Welcome back Zulu-traders. Here's weekly recap of demo accounts I'm following.Most of the providers came from my query Consecutive Trades with Low Drawdown posted back on 12/8/2009.
Missforex was the screaming winner on the week who picked up 347 pips in 6 straight winners. The last 2 trades came very close to souring and got as far as -172 pips into drawdown before coming all the way back. If this were real trades, there is a good chance those -180 pip stops would have gotten hit.
Next up is Blinov who picked up 225 pips on 11 straight winners with a maximum drawdown of -35 pips. Blinov appears to have one live follower who has gained 239 pips.
Next up is kingtrade who picked up 32 pips on the week and has now made only 4 trades in the month of December. But they were all winners and he's up 97 pips so far.
Next up is Ferrari who picked up 26 pips on the week. At one point, he was up 81 pips but got knocked down by a -56 pip loss. Ferrari has the distinction of trading his own money on Zulutrade which is rare.
Next up is 280pips.com who lost -108 pips on the week. His performance was case of cutting the winners and letting the losers run. I'm toying with the idea of reversing some providers and this provider could be a candidate for that strategy.Last up is Hayate who picked up 82 pips with 6 straight winners, then gave it all back and then some with a 186 pip loss.
Finally I would like to that all of my readers who come back to this blog often and visit the sponsor links. My Zulutrade experience has been discouraging to say the least, but your comments and feedback have lessened the pain and turned it into a learning experience.
Also, we have had some really excellent comments from Townjet (JT) Redford and Dazzer just to name a few. The last few comments by Redford alone have summarized many months and years of experience in a few paragraphs, and we really appreciate it.
Just looking at Blinov points out how easy it is to be hoodwinked by the Zulu game. This provider, for his last trades which all closed at the same time + or - a few seconds, had 30 open trades of one lot each prior to closing. Come on now, what is he, a bank? He would need several hundreds of thousands of dollars to carry that trade with most brokers. Prior to that last trade, he had another trade with 15 open lots, and prior to that, another with 14 open lots. Zulu should be penalizing these kind of traders (of which there are many), and rewarding the provider who trades <= 5 lots max. Really, Zulu almost forces you to go broke a few times before you can figure out WTF is going on.
ReplyDeleteRedford-
ReplyDeleteI had Blinov set to 2 lots max so the 11 straight winners comment from above appears to be valid - at least as far as any observation on Zulu is valid.
What gets me about Zulu is that when you find a provider that looks like a winner - who is going to bring home the pips without loosing all your money - they seem to blow up not long after you put them into your live account.
I can see this happening 2 or 3 times out of 10 attempts, but it happened to me with basically every provider. That's why i'm looking at EA's that are emotionless and you can run them back and forth over years of history to access their stability before committing real funds. Of course I haven't found the Holy Grail over there yet either - but I just got started.
Thanks again for reading and commenting,
Chris
Signed in as my wife - oops!
ReplyDelete'Of course I haven't found the Holy Grail'...
ReplyDeleteAnd if you do, you won't be blogging about it either. The Grail to me is, (1) frequent trades, (2) risk/reward (S/L : T/P) relatively small, (3) swing trades as opposed to scalps, (4) winning percentage 50% or more.
I have little doubt you can find an EA with (2), (3), (4) but not with (1)-(4). It would have been discovered by now and publicized. So we're left trying to find an unfrequent trader with all the other good stuff. Godfather EA could be one of them; and Daniel Fernandez has another which he shares with his subscribers. Why would he share it? Because, as has been proven with the Turtles System (Richard Dennis), people don't want to use a system which trades relatively infrequently and has a modest win/loss ratio, perhaps even a negative ratio where losses outnumber winners. Time (patience) is the great equalizer. Fernandez is giving away a verson of the Grail with little concern that hordes of traders will use it. Would you use it Chris? Do you have the patience? I don't think I do.
Redford-
ReplyDeleteThanks, great comment.
Yes I read the Turtle rules a few years back and also read an excellent book on the topic called "Trend Following" by Michael Covell. A few people have made big money with simple trend following such as including John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox.
Good point about the rules being public because most people won't have the patience to follow the rules and/or won't tolerate the drawdown.
I appreciate the psychological challenges of going long periods with no winners, and then building up large winners over time, just to watch them slip away until you are waiting for the trend following signal to get you out. Not the Holy Grail, but if you have the patience its one way to go.
I guess it comes down to whether you are looking for long term profitability or entertainment. ZuluTrade is certainly entertaining, but not profitable, for me anyway.
I haven't sprung for Daniel's E-book yet, but plan to do so shortly and spend some time with it over the break.
Let us know your experience with Godfather, and if you back testing agrees with your forward testing. I'm working on a post about backtesting with MT4, so check back later in the week for that.
Chris