Thanks for the support Minelli. So I discussed my portfolio (portfolio1) with a 'private advisor' and came to the conclusion that a leverage of 30.2:1 is not acceptable... Therefor I made the following change in my portfolio: out: - Ubertrading.com - EURJPY - Ubertrading.com - GBPUSD in: - ATRChannel - GBPUSD Although very new on fx-auto, this EA was developed for the Automated Trading Championship 2006 and was on the 9th place with low risk... http://www.forexfiesta.com/systems_trend.htm So the new portfolio (portfolio 2) is now (all with 0.1 lots): - ForexFighter-KO - GBPUSD - fxmaster.net - EURUSD - Quants-MP40 - GBPJPY - ATRChannel - GBPUSD that brings the leverage back to 16.8 ... attached the simulated return from 1/1/2007 till now. So let compare portfolio 1 & portfolio 2 (the new one): portfolio 1: - start 6000 - simulted equity from 1jan07 till now: 10800 - % simulted return: 77% - leverage: 30.2:1 - %return / leverage : 2.54% portfolio 2: - start 6000 - simulted equity from 1jan07 till now: 9800 - % simulted return: 63% - leverage: 16.8 - %return / leverage : 3.77% so if "%return / leverage" is a good indicator of the 'quality' of a portfolio, then portfolio 2 is 50% better then portfolio 1. OK, I'm going to stick to this portfolio now ... I'll keep you posted, let me know what you think. Cheers, FX245. forex245(at)gmail.com
I think 16.8 leverage is too high. Forex profits seem to be even much harder to make and hold onto than Futures profits, based on what I have been seeing from diff sources. Forex profits are considered extremely difficult. These systems you are seeing will likely not continue their profits. I have seen many like this at another site (futures), and they rarely continue their profitable ways. The higher reality is, if you are just trading systems off a list (without doing your own analysis of them), that in 3 months, you will be bemoaning why it didn't work like their hypothetical "tracked" records. And why you lost most of your money. In other words, I would recommend you trade LIGHTLY for a while if you wish to preserve your trading capital somewhat. FWIW, the optimal leverage I have seen in the Futures Market (Based on some studies) was about seven (7). That seemed to best balance risk/reward. Of course, how diversified your portfolio is also a factor (in your case, using diff forex pairs...) You should ask yourself, do you want to (possibly) make money at a good pace, or do you want to (possibly) make a lot of money and then lose it all plus your starting capital? This happens to over 90% of leveraged traders, perhaps 95%, according to many. Don't forget you are new to this discipline. You need to add rookie mistakes you would never think of to this mix.
What often happens when using tracked systems that rank high, is that they were high due to luck (out of 100 systems, TEN have to be in the top 10% !!). Then they often stop working when someone tries to trade them, because they never really worked in the first place. I recommend you follow your selected systems for 4 weeks, to see if they STILL keep working. You may be amazed what happens to some, most or all of your selected systems...
Dear rcanfiel, Thank you for all your considerations & advice - I will certainly take them into account. To reduce leverage to 7, I could only trade eg ATRChannel ... but at the same time, I feel that live trading is the best learning school .... best scenario would then be to increase my equity with a new deposit .... let me ponder on that. Could you share with us your experience with automatic trading ? Any systems you found that work ?
Dear Tom, Thanks for your reply ... Please enlighten me .. how do you automate "Buy LOW, sell HIGH." ? I'm looking for a number of good automated trading systems .... How do you trade ?
daily statement of 16May2007 - see attached. We had a good day today. 3 closed trades: -18 pips - ForexFighter-KO-GBPUSD +35 pips - ATRChannel-GBPUSD +34 pips - fxmaster.net-EURUSD 5 open trades balance: 6002 equity: 6036 happy camper.
Hi, "I think 16.8 leverage is too high. Forex profits seem to be even much harder to make and hold onto than Futures profits, based on what I have been seeing from diff sources. Forex profits are considered extremely difficult. " It would be a rare event that you would be deploying your maximum leverage, many of the systems you have in your portfolio are not always in the market, FxMaster EUR maybe 50%, Quants may have 2 positions from 4 open 90% of the time. It may be that you are only using 75% of this figure for most of the time. What often happens when using tracked systems that rank high, is that they were high due to luck (out of 100 systems, TEN have to be in the top 10% !!). Then they often stop working when someone tries to trade them, because they never really worked in the first place. I recommend you follow your selected systems for 4 weeks, to see if they STILL keep working. You may be amazed what happens to some, most or all of your selected systems... 48% of listed traded systems are in the black. Quants Portfolio's made 10,000pips over last 12months. The reason why systems fail when people trade them because they are buying a backtested system, this is an inaccurate method of determing real trading performance, and its blatant fragilities are obvious when put to the test in real environment.
Good idea, but I want to see some more track record first on fx-auto .... and need to manage my leverage ... thanks for the advice !