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.
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I have been thinking about adding Cheetah, but don't know how he will behave when an actual bad trade comes along that will go past -115. I am also thinking about activating Coolie again but I two am also worried about his draw down control. He use to not let it go past -90 to -120. I wish you good luck with Bigwin, I am still very wary of this guy. As I may have mentioned, he had me up over +1000 pips in July then lost it all in the first monday in Aug. I remember being excited about him because he did not let any of his possitions draw down past, what was it, -180 or something. Then he let them fly down to -400 and beyond. I know as soon as I decide to hop on if he is doing good, he will blow up. Kind of like what happend with you and coolie.
ReplyDeleteTownjet-
ReplyDeleteI went back and took a look at Cheetah's history using my provider database. He has 426 total trades, and the maximum drawdown I could find in his entire history was -115 pips! That's an amazing accomplishment when you think about it. That means (if you can trust Zulu's history) he would NEVER have hit my 180 pip stop! Eventually he will have a larger drawdown but that's what stops are for.
He does open many lots, and I ran his history through my 2-lot, 180 pip limit and under that scenario, he would have netted 1124 pips in his 138 days on Zulutrade. He's clearly a winner and other live users think so since he showed up #5 on this past week's activity by sum of Live Trade.
In terms of Bigwin, I went back and looked at his trade history and my record. He hit rough spots on 8/3 and 8/7. On 8/3, I closed out his first 2 trades down -160 and -34 each. Then I closed out his third trade -83 pips I think I pulled the plug on him as he had clearly gone off the rails. I traded against him with a manual account and pulled in about 100 pips.
So as long as you had a stop-loss and position limit in place, I can't see how you lost 1000 pips in one day. Worst case, you should have lost about -400 pips, and would have still been up +600 pips.
Thanks for the comments and let me know if i'm missing something,
Tcxmon
I am slightly exagerating, as on 8/3 I had 5 trades open for Big win. All of them loosers as he opened all five in a row and then blew to my stop. Can't remember what I had it at... Seems like I lost about 800. Then a few days later I only had two open trades then he lost the other 200 or so. Still was quite devesating, but not quite all at once as I exagerated. In fact I switched over to his other signal provider account Forex Bridge for a try, thinking he might be doing something a little more different/better, and lost some money there as well.
ReplyDeleteTownjet-
ReplyDeleteOkay, that makes sense. I haven't blogged it, but I think for a mini (10K) account, you should have $1000 in account equity per lot open. So for a 5K account, a total of 5 open lots would be a reasonable limit. And I wouldn't open all 5 lots with a single provider, that's why I stick with 2 lots max per provider.
Sure, the FCM's will allow you to open 5 concurrent lots with a $1000 account, but if you do that, all it takes is one 200-pip loss to wipe you out.
Cheers and good luck,
Tcxmon
I decided to go back in my history and clear this up. I suppose I was not exaggerating as I thought I might be. I had 5 open lots/trades for Big win at the time. I was up 1108 pips, then he had his bad day where he blew out to my stop which was at -210 (Aug 3), that took me down to +55 pips. I kept trading with him for a bit where he took me back up to +185, then on Aug. 7. I had two open lots/trade which he stopped out on -210 again. This put me at -236 with Bigwin when I stopped using him. (I am trading mini lots). I then traded Forex Bridge for a few times which put me another -184 pips in the hole.
ReplyDelete