Zulutrade - Top Providers by Live Trade - 11/27/2009

Welcome back Zulu-traders.

To your left please find the top 20 Zulutrade providers by Live Trade for trades closed from 11/22/2009 through 11/27/2009.

Most of the names look familiar, but there a few standouts.

First is 3A who made a first-time appearance on the top-20 list. He also appeared on my post Lot-Limit and Stop-Loss results with a relatively high profit factor of 5.4. That means that his closed profits are 5 times greater than his drawdown on a closed-trade basis.

Anyway, I took a look at 3A and he appears to only trade the GBP/JPY which is a non-starter for me. GBP/JPY is too volatile for my taste versus say GBP/USD or EUR/USD. I've heard stories that some professional forex traders trade nothing but GBP/USD because it has good daily pip range trending behavior, etc. TheKillerz and Bigwin trade mostly GBP/USD.

Another standout is king trade who is also making a first-time appearance on the list. We added king trade as a new demo this weekend after yesterday's post Review of Rossco's picks. So we will be watching this provider in this week's action along with our other demos.

I still think there are couple of good candidates for new demos from my post Lot-Limit and Stop-Loss results, but I haven't had the energy to go back and go through them. Please take a look yourself and let me know any suggestions.

Use the providerid from the table to navigate directly to the performance page for each provider:

https://www.zulutrade.com/TradeHistoryIndividual.aspx?pid=

That's all for now, good luck and good trading.

Zulutrade - Review of Rossco's Picks

Welcome back Zulu-fans.

Reader Rossco was kind enough to leave us his provider picks in his comment to my post Lot-Limit and Stop-Loss results a post a few days back.

To your left find a report showing the results when those providers were run through by 2-lot 180-pip stop filter. A few things jump out, but they can be deceiving, so let's go through his picks one by one and come back to the graphic as needed.

His first pick is King Trade who looks pretty good. He's been on the Zulu system for about 4 months with 255 trades and a max drawdown of -115 pips and I can only see a single 2-pip loss in his entire 4 month history! That gives him profit factor of 306 which is pretty much off the charts. If ever there was a provider worthy of a demo account, its King Trade.

Next up is one2three. One look at his profile page indicates he has over twice as much in open losses as his has in closed profits. This means he just opens trades and wait for them to come back which is not a workable strategy for me.

Next up is SFForex who at first glance who has a max drawdown of -113,410 pips and a closed profit of 63,789 pips. This is the very definition of a risky provider where drawdown exceeds profits and I have to look elsewhere for that reason.

Next candidate is 1NEARD_X. This provider appears to have some promise, but there are large drawdowns (-380 pips) is his history, and he's only actually closed trades on 3 different days on the Zulu system. In fact it looks like he's actually made only 3 distinct trades on the Zulu system and the last of the 3 was basically the same trade 47-times over. This guy is definitely playing with funny money and i'm not amused.

Next victim is GETTIN PAID!!! who went negative this past week after being up almost 3000 pips. He got crushed by a series of losses in a long GBP/JPY trade which got stopped out down -500 pips. Since 500 pips is the system default stop, its clear he just put these trades on and walked away. I feel sorry for this provider having taken some real 500-pip losses myself.

Next up is *Instant Cafe Records* which is pretty creative name. Unfortunately, he has 1,200 pips in open losses for his 2,300 pips in closed profits which is a non-starter for me. Next please.

Next provider is JEDI42 who has a 95% win rate. Unfortunately, his largest drawdown is -1082 pips for his 669 pips in closed profits. This isn't really that bad, so i'm pretty picky nowdays so i'm going to have to pass.

Next case is SharePips who was also riding high lately until a pair of 500 pips losses came along and cut his profits by 40%. Another case of leaving losses for -500 pips (similar to GETTIN PAID!!!!).

Next up is Winpips4Us. This provider seems to have some promise with a 95% win rate but with an average win size of 5 pips, if this guy take more than a 5-pip profit, its apparently by accident. I have to see wins greater than the 20-pip range to make it worth my while. A good example is TheKillerz who averages closer to 30 pips per trade. Otherwise, its like picking up nickels in front of a steamroller. Sure you'll make some profits, but sooner or later, you'll get steamrolled.

Next up is TORA! TORA! TORA! who took it on the chin this week with a serious of -500 pips losses. This provider lost 6,500 pips this week. And I thought I had a bad week on Zulutrade!

Next up is FxTeddyBear who looks pretty good, but hasn't traded since July 15, 2009. So we'll have to disqualify him on the basis of inactivity. Of course, with how well I have been doing with Zulutrade, non-trading would be a preferable strategy.

Last up is auto-fx who hasn't traded since 9/15/2009. This isn't because he hasn't been active on Zulu, its just that he has a boatload of aliases and just moves between his 43 different aliaes and takes profits when he has them. Fun for him, not much fun for me. He's making more money with SURFING who is currently #2 on the Zulutrade system for "Sum of Live Trade" as shown on my post Top Providers by Live Trade 11/20/2009.

So the only provider that comes out of this evaluation with a demo is King Trade who looks like a screaming winner. Enjoy your Saturday and check back later.

Zulutrade - Live Account update - 11/27/2009

Welcome back Zulu-traders.

Well it was a brutal week with my live account and I need to take some steps to protect my remaining captial before I do much more live trading. If anyone reading this blog can suggest a good FX broker who works with Zulutrade and allows Micro (1K) lots, please let a comment and let me know. Please do that now before you forget and then go back and read the rest of this post.

Let's get back to the week's trading. The week started out on a down note when I manually closed a trade put on by EliteCapital for a loss of 64 pips. This turned out to the bottom of the trade and EliteCapital closed it the next day for a 100-pip profit. I wasn't too concerned about this at the time as I figured it could make it back easily enough.

Monday was a good day and all of my providers participated and I picked up 59 pips.

Tuesday was a pretty decent day and I picked up 36 pips, and everyone participated except for Cheetah. Late Tuesday Bigwin went short 2 lots of GBP/USD in the low 1.65's which looked like a pretty good trade at the time. That trade didn't work out and I went to bed down about -60 pips on each lot, pretty far away my -180 pip stop.

I woke up Wednesday to find myself stopped out, down -180 pips on each position. This was a -360 pip gap down in my account, but I can't complain since Bigwin has added about 495 pips into my account since I added him in early November.

Not content with that trade, Bigwin went long USD/JPY at 87.60 which had just pierced the recent low at 88, but had not yet taken out the intra-day lows set back in late 2008 and early 2009. This trade was in the money briefly, but started to go negative, and I closed this trade out down 1 pip. Then Bigwin came back again and added another lot which I closed out later that evening down -37 pips.

Between those 2 trades, EliteCapital came in and bought USD/JPY right about the same price level - 87.70. I stuck with this trade which hit my -180 pip stop early in the evening on Thursday 11/26. Not content with those losses, both EliteCapital and Bigwin came back and bought USD/JPY again and I close both of those trades manually, down -48 pips and -112 pips respectively.

I understand the Martingale concept where you increase your bet size as the position moves against you. Then you basically make it all back (and then some) when the position moves back in your favor. But that strategy is a sure thing only when the gambler has an unlimited risk capital. Wait - Zulutrade providers have unlimited risk capital - but I don't. So this strategy might work for them but doesn't work for me. Seriously though, why do these guys continue to add to loosing positions? If something isn't working out, do you keep doing it?

The week ended on a slightly brighter note where Cheetah came in and added 27 pips in pair of trades on Thursday evening and Friday AM.

Overall stats for the week:

TheKillerz + 113 pips - This provider has been sublime - let's hope he keeps it up!

Cheetah + 46 pips -Slow but steady

EliteCapital - 259 pips - Ouch!

Bigwin - 494 pips - Double ouch!

The overall net on the week was -594 pips.

Granted, Bigwin's GBP/USD trades topped out -220 pips and my stop was -180, and these trades were closed out by him for a profit within 24 hours of my being stopped out. But I closed out 2 of his USD/JPY trades for a small loss which would have gone on to much larger losses.

Similar situation with EliteCapital where I closed some of his trades early, but also saved some further losses. We can take a look a better look at Elitecapital when I review his demo account. I clearly added him to my live account too early.

Overall, I think I understimated the amount of drawdown involved in successful trading. I'm thinking if I went to 10-cent pips instead of dollar pips, I could better take the pain and have a better chance of making money.

Have a good weekend all and stay tuned for Rossco's provider picks from my post Zulutrade - Lot Limit and Stop Loss results.

Zulutrade - Expiring demos wrap-up

Welcome back Zulu-fans.

Thanks to everyone who commented on yesterday's post - Lot limit and stop loss results. I have some follow-ups from that post, and I'll get to those later or tomorrow. But I have demo accounts that are closing tomorrow, and I need to put the wraps on those before they disappear.

First up is Isunia who zigged-zagged between profit and loss as shown the the graph above. He hit my -180 pip stop twice during the demo period. Not a terrible record, but not extraordinary either, so we won't be following this provider going forward.

Next up is Student who turned in a solid (but not extraordinary) 128-pips in the 30-day demo period. What's impressive is that he lost only 4 times out of 22 trades total, and his maximum loss was -15 pips! I'll be watching this provider going forward although I'm concerned his low level of profitability could be blown out by a news-related price gap.

Next up was Sophistication who lost 630 pips during the demo period. He hit my 180-pip stop 10 times during the demo period and shows clearly too much drawdown for my 10K lot account. He might work for a smaller lot size, where I could tolerate more drawdown, but clearly not working for my account parameters.

Next up was JLOFX who sprung into action on 11/24 after almost 25 days of no trading activity. Its like he suddenly realized he was about to be eliminated due to inactivity and he sprung into action pulling in 59 pips over 9 trades in a 2-day period without a single loss. This is impressive, but I prefer providers who put in a daily effort perhaps missing a day here and there so we will look elsewhere.

Next up is Wqq899 who lost -538 pips over the demo period. This provider got off to a bad start, being stopped out on his first 3 trades, and never recovered from that drawdown.

Last up is Trendcatcher who shows a loss of -440 pips over the demo period. I found out from a comment by Alan that his loss of -157 pips in my demo account was actually closed by the provider for a small profit. Even so, I've been following this provider for a while and while he has good loss control, and trades like he's using real money, he's not consistently profitable enough for consideration for my live account.

So the only demo provider to survive this evaluation was Student.

That's all for now, enjoy your Holiday and don't eat too much Turkey!

Zulutrade - Lot Limit and Stop Loss results

Welcome back Zulu-fans!

Well I've been promising it and here it is. To your left, please find analysis of the top 20 providers in Zulutrade after my 2 lot, 180-pip stop filter has been applied.

Before we get to lessons learned (and there are plenty), let's examine the results overall.

Of the 1084 providers analysed, only 499 (just under 50% of them made any profit at all. When I add up the total pips earned across the group, they actually lost -480,966 pips. When I sum up the draw down, that equals -1,230,294. That means the profit factor (profit earned for draw down encountered) is actually -0.39! That means the system as a whole loses money when lot limits and stop losses are used!

It's no wonder that Zulutrade won't let you filter the results for the stop and limits, because if they did so, you probably wouldn't want to trade on the system! And that's where the Zulutrade dream meets hard reality. Use of stop and position limits in general kill profitability.

I went back and ran the same stats for the database without use of stops and lot limits. For that sample, the entire system earned 667,176,917 pips but had -769,083,710 of drawdown. So for the entire system (without stops and lot limits), the profit factor is only 0.86, less than one. That means the Zulu system as a whole is a "Risky Provider" meaning drawdown exceeds profit earned!

Now let's focus on the top-20 graph from above. Most providers (with the exception of Real Conservative Trading and Crocodile have drawdowns greater than -500 pips. That's explains why I have consistently lost money on Zulutrade. Its because I usually drop providers once their drawdown exceeds 500 pips or about 5% of my original $10,000 investment. Even with the top 20 providers, you would have had an average of -717 pips drawdown.

So what does all this mean? It means that Zulutrade is mostly a losing proposition, at least from the customer's perspective. Of course, the FCM's, the Providers and Zulutrade themselves make money. But the customers have the odds against them for making any money.

Another key takeaway is that the more conservative you are with your money (by use of lot and stop losses), the more likely you are too lose it! Put another way, the use of stops and limits keep you in the game longer, but in the end, they just prolong the pain and you loose you money over a longer period of time instead of losing it all at once.

Overall, this is a pretty depressing set of circumstances. I'm going to need to assimilate these results and decide whether I want to risk any more real money with Zulutrade. I love the concept, but I'm having a hard time with the reality.

All that said, some providers do have an uncanny knack for making money, even with stops and lot limits. Some of my favorites are #16 Bigwin, #24 Coolie1997, #69 Cheetah. Cheetah himself is pretty amazing overall in that according to my simulation he earned 1123 pips with a max drawdown across trades of only -50 pips.

Another example is TheKillerz who is #124 on the filtered list with 733 net pips and 395 pips drawdown. And TheKillerz has only been active on the system for about 9 weeks! So I think you can make money with good providers overall, but if you can't handle a drawdown of -1000 pips, you're probably going to lose your nerve (and leave the table) before your provider can make your money back.

That's all for now, thanks for reading. And for those of you based in North America, have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Zulutrade - Top Providers by Live Trade - 11/20/2009

Welcome back Zulu-traders.

To your left, please find the top 20 providers by Live Trade in the Zulutrade system for trades closed from 11/15/2009 through 11/20/2009.

Cheetah occupies the top spot, up from #5 last week. New comer Jack Bauer made a big move up to occupy the #11 slot, up from #60 last week.

My personal favorite Bigwin rose to #15 on the week up from #27 last week. Our other favorites not appearing in the top 20:

Coolie1997 - #34
TheKillerz - #48
Trendcatcher - #129

Keep in mind that these numbers (along with everything else on Zulutrade) are somewhat suspect. So this information is for entertainment purposes only.

Have a great week and stay tuned for my analysis of top Zulutrade providers when my 2-lot, 180-pip stop filter applied.

Zulutrade - New Pairs, Performance Graphs

Welcome back Zulutraders. Two items for your attention.

First, check out the new, weekly performance graphs provided by Zulutrade for each of your demo and live accounts. I received the graphic via e-mail earlier today (Sunday) with a single e-mail containing the performances graphs for each of the accounts covered under that e-mail account. The graph covers the prior 15-days performance.

Above, please find the performance graph for provider Trendcatcher for this past week. Thanks to Alan for commenting and pointing out that an open GBP/JPY trade opened by Trendcatcher was closed by Trendcatcher for a 25-pip profit. In my demo account, that same trade was allowed to run to a large loss. Alan rightly pointed out that until these issues are resolved, we can't commit any serious funds to Zulutrade.

Second item is that Zulu added 2 new pairs (at least for FXCM users), EUR/CZK and USD/CZK. If you have stop values set for your providers, they have been converted to "per currency" stop values. You need to go to the settings tab under your account, and add stop values for these 2 new pairs for each provider. If you don't do this, then any new trades which hit your account from these pairs will have no lot or stop limits which could have bad consequences for your account. So take a look and make sure you are covered.

Cheers have a have a great week,

Tcxmon

Demo Accounts Update - 11/20/2009

Greetings from the Zulutrade jungle.

Here's a weekly recap of demo accounts i'm following.

The screaming winner for this week on the demo side was TheKillerz who picked up +267 pips. His demo account is up 331 pips in just one week's time. And keep in mind this is with a 2-lot limit and 180-pip stop, so with was done with realistic account parameters. I added TheKillerz in my live account this past week and he picked up 46 pips in 2 days trading.

Next up is Isunia who picked up 60 pips on the week. Overall, he's up 259 pips since the start of the demo period. He hit my 180-pip stop 2 times and at one point was down -75 pips in the demo period, but he's fighting his way back. He's also gaining in popularity and was #7 this past week in terms of live following on Zulutrade. Looking at his open positions, he's leaning heavily in favor of further gains in USD versus EUR, CAD and NDZ and AUD. Also keep in mind that he keeps loosing positions open until they come back to profitability which explains his 94% win rate.

Next up is Student who was up 53 pips on the week with 6 trades. Overall, he's up 103 pips in the 3 week demo period. On the bright side, he has small drawdowns, and I don't see a single trade moving against him more than 35 pips. But we know there were issues with incorrect drawdowns in EUR/USD this past week, so we can't really trust these numbers. Also, with his average winner you in the 10-12 pip range, I don't seen enought pippage here to come back from the inevitable drawdown.

The chickens's came home to roost this week for provider Sophistication since his heavy short positions in GBP/USD came back into profitability. Unfortunately, by that time the damage had been done in my demo account and at one point he was down about -1,300 pips. Even though he had a good week (+248 pips). This large drawdown make this provider a non-starter for my live account.

Provider JLOFX hasn't placed any trades in the demo period, so we haven't learned anything from this demo and will be dropping him unless he does something in the remaining 7 days.

Next up is Wqq899 who gained 90 pips on the week. Prior to that, though, he's been a complete disaster and hit my 180-pip stop on his first 3 trades. That definitely would have sent me running for cover in my live account.

Next up is TrendCatcher who was up 146 pips on the week but still down -141 pips since the start of the demo period. You would never know that from looking has his public profile. Again, stops and position limits make a HUGE impact on actual result and often cause large differences in performance between public and actual results.

Next up is Cheetah who as picked up 78 pips in the 3 week demo period. Overall, i'm not impressed since his average winner is less than 10-pips and not really enough to justify the potential drawdown. I'm thinking of removing him from live trading this coming week.

Next up is Coolie1997 who was up 89 pips this past week. But he's down about -781 in open positions and added new positons in NZD/USD and EUR/USD this past week. He's positioned for further dollar weakness this coming week.

I realize that's a long list and the only ones who i'm going to keep following once these expire are Isunia, Coolie1997, TheKillerz and EliteCapital. Check back later for a list of Top Providers by Live Trade for this past week and other cool stuff.

Zulutrade - Live Account update - 11/20/2009

Welcome back Zulu-traders. Here's an update on my live account results this week.

Provider Bigwin was my big winner on the week pulling in +251 pips. He went short GBP/USD at 1.6819 which turned out to be a brilliant trade. He stuck with it and at one point was up over 200 pips. I ended up closing the trade on Thursday up about +156 pips, see the graphic on the left.

What's strange is that I found out later that he closed that initial trade for +5 pips that same morning. But for some reason, my account stuck with the trade and it paid off. This was a case where a flaw in the Zulutrade platform actually worked in my favor.

Either way, Bigwin continues to work for me as a provider and he's now added +495 pips to my live account since adding him back on 11/1/2009. He's also had 27 straight winners and hasn't hit my 180-pip stop even once.

Next up was TheKillerz who added +46 pips in 3 live trades since I added him on Wednesday 11/18. TheKillerz is also on a roll in my demo account where he added +331 pips since I setup that account last Friday 11/13/2009. In that account he has 15 straights winners.

Next up was Cheetah who was a complete wash for the week, adding 0 pips. He had 7 trades total with 4 winners and 3 loosers. On the whole, however, he has added +22 pips to my live account since I added him last week.

Next up was EliteCapital who I added late Thursday with one lot and 140-pip stop. He came out right away with a drawdown which was not confidence building for a new provider. I ended up closing this trade out for a -75 pips loss, but I held onto his GBP/JPY long into the weekend.

Last up were some manual trades I made which all turned out badly. In one case, I hedged a Cheetah trade and lost -160 pips. In another case, I followed Coolie long NZD/USD but at a better entry point than Coolie. This trade was profitable for most of the day Thursday, and at one point was up almost +35 pips. But the dollar rallied and NZD sank on Friday and I ended up closing this trade out -75 pips.

Overall, my live account is down -14 pips for the week but up +89 pips since the beginning of November. I think I learned that I need to trust my providers more and stick to the trading plan. Its easy when providers jump in and out and make a profit for you when you not even looking. Its another matter when a trade moves against you, and you end up taking a loss before you planned stop value just because you can't take the pain. That's why its important to follow your providers for some period of time and get to know them before going live. I need to have confidence that even if I get stopped out, the provider will come back me money long term.

Perhaps I added EliteTrader a bit too quickly. Anyway, let's see what he can do next week. He doubled down on his EUR/USD and GBP/JPY longs at the close and I stuck with the GBP/JPY long.

That's all for now, time to load up my Zulu provider database and see what interesting nuggets drop out!

Cheers and stay tuned.

Zulutrade - New demos for EliteCapital and PraetorianGuard

Welcome back to the wild world of Zulutrade!

Where else can you turn on your computer and find that someone on the other side of the world (who you don't know and will never meet) just made you 20 bucks?

Anyway, while combing the Twitter-sphere, I came across EliteCaptial and his more agressive sister account PraetorianGuard,

This provider seems to have all the right stuff as follows:

1) Good choice of provider names with no embedded spaces or funny characters that will crash my web-crawler

2) Nice account graphic indicating some degree of effort and sophisitication

3) Professional profile description that seems to match my own objectives which are account growth with a minimal tolerance for risk.

4) EliteCapital takes about 20 pips per winner and would have hit my 180-pip stop 7 times in his 127 trade history. That's about a 95% win rate and puts him well on the positive side of the sustainability equation. Running him though my 2-lot, 180-pip stop filter, he would have earned 690 pips versus his public records 2315 pips.

5) PraetorianGuard takes about 14 pips per winner and he would have hit my 180-pip stop 2 times in his 70-trade history. That's about a 98% win rate, and stepping down to a 95% win rate, he comes out on the positive side of sustainability, but not so much as EliteCapital. He would have made 431 pips after my stop, limit filter versus 829 in his public record.

6) Both providers put in a daily effort and trade almost every day, perhaps missing a day here and there.

Keep in mind that these are relatively new providers, EliteCapital has only been around for 8 weeks and PraetorianGuard only for 3 weeks. But even in that brief time, they have earned a spot on my demo account.

You can follow this provider on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EverquestFX.

And you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/tcxmon.

Cheers and check back later for more updates.

Zulutrade - Happy Anniversary FXTOIS

Welcome back to the strange world of Zulutrade.

Happy one-year anniversay to Zulu provider FXTOIS who closed his first trade on the system back on 11/14/2008.

Taking a look at profile page for FXTOIS, we can see he has a profitability rate of 86% with an average winner of 22 pips. His maximum drawdown is pretty high and is at 90% of his total profit. This puts him dangerously close to 'Risky Provider' status. Also, his average trade length is 45 hours which is on the long side.

Out of 253 trades, this provider has over 40 trades with drawdowns greater than 200 pips. He also had a dozen trades with drawdowns over 400 pips. So it appears that this provider weathers alot of drawdown compared to Cheetah for example. Cheetah has had over 430 trades without a single trade with drawdown more than 125 pips.

Keep in mind that we can't always trust the Zulutrade's history. In fact, we had a strange issue with Cheetah's trades earlier this week pointed out by fellow blogger Townjet. Take a look at Zulutrade Cheetah's strange trades for the details.

Back to FXTOIS, I would classify him as a "high drawdown" provider and look elsewhere for new demo providers.

Congratulations to FXTOIS for one year on the Zulutrade system.

Tcxmon

Zulutrade - Top Providers by Live Trade - 11/13/2009

Welcome back Zulu-traders.

To your left please find a list of the Top 20 providers on Zulutrade from 11/8/2009 to 11/13/2009 for positions closed in that period.

If you've been following this blog, you know that we can't completely rely on this figure to be accurate. Based on feedback from provider Coolie1997, we estimated that these figures can be understated by a factor of 4. In other words, the trade values are in reality 4 times larger as we see on the left with each unit being a Mini (10K) lot.

By the way, Coolie came in at #31 on the list with 40 live trades closed.

I haven't done any diligence on these providers, so I can't say they are worthy of risking your own hard-earned dollars. Even so, its interesting to see who is on top in terms of having the greatest dollar following from users with live accounts.

As promised, I ran my 2-lot, 180-pip-stop filter through my Zulutrade History database with some interesting results. I need to do some additional work to calculate the requisite drawdown (and required account size) before I share that data. Stay tuned and perhaps I can get it out later in the week.

Cheers,

Tcxmon

Zulutrade - Demo Accounts update - 11/13/2009

Welcome back Zulu-traders.

Here's my weekly update from the demo accounts i'm following.

Trendcatcher added 136 pips on the week, but is still down -287 pips since the beginning of the demo period back on 11/1/2009. In terms of his public profile, he's only down about 27 pips since 11/1, so my 2-lot limit is making a big difference in terms of his profitability. Overall, i'm not convinced this provider can pick trades any better than chance, and he often stops out trades with losses under 100 pips.

Next up is Coolie1997 who had 127 pips in closed profits for the week. The graphic above shows his public facing account history which shows nothing but green since 10/18/2009. What it doesn't show is the 4 lots he has open already which have a -360 pips in open losses. So in that respect, Coolie is starting to resemble some other Zulu providers who paint the tape green by taking profits when they have them, but let losses ride until they come back into the green. Anyway, we will continue to watch this provider as he provides a lot of good trades.

Next up is Isunia who is up +199 pips since the beginning of the demo period back on 11/1/2009. Interestingly, he has hit my 180-pip stop twice, and still come back to show a profit. That's pretty impressive and i'm going to keep watching.

Next up is TheKillerz who is on a terrific roll. His demo account closed out mid-week in fine fashion, see The Killerz Comeback. I opened up another account on Friday where he pulled in another 64 pips on Friday alone. On the public side, he is up +3400 pips in the 7 weeks since he started this new account. When I run his public record through by 2-lot, 180 pip filter, he comes up with a gain of +468 pips. When I increase that stop to -300 pips (per his suggestion) the results are identical. I think more work is required to discover the ideal stop for this provider.

Next up is Student who has gained 50 pips since I added him back on 11/2. On the public side, he has gained 25,000 pips in that same timeframe, but he has done so by opening multiple trades of 100 lots each. Overall, i'm not impressed since his gains are too small to overcome the nasty 150-pip gap that will come eventually.

This difference between public and actual performance makes me angry, because Zulutrade could fix this problem and keep new Zulu-customers from going off the cliff, but they refuse to do so. If they did, it would saved me $1000's of dollars in losses before I discovered this reality. I think this deception is what is keeping Zulutrade from getting really big. Come on Zulutrade - I know you are reading this blog, so bow to the pressure and do the right thing.

Next up is wqq899. This provider has been a complete disaster and has hit my -180 pip stop on 4 of his 7 trades. Not sure what I saw in this guy. Next.

Last up was Sophistication who took a beating his his short GBP/USD trades and closed out the 2 week period down -969 pips. He hit the 180 pip stop 7 times in the 2 week period and definitely is not working for me as a provider.

Lessons learned are the usual - public records on Zulutrade are very deceiving and it takes a demo account to really discover the truth about how providers will perform in your real account.

My local database of Zulu provider history now has 350,000 records in it. I'm planning to run my concurrent lot, stop filter through the provider history to find out who the real winners are. This will allow us to wander of the beaten path of the top 100 providers and discover some new talent that is undoubtedly lurking among the approximately 700 providers in my database.

So stay tuned for that and have a great week.

Zulutrade - Live Account Update - 11/13/2009

Welcome back to the wild world of Zulutrade.

It was a pretty good week in the Zulutrade jungle and my account continues to rebuild after a punishing October.

Provider Bigwin had another good week, and has now added +244 pips to my account since adding him back on 11/2/2009. Bigwin now has 18 straight winners and I would have make another 120+ pips but I closed out his short GBP/USD trade a bit early.

Provider Cheetah Cheetah also contributed a pair of trades adding +22 pips. Cheetah also appears to trade in "runs" like Bigwin, and the first trades in the run are generally not the ones that make the most profit.

I also followed Coolie1997 on some long EUR/USD and NZD/USD trades, and closed those out for a net profit of 14 pips. He later closed out NZD for a good profit and still has USD open. I could beat myself up over cutting my winners short and not letting them run, but its best not to over think things.

I'm starting to understand Coolie's style a bit more, but not quite comfortable with his ability to control losses. Perhaps its his knowledge of the fundamentals that gives him the ability to hold on through drawdowns. As of now, he has 360 pips in open losses and almost 2400 pips in closed gains. This is a reasonable percentage compared to some other Zulu providers. In my case, I don't want to tie up account margin on trades that are not working out. Either way, he's a very talented trader and worth continuing to watch.

That's all for now. Check back later for a review of the week's action in demo accounts.

Open up a free Zulutrade account by clicking here.

Zulutrade - How to rank providers

Welcome back Zulu-traders.

I must admit I've been baffled up to now as to how to submit my own rankings for providers I have used in the past. I had an IM converation with Julia from ZT support this evening and she filled me in.

I think my education and experience as IT professional was working against me in this case. Anyway, here's the procedure.

Basically, you go to the provider profile page and scroll down to the bottom just above the trade history. Hold your mouse over the 1-5 stars next to the 3 questions. If you have used the provider in the past, you will be able to click one of the 5 stars which auto-blank from the right and auto-fill from the left. In other words, you can select any number of stars from left to right.

If you have not used the provider, the mouse cursor will become a red "Do Not Enter" sign.

Notice that there are no negative ratings. Its kind of like a survey with choices "I like the performance of my local politician" with choices "A Little, Somewhat, Moderate, Moderately Positive, Very Much". There is no choice for bloody awful.

Provider ratings is another interesting way to compare provider popularity. More on that in a future post.

Cheers and good trading,

Tcxmon

Zulutrade - Pro-B5 Anniversary

Welcome back to Zulu traders.

Happy one-year anniversary to provider Pro-B5 who closed his first trade on the Zulutrade system one year ago back on 11/12/2008.

We have a long history with Pro-B5 starting back in February of 2009 with the post Shaken out of Pro-B5.

He had a big run over the summer of 2009 and landed at the top of our provider picks in early August leading to our post Pro-B5 Promises and Delivers. Pro-B5 generously responded to that post, weighing in on a number of issues dear to Zulu signal providers and subscribers alike in his response Pro-responds back on August 6th.

From there, things got rocky, leading to my post Pro-B5 takes a hit and Pro-B5 wipeout back on September 19th. Since I left Pro-B5, he has had a net gain of 335 pips with only 5 losses since then with a max loss of -129 pips back on 11/1/2009.

As a provider, Pro-B5 is probably as real as it gets. He rarely opens more than one lot at time which sets him apart from the bulk of Zulu-providers who open many lots and run large drawdowns.

Also on the plus side, Pro-B5 trades like he is using his own real money which is rare on Zulu. Also since he opens few concurrent lots and manages his open stops, you don't need do a lot of manipulation to see how your would have done with a reasonable stop and lot-limit

On the negative side, Pro-B5 takes relatively small profits. Since September 1, his average winner has been about 13 pips and his win % rate has been close to 90%. With a 90% win rate, he would have to make better than 18-pips per winner to come out on the positive side of the sustainability equation when using my 180-pip stop.

But since he manages his own stops, we can use his average loss of -72 pips (since September 1) instead of my stop value. In that case, if he wins 90% of the time and takes on average 13 pips per trade, he comes out on the positive side of sustainability equation

Also, his win size has improved somewhat lately and he took a 43-pip winner back on 10/14.

Overall, Pro-B5 is a solid member of the Zulu community and we thank him for his ongoing service. You can follow Pro-B5 on Twitter at https://twitter.com/prob5

Cheers and good trading,

Tcxmon

Zulutrade - TrendCatcher Anniversary

Welcome back Zulu-traders.

With my database of Zulutrade provider history now in full swing, I ran a query showing providers who have been on Zulutrade for a whole year. Providers who have stuck with same screen name for an entire 12-month's deserve some credit and are worth a look.

Today's luck winner is Trendcatcher whose first trade on the Zulutrade system was on 11/10/2008.

I've been following Trendcatcher in a demo account since 10/29/2009 with a 2-lot limit and 180 pip stop. As of today, he's down -293 pips since the start of the demo period, but he does have a +120 pip open gain in a GBP/JPY trade.

Looking at the demo period, out of 30 trades, he's has 19 winners and 11 loosers. With a 66% success rate, I prefer providers with a higher win rate. This gives me more confidence that the method of entry is selective and disciplined, well beyond what you could get from a coin-flip.

What's positive about Trendcatcher is that his profile indicates he trades his own signals, and based on his loss-aversion, I believe him.

Looking longer term, Trendcatcher has had some good months with monthly profits well above over 200 pips.

Strangely enough, he seems to do better in the in the autumn/winter months, and not as well in the summer months. I don't know if this has any significance - perhaps he's out on his jet-ski when the weather is nice. Nothing wrong with that.

The graph also shows that loosing months are relatively rare and we'll be following Trendcatcher to see if he can pull out a profit for this month.

Trendcatcher also runs a more agressive account called Magnum UB which has some nasty drawdowns and is close to 'Risky Provider' status where drawdown exceeds closed profits.

That's all for today, cheers and good trading.

Tcxmon

Zulutrade - TheKillerz comeback

Welcome back Zulu traders.

I've been watching a provider called TheKillerz for the past month or so, after meeting him on Twitter under the name Gascan69. That account was closed due to some platform issues and he started fresh under TheKillerz back on 9/30/2009.

My demo account started on 10/12/2009. I limited him to 2 lots with a 300-pip stop as per his suggestion.

Since the demo is about to close out, here's an update. At one point, he was down almost 450-pips. But he's come back into the positive, netting +191 pips total over the demo period. He closed strong last week with 15 straight winners. What's even more impressive is that the above results are a 2-lot limit, so he produced a screen looking like that without "painting the tape" by making the same trade 15 times.

In terms of sustainability, his average profit for each winner was 45 pips. Out of 33 total trades, he won on 26 (78%) of those trades. His average loser was -124 pips. Based on my stop loss of -300 pips, he would have to win 86% of the time (with an average win of 45 pips) to cover the stop loss. Working in his favor is the fact that he often closes loosing trades well before the 300-pip stop is hit.

Based on my account size and tolerace for drawdown, i'm not ready to add TheKillerz to my live account, but he's definitely worth continuing to watch via a demo account. I think based on my account size, 2 micro lots per trade would be a better fit than 1 mini-lot.

Also, I owe Mr Rabea a review on The Killer's "Hot Fuss" album. I gave it a spin today and here goes.

"Mr Brightside" is definitely the bright spot of this album. It starts out with some intricate guitar work then builds on top of that basic riff with an incredible amount of power and energy that's pretty rare for a studio record. I can imagine what these guys are like in concert.

Track 7 - "On Top" shows the dance-inspired electronic influence that we saw rise to prominence with the Killer's big hit this year "Human". Some spacey guitar shows some U2 influence as well, and this is my second favorite. Track 9 - "Believe me Natalie" has some influence of The Cure. Track 10 - "Midnight Show" sounds Billy Idol inspired.

Track 11 - "Everything will be Alright" is definitely a wind-down type song and is the closest this band gets to a slow song.

Besides great song-writing, vocals of lead singer Brandon Flowers gives this band a unique signature. Also, his phrenetic, almost psychotic delivery leads you to beleive he's about to come off the rails at any moment. It definitely appeals to the younger, more wired demographic.

Thats all for now, good trading all.

Zulutrade - Live Trade Analysis

Welcome back to the wild (and often deceiving) world of Zulutrade!

Looking at the Zulutrade performance page, its easy to click on the Users tab and sort the provider list based on the number of subscribed users. When you do that, provider Lowest DD comes right to the top. In fact he has almost 3 times the number of subscribed users as the next closest provider Pro-B5.

Presumably, this number includes both the number of live users and demo accounts following this provider. But can we trust this number?

When you think about it, this number can pretty easily be manipulated. All the provider has to do is request 5 new Zulutrade demo accounts per day (which I believe is the limit) and setup each demo account to follow themselves as a provider. Create 5 or 10 free e-mail accounts using Yahoo, and in an hour or two's work, a provider could easily add another 100 fictional followers. Repeat this every day for 10 days and bingo! 1000 new fictional followers!

What we really needs is a way to get under the covers and see how many real users are following the provider with real money accounts. The Zulutrade profile screen doesn't reveal anywhere how many live users are following a provider, so we need a way to peer under the covers and get at the live trading data.

Fortunately, the provider history (available for download via Excel) has a field called "Live Trade". This field presumably shows how many live users took that particular trading signal - although I can't find it documented anywhere. This is a much more accurate measure because people vote with their wallets. Also keep in mind that its not necessarily indicative of number of users, because a few very large users (with deep pockets) could be accounting for much of the trading volume.

Anyway, using my local database of Zulutrade provider history, I was able to reveal the real top users on Zulutrade according to actual trades executed. The table on the top shows the top-10 providers in the past week (DateClosed > 10/31/2009).

I haven't analyzed these results in any detail, but a few interesting things come out. First, my recent favorite Isunia occupies the # 10 slot. Isunia also occupies the #6 slot in terms of total user count and was the only provider to appear on both lists. If I was in law enforcement, I would call this corroborating evidence.

Anyway, here's a few other observations, that you can't see from the table above. There were 182 providers who actually had trades this past week and the total sum of live trades were 11765. I don't know all the specifics of pip rebates, but those of you who do might wish to leave a comment indicating an estimate of much Zulutrade as a system makes in a given week.

Here are a few other tidbits:

Bigwin is #12 with 200 live trades

Lowest DD is #23 with 146 live trades

Cheetah is #30 with 127 live trades

Sophistication is #31 with 122 live trades

Pro-B5 is #124 with 17 live trades

The Hunter is #158 with 5 live trades

So its clear that things are not always what they seem. Good luck and good trading!

Tcxmon

Zulutrade demo accounts update 11/6/2009

Welcome back Zulu-traders.

In my post Profit-to-Drawdown back on 10/28.2009, I took my new local database of Zulutrade provider history out for a test drive.
The database now has history on over 550 providers and 250,000 individual trades.

Anyway, the goal of the post was to identify providers that produced a high amount of closed profits as a percentage of drawdown on those same trades. The idea is that a provider that takes a 40-pip profit after a -10-pip drawdown is better than a provider that takes a 40-pip profit after a -120 pip drawdown.

Based on that list and some additional screening, I created a series of demo accounts. Let's see how those providers have fared in the week and a half since i've setup those demo accounts. To keep things realistic, I setup each provider with a maximum of 2 lots and a 180-pip stop which are the same settings I use in my real account.

First up is Isunia who bagged 107 pips since I added him on 10/28/2009. 19 out of 20 of his trades were winners. At his peak, he was up 276 pips, but hit my stop on one of the trades. His average pips per winner are about 15 and with 95% percent win rate he's just barely on the positive side of the sustainability equation.

For more on the sustainabilty equation, see my post Zulutrade stops According to the equation, Insunia would have to win 92% of the time on an average winner of 15 pips, so he's just barely positive with a 95% win rate. Anyway, I like Insuna's daily effort and will be watching him closely for a possible add to my live account.

The chart above shows the monthly profits for Isunia. You got to hand it to Zulutrade on those recent user interface improvements that make it easy to make great-looking blog posts.

Next up is Student who netted 49 pips, winning on 4 out of 7 trades. Impressive about this provider is that his maximum drawdown on any trade was -31 pips. His profile indicates these are his real trades, and based on his loss aversion, I beleive him. On the plus side, his win % rate is lower than I would like, but if he can keep his losses to under 100 pips, he could be a winner.

Next up was Sophistication who nabbed an impressive 138 pips and earned the most of my demo providers. At one point he was up over 450 pips which is pretty amazing for a 2-lot limit. Also impressive is that he leaned very heavily on the short side and every trade was a sell of GBP/USD. He would have had an utterly smoking week except that GBP/USD had a pretty good rally and my 180-pip stop was hit twice.

When GBP starts to sell off, this provider is going to make some major pipage. In fact he's short 15 lots of GBP/USD all the way down to 1.62.

Next up was JLOFX who hasn't traded since 10/27.

Last up was wqq899 who was a complete disaster. He only traded twice in the demo period and hit my 180-pip stop on both trades.

I have a few other demo accounts, but they didn't come out of the profit-to-drawdown screen. I'll cover them later or tomorrow.

Enjoy your evening,

Tcxmon

Zulutrade Weekly Update - 11/6/2009

Welcome back Zulu-fans.

It was a good week in the land of the Zulu's and my live account finally showed some signs of life.

The last of my positions with Coolie 1997 got stopped out at a loss of -180 pips sending my account to fresh lows. Coolie went on to close that position with a +72 pip gain after a max drawdown of -188 pips. So unfortunately, my stop turned out to be a hair too tight on that trade.

On the bright side, I added provider Bigwin on Monday first with one lot. He quickly picked-up a few pips and I added another lot with my 180-pip stop. After taking in 7-pips he went into drawdown and I nearly got stopped out (down -163 pips) which would have been very bad and probably would have blown me out of Zulutrade for the rest of the year. But I hung in there and he came back to close that trade up +3 pips.

As the week went on, he slowly picked up steam and closed the week with 10-straight wins up +145 pips on the week with my 2-lot limit. On his public profile, he picked up 1390-pips on the week, trading between 10 and 20-lots at a time.

I was particularly impressed with the way Bigwin traded on Wednesday and Friday. In both cases, he layed low until after the big event of the day (FOMC and NFP) and then picked his entry point carefully. Friday's trade was downright surgical, picking up 40-pips on each trade in about 20-minutes time with about a 10-pip drawdown.

The more I learn about trading, the more I realize that its all about being selective. It takes a lot of discipline to ignore 98% of the price action and sit on your hands 98% of the time and wait for that one trade. But that's what I admire in Bigwin and other successful traders, and that's a goal I aspire to myself.

That's all for now, enjoy your Friday evening and i'll update performance on the demo accounts i'm following over the weekend.

Tcxmon

Zulutrade User Interface improvements!

Welcome back Zulu-traders!

Zulutrade has made some really nice improvements to their user interface. They have also added some top-quality features make it easier to analyse provider history and open positions.

Most of the changes appear on the provider history tab. The performance graph has been given a new 3D look and feel. The graph on the left shows the performance history of provider British Pound.

Next up, notice the tabs along the top of the performance graph. They allow you to see the monthly P&L, Monthly Trade Volume and Currency pairs traded by the provider.

I particularly like the monthly P&L history because it allows you to understand why the provider might have a profitable history, but hasn't made any profit for you!

For example, the graph on the left shows that British Pound made the bulk of his profits in August 2009 and his returns have been declining by about 30% per month since then.

The trade volume and currency pairs tabs provide additional insight into the providers performance, well beyond what you could get previously. For example, take a look at the currency pairs trades by provider Coolie1997. Below is a graphical representation of just how versatile he is as a provider. I'll bet he trades more distinct pairs then any other Zulutrade provider.


The next really awesome improvement is the "Open Trades" tab at the bottom of the provider history page, just to the right of the trade history. This allows you to see the open trades for any provider where previously you had to subscribe to that provider to see the details of his open trades.

The benefit of this approach is as follows. Let's says you have a provider with good history like British Pound for example. You can see he's got almost 295,000 pips total profit, but about -2500 pips in open losses. But up to now you couldn't tell exactly where his loosers were.

Well now we can see that he's short 11 lots of GBP/USD from 1.62 to 1.65. This tells us that he's leaning heavily to the short side in GBP/USD which is nearly the identical position as his alter-ego Sophistication. Now we know that British Pound and Sophistication are highly correlated systems and following one is as good as following the other.

Another benefit of this approach is you can take a long-term position player like Coolie1997 and take a look at his open loosers. Given his history, its a pretty good bet that those loosing trades are going to come back to profitability given enough time. Like many good things in life, patience is required.

Despite these improvements, they are still missing 2 key features:

1) Let us filter the provider history on # of open lots

2) Let us filter provider history to simulate use of various stop-loss values

These last 2 items are key because (unlike Zulutrade providers) us real customers have a limited amount of risk capital.

Overall, though these improvements are welcome improvements. Good job Zulutrade!

Tcxmon

Zulutrade Provider Coolie 1997 comments

Welcome back, Zulu-traders.

We heard back today from our recent favorite Coolie 1997 who offers some perspective on his absence from active trading on Zulutrade and his change in style.


By way of background, Coolie 1997 entered the Zulutrade scene on June 29, 2009. Through the end of September 2009, he racked up an impressive 2000+ pips. He was able to pull in pips from a variety of pairs rarely seen on Zultrade such as NZD/JPY, EUR/JPY and EUR/AUD just to name a few. Even more impressive was that he did so with a remarkably small amount of drawdown. His success landed him in the top-10 providers on Zulutrade (by user count) which is a pretty impressive accomplishment in such a short period of time.

Anyway, after my buddy Townjet over at http://www.zulutrade-top.blogspot.com/ had an excellent September with Coolie I jumped on the Coolie bandwagon. Since adding Coolie to my live account back on 10/13, i'm now down almost -700 pips down sending my account to fresh lows. Depressed by this change of character, I posted Coolie what's the deal? and Townjet posted Putting a hold on Coolie 1997 both in the last 2 weeks.

Coolie has commented today as follows:

Hi Tcxmon,

Sorry for a long absense.

I have been seeking what trade style is the best for Zulu and me. Zulu users like short term gain, and my real trade style is very long one. The change of trade style made the users' lot smaller.

The total lots of all the users became 10-15%. Even though my job prevents me from trading 24 hours a day, the answer is almost 1), not 2).Sorry again for a sudden change and a big loss, please use me effectively by putting stop order, betting small lot, etc.

See you sometime,

coolie1997

So Coolie has retreated to a longer-term trading style. In terms of his recent performance, he has closed +357 pips since I dropped him, but he has -334 pips in open losses. His open losses are about 12% of his total closed profits since account opening back in July. He's nowhere near "risky provider" status (where Max Drawdown exceeds closed profit), but he's clearly at a higher drawdown rate than we have seen historically. But he does lend some long term perspective to currency trading with larger tolerance for drawdown.

Anway, we thank Coolie for his comments and wish him all the best with his trading.

Stay tuned for the weekly update,

Tcxmon