Bigwin blows up, skips town

Greetings to those of you brave enough to venture into the Zulu-jungle.

My one remaining Zulutrade provider Bigwin blew up this past week sending my account to fresh lows. This time at least the stops worked properly and held at -180 pips per position.

Looking at the chart, Bigwin went long GBP/JPY at 1.47 which was a reasonable support point on the chart and corresponded to the lows set back in July. But instead, GBP/JPY dropped like a stone and closed the week at 143 down a nasty 700 pips on the week.

Looking at Bigwin's overall affect on my account (chart above), he left me up $600 which was more than I ever made on any other provider, even after his recent losses.

What really got me about Bigwin (just when I thought I had seen it all with Zulutrade) is that he vanished off the Zulutrade system! He did the same thing with his other account Forex Bridge. Rather than giving us the macabre satisfaction of showing a spectacular wipeout (anybody remember High Rollers?), he skipped town!

This is reminiscent of the traveling snake-oil salesman who comes into town, sells everyone a bill-of-goods, then leaves just as he is discovered as a fraud and a charlatan.

On a more serious note - this is what the big guys call survivor bias. The accounts that show profit on Zulutrade are still there - and those who fail miserably disappear off the system. This tends to build up the winners and leave the rest to ignore the "graveyard" of hidden evidence we never get to see. Thanks to Nassim Taleb (author the Black Swan) for that one.

This is yet another opportunity for improvement in the Zultrade system - don't let people delete accounts at a whim - leave them around so we can see the full extend of the damage they caused.

One other thing I learned from my experience with Bigwin was that you have to pay close attention to what's going on in the underlying. When he had a drawdown back in early August on the GBP/USD move up to 170, I was on the case enough to cut his loosers and go the other way which helped to minimize the damage. This time I was asleep at the switch and not aware enough to see the major breakdown going on in GBP against all pairs.

The lesson here is that money is made when value is created. And value is created as a result of careful and deliberate effort expended by talented people. No effort expended, no care taken, no value created.

Anyway, tomorrow is another day! Enjoy your weekend.