How’s your batting average?

I am not a baseball fan.  I am a New Yorker.  These two statements are mutually exclusive and cannot be uttered aloud on the streets of  New York during these final moments of the post season play as the NY Yankees play the LA Angels tonight to secure their 40th World Series,  far more times than any other baseball team, ever.  They are pretty awesome.  Even I have Yankee fever.  I have likened forex traders to poker players before, but a forex trader can certainly also be compared to a baseball player, especially when it comes to the hitting, and maybe even more so.  It is astounding the amount of statistics held on each of these hitters:  percentage of hits for each time at bat, percentage of hits when against a lefty pitcher, percentage of hits against a righty pitcher, home runs per at bat, runs batted in, on base percentage… and on and on and on.  So when Alex Rodriguez approaches home plate and he is sporting a .285 batting average it is fairly easy to guess that he may hit during this time at bat.  Let’s compare how batting stats can be attributed to trading.  Its all about probabilities and helping your confidence.  I keep my weekly and monthly percentage of winning trades and my weekly and monthly profit ratio.  But if you trade more than one strategy then it is important to track each strategy separately.  You may be profiting 80% of the time using your intraday trend following strategy, and profiting 65% of the time using an intraday contra trading strategy.  Similarly you may be profiting 71% of the time using a swing trading strategy.  Or, if you trade more than just one session per day, you should track those separately also.  For example, you may be 79% winning trades during the NY session and only 54% winning during Asia trading.  Hey, this is fun, let’s not stop there!  Do you trade more than one currency pair?  Then you gotta track those separately too.  You may find that you are 52% winning on the EURJPY trades but 86% on the EURUSD trades.  How about percentage of trades reaching ultimate profit target vs. trades hitting break even or an early taking of profit.  Do you trade NFP each month and how’s that working out for you?  Certainly each week and month varies as we move through different cycles of the year.  I thought I was already being thorough with my statistics on my trading but this baseball thing has got me thinking… I have some more work to do.  In the meantime, GO YANKEES!