Greetings Zulu-traders.Zulutrade provider Coolie1997 had another smoking week. He pulled in 162 pips on 6 trades with a maximum drawdown of -62 pips. Since I added him in demo mode 2 weeks ago, he has 12 straight winning trades with a maximum drawdown of -77 pips.
I couldn't take the wait any longer and added Coolie1997 to my live account on Thursday evening with a maximum of 2 open trades with a 180 pip stop. He layed low all day Friday but surfaced just before the close and went into the weekend long NZD/USD at 0.7344. He did the same thing last weekend going long AUD/USD on Friday.
The remaining providers each had positive weeks, but are still underwater since the start of the demo period 2 weeks back.
TrendCatcher gained 72 pips and won on 8 out of 10 trades. He brought his overall performance back for the 2 week period to -2 pips, so he's just about back to even.
AkhterFx pulled in 102 pips for the week with 27 trades. But I realized after the fact that he had many over lapping trades and this wasn't a realistic test. So I went back and set all my demo account at a maximum of 2 concurrent trades which is what I would do with my live account. Even with the boatload of trades, Akhter is still down -593 pips since the start.
Zun pulled in 43 pips on 3 trades and all were all GBP trades made within a 2 hour period on Wednesday 10/7. Zun is down -182 pips since he started the demo period 2 weeks back. He also makes references to a 3-lot position so i'm not sure he's going to work for me since I have a 2 pip-limit.
Finally we heard from Gascan69 that he switched accounts early in the week to a new account called TheKillerz. I was slow is setting up this new account, so I setup the same account that had Gascan with TheKillerz with a maximum of 2 lots and a 300-pip stop which was per his advice. We'll get some good realistic results next weekend.
Looking at his new account TheKillerz is off to a strong start with a 97% win rate and an average win size of just over 50 pips. I ran my stop grid from yesterday's post on a 300 pip stop and found he has to be profitable just over 80% of the time for this strategy to be sustainable.Based on what we've seen so far this shouldn't be an issue. One reader asked him why he opens so many trades and his response was that he needs to get over the 30 trade threshold before he's visible in the Zultrade system.
His 97% win rate (so far) may be a big deceiving since many of the trades were really just the same trade many times over and wouldn't come out that way with a 2 lot limit. When he was GasCan69, he had about a 79% win rate with an average win of about 94 pips per trade which certainly appears to be sustainable using the table above.
The concurrent position limit of 2 lots could make a huge difference in results. That's one of the most deceiving things about viewing public Zulutrade results. Its difficult to see how they will do with your position parameters until you get them in a demo account.
One final point - The Killers is a great band. If you haven't heard their song Human check it out. Its a bit disco, but not too much for this rock and roll fan. Somewhere in the same rock and roll genre is The Airborne Toxic Event with their hit Sometime around midnight. If you haven't heard that, give it a spin, its powerful and emotional.
See you next time in the land of Zulu.
The killers is an awesome band "Hot Fuss" album is my favorite :D
ReplyDeleteThanks GasCan, i'll checkout "Hot Fuss".
ReplyDeleteHave a great week.
I am always open to comments and suggestions from subscribers. When did you start the demo? It seems that you caught the really bad sterling yen trades.
ReplyDeleteThe drawdowns can be attributed to the lag time on my system. I've seen a 1-2 day lag, and most recently a 1 week lag. I am considering only making 1-2 trades a week considering the amount of volume being pushed as the subscriber base grows. All comments appreciated. Have a great day.
Shawn
Shawn-
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments.
I started the demo accounts back on Sunday 9/27. You had 4 EUR/USD trades entered on 9/28 that hit my -180 pips stop on 10/2. Even with a 2-lot limit, that would have been a -360 pip deficit from which to recover.
Small Zulutrade account holders have to limit max open lots to just a few mini-sized lots. We also have to deal with stop size as you can see from my other post.
So from my side, I would like to see you have no more than 2 open lots, with a stop somewhere south of 200 pips. If your system does best with other parameters, let me know what they should be and we make some adjustments to the demo account.
Thanks very much for reading and comments and keep the feedback coming!
Those EURUSD trades were trading a range of 1.4535 to 1.4808. I got in too early. Market played my bluff. This is the first time I've seen the system lag 1 week. The most I've seen is 1-2 days.
ReplyDeleteI have closed positions a lot earlier due to bias shift. You will see some trades get closed very early, 20-30 pips. I let the drawdowns run at times because the bias still holds valid. I am just met with a momentary stop-run.
My conclusion from the drawdowns is that I entered too early and the market was playing my bluff. Happens a lot. I watch trades very closely and try to prevent accounts from blowing up. But even I cannot stop greed. (ie. $1,000 accounts trading standard lots then giving me a low rating)
You should ALWAYS allow 2 max trades from my end. Never increase # of trades. Always always follow the settings I have outlined. I place more trade on same pair due to new subscribers. I rarely place new trades if I have not closed the previous trades. I do not recommend a stop-loss from your end, as I trade high probability price gaps. But you should risk no more than 5%-10% equity in each trade. I treat this as a serious business and you should know that I do not let losses run without reason.
I have especially tailored this signal for accounts with $1,000 minimum balance. Everytime I trade, I keep in mind that I only have $1,000 in my account and that I am opening 2 trades maximum at a time. You will see that I am not like other providers who open their max allocated lots on a daily basis and carry huge drawdowns to paint the tape. (Although I am guilty of painting the tape with my earlier GBPJPY trades-- never again)
If you see a drawdown in the future, send me a message on twitter and I will be happy to explain why I am holding the position.
I had a friend who started following me with $1,000. Grew the account to $4,000 very quickly and thought he was pro forex trader. Started trading standard lots and you can probably guess where his account is right now.--in the gutter.
All the best,
Shawn
Shawn-
ReplyDeleteIf I understand you correctly, then a 10% stop on a $1000 account (using mini-lots) is a about a 100-pip stop which is just over 0.5% (one half of one percent) of the GBP/USD. Understood, it varies by pair - but that's a different blog post. Anyway..
Looking at it another way, with a 100-pip stop, and an average win of about 10-pips (from your public Zulu page) you would need to win better than 90% of the time for that to be sustainable. Your public record shows you profitable better than 92% of the time, which shows some promise.
But I can't tell from your public record how concurrent lots you have opened historically and what has been the drawdown. In the first week, you opened 4 concurrent lots. I can't tell from the record how many concurrent lots you opened on week 2. So I limited the demo account to 2 lots (yesterday) so we should get some more realistic results next week.
I understand the difficulty of trading forex, market conditions, etc. I'm just trying to be realistic about the prospects of account size, concurrent open lot, drawdowns, etc.
Thanks again for reading and commenting.
Sounds good.
ReplyDeleteJust adjust the settings according to my description and you should be fine.
All the best,
Shawn (AktherFX)
PS - I updated Coolie 1997 to 4 maximum open lots (was 2). I did this after I saw I missed an NZD/JPY trade which netted 31 pips.
ReplyDeleteThis made the Margin Call -o- meter ™ go from 3.4% to about 14%. I made this change because Coolie tends to open 1 lot each in different pairs versus just multiple lots of the same pair.
To offset this additional risk, I set the Maximum Open trades per currency to 1. I though that would make the Meter go down, but instead it made it go up from 14% to 26%. Go figure.
Dear Shawn,
ReplyDeletei also follow your trades on my real account.
i want to follow you on twitter,
whats your name?
Anonymous-
ReplyDeleteYou can follow AkhterFX (Shawn) on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AkhterFX
Cheers