My Thoughts on Tori Trades

I've been following Tori Trades' content for quite some time. Her trend line strategy and concepts have helped me think through ways to optimize my trend trading system. As with any trader that has garnered a following on social media, she also has her fair share of haters.

I say "haters" rather than "critics" because I see those videos existing solely to nitpick and dunk her content rather than offering anything of substance. While I don't think her videos are perfect, they definitely have merits and areas for further improvement.

Tori Trades' trend line system is quite simple, which some videos mock and poke skepticism at. "How can you be profitable just plotting a couple of trend lines?" is one of the common themes in these videos. I won't specifically call out these videos and give them more attention than they deserve. However, they aren't too challenging to find if you search thoroughly.

How has her trend line system helped me?

I follow the trend, which I define simply by the 20- and 60-period exponential moving averages. I will use EMA20 and EMA60.

If EMA20 is above EMA60, I will classify it as an uptrend. The entry criteria will be based on trend lines. Below is a daily chart of platinum.

Platinum Daily

In this chart, EMA20 remains cleanly above EMA60. "Cleanly" is defined by the fact that the two moving averages did not cross, not even momentarily.

On this daily timeframe, I also plotted a couple of key levels where I expect to see major price reactions. For my trade entries, I used a lower time frame to guide these decisions.

Platinum H1

Since the daily timeframe indicated an uptrend, my directional bias is bullish. On the H1 timeframe, I plotted a descending trend line (DTL) since price was drifting lower.

When the price broke above the DTL, this indicated confluence. I entered long and, unfortunately, closed the trade prematurely because platinum trended much higher.

My trade on platinum is an example showing how trend lines have helped me optimize my trade entries. I do see merits in adapting the trend line strategy that Tori Trades uses into my trading process.

That said, it's not perfect. However, I don't see logical reasons shared by the channels calling out Tori Trades.

What Tori Trades does well:

Tori Trades is more transparent than most other channels that I've seen. In her trade recap videos, she shows her profits as well as her losses. In addition, there are several videos of her showing her full broker statements. If you really wanted to audit these statements and map them to the timestamps logged, you could.

What I find questionable:

It's well known that Tori Trades doesn't take many trades throughout the calendar year. This might be a bit suspicious to some people because it may indicate that she's managing several accounts and then showing off the one that's performing the best.

However, that's a wild accusation that isn't worth anybody's time to try and prove. Instead, I will focus on her Tradezella stats. This is an area where I think Tori Trades really needs to do more work in explaining these metrics and how they tie to her positive expectancy.

Tori Trades has a date range filtered from January 1, 2024 to August 1, 2024. She has a Zella Score of 100.0 and the triangle visual is showing very strong Win %, Average Win/Loss, and profit factor.

In fact, the scorecard in the top bar is showing a 42.31 profit factor. Beside this scorecard, her Trade Win % metric is 63.64%. To me, there are two likely scenarios.

In scenario one, the Trade Win % shows that six out of every ten trades are winners. However, the high profit factor could indicate that she's closing losses very quickly and letting profits run.

The second scenario is that she isn't closing her losing trades in a timely manner. She lets the losing trades run so that she can close them out at breakeven or near breakeven. This results in very small losses while showing strong Profit Factor and Average Win/Loss metrics.

Nothing is conclusive based on the metrics shown in this screenshot. However, we can narrow down the likely scenarios.

One thing I did notice is that Tradezella seems to have simplified its dashboard in more recent updates. In some of Tori Trades' older videos, you can see the Zella score is based on six dimensions.

One of these dimensions is "Consistency." According to Tradezella, the Consistency metric is the standard deviation of profits divided by total profits. In other words, it tracks the variation of day-to-day performance.

While Tori Trades does a good job showing the use of a journal, I find her to be more focused on her P&L rather than her performance metrics. The low consistency metric shown in her dashboard, which will vary based on the date range selected, potentially indicates inconsistent trade sizing and risk per trade.

In some of her other videos, I have seen this metric be even lower than how it's positioned in this screenshot. Unfortunately, those videos either don't exist publicly anymore, or I simply haven't found them.

It would be more useful if she elaborated more on her trade parameters, risk per trade, and position size rather than focusing on the P&L outcome.

The final screenshot that I will show is the breakdown of one of her trades. I noticed how her MFE/MAE metric is consistently very close to a ratio of 1.

MAE is Maximum Adverse Excursion, which measures the absolute maximum movement that a trade moved against you before it was exited
MFE is Maximum Favorable Excursion, which measures the absolute maximum movement that a trade moved in your favor before it was exited

The MFE/MAE ratio is a great risk-adjusted metric. If your MFE/MAE ratio is less than 1, it indicates that your trades have a tendency to move drastically against you rather than in your favor.

If you have a MFE/MAE ratio that is greater than 1, this shows that your trades tend not to be in the negative territory for long. TradesViz has a great, in-depth article on this metric.

In the screenshot above, Tori Trades is showing an MFE/MAE ratio of 1.022 ($972 / $950.70). If you sample her individual trade recaps across all her videos, her MFE/MAE ratio is consistently marginally above 1.

This indicates that she's likely letting her unrealized losses run just as much as her unrealized profits. She's not getting out of her losing trades quickly and letting profitable trades run.

My takeaway based on the metrics shown—she might have a profitable strategy with a great return percentage; however, her risk-adjusted performance is questionable based on the inconsistencies across the MFE/MAE ratio and the other metrics shown.

In summary:

Tori Trades does a good job being transparent with her trading by showing brokerage statements
She also does a good job explaining her strategy in a simple manner and demonstrating good journaling practices
However, she focuses too much on return percentages and dollar profits per trade and less on the long-run expectancy metrics (although showing return and dollar profits are very appealing for content)
One key area that she could improve and viewers should be conscious of is looking at the analysis surrounding her strategy and how she analyzes the expectancy metrics (process > result)