Cesar Alvarez

Author Archives: Cesar Alvarez

Using Stops: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

I recently gave a presentation on Better System Trader about using stops on a breakout strategy. The research produced results I was not expecting and may be surprising to you. The stops tested are

  • No stops
  • Maximum Loss using ATR (Intraday and End of Day)
  • Maximum Loss using percentage (Intraday)
  • Trailing ATR (Intraday and End of Day)
  • Profit target using ATR (Intraday and End of Day)

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October 21, 2015

Biotech: My love-hate relationship

My love

RDUSa

My hate

CELGa

The two charts above are from recent trades I have taken. Charts created in AmiBroker.

On July 20, 2015 IBB, iShares Nasdaq Biotechnology ETF, made a closing high of 398.  About three months later it closed at 289 for 27% loss. A very common thing I hear from traders is that they “don’t trade biotechnology or pharmaceutical stocks.” I completely understand. These stocks tend to be very volatile and news driven. But does removing these stocks really reduce your drawdowns? What happens to your Compounded Growth Rate? Time to see what the research shows us.

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September 2, 2015

What I am reading: Sept. 2, 2015

Recent articles that I found interesting and made me think. For more articles see the quant mashup Quantocracy.

Was Monday’s ETF Collapse Just A Warmup?

“The ETF can’t be more liquid than the underlying, and we know the underlying can become highly illiquid.”

 

Computers are the new Dumb Money

“Rational, experienced people understood that an ETF with holdings that were down an average of 5% should not have a share price down 30%.”

 

Avoiding the Big Drawdown: Is Downside Protection Helpful or Heresy?

‘Chasing the Investing Unicorn: Give me “High Returns with Limited Risk”’

 

Algorithm Aversion — Why people don’t follow the model!

“However, given this knowledge that models beat experts, forecasters still prefer to use the human (expert) prediction as opposed to using the model.”

Good Quant Trading,

The Health of Stock Mean Reversion: Dead, Dying or Doing Just Fine

My second post on this blog was a look at mean reversion, Is mean reversion dead? Given I am using a new data provider(Norgate Data), it has been almost two years since that post and there have been other articles on this recently, I figured it was time to check again. The research will focus on Russell 1000 stocks since 1995. The test is back to 1995 covers 3 bull markets and 2 bear markets.

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