Nothavir

Built for Significance

[Nothavir @nothavir]

A lot of people trade for years without ever completing one full loop.

They're not stuck because the method is wrong. They're stuck because they've never gone through a real loop.

[Nothavir @nothavir]

Then gradually the account approaches breakeven, then moves past it. That's not a bad method. That's the process working exactly as it should.

[Nothavir @nothavir]

The first loop will almost certainly lose money. So will the second.

[Nothavir @nothavir]

The systematization loop. Four simple steps.

1. Pick a rule set.
2. Collect 30-100 trades with that exact rule set.
3. Review the batch to find what can improve.
4. Go back to step one with the adjustment.

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[Nothavir @nothavir]

The rule set you pick matters less than whether it gets repeated exactly the same way every time it shows up.

An average rule set run with total consistency beats a perfect one run differently every time.

[Nothavir @nothavir]

Consistency comes before profit.

I used to think the order was: find a method that makes money, then stay disciplined with it. Turns out it's completely reversed.

🧵

[Nothavir @nothavir]

But inside each system, each rule set, entry and exit have to stay identical every single time.

Change it each run, and even ten setups running in parallel produce zero clean tests.

[Nothavir @nothavir]

A strategy only counts as understood once you've watched it survive enough real situations, not just look pretty on a historical curve.

[Nothavir @nothavir]

Backtest is just a hypothesis. The live market is the answer.

I once backtested a strategy until the numbers looked beautiful. High win rate, low drawdown, equity curve almost a straight line.

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[Nothavir @nothavir]

Real knowledge of a strategy doesn't live in the backtest file. It lives in how it reacts to a market that doesn't care what you calculated beforehand.

[The Factor Report @PeterLBrandt]

Rambling Random Ruminations of a Relic - a series

Hey, Gen Z and younger Millennials—especially those of you who trade the markets.

I get it.

You’ve been screwed by the Boomers.

Expensive education.

No clear career path in your chosen field.

Student loans.

Another internship that leads nowhere.

Close-to-minimum-wage work—not a living wage—waiting tables or doing something similar.

And when you finally find a job, the owners expect you to work your butt off. What’s with these four-day, nine-hour-a-day jobs, anyway?

Owning a home is not even imaginable.

Marriage? Why would you want the lives your parents had?

As an early-years Boomer, I fully acknowledge the disaster created for you by your parents’ and grandparents’ generations.

You have every right to be angry.

But I am seeing more and more of you come into equity and futures trading with expectations that are absolutely off-the-charts insane.

You poo-poo this claim!!!!

Many of you are chasing stories about turning $5,000 into $5 million in five years. The Market Wizards stories are incredibly compelling.

One of the things I am most proud of during my 51-year career—supporting my family and building wealth—is having been featured in Market Wizards. I remain deeply honored.

You might be a three-standard-deviation wonder. I am cheering for you—I truly am.

Welcome to trading.

It has been a thrill and an honor to trade my own money as my full-time occupation since I was in my 20s. I am now within spitting distance of 80, living in a body that betrays the fact that I once had a Division I university ice hockey scholarship.

I strongly believe that the pursuit of becoming one of the three in 1,000 will ultimately reveal the full character and integrity of those three.

Am I advising you not to invest in stocks?

Nope.

I am advising you to prepare for a career with a future, work hard and save as much as you can every month.

Then I would advise putting 80% of those savings into SPY, 5% into Bitcoin and 15% into gold and silver.

There is big money to be made in precious metals—but the move does not need to begin next week, Mr. and Ms. FOMO.

There is a very strong chance that, 30 years from now, you will wish you had annualized 20% to 30%. You will recognize that your dream of doubling your money every year originated in Fantasyland.

Please believe me: I am NOT, NOT, NOT trying to insult you.

I believe in you. My grandchildren are Gen Z. Your generation has enormous potential for wealth and happiness.

So, what is my advice to you????

You probably won’t accept it now, but print this X post and place it in an envelope marked, “Open in 2060.”

Believe me—life goes by faster than you can possibly understand right now.

If you want to learn trading—and I mean consistently profitable trading with your own money—it is possible.

But you must get the idea of doubling your money every year out of your mind. Instead, think in terms of reaching 20% annually during years four and five, measured from the first year you begin trading.

The best living investor/trader, in my opinion, is Stan “the Man” Druckenmiller.

The best trading operation? That’s easy: Renaissance Technologies.

Both have hovered in the 40%-plus zone over long periods.

Let me square with you on this next statement:

If you can learn to average even 30% annually over five years—with a Calmar ratio of 2.5 and without much variation across several hundred Monte Carlo simulations—you will have no trouble becoming a millionaire-plus, if money is your thing.

More importantly, you will feel an enormous sense of accomplishment.

Also, in my opinion, futures markets are far superior to equity markets for building an account and supporting any reasonable lifestyle.

Why futures?

Lots of reasons—more than enough to explore in another installment of “my story on X.”

But I mean trading with real money.

Not the pretend “prop shop” nonsense.

If that is what you have in mind, unfollow me immediately. I have nothing to say to you.

There are micro and even smaller contracts available these days, especially if you live outside the United States, where CFDs are permitted. Traders with access to CFDs have an advantage over those of us in the Stars and Stripes gang.

I believe the CME even offers a one-ounce gold contract.

And as more hard assets are tokenized, still more alternatives to traditional futures contracts will become available.

I believe it is entirely possible to succeed in futures trading—if you enter the business with the right expectations.

For your first three years, your primary goal should be simply not to lose money.

If you accomplish that, you will already be way ahead of your peers.

I mean WAAAY ahead.

If you can survive three or four years in futures and still have your original money intact, then you may indeed have a very bright future in futures.

One warning:

DON’T EVER pay some service to provide you with signals, setups or whatever else the YouTube and X Wonder Kids of the Century want to sell you.

You have to do this on your own.

There is no other way.

If there were, I would tell you.

Please believe me.

Perhaps I will wander deeper into this tunnel in the future.

But that’s all the rambling for now.

[Nothavir @nothavir]

A good plan isn't picking one perfect setup. It's holding multiple possibilities at once, so you have enough data without betting everything on a single roll.

[Nothavir @nothavir]

One setup is not a plan.

There was a stretch where I put nearly all my confidence into a single setup. Win, I felt on track. Lose, it felt like the whole method was collapsing.

🧵

[Nothavir @nothavir]

This isn't about trading more to boost win rate. It's about giving the method more chances to prove itself, so a few losses can't tank your whole confidence in the system.