In today’s article, I will give you 5 very simple but very important tips that are helping me today to get better results from my ATS. I didn’t do any of these things at first and it was a big mistake – you should avoid that mistake.

1. Regular reoptimization: I wasn’t doing it.

Some time ago I did an interesting analysis of several of my systems and it showed me a really important point: the difference between regular reoptimization and long-term trading of fixed parameters can be really huge, especially at times when your systems are not working. . good. In my case, some of the underperforming strategies showed an improvement of up to 80% by 2014, if they were reoptimized at the end of 2013. The results were really significant. For example, one of the weaker strategies experienced a loss of $5,000 in 2013, however, the reoptimized version had a much more acceptable loss of $900. Really, I can say that regular reoptimization helps to improve the performance of systems, especially during bad times. Personally, I re-optimize about once a year. It was a big mistake not to have applied this concept of regular reoptimization from the beginning.

2. Clever use of 2 contracts (or an even number of contracts): I didn’t know about this simple trick for a long time.

There are certain situations in the markets that are extremely promising for good profits. One of the simplest examples can be the day of the week. I’m sure you have some strategies in your portfolio that perform better on a certain day of the week than on other days. I use these situations to change the number of contracts, i.e. I change twice as many contracts as I would otherwise, to make the most of this situation. You’d be surprised at the positive impact these simple tricks can have on your equity curve; often the capital is smoothed very well. Of course, you have to be creative and think of new situations that you could use to change the number of contracts.

At first, I didn’t use these simple tricks, I underestimated them and learned them after a while. But they can really drastically improve the overall stability of your portfolio.

3. Try swing strategies. I’ve been hesitating too long to add them to my portfolio.

If you prefer day trading ATSs, don’t focus too much on them and try some strategies that don’t close positions at the end of the day. You can add a certain profit target to them and leave them open for several days. I’ve found that strategies like these can really help with diversification. Even in 2014, which was a pretty bad year for index breakout strategies, swing strategies were doing very well, compared to intraday. Personally, I use a combination of both. With some systems, I close half my contracts at the end of the day and the other half I close with a fixed profit target, even though it can take days to reach the profit target. Or, for a less stressful, nice and relaxing weekend, I can close the position at the end of the day on Friday.

If I had had swing strategies in my portfolio from the beginning, I would have done much better, especially during the bad times. Today I know that having only daytrading strategies in my portfolio is not enough if I want to have a quality profit distribution.

4. Even a very small diversification is a diversification.

This is one of the things that I have been doing correctly since the beginning. I am adding it to this list just to point it out and to protect you from making this mistake.

Diversification into more markets is absolutely crucial and even micro-diversification counts and is really important. For example, if I have a small account and have to decide between two systems for two different index markets and one system trading two totally different markets (an index and a grain market), I would always prefer the second option. Two different markets will help you diversify much better than two, even low correlation systems that trade in the same markets. This is my experience and this is what I do. Diversify as you can.

5. Work together. I didn’t, but working with other merchants helps me move much faster.

This is my last tip, although it is slightly different from the previous ones. It’s a simple tip: work together with other ATS traders. It will bring you better results and make progress faster.

A couple of years ago, I met a trader from Australia and was surprised that he shared with me, the first time we met, his best knowledge. Of course I did the same. The result is that we are “growing” together for some time because we continue to share the best we know, and we both get richer. The important point is that the sharing traders must be on the same level, otherwise this idea doesn’t really work.