Nash please read carefully. After we bank +30 we move to breakeven so the 2nd unit carries no risk at that point.
Really ? I can't find back any performance results of your ACTUAL trading account. How much did you make in your personal trading account ?
Our trading account record is about -200 points less (1965.11 to be exact as of yesterday) than the 2000+ pips we banked in 2008 so far, primarily due to roll costs ( we don't account for those) and also because of entry slippage. We are market takers and enter after our signal is sent behind our subs so we tend to get a worse entry price by 2-3 pips - after 100 trades that adds up. So effectively if we were running money we'd be up 18% cash on cash vs. 20% but even that can't be certain because you never know what liquidity constraints would be like under real market conditions even in a huge market like FX ( try getting 50M CAD done at 3 AM EST without moving it 10 pips) Overall however the trading experience of the BKT subs has been incontrovertibly positive and we managed to generate alpha even if you degrade for slippage in an exceptionally difficult year, so K and I remain confident in the model.
JBT: A Fundamental Question About Hedging: 1. Are there fundamentals reasons for hedging? (Numbers-based/mathematical reasons). 2. Are there conditions under which one should or should not hedge, and how? Readers: Watch me trading FX on thread at this link: http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=147036&perpage=6&pagenumber=4
I my opinion hedging is simply the act of paying spread twice. Ultimately to make a trade you need to assume risk and that means lifting one leg of the hedge. There may be other psychological reasons that traders use hedging, but we do not. We are strictly stop/limit traders that take our risks and let chips fall where they may.
It is not that form of hedging that I was addressing, but rather hedging that changes risk and reward. It takes many forms the most obvious of which is to the use of options, but there are subtle ones as well. Regards PS1: with the form of hedding you described, if time of entry and exits of both sides are not the same do you stilll think it is always the same as a flat position (putting the cost of spread/etc aside) PS2: Readers: Check the headfacke on EUR/GBP live trading that I wrote it would take place. The buyers at 0.8740 were lifted, and those who followed them get knived. Another message have been sent to the buyers. We will see how the battle will turn out.