Hi all, It's been a while since I last posted here. I am now in a -20% draw down since the peak of last June. After the sharp deline in June, it looks I am still in a down trend for the last 3 months, losing roughly -2% per month slowly (some due to market, and some due to my poor execution (fixed now!)). Hope the market comes back to the trending mode again soon! Sad news for me is that IB to terminat currency and interest rate delivetives services to Japanese residents, effective this month... With this, I lost 7 instruments, and the currency/STIR asset classes completely out of my portfolio. I looked for alternative instruments... but it seems like there's no easy solution (CFD not available for Japanese residents, spot fx pairs too costly with IB, with about 1.5% funding spread), but continue trading futures with the remaining asset classes, accepting some decrease in expected return. I did all the considerations and cost calculations refering to the Rob's book - "Leveraged Trading". Thanks Rob!
Out of curiosity: which instruments are you no longer able to use? Just like you, I also had a large drawdown in June and have not yet recovered from it. Not much happened (in terms of recovery) during the summer months.
Yes, I can imagine that removing this entire class will have an impact. There are some ETFs related to exchange rates, but I'm not sure whether those would still be available to you in Japan. And of course do they not provide the leverage that a futures contract does.
Thank you, HobbyTrading. I will at least check the cost and other impact of using those ETFs instead. I know they are available as I do own some in my investment portfolio. As you say the cash utilization will be an issue but it could be offset by the benefit...
I figured out that the ETFs are as costly as the spot fx in my case here. Since the volatility is relatively low for currencies, I need to hold large positions which leads to high holding cost (assuming I use margin loan). I had thought about re-calculating the holding cost, considering that I would likely be able to utilize the excess capital stored for future margin... but decided not to go further. Anyway thank you for your information!
Had a bit of a wobble last week as well. Recovered a bit, at pixel time drawdown is ~7.5%. Finally cracked small account dynamic optimisation, so now working on implementing that, before resuming the book writing. I'm on TTU tommorrow morning, questions can go here or email Neils directly Two (actual physical!) conferences in London this month: https://energytradingweek.com/traders-live-in-person/ https://www.derivatives.societegenerale.com/ GAT
Is this the blog post you were referring to in your Pepperstone interview this week? I was listening to it live and was disappointed when the stream abruptly ended, apparently due to some technical issues.