Good question. From starting equity the max drawdown was 30% (max drawdown / starting equity). However as the account had nearly tripled a 10% drawdown late in the game accounted for that. The maximum drawdown from equity highs was 11%.
Interbank FX just sent me an email telling me that I won the contest and the $2,000 prize money is now in my account. Well folks, as is evidenced by the title of this thread, I set out at the beginning of September to win the contest, and now I have won it. I am now asking myself the question, "what next?" Time to get back to work on improving my methods, and stop fooling around on these boards. Good trading.
Congrats! You've now set an example that will ruin many a forex newbie's account. What next? Why, a trading journal here on ET, of course. What's fortune when you can have fame and fortune? BTW, your 2nd maximum drawdown calculation is correct, 11%. DD is not linked to starting equity (you knew that), or else it'd be entirely possible to have greater than 100% DD during the account lifetime.
How many trades did you make during this period? - oh, and regrading what's next.. if you were to ever post a trading journal, I'd be one to check it out from time to time Adam
So tell us a bit about your trading style. Do you trade a diversified portfolio across several pairs? Or just focus on one, e.g. EUR/USD? What is the timeframe? Minutes? Hours? Days?
Ok I'll try to add some value to this thread. My strategy is volatility and momentum based. It works on all timeframes I have tested but has the smoothest equity curve on the shorter time frames (minutes) and also makes more money on shorter timeframes. However, many FX brokers don't like short term trading so it has been a process of give and take to find a timeframe that balances profitability with still being amenable to the broker. In that process I noticed that certain systems cycle into and out of greater/lesser profitability. With that in mind I made some of the systems adaptable based on a volatility factor that adjusts to the current level of market volatility. I have 5 computers and 50+ system variations that I keep an eye on. I don't have nearly enough room to watch all the variations I have created - the crappy ones tend to get booted off by the better performing ones. I'm tinkering all the time and continue adding new variations as I observe how the different systems react to the market. The primary target market is EUR/USD (that is all I traded for the contest) but I am also looking into other products as well. The system is custom built in VB. I do lots of evaluation over the weekend and come in the next week with an idea / strategy on how I will be trading and which system(s) I will be using. I have studied in depth which times are more profitable for the different systems, and readjust each week (and sometimes daily) based on the most recent profit trends. So the timeframe is constantly changing, and when I am trading is constantly changing. Other than that the systems run fully in automated mode. My "long-term" systems hold trades hours, but could take 3-4 positions in a half hour if volatility were extreme and if the signals were given. I don't trade any day-long hold systems. I like to monitor all the action in case my system fails to execute an order correctly, though I will admit that the last week of the contest I ran the system almost 24/6 because I thought I was behind. All told there were several hundred trades for the month. As far as typical position sizing goes, I am willing to accept about a 10% account drawdown. If I have two systems A and B, and System A (shorter term) has a 50 pip average historical drawdown, and System B (longer term) has a 100 pip average historical drawdown, I can trade twice as many units of System A, and thus the shorter term systems tend to give more bang for the buck.
If I may ask, what do you mean by shorter term? 1 Min Charts? Do u use indicators? 288% in a month is amazing. Congrats.
hi pips what was your max position size and beg. and ending position size during the contest ? also .. did your position size ever ger reduced after losing trades or did you ever average down or scale up on size ?