My prediction is that you will go back to reading posts instead of posting within 1 month, 2 months tops.
dnaj65000, you ask, "Is it sustainable?" No idea; only you can really answer that, going forward. No time for a full analysis, but let me offer a few observations, perhaps of some modest value. First and foremost, you may think of it as your "FX acct", but 71% of your total profit for that period came from trading spot gold, rather than forex. That's from 22 out of 79 trades in gold, or only 28%. A disproportionate share of profit. I'd say that, at least based on that limited sample, you're predominantly a commodity speculator, with some currencies thrown in. Nothing wrong with that, of course (I'm quite familiar with spot gold and silver trading on Oanda), but has a whole bunch of potentially far-reaching implications. For example: - Why be distracted by relatively tame / low-reward currencies, if you believe that your discretionary approach will continue to work well on gold? At least as long as gold is as supremely tradable as it's been lately... as opposed to the last 20 years. - More specifically, gold happens to be nearly an order of magnitude more volatile than any currency pair. Gold's daily volatility has been in the 2.5% - 3.5% range, with occasional explosions to 5% and more. By contrast, currencies range from as low as 0.3% - 0.5% for the intra-European crosses (EUR/GBP, EUR/CHF, GBP/CHF) to 1% - 1.3% on the high end for the most volatile majors and crosses. - Your position sizing is, well, all over the place, as you know very well. For gold: from 0.7:1 to 24:1. For fx: from 1.2:1 to 18:1. (I had no choice but to exclude the very first ~34:1 CAD trade from everything, since it's impossible to tell what the amount of that loss was.) The good news is that there's a mildly positive correlation between your highly variable leverage and your % P/L on any given trade: .44 for gold, .48 for fx, .45 overall. However, are you really 15 to 30 times "more confident" in some of your entries than others? If I were you, I'd invest some serious time, to analyze and standardize your position sizing, rather than continue going by intuition and feeling (if that's what you do for size). - More than half (55%) of your gold P/L came from just 2 trades, which happen to be some of the riskiest / highest leveraged trades: #6 (23:1) and #28 (8.8:1). While that's not uncommon and not a cause for alarm in itself, there are just not enough data points to distinguish between luck and skill. - Assuming that your discretionary method has a positive expectancy, I'm not convinced that you've got enough healthy respect for risk, especially when it comes to gold. Your own comment hints at that: "1st Spike down due to gold long, panic sold and rebought." Consider this: at, say, 20:1, Oanda's excessive, variable 0.1% - 0.2% bid/ask spreads on gold immediately put you behind B/E by 2% - 4% at entry. Then, consider that gold's hourly range (ATR) has been around $3 - $4 (and more) recently, with routine spikes. At, say, $3.50 stop loss and $575 spot, 20:1 leverage translates into an additional 12% of your account balance, for a 14% - 16% likely bare-minimum, initial risk. In fact, your largest loss was -9.85%, at "only" 7.5:1 leverage... with an $8.60 stop loss, including whatever spread was in effect then. As always, it's a balancing act between tighter stops / smaller probability of win and wider stops / greater risk. Making it work on an instrument as volatile as gold at such double-digit leverage levels -- especially on a (otherwise excellent) platform with such unfavorable, adverse spreads -- may be a challenge for the most skilled trader. Best of luck.
This is as good analysis as I've seen on ET. Excellent job! If I were the thread owner, I'd print this out and pour over it - too many gems in there. Thanks for taking the time and sharing. Cariocas
Thanks for the analysis. What you said brought to light what I've struggled with in the past, which was overleveraging. It appears that having a third party say it helps me realize that it is a component of my trading that still requires attention. Thanks again.