Pedma's Portfolio Management Journal - 01/20/2024

Portfolio management, market scans, and more

Introduction

Good afternoon, everyone!

I hope you're having a great Saturday so far. Today, I want to share my thoughts on the market, show you my portfolio, and discuss what I've been trading.

The market has been trading within this peculiar range for the past couple of weeks, which has not been very conducive to good performance for directional traders.

If you're using trading systems that require directionality, your performance has probably not been the best over the past few weeks. It will remain poor as long as the market does not decide its direction.

In these challenging times, traders must learn to remain calm and follow the plan they've worked so hard on. The reality of why most people fail in this business is not only because they lack a clearly defined edge, but also because they are unable to stick with that edge long enough to allow it to realize itself over large samples.

I've been in this game for six years now and have experienced countless drawdowns. I understand that a drawdown is the cost I must pay to participate in the game. However, I also realize that this is not the mentality of most new traders. I need to think from the perspective of who I was six years ago to better understand how to help those who don't fully grasp how trading works yet.

Consider trading as a beachside restaurant. Such a restaurant will do amazingly well during the summer but not so much during the winter. Does this mean it should close in the winter? In some cases, yes, but sometimes summer starts sooner or later, and the restaurant needs to keep building its brand over the offseason to attract even more customers when the season is right. The same goes for trading. You don't quit when times are hard because, just as good times don't last forever, neither do the hard times.

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Today’s Market Journal Content

• Crypto Market Report

  • General Thoughts

  • Strongest Coins this Week

  • Momentum Scans

  • Seasonality Analysis

• Personal Portfolio Performance

  • Performance Dashboard

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Crypto Market Report

The total crypto market capitalization has been hovering around this zone for the past few weeks. When this happens, momentum/trend systems tend to struggle as these environments are filled with fake outs and nothing really moves that significantly.

I am a systematic swing trader, focused on long-only trend systems. I take a lot of bets, in the hopes of getting a few of those moves that really pay off for all the losses. In these environments like the one we see above, we don’t get much of those moves, so the portfolio struggles to produce any returns. It’s normal and expected and we will get into that later down the article.