5% per month possible? - page 3

 

A similar analogy might be the advice to diversify your portfolio of investments.

The most successful investors are those who put all their eggs in one basket and then watch the basket like hell.

 
Viffer:

...But my trend trades have 3 scale out targets, easy, medium and stretch. I hold my past success for each target, dynamically calculate a Kelly for each target reweight the results as a percentage of the 2% stake and use this number to apportion lot volume to scale out at each target point. I haven't decided if it's worth all the effort but I figured it was more fun to code than lot*0.33 :). Feedback to this approach is welcome.

V

 

I'm not sure what you're doing. Sounds to me like you're either adding lots as you win or you're subtracting lots as you win. If easy target means shorter targets, and scale out means shaving off lots at each target level. Then I'll have to say, you're working in reverse to a popular Trend following Trade Management TM strategy I've ran into called Pyramid.

 

If the above (anti-pyramiding) is your approach, I'd have to agree with you from a comfort zone point-of-view. Tho I don't believe all these creative MM/TM systems could change the Math considerably. Meaning I don't think it makes much difference compared to risking 2% on the trade from easy-to-stretch. You benefit when the trend is short and have regrets when the trend is extended.

 

MM is complex enough without having to add how such a TM would effect your Risk of Ruin, Standard Deviation, Variance, Score, EV, PMI, ROI. So fun to code and easy to live with...Yes, it's all good AFAIC as long as you're not Over-betting. IMHO.

 
ubzen:

Does this answer your question? It's caped off at 25 lots. :)


Nice ubzen. How does it do trading it live?

 
engcomp:

A similar analogy might be the advice to diversify your portfolio of investments.

The most successful investors are those who put all their eggs in one basket and then watch the basket like hell.

I find that 'all the eggs in one basket' to be a risky proposition: all or nothing. If it goes sour on you, then it all goes down. But if it is only 1 out of 5 that goes south on you... . . .
 

engcomp:

.... can you tell us what you do?

Excellent money can be made in tutoring and mentoring, as well as coding, if you have a solid foundation and a proven track record ubzen
 
engcomp:

This is MILES above my expectation to turn $1,000 into $1,300 in six months.

On a previous attempt to turn $560 into $30,000 in six months the attempt failed after many weeks of glorious endeavour.

The trader is to be congratulated for his valour but I think his ambitions are extreme, likely to lead to another failed demonstration.

What do you think? Can such an ambitious target be achieve in forex?

Hi Engcomp et al,

Like many a NuB before me, I didn't take the best advice for beginners: don't trade with real money until you can consistently make profits forward trading for a significant period of time: ~ 6 months minimum.

I doubled my live account in the first 24 hours day trading just by 'watching the flow' on over a dozen charts and flowing with them. Then spent the rest of the week in vain trying to hang onto it. I find day trading to be to 'noisy' and I'm not into are able to constantly be doing nothing else but day trading the ForEx most of the time. Even if I wanted to, currently I'm to busy trying to learn MQL and make consistently profitable EAs. I prefer swing and trend style trading now.

Successful long term ForEx traders are VERY conservative. Unlike all the hype in EA adds which implies that you will be 'fabulously wealthy overnight and forever', they know that you can make excellent ROI when compared to most other investments over extended periods of time. Some use as little as 1% ~ 3% of there account as low as 10 to 1 leverage.

I opened up a new checking account recently specifically for my ForEx trading. The person was trying to get me to open up a savings account at only 1/2% ~ 1% interest. Having just made a rare foray into fundamentals trading after yet another Toyota recall that dragged the Yen down, I had just doubled my live account in 2 hours. I declined the savings account.

Look at some of the top 'signal providers' charts. Even the best ones have weeks and months that they lose money on, but in the long run.... . .

 
FourX:

Hi Engcomp,

...I'm prefer swing and trend trading now....

Successful long term ForEx traders are VERY conservative. Unlike all the hype in EA adds which implies that you will be 'wealthy overnight' and forever, they know that you can make excellent ROI when compared to most other investments over extended periods of time. Some use as little as 1% ~ 3% of there account at only 10 to 1.

I opened up a new checking account recently specifically for my ForEx trading. The person was trying to get me to open up a savings account at 1/2% ~ 1% interest. Having just made a rare foray into fundamentals trading after yet another Toyota recall that dragged the yen down, I had just doubled my live account in 2 hours. I declined the savings account.

Look at some of the top 'signal providers' charts. Even the top ones have weeks and months that they lose money on, but in the long run.... . .


I'd consider myself a Swing/EA trader if I'm forced to answer. However, trying to fit into a definition can be really tricky business. When I was trying to define what style of trader I would fit into, nothing on the list would have applied, I employ too many different strategies. The Only two definition I don't fit into right now is Scalper and Position trader. But that's about to change as I'm looking hard at Pivot-Points and Carry Trading. I desperately want a Scalper system within my basket. If for nothing else, I just wanna see the win-rate increase. The scalper system I'm actively investigating are pivot points. Too many newbie-traders are buying into these imaginary lines for it not to be worth something. This could mean almost about 1 trade per day from pivots alone as price touches those points. Even if it's just for 15 pips, I'll take it. Taking Long trendy positions for say 2-Weeks at a time does not interest me. There's too many peaks and troughs in that time period which I could be capitalizing on. But, if it means a free lunch on Interest Rates then count me in.

 

Fundamental trading like the Toyota trading you've been describing has-got-to-be one of Investments/Trading biggest advantage which set's them apart from gambling for example. You know When and Which direction the market is gonna move in when the Bad or Good news comes out. You can count Natural Disaster to that list as well. Most times people only have 1 piece of the puzzle like Which direction but not the When and vice-versa. One thing that gets my attention is you saying you double your account size every time. Sorry, but that sounds kinda fishy. I don't think you're lying about winning but it leaves one to wonder what account size are you leaving on the broker's end. Or how-much risk are you taking on these trades. Please don't answer those ?'s in $. You don't have to answer at all if you don't want to. Just taught I express what goes through my head whenever you say that. 

 
ubzen:


Good-One, as I've heard that one before.


Being a professional gambler your self, you would not only have heard it before but you would also keep your gambling funds separate from your private funds. Or?
 
ubzen:

I'd consider myself a Swing/EA trader if I'm forced to answer. However, trying to fit into a definition can be really tricky business. When I was trying to define what style of trader I would fit into, nothing on the list would have applied, I employ too many different strategies.

The large institutional traders with LOTS of resources behind them: like the crunching power of super computers, advanced theoretical mathematicians, statisticians and actuarial pros for R&D use as many as 5 indicators in figuring their trades out.

As in nature, you can see how different species flow together. Their is always some critter at the 'edge' of the classification that it is in that slipping into the next one a bit and has some intermediate traits from different taxonomic classifications .

I did take a quite expensive, intensive and extended ForEx personal tutoring and mentoring 'one on one' course on technical trading. The company that owned, ran and marketed it was kind of lame and tended to make what I thought of as rip-offs, However in comparison to the cost of the course, it was trifling: for me. Like these markets, they made money off of it by taking a small cut from lots of clients on an ongoing basis. AFTER taking the significant cost of the course up front. But the principal of it and the lack of ethics wranckled me. We all KNOW that this is a TOTALLY honest straight up game EVERYWHERE at ALL times and that the dice are NEVER Loaded. !NOT

But my tech trading tutor, who was half my age and was as he said: "A trader first, and a tutor second", WAS the 'real deal' and was a consistently profitable trader, especially in the long run. I don't think he ever had a month in the red, and if he had bad weeks, it was a very rare occurrence. It was very rare that he had a days trading where he lost. Loses yes, but not at the end of the trading day. I think that his average was about 20 pips a day on his account. As he told me, losses ARE 'more important' than profitable trades' because of the impact of diminishing returns. Like all good sand successful traders, he always kept a VERY close eye on the account balance: With 3% ~ 5% in action being the norm. Up to 10% if things looked really good, With a 15% limitation on VERY rare occasions IF there was a very hot 'sure thing' He did tell me that he did the same sorts of things that I did when he first started and like me got cleaned out numerous times as well. Sadly, and expensively in numerous ways, most of us 'very smart' humanoids are pathetic on learning from the mistakes of others and from history. Getting used to this 'individuated ego' that is being incarnated into us is a very tricky proposition with lots of growing pains.

I have the template that we traded on and it uses multiple factors including weekly and dharma pivots. A modified 'gator' with 5 MA. Multiple R & S lines. Candlestick formations, patterns and trends. Regular cyclic intervals. Because I can't trade with the time specific schedule requirements for the trading system, he looked at some longer term trades with me and then we started using Fibonacci lines more and the actual candlesticks themselves carried more weight.

One thing that gets my attention is you saying you double your account size every time. Sorry, but that sounds kinda fishy. I don't think you're lying about winning but it leaves one to wonder what account size are you leaving on the broker's end. Or how-much risk are you taking on these trades.

Whoa there ubzen, you are making a big leap and extrapolating a LOT that I didn't state at all!

Those where two specific instances, and most definitely where 'exceptions' and alas not the rule for me.

In the first instance I naively waded in and had way to much of my account in play at once and just got lucky. Note that I say right after it that 'I spent the next week TRYING to hang onto it: implying that i lost it all: which is the truth. My first margin call in a week )< 8(

With the Toyota recall, as I say: it was a VERY rare foray into 'fundamentals' for me. I'm not much of a 'mass media' consumer and not really tuned into current events. But when I did hear about Toyota getting repeatedly slammed in a series very rare and large QC problems, I started paying attention and watching the Yen. In my extended one on one tech tutoring, we had not got to the point where my mentor would even let me trade the CHF or the YEN when I did this. I've had a couple of margin calls and must be getting close to a year or more at this now. So far, my MQL programming skills are virtually non existent )< 8( But now I am at the point where I should of stayed at when I first started and heeded the advice that I heard from numerous sources that I didn't heed and am not trading in a live account at all and haven't for some time and won't be until my batting average goes up significantly and stays there. For one thing it is almost empty again and my (disposable) income is VERY low. What I want is about 250 computers testing EA's for me.

The man that made a billion dollars in a very short period of time, I believe it was in one day: First of all he must of been very rich to start with, and he obviously knew a lot more about economics and traded fundamentals which I don't really do at all except as noted above. The guy that did the $ Billion in a very short period of time did so because the Euro Union raised their interest rates. But GB refused to follow suite and kept the Pound Sterling % static. They refused to raise there interest rates when the Euro's went up. This guy KNEW that GB would HAVE to raise the interest rate and placed trades accordingly. He probably placed some stop orders than jumped in full force when it started to go. I don't know to do this, I don't know enough about economics.

One that I DID know about what must be about a decade of so now was when is when I was looking at the futures market when the Yen got cut off at the knees because of the very wide spread corruption that was exposed in their stock market. It was basically a 'rigged game' by the 'big boys within the industry. The yen plunged 2/3 ~ 3/4 in a VERY short period of time. I KNEW that it would climb back out of it in relatively short term. About 1.5 years later it was back up to 75% ~ 80% of where it was before it crashed.

As I have told some people that trade commodities. 90% of the wheat crops are being whipped out and it is spreading through the world (Scientific American) without even an inkling of an effective deterrent. In a few years, when their are another couple of billion of us 'Lemming heads,' loaves of bread will be a very expensive delicacy only for the very rich that can afford it. Throw all of the other factors in that show VERY clearly that we are IN an Apocalypse NOW and very rapidly plunging into the endless void of the abyss.

 
FourX: .....In the first instance I naively waded in and had way to much of my account in play at once and just got lucky. Note that I say right after it that 'I spent the next week TRYING to hang onto it: implying that i lost it all: which is the truth. My first margin call in a week )< 8(....


I Agree with you on allot of your points. When I read doubling your account, I taught that you were getting smart with the brokers there as Not keeping too much money in the account. Seem like you were Doubling, then taking half out and putting into a nice checking account. Then I taught maybe you're putting on 50% risks on the Toyota trades. So thank you for clearing that up.

 

Trading like something else I know can be deceptively easy. I know my demo experiences doesn't measure up to yours. However, what do you think happened the first day I lunched into my new found Toy "Meta-Trader". Yeah boy, once I'd figure out the New-Order button, it was On. I had the minute chart open and watching the Ticks like they had support and resistance on their own. Yep, (my opinion) humanly, if someone just sat in front of a trading panel without much to little training, he/she would place over 100 orders per day. Something that most of us know even the computer can't do and be profitable. Having real money, wouldn't make much difference. They just go from placing 100>50>20>10>5 and then eventuality to 1 order per day while losing vast amounts of money during this learning process.

 

I'm happy that you had a Mentor. I'm trying to investigate everything and information I can get my hands on. Starting with the easy stuff first. Nothing wrong with Demo trading, preservation of capital is the name of the game. Nothing preserve capital better than having 0 risk. So I'm gonna Demo till I Drop rather than learn the hard way.

Reason: