New Millennium Inc.

Forex and Commodity Trading Services

June+Results+Update

By Adam Liddiard | Published: July 12, 2010 | Leave a comment

This has been another challenging month for me, with good consistent winning runs spoilt by my chasing the market on a losing day. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that I need to further refine certain aspects of my trading in order to gain some forward traction, but I have little doubt that it will all come together in due course.

However, I’m not here to waste your time, and of course if you require your funds for other purposes then please don’t feel obliged in any manner: One of the benefits of an FX account traded to flat each day is that you always have 100% on-call liquidity. I’ll continue trading the NMi Hunter Evolution accounts very cautiously and at low leverage until I see consistent forward traction as a result of the necessary adjustment in my trading. And at that time I’ll be looking to increase the leverage per trade.

The good times will come, and in the meanwhile do remember that the number one rule is to not lose – or at the very least to keep any loses tightly contained, which I’ve done very well recently. The market has been extremely volatile this month, especially EUR/USD with lots of indecision and news affecting that pair. The big story in that regard was the massive EUR/USD rally with the pair rising 350 pips in one day; a move of that magnitude has not been seen since back in 2008 in the midst the GFC. I certainly wouldn’t want to have been naked short (with no SL order) on that pair, although undoubtedly many were, and got wiped out in the process. Instead, I gave back around 0.5% trying to find a short entry among these extremely adverse moves. The saving grace of using SL orders is that even if you get the entry wrong, you only lose a small portion of an account.

The official result for the NMi Hunter Evolution accounts for the month of June is -1%*

New Accounts

Moving forward, I have some exciting news and an alternative investment to my slow going on the day-to-day trading on Hunter Evolution. In retrospect, had the NMi Razor system been left to run its course without intervention, it would have actually turned a fantastic year-to-date result for clients. My main concern at that time was the risk level, especially because we did see the risk pushed to its upper limit. Taken in combination with challenges on the Miner accounts, which were running a different system that also involved an open running negative position, I decided then to discontinue all the EA systems, which I felt was the best decision at the time. Subsequently, the NMi Razor system did tick over of its own accord on some non-client accounts, and the performance just can’t be ignored. Time and time again, it has run its course of frequent trading in bursts on breakouts, and at times holding positions open for days before the market retests the high/low, the positions are closed and accounts goes flat. So to use a phrase coined by a colleague I’ll introduce below, “the system has been in the shop” and now its coming back out.

The official re-commencement of the former NMi Razor accounts is July 2010. And also, previous Razor accounts are back in trade with the NMi Razor system.

As you may already be aware, I’ve been toiling away in the background on a new proprietary momentum-based EA system. After several hundred hours of work I’ve very recently begun running live on one test account. It perfoms well over a 10 year backtest period on both GBP/USD and EUR/USD pairs. So far, it is working as intended, and after a trial period it will be further assessed and potentially opened to clients.

The official announcement of the NMi Momentum EA trial account, July 2010. In due course we’ll provide a live feed link to this account.

OK, how about a different service provider with established long-term records? This is a different managed FX account opportunity that I’ve had access to: As you probably know, I’ve dabbled with other traders and various systems over the years, but these days I make very few recommendations for other FX traders, EA’s or systems. That’s because it’s such a risky business, and if my recommendations lose money, then I feel it reflects badly on myself. That being said, I’m also not afraid of calling things how I see them as many of you have experienced. If something comes across that really stands out, which so very rarely occurs these days, then I think it well worth a mention at the very least.

These folks are the main driving force I’ve come to know over the years while we’ve travelled in similar circles and coincidentally our paths to this day are still interwoven because we have much the same interests and values. After this long in the business, I can say that the group carries significant experience in Forex. I’m told that there are 9 minds behind what they offer, and with four different managed account options to choose from, in my experience you’d need every bit of that man power. Just trading a single system can be all consuming, let alone balancing multiple systems. As an overview of what they have to offer, from my observations of their accounts:

  • Chrome and Precision Scalper accounts: Trading various scalping based intraday EA systems. These accounts use high leverage and volume, with aggressive trades sometimes topping 20% in a month. There are 6-12 months of track records on these two accounts.
  • McLaren: This is a human trend trader, acclaimed by ED. This fellow traded and made folks plenty to be sure, though that’s not say that there haven’t been hiccoughs along the way either. Personally I think that a good human trader is the best, but they are extremely hard to find, especially over the long term. Recent re-introduction after being “put back in the shop”. Experienced trader, now running latest.
  • Guardian Account: An advanced Grid system. This high frequency trading system with open running positions during profit phase that is wound back to flat periodically for withdrawals. Atypically (to a “normal” grid system) it thrives in a trend and tends to accumulate positions while range bound. All minimums for these accounts are USD5k and fees are in the 30% ballpark, which is about average in this industry. They offer their Precision, Chrome and McLaren accounts via a reputable, genuine Panamanian broker and their Guardian accounts through a US based broker.

Cayoflow June 2010 Month End Trading Report

To consistently achieve this level of return to-date is quite exceptional, all things considered. Certainly, I’m aiming to put myself in the way of the opportunity that I believe it represents, and I urge you to take the time to consider this for yourself.

If you’d like a formal introduction, then please send your contact details to me (Name, Phone, skype + timezone, preferred methid of contact) and I will make the arrangements so that you can conduct your own due diligence investigation.

Sincere Regards,

Adam Liddiard Signature

Adam

Posted in Reports | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

May+Results+Update

By Adam Liddiard | Published: June 17, 2010 | Comments closed

Boy, what a busy month it’s been! And again, I’ve had to let the posting date for this month’s results update slide as a result. None the less, our ongoing efforts continue unabated behind the scenes.

So, let’s cover this past month and review some of last month’s overview so you can see how it unfolded. As I hinted last time, I’ve mostly withdrawn from anything non-essential so that I can focus entirely on the development of my trading, and the development of some auto-trading software to manage some elements of my day-to-day trading tasks.

Since my undertaking to use strict stops-based trading on our Hunter Evolution accounts, without exception I have:

  • remained flat to the market each day;
  • placed limited low-risk trades with attractive reward objectives;
  • employed strict money-management at its core, so that any potential loss is both limited and able to be defined in advance.

I placed 62 trades in total, and compared with the total starting balance I traded up by around 1.4%, then back down by around 2.8%, then back up again by 1.4% or so. I say “or so” because of the way the multi-account management software distributes volume of trades: Some individual accounts have made a little, some accounts are behind by a little, and in the end I actually reduced the leverage and exposure I had intended to use. I think a 0% result for the Month of May is about the right one to post.

Although it’s not a big fat positive, all the other boxes are ticked and I might add that the recent half of those 62 trades show a smooth consistent up curve, the steepness of which is directly pegged to the very low leverage trades I’ve been using.

Volatility was in the region of 3% intra-month and reflects the limited leverage, which is well inside the 10% peak-to-valley (highest to lowest balance/equity over the month) maximum DD tolerance outlined in advance. I’m planning to increase the leverage over time, while still working within that 10% peak-to-valley maximum DD tolerance.

At this point, I could expand on the deficiencies amongst those 62 trades, but I think it suffices to say that I am aware of them, and they are almost totally comprised of human based shortcomings: my charting and trading technique itself is very much better than what the end-of-month result might otherwise indicate. To be able to make continuous improvements, we must first become aware of our deficiencies, and then learn from them and move forward as a result. And that is exactly what I’m doing and will continue to do. Doubtless all good traders continue to travel along this path, for we are never perfect as humans nor as traders – myself definitely included. But that’s more than enough about me!

You might be wondering about this new software system? Is Adam actually onto something with this momentum based system, hereafter referred to as the NMi Momentum EA. Well, thanks to modern technology, the knowledge base and the right contacts I can now have a system coded up with appropriate adjustable elements, and run it through simulated backtests going back ten years or longer! To do all this manually would take literally years, but it can now be done in a few weeks (of 3 am mornings mind you!), which leaves the door open to continued advancements and refinements for as long as I continue to invest effort into research and development of the trading concept.

About 50% of my efforts are investing in the NMi Momentum EA. It’s a very exciting path to travel, and I’m rather pleased to say that I’ve already got something that looks fantastic. In fact, this is the best looking backtest curve I’ve ever seen on a hard-stops EA over a 10 year backtest… if I could replicate this curve with my manual trading over a ten year period, I would be among the top traders in the world!

Enough of the talk, click here to see 3 tests: 2 x 10 year backtest with 0.1 vs 1.0 lot leverage per trade, as well as 12 month to date 1 lot setup confirming what I observed in the charts. What is especially good about this setup is that:

  1. It works over ten years, where as most robots can only muster short period of recent history;
  2. It’s performance is relatively consistent year-to-year, and it actually works even better in recent years with their increased volatility;
  3. It has a low relative DD for its returns;
  4. Its maximum risk per trade is always limited by a hard stop;
  5. Its risk versus reward per trade is always greater than 1:1, so it profits even with fewer than a 50% winning trades;
  6. It is NOT affected by broker spreads like scalping robots;
  7. It does NOT need to use high leverage like scalping robots because its TP targets are between 58 and 90 pips (25-50% of the average daily range of the currency);
  8. It is not always in the market, the account is flat and not exposed the majority of the time, with 2 trades per week on average the past 12 months.

To me it reads like a wish list of what I’d like to see in a forex account, managed by a human or by software. I’m really not much different from you, in that I too dream of sipping pinacoladas on a beach in Tahiti, while my forex account is quietly generating cash flow – with my good lady and our young son no less! Aside form that, I do actually enjoy the challenge of manually trading and it serves enhance the long term development of an autotrading system that I know inside out, and that I have enough confidence in that I’ll eventually relinquish some of my trading load to it. What works well for me… so too for my clients. Next week, it will be going on a test drive on one small live account, and then over the coming months I can further evaluate its live performance as well continue to invest further efforts in the R+D side of things. Ideally I’d like to see it trade more frequently, with greater accuracy and with multiple currency pairs. I might add that already there’s various setup options which do work with other currencies and timeframes, but they all individually require weeks (or months) of R+D to fully explore – keep an eye on this space.

This month, the Self-Managed Gold account trading the Gold Rush system has obviously done well again – depending on where your buy points were, with gold recently reaching a new high in excess of $1240/ounce. Without wanting to sound like a parrot, not much has changed since last month – gold remains very strong in the face of an uncertain and volatile economic environment, having already been the standout performer of the past 12 months, so too is this extremely simple and easy to employ system which is better than 100% correlated in perfomance to the price of gold. This is the account I recommend if you want core long exposure to Gold, as long as you’re willing to take the relatively small investment of time to learn how to employ the system (and, just as importantly, to understand the associated downside risk). However, it’s essentially no riskier than holding the same quantity of physical gold, as long as you remember that any increase in leverage comes with an associated increase in risk.

Active marketing will be limited during the near future but any inquiries will be serviced to our usual high standard. If you have any questions please do feel most welcome to contact us, and we’ll endeavour to get back to you by the next business day.

Sincere Regards,

Adam Liddiard Signature

Adam

Posted in Reports | Tagged , , | Comments closed

April+Results+Update

By Adam Liddiard | Published: May 13, 2010 | Comments closed

Sorry about the delay with this month’s report folks.

In addition to refocusing my attention on trading, I’ve primarily been working with our existing clients to provide regular updates during the transition of all NMi accounts to a strictly-defined hard-stops limited-risk style of trading, henceforth known as the NMi Hunter Evolution account. Most existing accounts have been worked back to flat, essentially back to a break-even point or thereabouts. That will allow me to fully deploy this revised trading regime. Some tough decisions are being and have been made, but in short, it’s ultimately all part of moving forward.

This new approach been borne from the desire to provide you with the type of account that:

  1. remains flat to the market each day;
  2. places limited low-risk trades with attractive reward objectives;
  3. most importantly, has strict money-management at its core, so that any potential loss is both limited and able to be defined in advance.

I’m calling this a new approach, but it’s really not – I’ve actually been writing the code and tracking the system for quite some time, and in fact an EA of this exact trading system is presently in the works. In the end, it’s quite likely that the EA will actually do better than me, because it can tend to accounts for all 24 hours of the day (I’m not capable of sustaining 24 hour days for terribly long), and it will not second guess itself and close trades early (that being a peculiarly human trait).

Of all the accounts and systems that I’ve ever traded, from any the signal services, EA’s or other managed accounts that I’ve ever used or investigated, this new approach has the lowest absolute risk, yet still allows for the possibility of very attractive monthly returns. My studies and observation reveal a high percentage of winning trades at better than 1:1 risk for reward, which is uncommon in most EA systems in my experience. But talk is cheap, which is why I’m not writing this report to convince you of anything. In the end, it’s the results that will count, and let’s not forget that smooth ride goes a long way too. I’ve set the bar at 10% maximum DD, and maximum 0.5% risk trades with TP objectives at around 1.5% on average. With trades placed on most days there’s a potential for 1% or better ROI daily, which is more than enough to alllow for a double digit monthly result.

Normally, at this juncture I’d show you the average returns across the various account types that we offer, but we have no way to generate any sensible numbers in light of the current situation, which will become clearer as you read on. Nonetheless, please do feel very welcome to follow up with a direct inquiry. We’re always delighted to furnish genuine inquiries with live-account statements, read-only access to live-accounts (although they might look a bit ugly right now!) and, of course, to address any concerns you may have.

Since the last results update, the Hunter and Razor accounts have received the attention they required to get all but 3 specific accounts back to flat, with no open running positions. But that has also involved giving back all trading gains made on those accounts so far, give or take some small percentage. So, although both Hunters and Razors did suffer loss and drawdown from their peak balance, it was essentially limited to the previous gains that had already been made – on the whole, at least everyone has their principle back. I’m painfully aware that this is far from an ideal scenario, but it is certainly more desirable than taking a loss.

The remaining Miner accounts are also going through the same process, although I expect that these accounts will suffer an overall loss – primarily because of the ongoing fundamental weakness of the Euro against virtually all other currencies, which goes against the primary logic behind the Miner system. Combining that with the fact that the risk is rather open ended due the stopless nature of the system, which is exposing these accounts to more risk that I now deem appropriate. In light of all this, the Miner system is being discontinued. Under more favourable market conditions this system does work fantastically, the results were nothing but positive from our early experiences with the Miner system. But, just like when you’re buying stocks, the market needs to be headed in the right direction otherwise you are locked into a downward spiral if you didn’t define the exit point in advance (i.e. set a SL).

This month, the Self-Managed Gold account trading the NMi Gold Rush system has obviously done extremely well, with gold recently reaching a new high in excess of $1240/ounce. And it remains very strong in the face of an uncertain and volatile economic environment, having already been the standout performer of the past 12 months, so too is this extremely simple and easy to employ system which is better than 100% correlated in perfomance to the price of gold. This is the account I recommend if you want core long exposure to Gold, as long as you’re willing to take the relatively small investment of time to learn how to employ the system (and, just as importantly, to understand the associated downside risk). However, it’s essentially no riskier than holding the same quantity of physical gold, as long as you remember that any increase in leverage comes with an associated increase in risk.

Going forward, all the new managed-account trading, herein referred to as the Hunter Evolution accounts, will be comprised of exclusively hard-stopped maximum 0.5% risk-limited trades, and with risk:reward objectives consistently in excess of 1:3. The trading system itself is of my own design and will be limited to just the EUR/USD pair, guiding trade entry and exit points using a combination of:

  • a momentum based trigger entry;
  • fibonacci levels;
  • daily highs and lows;
  • significant moving averages.

Recent detailed study and practical application of the system have so far confirmed profitability for very low risk; but the short term focus for NMi is to establish an ongoing and unbroken track record of this specific methodology. Active marketing will be limited during the near future but any inquiries will be serviced to our usual high standard.

If you have any questions please do feel most welcome to contact us, and we’ll endeavour to get back to you by the next business day.

Sincere Regards,

Adam Liddiard Signature

Adam

  1. Please note that figures above are gross of performance fee where applicable and that due to different account balances and the fact that official results post outs represent an average of all accounts, individual account-to-account performance will vary accordingly. ↩

Posted in Reports | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

Trading+Review+23-30+April

By Adam Liddiard | Published: May 1, 2010 | Comments closed

I’ve decided to try something new.  Recently, I’ve sent some reports to affected clients that go into much more depth about the trades I’ve been placing, and some of the reasoning that led me there.   And then I thought how useful an occasional insight into how a professional trader thinks would be to everyone else, and decided to post this review in public to see if there’s any interest in seeing this kind of thing.

So, before I start to compile the NMi Monthly Report for April, I’d like to take this chance to give you a brief rundown of last week’s trading. Most of the week was spent tracking my targeted entries, to anticipate how the trades would play out.

Of the trades I actually placed from the 12 generated on the main FIB system, I was unfortunate to get 3 of the 4 losing trades it had. But to balance that out, I also entered on 4 of the 8 winning signals – which, if traded according to plan would have worked out fantastically. Refining that plan has been a big part of how I spent my time this week, but… for the first week as an out-of-the-box trading plan it’s performed fantastically.

The orders are executed in such a way as to produce a 1:1 trade on 50% of the trade by volume, a 1:3 trade on 25% and a 1:6 trade the remaining 25% of the trade (in volume terms). A full winner would be in the region of 1:3 risk v reward, a 2/3 winner (TP1+TP2) would be in the region of 1:2.

The net effect is that I’m attempting to enter the market at small risk, get to break even fast and then stay in for the bigger moves with favourable risk versus reward outcome if the rest of the setups work out. At just 3:1 risk vs reward, 1 full win for 4 losers equates to break even, so 1 full win for every 3 losers or better and I’m making money for you. As you can see from the charts below (click them to zoom in!), so far I’m not too shy of 3 wins for 1 loss and with much better than 3:1 risk for reward just this past week – and with room to improve further.

Multiplier Result
5 x full winners
3 x 2/3 winners
4 x losers
0 x break even trades
Losers hit 15-20 pip SL’s
Winners hit 100-200 pip TP’s

Lets talk %’s, I’ll use 1:3 risk versus reward for the example below (but on average it is actually a higher number than this)

Risk vs. Reward Result
5 x winners at 1:3 risk (0.4% versus reward) (1.2%) (net) = 6.0%
3 x winners at 1:2 risk (0.4% versus reward) (0.8%) (net) = 2.4%
4 x losers at 0.4% risk per trade = -1.6%
TOTAL: 6.8%

The net result 6.8% for a week, placing 12x 0.4% risk trades (4.8% total risk for the week).

Two of the losers could have been either avoided by simple filters (and will be on similar trades in the future), and the losses minimised on remaining losers with tighter stop. In fact, from observation of my charts and some simple math, I realize that I can enter even closer to the levels I identify and install a tighter stop for both improve gains and risk reward profile (0.3% risk versus 0.4% risk per trade). It may even come to pass that the 1:1 bounce/rebound component of the trade can be eliminated or held for TP1 and/or TP2 levels (further decreasing risk and/or increasing reward).

The approach in itself (outside of the money and order management) is relatively simple but requires consistent accuracy and focus to implement; essentially just testing of previous significant areas of support and resistance, very often in confluence with commonly observed Fibonacci levels because that’s what a lot of technical traders observe in the market. I’ve pasted some of my charts below for those of you with an interest in charting (again, you can click the thumbnails to zoom in), and with a bit of detailed observation you should be able to decipher the long/short entries and the corresponding stop loss and take profit level.

FYI: Each trade is dented by “Long 1”, “Short 2”, “Long 3” etc. Blue up arrows are longs, blue down arrows are long take profit points and red down arrows inverted are long order stop loss. The reverse is applicable to short orders. Refer to the key in the chart.

The chart I completed on Sunday has the “into the future” levels plotted in advance, as well as the chart not long after open today (have a look at every level I plotted in advance and how the price reacted today). Get these levels accurate and trade with tight stops and I believe it’s the closest thing to knowing the results of event in advance (legally!) and being able to place risk on it for favourable reward profiles – but it requires a human… I’m not yet sure if I could have this approach coded into EA. As you can see there seems to be between 1-3 entries with great risk for reward most days, so its just matter of being up to date with my charting, having a good plan to exploit the price action as it unfolds and following my rules – trading rules and technical levels I know have a solid foundation in trading.

This is the first day of May and the start of great things I’d like to think – at least that’s my plan.

Kind Regards,

Adam Liddiard Signature

Adam Liddiard

Posted in Forex Trading | Tagged , | Comments closed

March+Results+Update

By Adam Liddiard | Published: April 5, 2010 | Comments closed

It’s been a tough month: Perhaps the toughest we’ve faced, and as a result of that the future direction NMi will change somewhat. The details of these changes will be revealed in a future post, but for now I’ll focus on your monthly review.

To see further information on any of our current accounts, just click on the name of that account below and read the brief account summaries that follow. As always, please do feel very welcome to follow up with a direct inquiry. We’re always delighted to furnish genuine inquiries with live-account statements, read-only access to live-accounts and, of course, to address any concerns you may have.

Official March Results:

The NMi Miner account had a really bad month. The account was rightly long on EUR/CHF and short on AUD/NZD, according to the long-term correlation theory on which it is based. In addition to this, the NMi Razor EA (which runs on the Miner account too) was also short the EUR, and that too was the right thing to do – until this recent rally.

And then, simultaneously, all of those pairs headed in the wrong direction such that within 24 hours account equity went from somewhere near reasonable, to extremes that pushed the smaller and more highly leveraged accounts to a margin call. (A margin call occurs when the sum total of all open trades exceeds the account balance, and the broker closes all positions at a loss to the account holder).

While we already knew that the possibility for EUR/CHF and AUD/NZD to head to these extremes was there, statistically it seemed extremely unlikely – and even more unlikely that they’d both do that simultaneously while the EUR also rallied against the USD… but, fundamental forces resulted in: CHF rather EUR’s (for now obvious reasons); AUD rather than NZD, because Australia is a natural resource power house with virtually no sovereign debt. After a strong EUR sell off, which brought some strong profits for the NMi Razor, it now seems that the market wants EUR for USD’s, while the NMi Razor EA has short positions down low.

Were it not for the EUR/CHF and AUD/NZD positions, or even if the worst affected accounts had received additional capitalization, then they would likely have had enough to room to breathe with their additional EUR/USD trades. All said and done now, it should never have gotten to this point, and the decision to first run the Miner as a stopless system, and later the same for the Razor system has proven fateful for our Miner account clients, the company and myself.

The NMi Hunter account’s relatively consistent run of profitable trading continues with most account about flat for the month, albeit with a game of hedge on the GBP/USD pair for a period. The overall negative results was a results of two saftware malfunction on two accounts causing orders to unintentially close. The open position DD has continued this month, though to a lesser degree than it has otherwise been recently. The month finished off smoothly for the Hunter accounts, despite focus being somewhat diverted to the Miner account issues.

Given the lessons learned from the Miners, and considering the long-term trading of the Hunter accounts, these Hunters are now being traded with some variation to their strategy: That is, from now on I will take more regular smaller losses in order to prevent a large accumulation of any currency pair, and rely more on good entries and exits with shorter term stops. The idea is to remain more consistently flat to market, with no large open positions. The more recently opened Hunter accounts are now in profit and flat over the weekend. And, boy, I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to not have those accounts constantly in the market, exposed to ever changing fundamental market forces.

The NMi Razor accounts performed nicely for the first part of the month, but were unfortunately caught in a series of short EUR trades placed on a Friday. The market then rallied significantly to our upper most risk tolerance, at which point I manually implemented a hedge. This gives a trader time to develop a trading plan to deal with the situation. I waited for that opportunity, which seemed to arrive on Good Friday when the market failed to reach 1.36; I placed a take-profit on the hedge at 1.3585 (with a protective long hedge again at 1.36 in case price rocketed north), and simultaneously added to the short position with stop-loss at 1.36. The market just had to hit that 1.3585 mark again, while not reaching the 1.36, and then drop far enough that I could close out all orders in profit without taking a single loss, and get the accounts back to flat for this plan to work out perfectly.

As I was manually installing orders to execute this plan, on the first account I manually closed the long and went short, before moving on to the next account. By this time the price had moved just below the long hedge, so I installed a take-profit very close, thinking we’d surely have another spike towards 1.36 – if not breaching it, thus reapplying the long hedge (this prevents the situation from otherwise worsening). Well, the price didnt come back and proceeded to tank – just my luck it seems this month. At the end of the day I will again need to await the right opportunity to try the same plan again until it works; the only alternative would be to manually close all orders and take the open position hit of around -30%.

This month, the NMi Self Managed Gold account didn’t close out any trades, which is hardly surprising given the downside seen in gold, care of the recent flight to the USD. Still, it remains very strong in the face of an uncertain and volatile economic environment. This is the suggested account of choice for folks wanting core long exposure to Gold, and who are willing to take the relatively small investment of time to learn how to employ the system, and importantly to understand the associated downside risk. It’s essentially no riskier than the same quantity of physical gold but with any increase in leverage comes an associated increase in risk.

The sum total of everything that is on my plate right now has made me realise that I need to become more focused on a fewer trading systems myself, particularly the stopless systems that require 365 days a year attention. And rather, to work more on more stringent risk management, while further diversifying into a quality range of forex accounts and services that do not exclusively rely on my own input. I still feel there’s an immense amount I can offer, but the format of delivery will need to be changed to leverage it more profitably for you. As I stated previously, the details of all this are forthcoming.

If you have any questions please do feel most welcome to contact us, and we’ll endeavour to get back to you by the next business day.

Sincere Regards,

Adam Liddiard Signature

Adam

  1. Please note that figures above are gross of performance fee where applicable and that due to different account balances and the fact that official results post outs represent an average of all accounts, individual account-to-account performance will vary accordingly. ↩

Posted in Reports | Tagged , , , | Comments closed

February+Results+Update

By Adam Liddiard | Published: March 10, 2010 | Comments closed

It’s been a very busy month on the trading front with some big volatile moves; hence my somewhat delayed report. This has been extremely good for realized returns with some of the biggest monthly numbers we’ve seen in a few months. Nonetheless, the open position drawdown on both the NMi Hunter and NMi Miner accounts is rather more than I would like, even though within tolerable limits (depending on leverage levels employed).

This new NMi Razor EA accounts performed well this month across all the brokers we use. Although it produced rather less than we might have liked to see, it still brought a very respectable result and we fully expect that with the passage of time we’ll see some far better months. The huge advantage of this system is that it’s often flat to the market; that is, it has no open running positions, which is in stark contrast to the NMi Hunter and NMi Miner systems which are always in the market to some extent.

The NMi Razor account still has a super low-entry of US$2,000 for our initial limited trial client intake of 25, with first priority to existing clients. If it continues to perform as well as it has been doing on live accounts recently, and as well as we’re anticipating, then this may be your only chance to enter. Some new accounts have also been established at a semi-private ECN/non-market-maker brokerage, so far in our live testing it has shown to trade slightly better than even Alpari (UK).

To see further information on any of our account types, just click on the name of that account below and read the brief account summaries that follow. As always, please do feel very welcome to follow up with a direct inquiry. We’re always delighted to furnish genuine inquiries with live-account statements, read-only access to live-accounts and, of course, to address any concerns you may have.

Official February Results:

The NMi Miner account has had a great month in terms of balance gains thanks largely to our addition of the Razor EA, bringing some some accounts in the 12-13% range for the month. And also helped by the fact the NMi Carnifex EA does also hold long AUD/NZD, where it took profit on some trades for nice balance gains; And finally profits from some smaller range bound grid trades care of the original (but rewired) NMi Miner EA. However the core long-EUR/CHF and short-AUD/NZD strategy of this account pushed open position drawdown further into the negative according to degree of leverage used.

The upside is that the EUR/USD pair seems to have found a bottom, the threat the PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain – Eurozone governments with severe sovereign debt problems) posed in the currency markets seems to have abated, and when you add in to that mix the Swiss National Bank’s repeated intervention then it would seem the EUR/CHF is probably now poised at a bottom.

The AUD/NZD pair by comparison has risen to level not seen in nearly a decade, which is not ideal. However, provided the longer term regression-to-the-mean-average holds anywhere near true, then it will mean that account holders will have sold their Australian dollars at premium price in the cycle, and will reap the benefits in due course.

There’s been a big retracement with AUD/NZD in recent days, which could mark the top for that pair. And there’s a strong argument in my mind that additional capitalization of existing and newly opened accounts at these levels is the right thing to do. In the coming months, you might otherwise be kicking yourself if you don’t give some forethought at these extreme levels, because it never becomes evident what you “should have” done, until after the event. But, it should always go without saying that the opposite might also be true, however, what’s for certain at this stage is that the ideal time in the price cycle to be long the AUD/NZD pair was last month – to get on the train now is certainly, at the very least, a late entry.

Moving on to the NMi Hunter account’s continued consistent run of great trading; the very weak GBP caught us a little unprepared while we were net long in that department, suffering a very sudden and dramatic fall on that pair at which point a we implemented a hedge to stabilise equity, which is still a work in progress. The beauty of the Hunter accounts is that its risk is spread across multiple pairs, so it’s very much business as usual for the rest of the pairs in trade with some solid gains being posted thanks to above average volatility of the markets this past month.

The NMi Razor account performed nicely for its first official live month, making an average 4% return on balance across all accounts, with all positions now closed. It was rather quiet though, only chosing to trade in a very narrow window of 4 days this month placing only 36 short EUR/USD trades during that period. I expect that it will begin to trade again when the EUR/USD decides to break out either to the upside or downside of the recent range, and traditionally the direction of its trades is very indicative of strong trending moves. The fact that it’s no longer short EUR/USD, and that EUR/USD has held at 1.3450 adds weight to the fact that bottom could be in for the EUR, and this also marks the top for the USD rally, which I think is all but confirmed already, anyway.

This month, the NMi Self Managed Gold account closed out one trade in the US$1075-1125 range. This reflects one of the beauties of this truly simplistic system in that it still makes gains in the gold market even when the market is going sideways. Now it’s posted consecutive months of gains simply buying at US$1075 and selling at US$1125. If gold continues northbound, sideways or even just drops a bit you’ll do well and you can hold your account in variety of currencies so you’re not linked to the USD dollar. This is longest running system that NMi has; it would have worked for years prior to our actual implementation, and will only cease to work when gold truly starts heading south in excess of US$300 from a peak which, with all of the additional fiat currency injected into the world economy in response the WFC, would seem rather unlikley.

There are, of course, two sides to the “gold bug argument“, but for now it seem the gold bugs are right, at least until we see gold headed strongly south. If you’re on the other side then you can simply run the system in reverse, swapping Gold for USD’s all the way.

This is the suggested account of choice for folks wanting core long exposure to gold and who are willing to take the relatively small investment of time to learn how to employ the system and importantly to understand the downside risk associated. It’s essentially no riskier than the same quantity of physical gold but with any increase in leverage comes an associated increase in risk.

If you have any questions please do feel most welcome to contact us, and we’ll endeavour to get back to you by the next business day.

Sincere Regards,

Adam Liddiard Signature

Adam

  1. Please note that figures above are gross of performance fee where applicable and that due to different account balances and the fact that official results post outs represent an average of all accounts, individual account-to-account performance will vary accordingly. ↩

Posted in Reports | Tagged , , , | Comments closed

January+Results+Update

By Adam Liddiard | Published: February 8, 2010 | Comments closed

It’s been business as usual this month albeit with some very volatile market conditions thanks to the PIGS scare, and the resulting surge in USD strength. It’s now most definitely confirmed that we are currently in a primary USD uptrend, and that brings us some challenges. Nevertheless that’s what we have to contend with, and that is the reason we are constantly working on research and development. And that, in turn, has lead to our discovery of an incredibly interesting and exciting new EA system, which displays results and data surpassing anything that’s ever crossed our path before.

This new Razor system works extremely well on live-money accounts, and has been well tested at 5 different brokers so far. As of the first week of February, we’ve begun running it on all existing NMi FX Miner accounts, where its trading has followed the current big trend with 100% accuracy, and with only rare periods of relatively minor DD. Even though the details posted below are based on backtest studies and live forward-testing (because we do not yet have dedicated stand-alone NMi FX Razor accounts for the month of January), I do want to stress that the latest stand-alone live-account performance is equally encouraging.

To see further information on any of the accounts we offer, just click on the name of that account below and read the brief summaries that follow further down. As always, please do feel very welcome to follow up with a direct inquiry. We’re always delighted to furnish genuine inquiries with live-account statements, read-only access to live-accounts and, of course, to address any concerns you may have.

Official January Results:

The new NMi Razor account has a super-low entry investment of just US$2,000, but we have only a limited initial trial client intake of 25, with first priority given to our existing clients. If this EA continues to perform as well as we’re anticipating, and as well as it has been doing on live-accounts recently, then this may be your only chance to enter! We are currently trialing at PBFX (a semi-private ECN/non-market-maker brokerage in the US), with the view to also offer the accounts there, because our live-testing has shown even better trading returns at this particular broker. 60% and 70% months are entirely possible even at standard leverage, and between all our live-trading to-date, and our 10 year backtest, we’ve found just one losing month in it’s entire history!

The NMi Miner account performed as expected given the market. At the depths of the extreme move against the system, I gave some returns back with lost hedged trades. That turned out to have been rather unfortunate, because not long after that, two very favourable events occurred:

  1. The SNB intervened not once, but twice to support the EUR/CHF. Such things usually precede a base being formed and an eventual reversal. This puts us in good stead, and I would like to thank the “powers that be” for protecting the downside which would only be exacerbated by the current PIGS situation.
  2. The RBA surprised the market by not raising rates further, causing an immediate downward spike on the AUD/NZD pairs closing out a bunch of shorts for a nice profit.

Despite those favourable events, the whole situation lead to some evolution in our NMi FX Miner system and, having consulted with all existing NMi FX Miner clients, it’s now become NMi’s mixed robot system. The update includes:

  1. the NMi CarniFeX EA, which has been doing a great job long and short the EUR/CHF and AUD/NZD pairs versus the one-direction only NMi Miner system;
  2. and the new NMi Razor EA, our other all-time favorite EA that really proven itself over the past 10 months.

Going forth, this may very well be one of NMi’s highest yielding and consistent accounts with some accounts already up as high as 7.5% on February month to date.

The NMi Hunter account’s consistent run of trading continues; although the very strong USD surge caught us a little unprepared being net short in that department. Given the primary trend has changed on the USD, we are looking at things from a USD strength position until a reversal is clearly evident. In the meantime NMi Hunter account holders are going to have to live with some open-position DD – although this shouldn’t adversely affect their ability to continue to make consistent balance gains across the mixed portfolio of positions in the interim period.

The recently introduced NMi Carnifex Pro account has proven ideally suited to the recent market conditions. Our most recently commenced account has also gained the benefit of an excellent entry: The relative extremes in the current price of EUR/CHF and AUD/NZD creates a fabulous opportunity to enter the market at a price far above or below the long term median prices, which should really pay off in the longer term when the price moves back towards that median.

This month, the NMi Self-Managed Gold account closed out one trade, provided your broker of choice did see below US$1,074.50 along with the high of US$1125 for January. With the recent scramble to USD, Gold has taken a bit of dive but it’s also said that when no one else wants to, that is usually the better time to buy. Only history will tell for sure. This is the suggested account of choice for folks wanting core long exposure, and who are willing to take the relatively small investment of time to understand the downside risk associated. It’s essentially no riskier than the same quantity of physical gold but with any increase in leverage comes an associated increase in running open position total.

If you have any questions please do feel most welcome to contact us, and we’ll endeavour to get back to you by the next business day.

Sincere Regards,

Adam Liddiard Signature

Adam

  1. With the Razor account the first figure is for an account traded at standard leverage; we’re also offering double-leverage accounts which would have had returns in line with the higher number last month. ↩

  2. Please note that figures above are gross of performance fee where applicable and that due to different account balances and the fact that official results post outs represent an average of all accounts, individual account-to-account performance will vary accordingly. ↩

Posted in Reports | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

December+Results+Update

By Adam Liddiard | Published: January 5, 2010 | Comments closed

Happy New Year, and Season’s Greetings to you. I trust you’ve enjoyed the bonuses of the festivities in one shape or form.

The New Year inevitably brings resolutions to mind. As a recipient of these monthly posts, you’ll begin to see some more positive changes as the result of some of the company’s New Year’s resolutions. Our focus will be shifting away from the diversification of our combined energies, and moving much more towards the most important aspect of NMi’s business, which is generating healthy and consistent monthly returns for you: More specialization on a smaller range of accounts, and even greater efficiencies in our online infrastructure thanks to a the impending relaunch of our website; and to the refinement of our VPSs leading-in to the use of our newly updated EA1s for 2010. With the EAs increased functionality, my trading load will ease and free more of my time for more exacting exploitation of the FX market, which will bring better ROI and lower DD. With all of this will soon come the introduction of our newest team member and business partner, coming into the fray to assist NMi to this end.

To see further information on any of our accounts, just click on the name of that account below and read the brief account summaries that follow. As always, please do feel very welcome to follow up with a direct inquiry. We’re always delighted to furnish genuine inquiries with live-account statements, read-only access to live-accounts and, of course, to address any concerns you may have.

Official December Results:

The NMi Miner account performed as expected. The market retraced after quite a run against the system on the AUD/NZD pair, and the additional shorts placed on these accounts paid off nicely as the pair tumbled several hundred pips. Against my expectations, exactly the opposite of that occured on EUR/CHF – support at 1.50 gave way and the pair tumbled 300 pips from where it has been for the last several months which has brought some increased DD on this pair. We’re still very much within the limits of the system, and the bonus on the additional long EUR/CHF positions is that of positive overnight interest differential in addition to trading gains, which has the effect of offsetting DD to a degree over time, and is added on each trade as they close.

The NMi Hunter account’s standout run of trading continues; the USD strength continued until the very first few hours of 2010, and with a rather subtsantial covering of shorts taking place, which resulted in many pairs rallying significantly against the USD. In particular, the GBP/USD pair rallied hard after of having being quite heavily shorted by the majority of the market which resulted in some healthy end of year gains and a very favourable effect of open running positions for Hunter accounts, as the inflows also assisted greatly in the short EUR/GBP trade.

The longer running NMi Managed Gold accounts weren’t shining brightly, as you might have expected, with Gold tanking to below US$1,080. With my long bias and a rather volatile market, I found that rather difficult to negotiate. It’s highlighted a long standing gut feeling that I should step aside on NMi Managed Gold accounts. In comparison with the NMi Hunter accounts, they are much harder to trade for a number of increasingly apparent reasons, not least among which are:

  • the fact that it’s more expensive to trade gold
  • and that gold is much more volatile and harder to find cheap entries that work as well as the fundamentally core long bias (which works great in rising market but inevitably gives some back on retracements).

Add to this fact the overall load on my time, then the only logical conclusion that can be drawn is that I must focus on doing less, but doing it better. In line with that, the decision has been made to discontinue any additional gold trading accounts and look to wind out of current accounts as when the opportunity presents itself, with further communications directed to affected clients.

This month, the NMi Self Managed Gold account didn’t close out any trades as is to be expected given its fundamentally long bias. This will become the suggested account of choice for folks wanting core long exposure and are willing to take the relatively small investment of time to understand the downside risk associated. It’s no riskier than the same quantity of physical gold but with any increase in leverage comes an associated increase in running open position total.

If you have any questions please do feel most welcome to contact us, and we’ll endeavour to get back to you by the next business day.

Sincere Regards,

Adam Liddiard Signature

Adam

  1. Expert Advisor is used primarily for the MT4 trading platform type, but is often also referred to as a trading robot or automated trader. NMi has two proprietary models of its own design use to assist in management of accounts. ↩

  2. Please note that figures above are gross of performance fee where applicable and that due to different account balances and the fact that official results post outs represent an average of all accounts, individual account-to-account performance will vary accordingly. ↩

Posted in Reports | Tagged , , , | Comments closed

November+Results+Update

By Adam Liddiard | Published: December 7, 2009 | Comments closed

It’s the final report for this year, and we sincerely wish you a very joyful festive season.

To see further information on any of our accounts, just click on the name of that account below and read the brief account summaries that follow. As always, please do feel very welcome to follow up with a direct inquiry. We’re always delighted to furnish genuine inquiries with live-account statements, read-only access to live-accounts and, of course, to address any concerns you may have.

Be sure to check the “NEW Weblink” views to see the live-account reporting data in a very user friendly format, with a special thanks going to GE our Technical Director for implementing it. Please note that, due to different account balances and the fact that official results post outs represent an average of all accounts, individual account-to-account performance will vary accordingly.

Official November Results:

The NMi Miner account performed as expected again, although the market has continued to make quite a run against the system on the AUD/NZD pair. Given that leverage was reduced earlier, and that relative DD is lower than would otherwise be expected, we’re now presented with the option to increase the leverage again – with due consideration given to the fact that we may very well see a further a run against the system. On the upside, the EUR/CHF pair appears to be awaking from its sleep; there’s now talk of a run north towards 1.5250 which will greatly assist in offseting the drawdown on the AUD/NZD pair.

The NMi Hunter accounts continued good run of trading continues; in spite of the current USD strength and GBP weakness, we’ve ended up with a respectable positive month, with both comfortable running open-position DD and account exposure.

The NMi Scalper accounts have now been discontinued. Refer to our October Results post for further details.

The longer running NMi Managed Gold accounts were shining brightly as you might have expected with gold at around US$1200, leaving us with good balance and equity gains. As it happened starting into this month of December with rather better than expected NFP numbers bolstering the USD, gold tumbled quite dramatically and along the way at least some of those returns were given back. The focus will now be to look for a good long entry with the view this bull run has not yet hit top!

This month, the NMi Self Managed Gold account again closed several long trades for a big gain. The results page of the NMi website will be updated with exact numbers shortly.

While some accounts do have open-position DD to varying degrees depending on the account particulars, with the exception of the discontinued NMi Scalper accounts, everything else is performing well overall… which I trust is a nice addition to your Christmas stocking.

If you have any questions please do feel most welcome to contact us, and we’ll endeavour to get back to you by the next business day.

Sincere Regards,

Adam Liddiard Signature

Adam

  1. Results are calculated based on end of month balance on account/s tracked, excluding management fee of 20% on profits if applicable. ↩

Posted in Reports | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed

October+Results+Update

By Adam Liddiard | Published: October 11, 2009 | Comments closed

It’s that time of month again, and this time we’ll keep things briefer than in the past, although you may have already received additional direct communication from us with more detail if that’s relevant to the accounts you hold.

Moving on, if you’d like to see further information on any of our accounts, just click on the name of that account below, and as always please do feel very welcome to follow up with a direct inquiry. We’re always delighted to furnish genuine inquiries with live-account statements, read-only access to live-accounts and, of course, to address any concerns you may have.

Official October Results:

The NMi Miner account performed as expected again, bringing no surprises given the rock-solid predictability of this system. The market has made quite a run against the system on the AUD/NZD pair. As mention in our last post, the leverage was reduced due to out-of-favour pricing being rather close to the long-term median price. That turned out to be a prudent move as the AUD/NZD pair continues to move further away from the long term median, because our relative open position drawdown is lower than would otherwise have been the case had the system been left completely to its own devices. Thinking ahead, this presents an improved position to consider increasing the leverage, which we might expect to bring a return to higher monthly ROI numbers.

The NMi Hunter account, by comparison, had a tough start to the month in terms of maximum DD with a hangover from last month. But, as the month played out those positions came back to us. I’ve had a rather good run of trading these past couple of weeks, and we’ve ended up with a respectable positive month now, and we’re back to a comfortable running open-position DD: Currently around 5%.

The NMi Scalper accounts have once again had the ups and downs that are in its character. Unfortunately, down more than up this month, and after a rather prolonged lack-lustre performance this account will officially be discontinued for at least the present time, while we do some further evaluation and testing on our account. Only if we see vastly improved performance will it again become an official offering. Current clients have 3 options:

  1. to continue per our test account, which Emmanuel our Tech Director will take charge of;
  2. move those funds to an NMi Miner or NMi Hunter account;
  3. discontinue the NMi Scalper account altogether and withdraw.

Note that not one account is actually behind on starting balance, but for the risk and methodology over the last few months, it simply doesn’t make much sense at present. However, I have certainly not given up completely; it’s just that I want to see some more verification of its performance before I’ll accept any new accounts.

The longer running NMi Managed Gold accounts at ODL and FXPro didn’t shine as brightly as you might have expected. The reality is that I misjudged gold’s rise; I had anticipated a pullback to clear out short hedged positions at FXPro and ODL accounts that never came. I’ve been swapping some of the balance gains made previously for reducing the short hedge, and was trying my best to time picking the top, release longs and to average back to the short position. All aimed at cleaning up accounts with the view to resume a long-only stance.

Note that as it stands now all account holders at FXPro and ODL are at about starting equity plus a little when taking into account the short hedged positions, and net 0.01 long from US$1082. Moving forward from here, all current and future gold accounts will be traded long only, and, if gold does retrace the short positions can be covered (i.e. removed). And if that doesn’t eventuate, then it’s fine and in fact preferred: Equity will continue rise with the price of gold, and we can effectively ignore the hedge for the time being.

FXDD gold accounts are not in the same position, due to anti-hedging regulations that came into place I took a hit on these accounts at that time to clear all the short hedges. At that time it did hurt, but ultimately turned out to be a blessing in disguise as I could not hedge further even if I wanted to. This, in addition to added scaleability of 0.01 increments (versus 0.01s only at FXPro and ODL) results in a nice positive month for account holders, with no open position drawdown.

It’s a regrettable and unfortunate turn of events for ODL and FXPro account holders, but please do take some consolation in the fact that we are not talking about losses here, just unrealised gains. All the accounts are ahead, and will continue to increase their equity position just as long as gold continues its march north. The NMi Self Managed Gold account again did close a trade this month for a 3.8% gain. Yes, this is one of the ideal market environments for the NMi Gold Rush system and it’s absolutely kicked my proverbial discretionary gold-trading backside! And, for US$99 and about an hour of your time it’s yours. Existing NMi Managed Gold account clients are entitled to complementary copy of this digital product to provide you with 100% control over a long only gold position – just contact us and we’ll issue you a copy.

It’s tough to have to officially discontinue the NMi Scalper accounts, and I may have to forgo some assets under management in the process. It will, however, free up my time to focus on what have proven to be the better performers, and much easier to trade to boot; that is, the ultra reliable NMi Miner accounts and the very actively traded NMi Hunter accounts, as well as additionally for the NMi Managed Gold accounts. It will also free up more of the team’s time so that we can focus on improving our customer service and response times, and ultimately invest more time into the back-end R+D for our client’s benefit.

If you have any questions please do feel most welcome to contact us, and we’ll endeavour to get back to you by the next business day.

Sincere Regards,

Adam Liddiard Signature

Adam

  1. Results are calculated based on end of month balance on account/s tracked, excluding management fee of 20% on profits if applicable. ↩

Posted in Reports | Tagged , , , , | Comments closed