READING THE STATS: how to understand the numbers when investing into a money manager
When taking a decision to invest into a money manager you have to have a very close look at his past performance. Only numbers, only facts can prove if this MM is worth taking your money or not. However sometimes all these numbers, charts and factors can be Chinese to a new comer. So we have highlighted a few points you have to look at first:
1. There has to be track record. Period. If there is no past performance, there is nothing to believe. Do not trust pure words. Only recorded performance counts. And the longer this back track record is, the better. Ideally you should be looking into 3 months + statement.
2. All trading has to happen in live (real) account. We use MAMMOTH performance as an example (point 1)
https://www.mql5.com/en/signals/499244
There is a big difference in trading in live and demo accounts. Only real money counts.
3. Trading has to happen in a trustworthy broker (point 2). It is still possible to modify your statement when trading in noname broker. Big boys care about their reputation so they would not allow you to change data.
4. Trading statement has to come from an independent and trustworthy source (point 3). We would not believe if someone handles us their statement on Excel file.
5. You are looking to make some money, isn't it? So overall performance should be positive (point 4).
6. There must be losses in trading. It is as natural as exhaling when breathing. Investing is a long term play, there will also be bad days. It is rather suspicious if you can't see any of them. But what you gotta look into is how big those losses are. A MM shall not lose all your money is a single trade. So check haw huge was his max drawdown historically. It can very depending on the asset traded but shall never exceed 25% (better less) (points 5 and 6).
7. Ideally the number of winning trades is greater then the number of losing ones. In our example MM wins over 70% of the times. Which is a really high number (point 7). Same represented by profit factor: winnings happen 2.25 time more often then losses (point 8).
8. Lastly we strongly believe in professionalism. We think the less assets are traded the better. Our MM trades mostly 2 currency pairs.
