I am not a profitable trader… yet. Why start my very first blog post with these seven words? Consider it a confession and a goal. Why confess? I want to be clear, if you are looking for some kind of trading guru to follow or if you are interested in a “get rich quick scheme”, you are in the wrong place. I’ve been working diligently for the last eighteen months, learning about different trading strategies, learning to code in mql and studying trading psychology. I have no regrets about the work I’ve done and I will eventually profit from it. I am to the point now where I think I understand what kind of trader I want to be. But before I share my vision with you, let me tell you a little about myself.
I am a 42 year old nuclear engineer with a family to take care of. My wife Amy travels a lot for missionary work and I would love to be able to retire at a relatively early age and join her. I have three boys ages 11, 15, and 21 and I love spending time with all of them. I didn’t do a great job saving money early in life but I am now debt free and finally have some disposable income to work with. While I don’t hate my day job, I have no desire to keep doing it until I’m 60+ years old. I’m by no means a statistician or “quant”, but my engineering degree and MBA have rendered me somewhat fluent in basic statistics. Also, I have always enjoyed writing and debugging computer code.
Since I have a full time job and a family, sitting in front of a computer for hours every day is not an option for me. The way I figure it, I have two options. I can swing trade or I can use an automated trading system. While I do make some swing trades in the stock market, the area I am really interested in is automated Forex trading. However, I think I have a slightly different take on the automated trading piece than many. I have heard successful traders state that it is extremely complex and even impossible to develop a successful automated trading system. They explain that you have to anticipate every possible situation and of course there is no way to anticipate changes in market behavior or all of the unforeseen events that impact markets. I agree with these statements if (and only if) you are talking about a 100% automated system. However, I have no interest in making a successful 100% automated trading system, at least not yet. The bottom line is if it makes money, it is a winning system. It doesn’t matter how sloppy it is. I don’t care if my automated system can’t handle non-farm payroll report, I’ll turn it off the day the NFP report comes out. Who cares if my system only makes profit for a month based on some unique market condition? Coding in mql isn’t rocket science, I can modify it near real time. Just because I am using an “automated system” doesn’t mean I have to turn it on, walk away and pray that it doesn’t get into a mess it can’t handle. How many times a day do people glance at their phone or device just to see the latest meme on social media, check baseball scores, or look at the latest fake news? What if all those brief minutes of your day went into monitoring or helping your system out when necessary? Of course, when to intervene and not intervene with automatic systems is a topic we will spend hours discussing. I can certainly spare some time a couple of nights a week to look at market trends and adjust my settings or turn off my robots if necessary. The main point is, an automated trading system doesn’t have to be pure. It can be a hybrid, with human intervention. It can be a team of expert advisors that sit on the bench and the coach sends them in when the time is right.
This is where my vision for Forex Chop Shop comes from. I envision a team of “expert advisors” or “robots” that sit on the bench and the coach sends them in when the market is ripe for their particular skillset. Since these robots are custom built, they’ll have flexible settings such that they might not need to be benched but just a tweak to their settings (like a pep talk). As I mentioned, coding in mql isn’t rocket science. What I see is a team of robots with a surplus of robot parts (pre-written or developed on-demand code) that can be installed and turned on or off to perform different functions, dependent on the current market condition. This pre-written code can come from the MQL 4 code base library, our own custom library, or as donor parts from our other robots. Notice that I said “our own custom library.” I’m looking for people who share my vision. These robots need trainers and coaches (programmers and back/forward testers). The team needs scouts (market analysts) and managers (strategists). Do I think I can do this by myself? Maybe. But it could become a reality a lot faster and be much more successful with a strong team behind it. If this sounds like something you are interested in, send me an e-mail or become a registered user and start throwing ideas out there.
In my next post, I’ll share some examples of some of my challenges trading the USD/MXN and how I plan on addressing them. Thanks for reading my first post!
