Elkart's Posts - Page 35

If the open trades are locked... in General Jan 05, 2010 at 04:11

Sorry if i'm being to talkative, but bored...Just to clarify the above:Level 1 - I police trades, happens daily that i need to stop something outLevel 2 - Positions, made up of the trades, about every 2 weeks I get on the wrong side of somethingLevel 3 - The system - made up from positions, trades can fail all they want to, but a consecutive failure of positions to me means my system is failing. Hasn't happened yet.

If the open trades are locked... in General Jan 05, 2010 at 02:30

Give you a practical example.I have three levels of exits (not talking tp's here, just ways of handling losing positions). 1. My normal trading. So if my parameters are met I do a new trade and close out the apposing trade.2. An equity exit - if the total sum of trades go against me X percent I get very aggressive in trade reductions and turning pairs. Cause then I have positions that aren't working, so I need to swing them the other way and then keep going. The idea is to get back on the right side of the market and at least get back to my previous equity high, as apposed to trying fo...

If the open trades are locked... in General Jan 05, 2010 at 01:10

Reminds me of the guy with the fake box. "but this pair been doing this for a long time"Sure, that just makes it more likely to stop doing that. Like the 26 year bond bull market. Stopped last year. Dead in it's tracks. If you weren't ready for it, that's you after 26 years wiped out. Old and poor. And that's a very obvious example. In fx the changes are a lot more subtle and very difficult to pick up before it's to late. System performance is the first clue that something has changed. Any working fx system has to be based on change. Not lack of change.

If the open trades are locked... in General Jan 05, 2010 at 00:58

A good read for this is would be Taleb's Black Swan: http://www.amazon.com/Black-Swan-Impact-Highly-Improbable/dp/1400063515It's not something I fully understood till late last year. Especially in relation to system development. Some exerts here:http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/imbeciles.htm

If the open trades are locked... in General Jan 05, 2010 at 00:48

Biz,I am referring to a complete failure yes. I'd love to think after all these years I managed to develop this ninja system that can cope with anything, but the odds are against me. Of all the people on this forum probably 1 or 2 will. Is it me? I don't know. Is it you? Don't know, we can check in five years or so and see. In the meantime, I need to manage the risk of a failure. It makes sense to have clients if they take out enough so if there is a failure it doesn't really matter. But no one should expect to write down a few lines of code, test for a month or seven, and then...

If the open trades are locked... in General Jan 04, 2010 at 05:01

Put it another way.The collective system development happening globally is basically a bell curve. Some people (very few) are going to do very poorly at it, some are going to lose a little bit of money, some are going to make a little bit and very, very few are going to be extremely successful at it.We know from broker stats more than 90% of people will give up, so of the 10% left, they'll have their own bell curve. Probably less than 1% of people trying will develop a long term working system. That's the reality of what we're doing.

If the open trades are locked... in General Jan 04, 2010 at 04:24

Just want to point something else out. I've been where what's his name is twice now. You build a system. You test. It looks good, you run it live. Works for a while then Bam!! And you're out.I made two years twice. Making and losing small fortunes in the process. Think about that, 24 consecutive successful months twice...I presume now that any system I (or 99% of people) will develop will fail. Sooner rather than later. There's no point in trying to plan and program for everything. It's just not possible.So instead what I do is draw heavy and for clients I force them to tak...

If the open trades are locked... in General Jan 04, 2010 at 04:01

They definitely were not heroes or wizards. But certainly cleverer than I am, and probably you are. You don't just roll out of bed and get Nobel prize. My point is simply that some really clever people, very well resourced people, have been trying to do this for a very long time. Majority of them failed.

Currency Stability in General Jan 03, 2010 at 07:48

More stable than a stock, a currency doesn't often lose 50% or 80% of its value, unless you have the misfortune to live in Zimbabwe. One of my stocks IMP which is one of the biggest platinum mines in the world did exactly that last year. Also, you're not going to get a CEO who gets pissed in the company bar and say the wrong thing and the next day the stock is on the floor. I lost money like that.In fx a 10% move is big. But a block is so expensive and credit so easy to get through margin accounts that people tend to over leverage the trade. So I think it's more stable than stock, ...

Free Trader in Trading Systems Dec 31, 2009 at 11:33

I swing trade, so I always have a position. And the avg is 2.5 days. So using your method to get in, I'd say a percent or so later you need to be out or maybe at worst here at 2 days you need to be looking. Maybe even use apposing signals on your system, cause you're not prisoner to one pair anymore, if a lot of them call for a turn, close out.If you look at my breakdown above you'll see that's there's always a pair misbehaving. Maybe 20% to 30% will always do the wrong thing for whatever their reasons are. In my case this time they were the major pairs. Even if they are pr...

Free Trader in Trading Systems Dec 31, 2009 at 11:04

On Oanda you can't hedge. They cancel out. I don't think I have much hedging even on mt4, not the way my equity swings around. So I don't think that's an issue. Where they do hedge you wanted a neutral position anyway. So not an issue.I've never seen 0, I'm always losing or gaining. You'll have to make some rules for the losing positions, but for that you'll have to play with your entries and see what happens. Here at -5% on my equity highs I start taking action, but it doesn't happen often. And when it does I normally have about 5% open and in profit so it ...

Free Trader in Trading Systems Dec 31, 2009 at 07:41

Khap hun Krap - that's thai for thank you. I'll try something else see if I get it. Brain not as nimble as it used to be. All the diving. Bubbles in the brain. Should have seen me before I started, Einstein had nothing on me, now I'm just another dude.

Free Trader in Trading Systems Dec 31, 2009 at 02:57

Sorry one last thought.Using my approach it's possible to be say long USD and EUR and GBP at the same time, your EURUSD etc. position will be neutral. Just because we are used to a 80 or 90% opposite correlation to between EUR and USD doesn't mean it will always be like that. What if the dollar falls away as reserve currency and europe fails as block? Both will lose value at the same time against say AUD.And it will be in fx long before it's in the news, that I can guarantee you. So this way we are more dynamic in our approach to fx movements. I often have what would be seen as con...

Free Trader in Trading Systems Dec 31, 2009 at 00:09

Why doesn't my attachment show up as a picture?

Free Trader in Trading Systems Dec 31, 2009 at 00:06

Here's an example I did yesterday with very small trade sizes as an example. I ran through both Euro and Usd and ended up with a EurUsd position, I could have ended up with just a Euro or just a Usd position. But most charts CCI gave either as overbought or oversold, so it was easy to take the position. JPY wasn't so clear so I ended up with a small position.

Free Trader in Trading Systems Dec 30, 2009 at 23:43

I'll explain, going to be a bit long winded, but it's an important concept. I also traded USDJPY this week, and it was a loser for me, here's my losing pairs:USDJPYGBPJPYGBPUSDAnd here's my winning ones:EURJPYNZDJPYCHFJPYAUDJPYUSDCHFAUDUSDEURUSDUSDCADNZDUSDAll those pairs have either USD or JPY in them. So instead of taking a USDJPY position using USDJPY, I diversified the trade over a bunch of pairs. When you look at the USDJPY chart, why are you getting a signal? Did JPY move? Or did USD move? Or both?By placing a USDJPY bet you're taking a double position. For you to mak...

must have in Experienced Traders Dec 30, 2009 at 11:03

Taleb's Black Swan is a must.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nassim_Nicholas_Taleb

Free Trader in Trading Systems Dec 30, 2009 at 10:13

I haven't helped at all I'm afraid. What I'm trying to figure out is how you view trades. I haven't dealt with individual trades for some time. So I have no use for stops or TP's or Sl's for example and exits become a consequence of money management as apposed to an action to lock in profit. What I'm trying to get to is that if you're handling individual trades maybe it's time for plan B. Rather handle positions. When you do an individual trade you basically do a double un-diversified prediction. I tend to do single diversified predictions. And there is a fu...

Free Trader in Trading Systems Dec 30, 2009 at 08:26

k, but do you often have one trade open?

Free Trader in Trading Systems Dec 30, 2009 at 02:51

And in which direction?

EURUSD	1.04265	GBPUSD	1.2362	AUDUSD	0.62891
USDJPY	155.948	USDCAD	1.43517	USDCHF	0.9067

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