5.3. Against Your Own Strategy

Beside the stock list at the top of Replay is a second list, after the word vs. It lists the strategies you have built in the Playbook. Choosing one replays that strategy's rules over the same stock and the same dates, and shows what your rules would have done next to what you did.

With a strategy chosen, Replay adds:

• arrows on the chart, marking each Strategy buy and Strategy sell, beside the dots for your own trades,
• a second card beside Actual, headed with the strategy's name, with the same figures worked out for the strategy's trades,
• and a list of the strategy's trades below your own.

This is a comparison between you and your own rules. The strategy is one you wrote, and Tradestory forms no view on the stock. Where the arrows and the dots part company, Replay shows you where your practice and your written method went different ways.

Our example has no strategies yet, so the vs list is empty and Replay shows your own trades alone. We build a strategy in Chapter 10, and come back to this comparison there.

Summary

In this chapter, we put a stock's trades back on its price chart. We:

• opened Replay and read its markers: first buys, added tranches, and sales at a profit or a loss,
• followed STYLAMIND through three rounds, two closed at a loss and one held today,
• read the Actual card, which brings every round of a stock together,
• and saw how Replay compares your trades with a strategy of your own.

Charts and tables show what happened. In Chapter 6, we look at the numbers for the whole portfolio.