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 As I hinted last time, I’ve mostly withdrawn from anything non-essential so that I can focus entirely on the development of my trading, and the development of some auto-trading software to manage some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 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 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:
It works over ten years, where as most robots can only muster short period of recent history;
It’s performance is relatively consistent year-to-year, and it actually works even better in recent years with their increased volatility;
It has a low relative DD for its returns;
Its maximum risk per trade is always limited by a hard stop;
Its risk versus reward per trade is always greater than 1:1, so it profits even with fewer than a 50% winning trades;
It is NOT affected by broker spreads like scalping robots;
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);
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.
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:
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
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
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:
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