Welcome back, Zulu-traders. Here's an update of my various demo accounts after the third full week of demo trading.Its important to test signal providers in your demo account because 1) You can limit the number of open lots and 2) You can see the affect of stop-loss values. Without these controls, its too easy to be deceived in terms of how well or poorly the provider will do once you put your real money to work. Believe me, i've learned this lesson the hard way.
For my demo trials, I limited each provider to 2 maximum open trades with a stop-loss of 180 pips. The only exception is the TheKillerz which I set to a stop of 300 pips per his advice.
The best performer of the week was Zulutrade provider TrendCatcher who netted 87 pips. In addition, he's come back into profitability and now has earned a total of 85 pips after returning from a 120-pip drawdown. His performance graph for the 3 week period is shown above.
The second best performer for the week was AkhterFx who netted 14 pips on the week. Unfortunately, he's still down -579 pips since the start of the demo period. This was caused by a couple of EUR/USD trades that hit my -180 pip stop back in the last week of September. In his profile page, Akhter recommends that users DO NOT set their own stop-loss value. Signal providers can make statements like this since they don't trade with real money and can tolerate very large drawdowns. But this approach doesn't work for me because I trade with real money and can tolerate only limited drawdown.
Next up was provider Coolie 1997 who lost -104 pips on the week. I felt the pain in my live account on this one. See my blog post Coolie takes a hit for some discussion and reflection on this. As of now, i'm still live with Coolie-san and he has an open long position in EUR/GBP which is showing about a 90-pip loss as well.
Last up was TheKillerz who was down -131 pips on the week. This account had a tremendous run starting-up with almost 2000 pips profit but seems have run into some trouble this past week. One good thing was that he limited his losses to under -150 pips, but that said, his winners didn't add up enough to overcome the losses.
There were a few other interesting development on Zulutrade this past week, but i'm out of gas for now. So stay tuned for future updates and have great week.
There were a few other interesting development on Zulutrade this past week, but i'm out of gas for now. So stay tuned for future updates and have great week.
Hey Tcxmon, Have you looked at providers, LowestDD and Sophistication..Sophistication had one great week if I am reading it right...Lowest DD had one or two losers...Im impressed..See you Chris...
ReplyDeleteJim
Jimmy-
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words. We will be following you over at:
http://milliondollartradingroom.blogspot.com
All the best,
Tcxmon
I just wanted to come here and say coolie1997 pulled a good one today. I could not stand it and took +74 pips on it by closing it out in my real account. There is a good possibility I should not have closed it that soon, but being +50 pips over his average I could not help it. I hope we can get some more good ones in a row again.
ReplyDeleteOn another note: I know Jim touts LowestDD, but I am not sure I can trust using him still. Looks like I could pull it off at a 200 pips stop loss. As history shows he has 145 trades that would have stopped out at a loss of -29000 pips for that safe stop, totaling up the rest would show +53418 pips. This means a profit of +24418. But we all know that there is no way we could be in on all of these trades (maybe mico account could), as LowestDD is one of those that opens multiple trades at one time. Now, it looks like LowestDD has changed a bit since I last evaluated him. His average pips is not bad sitting at 31. So, my mind may change about him, and maybe he does deserve a stop loss at 180 to 200 pips. I suppose I should demo him again.
JT-
ReplyDeleteI was discussing LowestDD with Jim last night. If you look at "LowestDD's" performance history and go over to page #4 and #5 in his history, you will see he had a bunch of trades with 400-600 pip drawdowns that he closed for +5-10 pips each about 5 weeks later.
In fact, I can't find a single loss in his history. So I don't believe he can really take a loss, he just holds onto his losers until they come back. Clearly not realistic and not for me.
Cheers,
Tcxmon
I definitely agree with you. Even though I don't care much for LowestDD, I have been keeping an eye on him. He use to have open trades in the big negative, now he is at 0.0 again (probably was those 400-600 draw downs you mentioned). Bottom line for me when it comes to a signal provider like LowestDD is you have to set up your own safe stop. You had a pretty good post on determining where to place this, and I have my analysis I do on past data as to where I would place a safe stop. What he has going on is very unrealistic, so one needs to try to create their own realistic scenario 'IF' they are interested in doing so. Of which is very hard to do, using past data, when they open multiple trades, in an unrealistic fashion. Of which LowestDD does. It actually bugs me this guy calls himself LowestDD when he has actually drawn down more than -500 pips.
ReplyDeleteAt any rate you are right, he will probably never be for me either. It just bugs me signal providers open multiple trades at the same time. It is pointless, and a deceptive tactic on a few levels.
Well, I am disappointed by their "Top List", it has too many weird entries. I also couldn't make much sense of tech support, especially as I came across at least one "known issue" in the database, and I couldn't convince my fellow Greek executive to listen to me. It is good to remember that there is no voodoo on earth that can tell you if a provider is good after a few weeks or months, especially when the market is moving fast. When it is moving, it favours providers which have biases against certain currencies, and it would be very difficult to justify such a bias over a period of years, but over a few weeks you will look like a genius. Although I was considering becoming a provider myself with a fully automatic setup, I am concerned the current arrangements on ZT verge on the scam side of things, with ZT not reinvesting the $$ generated from referrals, and not cleaning up the leaderboard to lure in more customers for the referral and pip milking
ReplyDeleteTimisis (aka Anastasios?)-
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comments. I'm following at best about a third of what you are saying here, but i'm always open to new perspectives and it sounds like you have that.
Agreed that providers go hot and cold based on the their biases and conditions in their favorite pairs.
I've fallen into the trap of thinking providers can do no wrong after a hot streak of many weeks and 100's of pips. But conditions change and they go into periods of drawdown and I usually jump on board at the worst time and follow them into the hole.
I'm mainly a stock trader and i'm conditioned to sniff out trends and jump on board once it becomes obvious that the current price behavior is beyond what would normally be due to chance.
I've tried to apply the same logic to Zulu with less than stellar results.
Anyway, before it get off on a major tangent, agreed that Zulutrade has its share of issues and some aspects of it border on a scam. If they made a few simple adjustments to the platform the the results would be a lot more realistic and not so easily lure in nubies like I got lured in.
Anyway, let us know your further insights and what your up to whether its currency, computer science or business.
Cheers and thanks for reading,
Tcxmon