So close yet so far

[TRADERbest]

Hey all in my trading strategy I am selecting 4-5 stocks (with most potential in my eyes) and then selling them in a few days as per my criteria. Now the issue arises is that I have narrowed from say a universe of 500 stocks to 10 stocks and then choosing 4-5 stocks from those 10 as I cannot take all 10 (limited capital). What I have seen since the last few months is that constantly I do not know if its bad luck/karma or what is that the 4-5 stocks I have selected to trade perform mediocre or get stopped out a lot and the 4-5 stocks which I have NOT chosen do exceptionally well, and this is not an instance of just few times its constantly happening and highly frustrating.

Is there any way of increasing chances?

Would love to hear others experiences and solutions to this.

 

[TracerBullet]

Hey all in my trading strategy I am selecting 4-5 stocks (with most potential in my eyes) and then selling them in a few days as per my criteria. Now the issue arises is that I have narrowed from say a universe of 500 stocks to 10 stocks and then choosing 4-5 stocks from those 10 as I cannot take all 10 (limited capital). What I have seen since the last few months is that constantly I do not know if its bad luck/karma or what is that the 4-5 stocks I have selected to trade perform mediocre or get stopped out a lot and the 4-5 stocks which I have NOT chosen do exceptionally well, and this is not an instance of just few times its constantly happening and highly frustrating.

Is there any way of increasing chances?

Would love to hear others experiences and solutions to this.

Unless you have done the numbers, this is likely just side effect of following pnl of every trade or of small sample size.
You need to have hundreds of trade at minimum, maybe more. There is a lot of luck and randomness in the market and mind does not like it.
It could be a recency bias thing or just the usual frustrations of trading.

Or if its real perhaps you are sabotaging yourself somehow.

Anyway, in stocks cash, size is not much an issue. Cut down trade size by 2 and take all 10 trades if you can.
Another way, give up on trying to find the 'best' 5 trades out of 10. You have already selected 10 from 500. So just select them randomly to get 5.
Pick them up from a basket.

 

[TRADERbest]

Unless you have done the numbers, this is likely just side effect of following pnl of every trade or of small sample size.
You need to have hundreds of trade at minimum, maybe more. There is a lot of luck and randomness in the market and mind does not like it.
It could be a recency bias thing or just the usual frustrations of trading.

Or if its real perhaps you are sabotaging yourself somehow.

Anyway, in stocks cash, size is not much an issue. Cut down trade size by 2 and take all 10 trades if you can.
Another way, give up on trying to find the 'best' 5 trades out of 10. You have already selected 10 from 500. So just select them randomly to get 5.
Pick them up from a basket.

It definitely is "real"...I have been experiencing it for years for hundreds of trades...(before with fno /recently shifted to cash for this reason)

Sabotaging myself means?

Yes I thought about that too cutting in half and taking all 10 but then that would really dilute the returns.

If I do it randomly would it not come to the same thing i.e my random choices would be always the 5 worst LOL.

 

[Pradeep Narayan]

Write down why you chose the first 5 & also write down why you rejected the next 5. Observe the pattern & do the course correction!

 

[newtrader101]

It definitely is "real"...I have been experiencing it for years for hundreds of trades...(before with fno /recently shifted to cash for this reason)

Sabotaging myself means?

Yes I thought about that too cutting in half and taking all 10 but then that would really dilute the returns.

If I do it randomly would it not come to the same thing i.e my random choices would be always the 5 worst LOL.

What is your minimum reward-risk ratio?

 

[TracerBullet]

Yes I thought about that too cutting in half and taking all 10 but then that would really dilute the returns.
If I do it randomly would it not come to the same thing i.e my random choices would be always the 5 worst LOL.

1) As your said your first 5 are giving are giving worse performance, so picking up 10 would increase your returns and not dilute them.

2) Nope, random implies no pattern to your picking. With enough sample size, your edge, if it exists, will converge reasonably to what it should be. Any patterns you seen in randomness is your own bias. Its entirely possible that you don't have an edge, in that case.
Run the numbers and find out ...

 

[primitivetrader]

Hey all in my trading strategy I am selecting 4-5 stocks (with most potential in my eyes) and then selling them in a few days as per my criteria. Now the issue arises is that I have narrowed from say a universe of 500 stocks to 10 stocks and then choosing 4-5 stocks from those 10 as I cannot take all 10 (limited capital). What I have seen since the last few months is that constantly I do not know if its bad luck/karma or what is that the 4-5 stocks I have selected to trade perform mediocre or get stopped out a lot and the 4-5 stocks which I have NOT chosen do exceptionally well, and this is not an instance of just few times its constantly happening and highly frustrating.

Is there any way of increasing chances?

Would love to hear others experiences and solutions to this.

you are in a very frustrating situation. this is a common problem for swing/positional trading stocks.

a couple of things you can do:-

1) prepare a model book of 100 charts of the past 3-5 years or so which have fulfilled all your criteria and have given profits as per your method. irrespective of the fact whether you have taken that trade or not. its very tiresome work to do. but if you prepare such a model book, it will help you to analyze what common characteristics are there apart from your method in such winners and add those in your checklist.

2) don't know whether you are a breakout trader or a pullback trader. if you are a breakout trader add 55 or 123 days comparative relative strength and see whether a stock is outperforming the index or not. RS is very fine tool but a few traders use it. if you are a pullback trader RS indicator does not work much. plot nifty directly on the same chart and see the RS select stocks that are outperforming the index provided other conditions are met of your method. the inherent problem of PB is that it takes time to roll over and then restart the upmove.

 

[timepass]

.........
It could be a recency bias thing or just the usual frustrations of trading.

Or if its real perhaps you are sabotaging yourself somehow.

Anyway, in stocks cash, size is not much an issue. Cut down trade size by 2 and take all 10 trades if you can.
Another way, give up on trying to find the 'best' 5 trades out of 10. You have already selected 10 from 500. So just select them randomly to get 5.
Pick them up from a basket.

Recency bias !! Wow, first time I heard this term. Very apt.

 

[TRADERbest]

Thanks for all the input guys...but its been really depressing last few days that i did not even feel like coming to this post and replying

The last few days also i missed on alot trades and today i missed out on too many..

I Will try these suggestions...

Mabye i should give you all my rejected trades daily and you can make money from that...

 

[TRADERbest]

What is your minimum reward-risk ratio?

1 is to 3