Update for 20110712

Still no pair divergence system trades in July so far. All the Euro zone fears are causing people to dump euros and move money into "safe" currencies, one of which being the swiss franc. EUR/CHF is down 700 pips so far this month. EUR vs. CHF daily correlation over the past 50 days (~beginning of May) is only -45. It's usually much closer to -100 and a reason why I've been able to trade the way I do.

As an alternative for pair divergence, I've been looking at AUD/USD and USD/CAD, but I haven't done anything with them yet.

I'm trying some new trade ideas in the mean time. Some supply/demand price level analysis as well as simple Murrey Math price level trades. No big money on the new ideas so far, but that'll come within the month I hope.

Update for 20110706

Three trades since the last update, with two losses and one win. No trades in July yet.

For the month of June I lost 13.1%. I'm frustrated, but determined.

No change MTD
Up 3% YTD
Up 19% Since inception (4/19/2010)

Update for 20110624

Whoa! I'm still alive!

All kidding aside, it's obvious that I have been slacking with blog updates, and honestly that only hurts myself in the long run. I guess it's hard to tell the world "Hey! I'm not doing as great as I used to be doing!" sometimes, but here goes:

For my one year trading anniversary (4/19/2011), I returned +27% since inception with a theoretical return (no missed entries, all perfectly entered on time) of +43%. My maximum actual drawdown for the first year was 20%, resulting in a CALMAR ratio of 1.35:1.

To catch up on monthly returns since the one year mark, I lost 1% in the month of April whereas I could have had a theoretical gain of +8%. The difference comes from two winning trades that I did not take: one was during a bank holiday, and I was asleep for the other one.

I lost 3.7% in the month of May, with a theoretical loss of 9.3%. I lucked out here with more of the same reasons for discrepancy as in April.

So far for June, I'm down 11.3%! Rough quarter. Theoretical return for June so far is -8.9%. This puts me in my biggest drawdown yet, at 25%.

I'm feeling that opportunity factor of a trading system is pretty important. I'm averaging between 20-30 trades per month, but months like this current June are pretty frustrating in that there have only been 14 system trades, with 6 trading days of no trades popping up at all!

I would love to trade a system with more consistency overall; my current system feels like a coinflip, and I don't even get to flip the coin that often. Hah! Here's the latest equity curve:

The big differences in actual vs. theoretical come mainly from trades where I lost when I should have won. I never mean this in a bitter way, it's just the facts of the case had I entered the setup on time. I've setup my money management so that I lose 3% on losing trades and win 4% on winning trades, so when I mess up, it really shows against the benchmark.

E.g. when I enter late by 5-7 pips for whatever reason, the market bounces off my (closer) stop without hitting what would have been the original, on time trade's stop. Then the market goes on to hit what would have been my original trade's take profit level. The usual cause of distraction is either falling asleep early in the AM (working 1AM-Noon is rough sometimes, no matter the coffee supply!) or simply missing the setup forming while doing something else. I have made adjustments to my sleeping arrangements to help rectify the first, and I have improved my system's alert mechanism for the second.

Down 11.3% MTD

Up 1.5% YTD

Up 20.8% since inception (4/19/2010)

Update for 20110412

Finally had some trades pop up! Bad news was that they were all losers.

Going to bed with one still open, no big deal as SL and TP are set.

Up 1.8% month-to-date

Up 38.4% since inception (4/19/2010)

Update for 20110408

No new trades the last four days! ZzZzZzZ....

Stats unchanged from last update.

Update for 20110404

So I closed out March up 3.5% for my personal trading, and that's a big bummer, because I should have returned closer to 14.7%. I missed 2 winning trades, 1 losing trade, and entered 1 trade a few seconds late, giving me a bad fill, ending up being stopped out to the pip.

Anyway, April is looking good so far with two wins under my belt. Sort of anxious to see what my one year return will come in at in a few weeks!

Up 8.2% month-to-date

Up 44.9% since inception (4/19/2010)

Update for 20110328

Had two losses today, with the first one hitting my stop to the exact pipette! Ouch!

Up 1.8% month-to-date

Up 34.6% since inception (4/19/2010)