Hello there, we are Streetrader. We are ex-investment bank fx traders who picked a life as independent trader. We are really focus on how to build a responsible retail trader with high awareness of risk management and of course, profitability. Happy to discuss here and hope to have warm relationship with all of you our new society. Please welcome us well. 
Cheers.
Streetrader Team.
Hi there Streettrader,
It is very kind that you want to help out, but this whole community is aimed to build responsible traders etc. and it is not clear why we should post in this thread what we arenât already doing in all the other threads. So if you like to have more response maybe it is a good idea to show us a bit more about what you can bring us or this thread will quickly run dry.
For example, why would ex-investment bank traders want to help out new traders, what drives you guys?
I assume you have all good intentions of course.
oh wellâŚ
Why we posted in this thread? this is an introduction section isnâ it?
Intention? to simply enjoy, making friends and contribute on the discussions, in a good way; can we? or, should we do something ânewâ here? which is, what is ânewâ anyway?
well buddy, we are just macro traders by the way, not a good algorithmic auto something trades with good profit at few percentage of winning here and there - not to mention we are not a âhonoraryâ ones. Soo maybe, some here and there, we will say something really, we mean really, âsmallâ, like volatility remainder like: heyâŚâplease be more careful, this fund coming into that currency at around this timeâ⌠or just âplease keep playing smallâ and âplease donât speculate muchâ or âdonât chase profit, protect your capital insteadâ. yâall may say this will do that and boom! While we? ah, just little things buddy⌠little one.
Hello STR Team,
Well you are a refreshing change if you are all ex-professional institutional traders! Do you jointly trade a single fund or do you all trade individually and mutually share info and ideas? What markets, timeframes, styles and objectives do you trade?
Heyy! yes. thanks for the welcome.
We were working separately, from Singapore to London, for global markets division. That is, the part that manages all of fx circulation of a bank. So we got to know each other while hanginâ out on our spare time or when we met at investment conference, training, etc.
But thats old story. Now weâre just quit our job and trade our own fund - trust me, its not big.
So, in term of trading. We trade fx, commodities, equity, fixedincome/bonds and derivatives. we simply continue what weâve been doing in our day job, but now we do it by ourselves.
For trading method, we use the same approach for all instruments. And very simple.
and another one, this is âcheatingâ btw.
to make sure on everting, we like to contact our friends in money market brokerage company. You know, bank trade their money via brokerage account as well, named interbank money market brokerage: like amstel or tullet prebon. Nah, we asked our friends there about some of the flow that might happen. and, trust me, brokers there are all cuties - donât know how they manage to find such an all beauty pageant woman to be brokerage agent for bankers. ok skip.
we put order, and thats it. we come back every 4 hours. so simply said, we trade on 4H chart for forex and commodities. while for equities, we trade on daily basis.
Can we do intraday on shorter time frame? well, at some point we trade 1H chart. but that is the shortest one.
We will put some pictures later. Cheers!
Heyy! yes. thanks for the welcome.
We were working separately, from Singapore to London, for global markets division. That is, the part that manages all of fx circulation of a bank. So we got to know each other while hanginâ out on our spare time or when we met at investment conference, training, etc.
But thats old story. Now weâre just quit our job and trade our own fund - trust me, its not big.
So, in term of trading. We trade fx, commodities, equity, fixedincome/bonds and derivatives. we simply continue what weâve been doing in our day job, but now we do it by ourselves.
For trading method, we use the same approach for all instruments. And very simple.
and another one, this is âcheatingâ btw.
to make sure on everting, we like to contact our friends in money market brokerage company. You know, bank trade their money via brokerage account as well, named interbank money market brokerage: like amstel or tullet prebon. Nah, we asked our friends there about some of the flow that might happen. and, trust me, brokers there are all cuties - donât know how they manage to find such an all beauty pageant woman to be brokerage agent for bankers. ok skip.
we put order, and thats it. we come back every 4 hours. so simply said, we trade on 4H chart for forex and commodities. while for equities, we trade on daily basis.
Can we do intraday on shorter time frame? well, at some point we trade 1H chart. but that is the shortest one.
We will put some pictures, but it seems like the forum doesnât allow new comers to post a picture or any other before like 5 or more post. so we will do it later.
Cheers!
The more the merry. Welcome to the crew!
The first post was just a bit abstract for me.
Thanks for the reply, Streetrader, look forward to seeing more of your posts. Its good to hear a fresh angle on various matters
Canât be that small if you are all living off it!
How many are you and how long since you started up on your own? Do you work from your homes or do you have an ofice (and overheads!!)?
How long do you normally hold your trades? This is an interesting issue for me because it is affected greatly by whether one is trading for income or for capital growth. If you are living off your trading earnings then that puts big pressure on realising profits quickly and frequently - which in turn is quite difficult from daily and 4H timeframes unless markets are moving/trending fast. If you are growing capital then positions can sit for even yearsâŚ
Welcome-
What are 1 or 2 things a retail trader can implement immediately to aide in âbuilding a high awareness of risk managementâ?
Also, which IB are you coming from?
Jake
Hi, its 5 of us. We just started Streetrader this year, January to be exact. But weâve been trading our own money since sitting on our day job trading at banks.
We are not a company, at the moment, just a small group of happy traders (which is only 5 of us). But we rent an apartment in Singapore and run our trade placements, and some social media admin works from there. But 2 of us are Londoners, so they run the trade for London and US timezone, from their own home
How long? hmm. for FX, we only trade AUD, NZD, EUR, EGBP, GBP, USDCHF, USDCAD and USDJPY. in average we hold for 2-3 days each position. I donât know if I can say it here, but you can see our ideas on one of the free charting website out there.
Pressure? Hmm⌠why should be there any pressure if we keep on playing small? 1.8 percent maximum risk. We buy at support, sell at resistance. We have no worries. Keep doing that every single trades and feel happy. Really, we do
its simple buddy, just keep playing small. âhigh awarenessâ starts from playing small. if you have capital of 500usd, play 0.01 lot each trade. buy at support sell at resistance. Happy trade and live free.
Want to campaign this âplaying smallâ rule. That whatever strategy do you have, just keep playing small. Never risk more. because in the banks, our daily risk is limited at 1.32% each trade. So we want to bring this to reality of retail traders, to be a reminder. That even an IB traders, we never risk bigger than 2% of capital.
From what IB? Yes. Me myself coming from MS. The other member were working at MYB, SCB, and JMF (this is largest Indian IB). We are not disclosing all of identity at the moment because one of our friend remain at the bank. and we feel better to stay low like this. Eventually we will put âour team pageâ I hope it helps for just initial here.
The pressure I was referring to was not pressure from position size. I was indicating the pressure to produce realised profits on a frequent, regular and consistent basis if you are all living from your trading earnings. In fact surely the fact that you emphasise playing small only serves to increase that pressure for performance that meets your combined income requirements (which I can imagine are also kept small at this stage of your development!).
You have an interesting set up and clearly a sound background of experience. I look forward to following your progress! I guess at some stage you will be looking to manage funds on behalf of a customer base?
One last question for now: Do you all follow these postings are is there only one of you contributing here?
Nice talking with you!
Just find it odd that people of your caliber would be tossing around the word âplayâ when it comes to trading.
Good luck w/ your endeavors.
Jake
Whatâs really odd is folkâs refusal to admit that at any level, this game is anything other than placing bets on financial instruments.
And in the world of betting, the word [I]play[/I] is commonplace.
Bear in mind that âplayâ is to simplify the perspective. People tend to overcomplicate things and get trapped in paralysis of analysis. that is, weâre losing our standard due to noise of information. By âplayingâ small, we risk small part of our capital. in the market risk industry itâs measured with daily value at risk or dVAR. Where the calculation comes from multi equation of GARCH aka Generalized AutoRegressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity, an advanced econometric approach that those PhD of market risk management division studied in college.
But I donât think this is the right place to talk about GARCH thing isnât? so we like to use âlets play âsmallââ. Keep it simple. As it should, and has to be.
Cheers!
Interesting perspective, Speed bump!
You are probably right in a lot of cases but I am not sure that such a sweeping statement applies to all dealings in forex or other financial instruments!
For example, doesnât everyone have the right to invest their surplus money into something that they feel will give them a return on it? Some investments are fairly risk-free such as govt bonds, others carry a small risk, others carry a larger risk. Some invest in fine wines others in antiques. If one feels that another currency will strengthen more than another is it not the same principle to exchange oneâs savings into that other currency?
Having said that, the kind of short term speculative trading in financial instruments with leverage that one sees much written about on this site is indeed more like casino playing than investment strategy. But defining lines of separation between different activities is always a grey area.
If one has a professional approach to risk analysis and control as well as sound money management principles (an area sadly neglected by many as its a bit boring!) then I think it is a least one step away from pure gambling, maybe even two steps!
Hi Manxx, ok. let me answer your question about pressure for target profit. First, mindset. We see the whole financial market movement as random. No one can predict. So, yes, it is gambling, and guessing. However, we need to be âeducated guesserâ to be successful in the market. I will talk a bit on statistical base, but in easy word. Here is the fact. Based on statistical simulation, no one can profit the market on regular basis. BUT, every one of us CAN limit our risk in every trade. Market movement is random, but risk management is not random. That is the first and important mindset. With this mindset, we enter the market with THE SAME method every single time. The same method. always the same. Never change. Be it our entry setup, exit setup and cut loss level in term of percentage.
Of course, at this point you will think that automatic trading is better. Well, that could be. But there is another factor: economic data publication. When economic data is published, we traders all gathered and bet on position. Creating a huge chunk of market jump. Just like last NFP or last Yellen statement. Even at The Fed Rate announcement or yesterdayâs RBA statement. And this type of volatility creates what researcher said as âabnormal returnâ. So we gained mostly from this type of market movement.
Then come back to your question about pressure in realising profit. Honestly, there is no pressure. Again, comeback to the statistical approach. Market moves in predicted range. That is called as standard deviation from its base trend. This, in our work, called as DVaR aka Daily Value at Risk. This DVaR is something that we keep holding tight. Because what? As long as this risk is managed, at some point, the volatility will give us return we expect.
We went to Maccau one day, a casino royale in Honkong, with some friends. And one of our friend has no job but he lives good only from Casino. He shared the secret, âI just keep playing small, all the time, and let the element of surprise brings me up northâ. The point here is, you canât predict the market. Again, no you cannot. Even Economist of Goldman Sachs once said, only lunatics think they can predict currency market. Nassim Thaleb, former UBS trading director, and writer of âFooled by Randomnessâ said, there is no profit target. There is only risk limit target. Again, Paul Tudor, owner of TudorInvestment said, âwhen I go into the market, I never think about making profit, I always think about losing moneyâ.
So take it into one part. There is no pressure on us as long as we limit our risk. Then how we make money? Look, each day market moves. You can see which ever trend is up you HAVE to buy when it near to support. and vice versa. You will make money eventually. And when the market boom because of fundamental event, you can even make more money. Just keep playing small.
This is not technical analysis, this is statistics and we have simulated it all the time. (you can PM me if want to discuss about it more). For the sake of science, we use montecarlo simulation, on probability based equations. (again, if you do like math, PM us to discuss). And the result is no different then what economic researcher has done. That again, you canât target your profit. But you CAN target your risk limit. Eventually, money will come. Trust me
And btw, for who in charge to post in social media. Well, we work separately. Only our friend from Singapore and Indonesia that have âkind a office apartmentâ to do the business. He started posting this thread. And I continue (am living in London btw). We really love trading. And to go into social media with all of retail traders out there, is a new thing for us. But really, we are so excited doing this. As we want to show to society, that with the right approach and mindset, we can keep our risk - so we can make money out of it. ITs all about the mindset.
And nothing wrong with technical analysis, keep doing it. The most important one, always, please⌠playing small. you will get the money by playing small risk in the market. Just like in Casino.
Last one. Managing fund? Honestly, we donât think about it currently. Maybe later, maybe no. We like this. Trading, having a good time with family. And starting a new journey in internet business. We enjoy it so far. And managing fund remains far from our fund right now.
I hope it clarifies contact us personally if you want to talk more about risk management in trading. Always safe trade! Cheerio!
Alright, so - share some trade examples / charts of your strategy as that is what everyone will want to see.
May I add more here. Investment strategy, in the real world of portfolio managers (not in the world of equity sales of brokers) is really all about risk management. Because basically we all see this whole financial world as really big casino table. That results in no one has super return. Everything is normal return (this is called âefficient market hypothesisâ).
To create super return we have to catch extraordinary events. For me, as trader, I like trading at economic data publication. Because that is the opportunity where I can get extra return. In numbers, like 100 - 200 pips max one swipe for 2-3 days. (not 500 - 1000 pips like what so many âsellersâ do)
Thats why in the real world of hedge fund, to create big growth, there are so many practices to find"extra ordinary return" with mostly cross the legal border. for example: insider trading. That is, to get an insight from corporationâs management about the action company will take. And somehow, the greatest investment always the long-term ones. Why? because they buy the company and work on it as their cashcow and selling products. And by long term they catch most of the extraordinary event while keep on managing their investment.
Oh man, this is very interesting discussion. If you guys vote for me making new thread about it, let me know. We all of us on the team, would be happy to share our thought on this part. Let us know.!