My Trade Performance Using Tim Sykes Trading Strategies

Similar to how Reaper has posted his performance using trading strategies taught by Tim Sykes, I wanted to post about my performance using these same strategies.

I have been trading using methods taught by Sykes (with some of my own little tweaks here and there) since I started this blog in June 2008.  However, I never really kept track of my performance using his system.  Back in September of 2009, I discovered that the TradePerformance Lite software, which I use to track my trades, has the ability to break performance down by different trading strategies.  So, starting September 18th of 2009, I started categorizing my trades into various strategies, including different strategies taught by Sykes.  These strategies include:  buying breakouts (separated into morning and afternoon), shorting over-extended run-ups (separated into both morning and afternoon), shorting pump and dumps, and his TIMAlerts service.

I have been experimenting with a variety of trading strategies, but so far, Sykes's system has by far been the best performing for me.  In fact, my Interactive Brokers account, in which about 90% of my trades have been in Sykes's style, is now up 76% since April of last year, and I'm hampered by the pattern day trading rule in that account.  My Cy Group and Thinkorswim accounts have not performed as well in that time frame, but I also have been experimenting with other trading strategies in those accounts.  I also only recently re-opened my Thinkorswim account, and my position sizes are very small in my Cy account.

Here is a chart of my total cumulative profit since September 18th.  Keep in mind that most of these trades are in my Cy Group account, where I tend to only use about $1K per position (or less).  The profit would be dramatically greater with larger position sizes.

Here is a chart of my profit/loss by individual trade

Here is my equity curve by day

Here is my profit/loss by day

Here are the statistics for the trades.  You can see my overall trade win % is 72.3%, and my ratio of gains to losses is 3.69.  At one point I had 17 winning trades in a row, and I've only had 6 losers in a row.  One thing to keep in mind about the TradePerformance software is that if you scale in and out of positions like I do, it will count those as separate trades.  For example, in my last SIRI trade, I scaled in at 0.795, 0.8101, and 0.802, and then took my profits at 0.8593 and 0.857.  TradePerformance counted this as 3 winning trades.  So my 17 winning trades in a row is not going to be 17 winning positions in a row....it will be less than that.

Another thing to keep in mind is that these stats don't include trades where I broke my trading rules.  The reason I keep trading statistics is to know if there is an edge to a particular strategy.  However, if I break a trading rule that is related to a particular strategy, then it's not the fault of the strategy....it's my own fault.

If you are interested in Tim's strategies, I highly recommend you check out his DVD's.  Pennystocking Part Deux and TimFundamentals Part Deux are the best ones.  Now, keep in mind I am a Tim Sykes affiliate, which means I do receive a commission for every product bought through my affiliate link.  However, I am very honest in my assessment of Tim and his products; in fact, you can see that not all my reviews of Tim's products are positive (like my review of his Shortstocking DVD).  While his strategies are not scalable (which is a good thing in that you don't have to compete against big account traders and Goldman Sachs computers), they are by far the best strategies for people with small trading accounts such as myself.

In a future blog post, I will further break these stats down by the various types of plays.

Disclosure:  I am a Tim Sykes affiliate and I receive a commission for products bought through my affiliate link