Hi Everyone, I want to thank all of you who responded on this thread and privately over the last 6 months. it was very helpful. As a result of these post they are no longer in Trend Reflections. They got out on a bounce and covered the cost of the program. They then bought the top ten systems from Future Truth Magazine and are very happy with the results. Thanks again for helping protect the new guy and sharing your knowledge.
I am a trader of the Trend Reflection system. Somebody who was considering purchasing a TR system contacted me about the info being posted on this site and I felt it would be good to have input from someone who has been actually trading the system. I started trading the TR "Super Model" portfolio in April 2002. I started with $27k and I took every signal trading one contract. To be fair, I must disclose that I did start at the most opportune time to trade a trend following system. If you look at a chart of any currency or any of the financial instuments, they all started big rallys in the beginning of April 2002. By Sept. 2002, my account value was up to $135k. At that precise moment, because of my naivete, I got greedy. Not knowing the nature of futures trading and how equity builds and goes into drawdown, I figured if I could made this much trading one contract, imagine how much I could make trading two! Just as I did the system went into drawdown (look at the currencies or financials charts and you will see they went into a horizontal trading range which is deadly for a trend following system). By the beginning of December my account had dropped to just over $60k. At that precise moment, again due to naivete, I got scared and I pulled the plug on trading 2 contracts and went back to 1. As the trading gods would have it the drawdown stopped, the currencies, financials and energies started trending again and as of this date my account is valued at $87k. Not a bad return for a little over a year. It doesn't take much to do your due diligence on Trend Reflection. Open any traders magazine and you will find a full page ad for TR with actual brokerage statements of the developers account showing precisely how much the system made last year. I challenge you to find any other system vendor or trading class that will disclose that information in a public forum. If that weren't enough, before I purchased my system TR emailed me the exact open positions and trades that had occurred in each system at the end of each day. I don't know how they could be more open about what they are selling. You don't need Futures Truth, all the actual trades are fully disclosed. Here's the thing about futures trading that people who have never done it before do not understand. You are dealing with high leverage. You are looking at large gains in a short period of time and you are looking at large losses in a short period of time. Fortunately with a system your gains will be larger than your losses. It is 2 steps forward and one step back. And if you can't deal with that one step back you will not be in the game long. That one step back could occur the minute you start trading. Can you deal with a drawdown of 10, 20, or 30%+ before you start making money? If not, don't even consider futures. It's like that old saying of how do you cook a frog? If you put him in a pot of water and turn up the heat, by the time he realizes it's too hot he is aready boiled. However if you put him in a pot of boiling water, he is going to jump out right away. The former reflects what has happened in the stock market. For the past 3 years, investors have been suffering a slow boil while their portfolio has been in a 30% drawdown. The futures market represents the latter. It is a boiling pot and if most people suffer a 30% drawdown in 3 months, they jump out. I was lucky in that I built equity from the start. If I had started in Sept., I would have been wiped out and would have been adding my negativity to this forum. There are two things you need to trade futures. 1) Enough capital-maybe you will get lucky and ride some trends right off the bat, but the way the trading gods work that may not happen. You need to have enough to ride out the storm if it occurs as soon as you start. And make sure it is money you can afford to lose because scared money is always vulnerable money. 2) Discipline-Understand this-you will have drawdowns in any trend following system. It is going to happen. You will be so tempted to abandon the system and you will feel most likely to abandon it at that precise moment when it is most likely to turn around. You must prepare yourself psychologically for this inevitable fact. It needs to be a part of your trading plan. TR or any system vendor will show you results over a years period and they look great, but your equity curve will not be a straight line up from the time you start. You will have some wild rides during that time. Also, concerning a previous post from someone who said he lost 90% of his account value trading a TR system. The TR software allows you to go back to 1996 and it gives you a trade by trade listing of all trades for all the TR systems. I have gone back through all the systems and there is no way he could have lost that much trading TR. A big part of discipline is following the system every day and making sure your broker is following the system precisely. If you think you are going to buy a system and sit back and have a broker trade it for you, you are wrong. Watch what your broker is doing! Brokers make mistakes, data feeds make mistakes, anything could go wrong. In summary, Trend Reflection has exceeded my expectations. I would highly recommend it. Have enough capital and prepare yourself psychologically. I can recommend some excellant reading that has helped me, if you want, contact me.
Thanks for the input. But, it would be nice to see more of the same to have any kind of good feeling about the system. Especially after seeing the negative responses on this and other threads. My question is - if the system performs so well, why do they take out an ad in Active Trader. They should be able to sell 100's of these things just by word of mouth!?!? It makes you wonder...
I am glad you had a great experience, but I would be careful going forward as their program will probably poop out as the mkts change. the program you traded changed at least twice since I traded it as part of a reoptimization to current mkt conditions, ie the old parameters were setting new historical drawdowns. How do I know they changed it? Because they used to send me emails about getting up to date versions of the programs. Mine was the Peak 9/26, they changed the parameters to that, and have had I believe 2 different names since then. Ask about the daytrading system that shows up every so often as a product. I don't hold any grudges, I made the purchase on my own...and now I trade on my own.
Funster, I'm not sure I agree with the notion of waiting for a "system" to experience its average drawdown before implementing the strategy. I don't think there is a logical basis for doing so. Consider the following. If you believe that each trade is independent, then you will agree that the outcome of any one trade has no bearing on the outcome of another trade. For example, the joint probability of flipping a coin and getting 3 heads in a row is only 12.5% (0.50 x 0.50 x 0.50). This is on an "a priori" basis. However, from one coin toss to the next, the probability of getting heads will remain 50% for each toss going forward.Therefore, there is no logical basis for waiting for a drawdown before implementing a strategy assuming you believe that each trade is independent. However, if you believe that trades are dependent, then there is even less reason to begin a strategy during a drawdown. For example, you may have a method that catches trends and does poorly during a "non-trending" period. In that case, during a non-trending period, your strategy will be experiencing drawdowns. Why would you specifically want to begin a trending strategy while your market is non-trending and giving you (hypothetical) drawdowns? That smacks of fortune-telling, which never seems to be a successful strategy. Just my 2 cents. Regards, Thunderdog
thunderdog, Yes you are probably right as I am very much in the independent camp. However backtesting over a number of years has given me the 3 figures. The last two are important I believe as breaking them would show a move outside the extensive history I tested on. (i.e. gotta know when it doesnt work any more before it wipes you out). And while the first one is the same I admit there is probably more psychology involved. From my history there are regular 5-10% drawdowns. As for getting in a non-trendy market when you have a trend following system I don't think it is an issue. My belief is that you can only tell a good trend when it is all but over so it really is a mute point
gsweet, since you are calling me a liar, let's see your statements. i will show you mine. i compared signals with actual trades the system supposedly called. i truly believe that every trade was taken. but one thing i can prove is how much money i lost. let's see what you got.
Funster, I agree that a good trend is best seen after the fact. Indeed, that is a moot point. I only wanted to convey that waiting for a hypothetical drawdown of a certain amount before embarking on a strategy is not logically consistent regardless of whether you believe that each trade is dependent or independent of others. That was my only point. In any event, I think that drawdown statistics are far better at describing the past than they are at predicting the future. Nevertheless, I wish you the best of luck. Regards, Thunderdog
Speedy- I would be happy to document my results from trading Trend Reflection. What is your fax number? I noticed from your previous posting that you purchased the Trend Reflection system in 1999. I ran a trade-by-trade breakdown of both the old Peak system and TM system from 1/1/99 to 12/31/00. During that period, Peak showed profits of $56,538.20 with a max. drawdown of $5,349.95. TM showed profits of $68,769.72 with a max. drawdown of $7,782.50. If you provide me with the exact dates you were trading TR and what system you were using I could do a trade-by-trade breakdown for your specific case and we could then compare that with your actual trades. Your account balance should have been much higher. It seems to me that if you lost $45k during this time period you may have a very serious cause of action against your broker.
kgharris- In your posting concerning Trend Reflection you state, "why do they take out an ad in Active Trader. They should be able to sell 100's of these things by word of mouth". It's interesting, that is exactly what people were telling Michael Dell back in 1984. Fortunately, he was able to understand the value of advertising as a complement to word of mouth.