Welcome back Zulu-traders.I was hoping to have a better update for you this week, but it didn't work out that way. This week my live account was crushed.
Before you read any further - don't invest any funds with Zulutrade that you aren't prepared to loose. Zulutrade looks like such a great concept from the outside, but from the inside I can tell you that all its done for me is loose money.
I sent a funds withdrawl form over to FXCM for the remaining funds in my account except for about $500 or about 500 pips. So i'm giving Cheetah and TheKillerz one lot each and one more shot to keep me in the Zulutrade game, and then i'm done with real money. I might keep blogging about Zulutrade though since I find it to be pretty interesting. Better yet - I should find some other way to make money with Forex that actually works (like Metatrader 4 Expert Advisor's perhaps) and blog about that.
First, let's review the week's action.
It all started out well on Monday when TheKillerz came in and picked up about 110 pips in less than an hour on 2 GBP/USD sell trades. Tuesday also went well for TheKillerz when he picked up a quick 45 pips on a pair of GBP/USD sells. I was feeling good and confidence was high as they say in civil defense.
Meanwhile Cheetah got into some trouble on Tuesday just before I was about to post Consecutive Trades with Low Drawdown - which showed that Cheetah had over 400 consecutive trades with less than a 100-pip drawdown. Well he made a liar out of me and hit my 120-pip stop on a GBP/USD buy that went the wrong way.
I ended up sticking with Cheetah and he recovered from his drawdown and ended up picking up 27 pips on the week. Altogether, he's added about 33 pips to my account total since adding him back on 11/30/2009 which is not much considering the drawdown.
Things got rough for TheKillerz on Wednesday when he had a pair of GBP/USD sell trades that he stopped out down -120 pips each. Just after that, he came back and went the other way and bought GBP/USD. These trades went almost 100-pips in his favor, but he rode them back down and closed them for +7 and +8 pips which i'm glad he did because I was about to do it myself.
This time he turned around and sold GBP/USD again and this time picked up 71 and 74 pips, making back the better part of the -120 pips losses earlier in the day. Overall Wednesday turned out okay and he was only down slightly on the week at that point.Thursday, things really got ugly for TheKillerz. First he sold GBP/USD and took a pair of 100-pips losses. Looking to recover his losses, he went long a pair of GBP/USD. I didn't like the looks of this trade, but stuck with it anyway, and rode this pair down for another pair of 100-pip losses.
Not content with loosing 400 pips in one day, he came back and went short GBP/USD again, not far from where he went short earlier in the day. By this time I had had enough for one day and didn't like the looks of this trade either. So I closed the first one at scratch and hedged the second one by going long GBP/USD. This turned out to be a good move because TheKillerz ended up closing this last trade down -76 pips and I took a 49 pip profit on my hedge.
So overall, TheKillerz lost me over -423 pips on the week and it would have been over -500 had I not stepped in to limit the damage. So his overall affect on my account went from +100 pips to -320 pips in a matter of one day.
I understand loosing trades, and when things don't go your way sometimes you just have to turn off the computer, walk away and live to trade another day. But when you keep coming back for more when your obviously getting whipsawed is not good trading. If you walk away when you are up +100 pips on the day, why not walk away when you are down -200 or even -400?
It helped a bit that I had Cheetah in the mix because there were a few times in the week when Cheetah and TheKillerz traded against each other, one long GBP/USD and the other short. As I mentioned in a comment, I like these 'Delta Neutral' trades because there's a pretty good chance both trades will be closed out at a profit.
That's enough pain and suffering for now, check back later and enjoy your weekend.
Hi Chris,
ReplyDeleteI just knew this was gonna happen, winning a handful of trades for 1 to 10 pips but always waiting for a 180 pip wipeout hurts bad and is painful. Get a 180 after just a few 10 pip winners and you realise it will take weeks to get back into profit..painful.
Then 2 or 3 more 180's as these chancers panic / revenge trade is writing on the wall unfortunately.
Stick with it buddy but find the guys that trade safe. I know u hate the traders that grab a few pips here and there and don't trade so often but they are the traders that will evolve and survive. They are the safe traders.
Dump the big stops, 40 -50 must be your max, my mentor , a classic s/r and trend trader spent a year showing me a 20 pip stop was all that was needed provided you analyse your trade correctly, and he was making 150 pip winning trades off the 15 minute chart with 20 pip stop, 10 lots a trade, $15,000 - $20,000 profits on a regular basis.
My mentor is a trading genius and I hope to be able to see trades as easily he does one day.
Buy dips/troughs in uptrends sell peaks in downtrends, peaks and troughs are just profit taking. Read and understand martin pring on trend analysis, listen to mark douglas on trading psychology. Priceless.
IMHO zt is a very dangerous service unless you understand how to trade profitably yourself, good money management is key, psychology next then knowing when to take profit...entries are easy.
So sorry Chris for the soap box post. I have paid the price myself BIGTIME and want to stop others feeling the pain too.
My point for posting is that forex trading can be very profitable BUT it most likely will cost 95% of folks their shirts.
Never trade real money until you have done at least two years learning and testing, many pro traders I have met said it took five years before they became profitable, some even 10 years.
Everything you need in order to learn how to trade profitably can be found for free online.
Never give up, have a break if it gets too much but come back...if others can do it so can you.
Trading is easy. Just give it 3-5 years.
Sorry I forgot to mention the xmas hols are here, all the pro traders/managers / market movers have left it to their underlings to play with the markets now.
ReplyDeleteNo big money no true volatility, we just have the little boys PLAYING the markets now, spikes, stop hunting, new blood testing their skills.
I am testing mine too but limiting my risk. I should really just stay out and go on holiday too but hey what a game and I am still just learning and always taking notes.
The real players are just waiting and watching, they will be back mid January.
Thanks for commenting Dazzer. And my apologies to Chris. I had the same thing happen to me, as I was trading with TheKillerz as well. Any interesting places you could point Chris and I in regards to trading would be great, I suppose I am speaking for Chris, and I hope he does not mind.
ReplyDeleteI am thinking of trading a method I have been researching for the past couple of months for next year and leave zulutrade signal providers to the demo accounts. It is a slower method, maybe make 100% or more a year, so I could essentially double my money. I have back tested this 4 years on several currencies and found the GBP/USD can turn and average profit of 250% to 300%. Probably due to its capable of moving and popularity. The EUR/USD comes in second and has a close 1 to 1 true ratio of reward to risk.
I wish I could find the method that allows me to risk 20 pips for a gain of 150. That would be Great!
I think Chris and I need to lick our wounds over the weekend. :) Hopefully we can both come back feeling okay.
As I have said before, I have lost money now for 3 years in currency trading, next year I will make money in currency trading. (Always need to stay possitive)
Hi JT, yes always stay positive for sure.
ReplyDeleteEarly on in my trading career I realised "some" people were making good money at this, I also realised "many" people were just scammers.
I made it my mission to find the true traders.
My mentor stopped teaching so I cannot recommend him, however his method was very simple.
I know there are countless good places where you can learn to trade from successful traders, I stopped looking once I found a few I knew were the real deal.
Top of the pile is Strat, google "Strats stress free trading" He teaches how to trade the daily timeframe using prica action at support and resistance, PRICELESS. and totally free.
Google James of j16, another brilliant thread about trading pinbars on daily charts.
The fx500club.com is a fantastic live trading room that I have been a member of and would hugely recommend. Dan Armitage is an ex city trader and professional trader teacher. Dan, James, Zak, and Hemal will share their charts and show you how they trade in a live chat room environment. Not free but great value at £97 pcm and they do have a free trial.
Peter Crowns dibs method, a brilliant ex pit trader. Trader Dante, price action trader. Andersbaard Larsen, ex fx500 club memeber now running his own live trading school. Jacko of Jackos house of pleasure and pain. All of these guys are the real deal and most have free threads where they have tried to help people learn to trade,
One thing I have learned in my journey through trading is that there is no best or right way, they all seem to compliment each other.
One thing nearly all the pro traders agree on is that price action is King, fancy indicators are crap.
If you have time research all the people I have mentioned above, if time is short concentrate on Strats thread. Consider also joining the fx500club because IMHO you cannot substitue watching real traders trade live in front of your eyes.
Good luck guys.
D
Chris, sorry to hear that. Please send me the link if you going to open a new blog for EA.
ReplyDeleteThanks.
Dazzer,only 1 website is teaching real forex course?could get some where for free?
Dazzer-
ReplyDeleteThanks for the kind words of support and sage advice. No worries about the soapbox and thanks for sharing what you know.
I guess your overall message is that you have to learn to trade yourself and relying on someone else to trade for you will only get you so far - or farther behind in my case.
I suppose the appeal of Zulu is that we can stand on the hard work and accomplishments of others the same way we do with planes, boats, trains and all the other great stuff we use everyday that we couldn't build ourselves if our lives depended on it.
The problem with Zulu is that when you loose money with a provider, you haven't gotten any closer to the goal we all aspire to which is to earn our daily bread from the markets with nothing more than our skills and an internet connection.
Again, thanks for all the great links and i'll be checking those out.
Chris
Hi Chris!
ReplyDeleteSorry my english. The problems of last week touched me too. This was my first week. I did an analysis of Zulu and I understand that, I could lose every 7-10 trend. I chose three suppliers. But losing on all three almost simultaneously at the start!? What are the chances? Well that it was only mini lots.
I also chose the Cheetah on GBP / USD, SURFING - sim as Cheetah and BLED on eur / usd.
NOW - BLED-174pips, SURFING-232. For these two suppliers I got to the castle itself.
Cheetah-better than these two, because, he did not wait for the trend and turned, got up on the trend.
Problems Zulu that we can not find a better, to sleep and do not control the account.you can try http://forum.masterforex-v.org/ for training.
Dino-
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment and sorry to hear of your loss. Your english is great.
This week was tough in forex because of strength in USD. Most of the year USD has been weak and now USD is strong and traders loose because they bet on weak USD.
Many traders are on holiday now and come back January 4. Expect big moves first week of January. Be careful and protect your funds.
Thanks again for the comment,
Chris
Hi New Investor,
ReplyDeleteI do not understand what you are asking.
If you need to learn to trade forex for free then follow Strats thread, he is a brilliant trader and a great teacher.
Give it as long as it takes years even but read everything on his thread and learn.
Good luck