Live Trading Performance, my attempt

Beginner Questions
1

Hello Newbies, both Moderate and Experienced Traders.

It’s taken a while in preparation, but the time has finally come. After two years of planning, although admittedly not 24/7 I am opening a live account which can be followed by the link provided at the end of this post.

Target:

To trade $2,500 to over $100,000 in under three years

  • achieved by maintaining an average 12.0% ROI per month or greater

The trading approach used will not as of yet be described in the context of this thread, however live updates will be published as and when I see they have relevance. At the end of each trading month I will record a video of particular trades and how they played out, why they were taken and the outcome of these trades.

I’ve been trading on and off for almost five years now, starting from rock bottom as we all have. I know it’s a tough journey, and being knocked back is an inevitable part of the learning curve; if you’ve never been knocked back in your trading journey then you simply don’t know enough, or have not been doing it for long enough :wink: - it will come (hopefully sooner rather than later)

I’m not going to pack this thread with pointless material or repetitive replies, and I personally only see benefit to passing judgement on the success/failure of this account at the end of each yearly quarter. We all know that so much can happen in a single month, so for this reason I suggest holding back on opinions, both good or bad, until we can all justify it with a reasonable time period.

The start date for this account will be during 2014. Do not expect a trade each and every day as this is simply not the case. On average the number of monthly trades runs it at between eight and ten, sometimes more and sometimes less.

I’m sure by now you can see that I’m lacking details on the trade plan itself, so let me post a link of the live account, and some details which may explain in a little more detail.

[U]Live Stats and Performance Link >>> BFX Equity,FX Trading Public Challenge[/U]

With this being said, I wish you all a successful 2014 - a year I have been working towards for quite some time now :wink:

James

2

I like ur idea of talking about trading results quarterly.

One of the biggest problems I have regarding trading publically or giving signals is the negative noise when one or two trades go against shakes my confidence badly.

Even non negative noises, attempting to point out the obvious after a move etc tends to mess with my head.

With that being said, good luck.

3

Looking forward to this Jezzode!

4

Hi Nikitafx,

I have to absolutely agree with you, doing something in the public eye seems to add an extra unwanted level of pressure. For this reason I’m hoping that I wont be ‘sat’ in this thread 24/7 getting caught up in other peoples opinions. Although I do value other traders thoughts and suggestions, I feel that filtering these, at least for now, is going to be more beneficial to my own trading activity.

James

5

It is nice to see a long time member in BP to open up a thread like this. I really hope that these is a good start of a New Year where we can bring back most of those experience traders back again in BP to add value of what this trading site is for…

I will be following your thread and your fabulous website and hopefully I can learn a thing or 2 :wink:

Good-luck!

6

Hey Jezz, How are you ? Its nice to see your thread.

I wish you ALL the Best in your Venture.

7

In your plan, what is the costs in achieving this goal? I asked this because this is only one side of the coin, the reward side, how about the risk side? What is your planned monthly DD?

Cheers,
Fxturtle

8

Hi fxturtle,

I have a rather big collection of trading results, gathered from both back and forward testing which has been analysed to not only look at typical expected drawdown (both worst case and monthly average); but also what trade signals to expect, the time duration of these trades, and the probability of holding these given trades during certain market moving events.

To answer your question directly, I will be risking no more than 3.0% per trade of the account balance, with only one trade open at any single instance. Should drawdown on the account exceed 30.0% through normal trading activity then the account will be paused until I have established what is causing this problem. During the six years of tested data the maximum drawdown has reached 21% while risking a constant 3.0% per trade.

Just for simplicity, 12 losing trades at 3% when compounding down equals -30.62% of drawdown. Clearly, if and when the target is achieved a 3% risk per trade will be reduced accordingly.

10

Good Luck
Gp

11

What a great way to start the year.

We wish you the best of luck on your venture, Jezzode. Don’t let the pressure get to you. Trust in your systems and instincts.

Looking forward to your updates.

-Forex Gump (and Huck who’s beside me right now)

12

Thanks for the kind words, and yes, hopefully the pressure will not drive me too insane :wink:

13

In for this thread. Happy to see how this goes and a lot will be learned by everyone here :slight_smile:

14

Other people’s opinions don’t matter :wink: You just concentrate on what you need to.

Got my troll gun ready for action should anyone jump in here looking to make a scene.

15

I think many people waited for something like this. I hope you keep this account public for as long as possible!

Lots of pips to you!

16

I don’t know about you but I’ve read a lot of Forex threads, emails, questions and also educational material during my time trading. The same disheartening message seems to be being made increasingly clear, and that is “A trading strategy will at some point fail - regardless of if it is flexible and happens to adapt to the market” (don’t traders just love that phrase “[I]my system adapts to the market[/I]” - sure it does!)

I’m not here to answer this question directly - and i’m sure their is indeed some mathematical working to prove that at some point a profitable system will hit a margin call - but why are we being told this, and more to the point what can a trader do to avoid this unknown devastation date.

Now some people argue that compounding is partly responsible for shortening the life of an otherwise profitable trading approach. By compounding up every time your balance increases, your potential losses are always going to grow exponentially as a factor of your 100% deposit amount. The answer to this would be make sure you also compound down after a loss - doesn’t take a PhD student to figure that one out.

However, ignoring compounding for now and taking a linear approach, why do trading systems have an expiry date - and how can a total newbie turn this information into an advantage, rather than taking it as a negative and realizing that they are wasting their time with trading entirely because at some date, no matter how good they are, they will drive their account to zero. It doesn’t sound logical does it…

The problem with people in general from a sociology point of view is that the harder an activity is to complete, the greater the number of people who either want to give it ago, or wish they could successfully complete it. This sounds familiar to Forex right…succeed in Forex and all of a sudden you have walked straight into an elite club.

So back to the question in hand, are we being told this by traders who have failed and poured their life and soul into trading and who have now turned bitter; or are we being told this by mathematicians who use black and white rules to predict a not so black and white market. A successful trader would sure as heck not agree with this as they are still being successful, still making money and still walking down the correct road.

So who would you rather listen to when considering [U]if[/U] all trading systems at some point in time will fail… A mathematician, perhaps. A failed trader, don’t be stupid. A successful trader, absolutely. Of course the problem with trading forums is that we don’t know who is successful, but finding people who can’t trade is admittedly a little easier! At what point in time do you have to take a step back and realize that the blind are leading the blind and listening to some of these opinions will be more damaging than beneficial?

17

This is really simply a shameless subscription post, but on the compounding point my approach is simply to risk a fixed percentage of my trading account on each trade, recalculated at the beginning of each calendar month. So I’m agreeing with you - were I to have had a losing month, the following month’s risk per trade would be less. So I agree with you!

18

It’s been my experience that systems or methods don’t fail so much as the person that is using them does.

When I’ve hit a dry spell of wins, it’s usually because I’ve subconsciously tweaked what I was doing so subtly that it was detrimental enough to the strategy to cause a drawdown. It’s a constant battle to stay on point as it is human nature to want to “perfect” something.

19

Good fortune Jezzode :slight_smile:

20

Too much thinking Jezzode… Just push button that’s all it takes ( thinking is optional) lol

21

If only that was the case, right.

I like to know my probabilities, be them historical or the future likelihood before placing my money on the table :wink: