Meta-Trader - A week to forget

Welcome back Meta-Traders.

Another snow storm, some Forex Robots drawdown, and a walloping in the stock market teamed up to make this a week I would rather forget.

Okay, the snow isn't as bad as in the photo which is from Russia, but it did require 2.5 hours of hard labor to clear the driveway before starting my workday on Thursday.

Stocks whipped me around as well, first lifted into eurphoria based on great earnings from Netflix and a huge gap up in price. I expected the same from Amazon, but instead got trashed on Friday, giving back about 1.5% of my portfolio for the day. Like I said, a week worth forgetting.

Also, we finally started to see some expected drawdown on the forex robots accounts so let's do the numbers.

The week's winner was Atinalla #3 Live and its demo counterpart which picked up just under 4% for the week with nice winners in USD/JPY and USD/CHF. Nice job Daniel on a collection of systems well conceived, designed and in this case executed.

FX-Regression Live had a pretty good week winning on 6 out of 8 trades, but gave most of it back on Friday with a USD/CAD trade that went bad. The position lost more than I would have expected it to because the narrow ATR caused the system to increase the lot size to nearly 9% of the account versus the risk setting of 5%. Even so, this system has had a pretty good run so far and we are due for some drawdown.

Last year is a good case study in the trading history of FX-Regression. The system was up as much as 24% for the year as of April of 2010, before giving it all back and going slightly negative in September 2010. It then recovered and ended up about 16% for the year. So the system has a high degree of randomness in the outcomes, and you just have to have confidence that it has a statistical edge which I believe it does. Time will tell.

Atinalla FE came alive on Friday and sold EUR/USD, a trade which is still open.

Atinalla #4 with Sapaq Modifications is a new account i'm starting to track this week. This is a combination of many Asirkuy systems which (based on backtesting anyway) earned close to 75% average annual gain over 10 years with a maximum drawdown of only 16%. This is by far the best performing portfolio up on Asirikuy.

This account is not doing so well and is down nearly 6% since starting it about 2 weeks ago. I think i'm pushing my luck on this portfolio because 1) I haven't run it in demo yet and went straight to live trading 2) I'm somewhat undercapitialized with about $1800 in the account while DF indicates I should have about $3000. So I feel i'm headed for trouble with this portfolio, because its composed of systems which can all suffer a fair amount of drawdown at the same time being long-term profitable. So i'm going to hang in there and see what happens.

That's all for now, have a great week all.

Meta-Trader - FX Regression!

Welcome back Meta-Traders.

2011 week three came and went with two more nasty winter storms. This picture is from my backyard and I as you can see, the pool is closed for the winter. I did ok in Forex though as we will see below.

My equities account took a hit this past week with many leading stocks making sharp reversals wiping out gains for the year. At the same time, the broad market ETF's held up remarkably well. Still its been a great run in stocks and its a good time to consolidate recent gains and reposition into some winning stocks.

One thing I find about stocks is that their movements tend to be very asymmetrical where many weeks of slow, steady gains are wiped out in one or 2 days action. To see what i'm talking about, take a look at AAPL, MOS and POT. I managed to get out of those (still half in AAPL) with nice gains, but was not as fortunate with CRM, DECK and RVBD. Its amazing how one day you feel like the smart money, and the next day you are left holding the bag.

Anyway back to Forex. It was a quiet week versus the prior 2 weeks and most systems from Asirikuy were quiet. Atinalla No 3 Live had its first week of real trading with one winner and one loser for a small net gain. It also went out short USD/CHF will a small unrealized gain.

The winner on the week was FX-Regression Live which had its first full week of live trading and picked up 6.49% for the week or 110 pips! Filter the trades starting on 1/12/2011 to see just its trades since this was my former God's Gift Live account. Looking at the individual trades, it had 10 trades total and won on 9 out of 10. And the one trade that it lost was taken out on the low tick of the move, clearly a victim of stop hunting. By the way, Daniel Fernandez from Asirikuy did a great post on stops and stop hunting this past week, to check it out click here.

What I like about FX-Regression is that its benefits from sloppy, trend-less direction-less trading. In that sense, its the perfect compliment to the systems in Atinalla #1, which require some type of directional action to profit. It also has a risk-to-reward ratio which is totally known and understood in advance for each trade. FX-Regression is free to all readers of this blog so, if you are not trading it, join my yahoo group at http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/fx-mon/ and download it for free. Just be sure to trade it in a demo account first so you know that your settings are correct. And always use risk capital, or money you can afford to lose.

Next up was Atinalla FE which was idle in both demo and live instances. I also stopped trading the "Twin Scalpers" account and started Atinalla #4 portfolio in that same live account. It did not trade properly due to technical problems with the EA setup. Those issues have been corrected and I expect to have my first week of real live results next week. Also, I have an additional $2000 live funds ready to trade once I find another system worthy of my real money.

Megadroid, Sapaq and Quimichi didn't do much worth discussing. Also, the jury is still out on the Sapaq system as i'm trying to understand how it trades and its profit to drawdown characteristics.

For future posts, i'm going to review Atinalla FE, Sapaq and Atinalla #4 with Sapaq modifications. I'm also may be reviewing Forex GPS and Pips For Idiots. So check back later for that and have a great week.

Meta-Trader - 2011 Week 2

Welcome back Meta-Traders.

2011 continued in fine fashion this week with solid performances from nearly all systems. I also had a great week in the equity markets rolling out to 2 year highs. Before we do the numbers, its clear that this pace is un-sustainable. We may end up giving it all back with many, many months of painful drawdown. That's why its important to keep a long-term perspective. Enough with the emotional moderation, let's do the numbers.

By the way, I did have to endure some nasty winter conditions this past week and shovel snow, but its not me in the picture.

The star of the week was Atinalla #1 Live which had a spectacular performance picking up over 550 pips for the week. All 3 systems which compose the portfolio contributed, but the star performer was clearly Teyacanani. Check out the way it went short on EUR/USD on Monday and took about a 45 pip loss. 3 bars later, it turned around and went long EUR/USD and rode it for a spectacular profit. That shows the power of Teyacanani and how it can change directions very quickly.

Next up is Atinalla #3 which gained 163 pips on the week and is now up a solid 10.05% for the year. Also up solid was Atinalla FE which picked up 200 pips for the week.

Next up was FX-Regression Demo which picked up 85 pips on the week and won 7 out of 8 trades. I decided to bag the God's Gift Duo live and started trading FX-Regression live in that account starting Wednesday. It was profitable on 3 out of 4 trades and I have high hopes for it going forward. A 10-year simulation showed an annual return of almost 50% with a maximum drawdown of 22%.

The rest of the systems put in performances which were less than noteworthy. My 3 new live accounts are now funded at Forex.com and ready to trade. Here's what i'll be doing this next week:

- FXDD Twin Scalpers will be converted to the Atinalla #4 portfolio live.

- Forex.com new account #1 will trade Atinalla #3 live

- Forex.com new account #2 will trade the Sapaq portfolio live.

- Forex.com new account #3 will trade Atinalla FE live.

Check back next week for the first week of live results and enjoy your weekend.

Meta-Trader - 2011 Week one

Welcome back Meta-Traders.

2011 got off to a fine start this past week with solid performances from nearly all systems.

The past few years i've noticed that in the first week of the year the forex market tends to trend strongly, usually contrary to the direction of the prior year. This week was no exception and most of the systems on Asirikuy had very good results.

Leading the pack was Atinalla #3 Demo which picked up 8.85% for the week with 4 straight winning trades picking up +306 pips. Not far behind was Atinalla #1 Live which added 7.94% for the week. I made more in this account this week then I did the entire year with Forex in 2010! It was also good to see all 3 systems which comprise Atinalla #1 contribute to the profits.

Keep in mind that these results are not typical and I have noticed that Atinalla #1 for example trades flat to downish much of the time, then makes its gains in a short period of time. Drawdown is part of the game and is to be expected. But we do expect to make money and make money we did!

Next up were the Twin Scalpers FXDD Demo Twin Scalpers and FXDD Live Twin Scalpers. These systems picked up a few percent on the week but remain in drawdown overall as a result of losses at the end of last year. Overall, this combination of Megadroid and ScalperX have been a disappointment, but I'm not ready to give up on them just yet.

My own system FX-Regression picked up 4% for the week recovering nicely from some drawdown that started last year. This system traded 8 times this week and was profitable on 7 out of 8 trades which is consistent with its high percentage of winners history. This EA is free to all members of my Yahoo group, so if you want to trade it along with me, join my group at http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/fx-mon/.

Newcomer Atinalla FE had a good week picking up 1.7%. Daniel Fernandez over at Asirkuy made this system free to the trading world as a Christmas gift and you can get your free copy here. This system is composed of 3 sub-systems, one of which it shares with Atinalla #1. I expect to be reviewing this in an upcoming post. This is a cool EA with a nice user-interface, thanks Daniel!

Megadroid Live picked up a few pips but remains in drawdown from when I started it over 1 year ago. Gods Gift Duo live also continues to slowly bleed pips in an unimpressive fashion.

We have 2 new comers to the Robots Evaluation.

The first is Quimichi (aka Watukushay #6) which I reviewed late last year here. This is a long-term trend follower with a high pain index, which means it suffers a lot of drawdown for long periods of time. When I reviewed it, I didn't like it because of its high pain index and a AMR / Maximum drawdown ratio less than 1, which means that it returns less on average than it draws down. But I figured it would give it a go anyway because if nothing else it will make us aware of trend action in the majors. True to its form, it lost 2.2%.

Sometimes I think Daniel enjoys the self-flagellation. He feels for some strange reason he has to suffer for his art, and experience as much pain and drawdown as he can before ending up profitable. In any case, his pain is our gain because he does some great work.

The other newcomer is Sapaq which I have not yet reviewed. This is an interesting counter-trend system. So far its down almost 1% but has a few open trades.

Overall, we're off to a great start in 2011. My recent deposit has yet to be put to work due to delays in setting up my 3 new live accounts. Forex.com customer support hasn't been particularly helpful.

Finally, I'm going to treat my robots like stocks. The ones that languish will be left to die on the vine or stop growing keep going. The ones that succeed we will feed with more funds. This way we will end up with an genetic algorithm selection method where the winners get bigger and the losers stay the same or go away.

Happy New Year to all!

Meta-Trader - 2010 Wrap-up

Welcome back Meta-Traders and Happy New Year!

Today marks the one-year anniversary of this blog. I've learned so much in the past year. Many thanks to my readers for your support and your comments!

Let's take a quick look back at how I did this past year and see what conclusions we can draw. Based on that, we'll see how we can use that knowledge to better position ourselves for 2011.

Let's start with equities since that was real bright spot, particularly versus the prior 2 years. I manage the bulk of my assets in a pair of brokerage accounts setup at my favorite web-based discount broker. I have one account for taxable funds and another for tax-deferred 401K rollover funds. I make basically the same trades in each account which explains why they perform basically the same.

It was a great year to be a trend follower and my 2 equity accounts earned approximately 19% versus about 13% in the S&P 500. That's about 6% alpha and i'm proud of that given the fact that I had about 20-25% in cash most of the time. Most of the gains came from big moves in AAPL, NFLX, HMSY, NEOG and recently APC. Equity Index ETF's SPY, DIA, EEM, EFA, VO, and XLB had solid contributions as well. I took about 3% of the gains off the table so I have some large unrealized gains that I will have to watch carefully to make sure I don't give too much back.

I find it much easier to make money in stocks in a bull market than making money in Forex. Forex is currently less than 2% of my assets, but I spend a disproportionate amount of time on Forex. I decided to balance that out a bit more and spend some time and effort improving my game in equities so I joined Chartpattern.com which is a newsletter, web-site and chat room run by champion stock trader Dan Zanger. Its relatively expensive, but i've already made one month's fees from trading from just a few days in the chat room.

As for Forex, the years winner was Megadroid Demo which pulled in an incredible 50.1%. Meanwhile Megadroid Live lost -4.6% for the year! The demo traded on FXDD while the live account traded on Forex.com. At one point Megadroid live was up about 30% for the year but ended up giving it back toward the end of the year with few large losses. In most cases, the losses suffered by the live account did not appear in the demo account since the demo escaped at scratch or a 1 pip profit while in the live account the trades ran to the maximum loss.

Another thing about Megadroid is that at 10% risk, it can still trade up to 40% of the account in one trade. And if both of those trades go to their stop-loss values, the account can lose up to 24% in one short day which I saw first hand. I'm going to continue trading Megadroid Live, but i'm not going to add any more money to it. If I lose the original $1000 goes bust, so be it. But at least I want to give it a chance to recover.

Atinalla #1 had a solid year earning 10% with about only 5 months of trading. Atinalla #1 Live did well also and pulled in 3.5% with only about 1.5 months of live trading.

Atinalla #3 earned about 9.1% for the year with about 3 months of trading. Atinalla #1 and #3 will be key parts of my robot's portfolio starting in 2011.

God's Gift Duo live at one point was up about 3%, but has been losing consistently lately, and is now down nearly 3%. Now that I have the profit/drawdown analysis tool working, I realize this is a lousy combination and need to pick a different robot's combination.

Finally FXDD Live Twin Scalpers also went into drawdown with the recent Megadroid losses and is down -4.66% for the year. I don't like this combination and i'm going to need to replace it with a different portfolio, probably with robots from Asirikuy.

I've added $5000 to Forex.com and I now have $11,000 setup and ready to trade for 2011. Once I clear up some issues regarding the deposit bonus, i'll get the funds transferred to some new accounts and ready to trade.

Check back throughout the week and next weekend for an update on the robot's portfolio and my first week of live trading in 2011.

Happy New Year to all!