Millionaire Tradersweren’t what I was expecting. Then one day I was, just walking
outside taking a hike, it hit me. I had optimized the system to go
from 70 percent to 130 percent profit and as result it just ended up
breaking even. [Authors’ note:Dana refers to the constant danger
of system based trading, namely the desire to overoptimize your
strategy in order to produce more profit. In fact such tactics often
lead to sub-par results as all trading systems typically require very
large margins of error.] So it’s things like that that have happened
where I correct my mistakes and write a new business plan. I am a
firm believer in doing that. Another thing I’ve heard some people
say is just look at all your trades. Van Tharp pushes that idea. You
can’t do that all the time, but I will do that occasionally, and I’ll
pick up some really big revelations such as a certain type trading is
not making me any money at all.
Q: How often do you do that kind of analysis? Once every three
months?
A: Yeah, if that, maybe three to six months, but I suggest to other
people to do it once a month [laughter].
Q: Do as I say, not as I do?
A: That’s right. Just did it recently and picked up that something
I wanted to do for safe trading was actually working much better
than I thought. Some other things were masking the profitability
of this low risk system. Just figured that out three days ago through
a review of trades.
Q: Is there anything else that you could share with us regarding
your analysis or is it proprietary?
A: It was very proprietary. I can tell you that some of the dis-
cretionary stuff I was doing was not working very well and it was
masking what the safe strategy was doing.