also look at SS during WF, more recent performance in WF, double check code and if anything is suspicious I will not tolerate much DD from it and send it back for analasys or toss it.
What is your favorite timeframe?
H1! It seems to be the optimal timeframe for me. Anything less has too much randomness and too much transaction cost. Anything above h1 and it is hard to get good SS.
How many strategies do you trade?
currently I have 5 SQX strats running along with 5 of my own breakout strats.
Statistical Significance is so important! Only the simplest of strategies can have less than 1200 trades. Make sure you have ample bars in your data as well compared to how many bars you use in your calculations. Read Pardo and Davey. Make sure your costs are roughly what real trading looks like.
I’m excited that SQX is always adding new stuff to try.
Maybe one day I can learn about AI and use it.
I will stop trading when I’m dead.