The new Trades beta product

Am loving it...ease of use and especially the trade report, excellent! Just all the information I need

A big thanks to the forexfactory team!

I wonder if this could eventually morph into a service where traders could subscribe to signals from the trade explorers of the best traders on forexfactory....? Or there could be competitions hosted by ForexFactory which would draw more visitors and ad revenue....I can see several ways how they could eventually start making money via the trade explorers.

Having played around with this new feature for a few days, here is what I would like to see in the future (a wish list if you like):

1. Could we add ROMAD to the performance section, so that return can be expressed by unit risk?

2. On the leaderboard, could we

* add an option to the user control panel so that you can display rankings by a custom time period? (I would like the main page to default to 3 months)

* have the option of sorting by a different metric, such as the listed performance ratios?

3. FF could create their own metric by synthesizing others, so for example you could created a FF ratio by just summing the profit factor, sharpe and sortino ratios as one number (perhap adding romad as a fourth after normalizing it by dividing by 10).

i don't think the ff community have grasped what a useful tool this can become in the future. for example you can analyze the trades of the top performing traders and reverse engineer their data to either build something similar and/or improve your own system(s).

keep up the good work, currently the best feature of FF!

Has anyone back checked the trades on the top 10 traders? I checked on Rainyroxo and CHIA trades and the ones(2 trades each) i looked at were incorrect. It seems very unrealistic for a trader to over double the account size in less than half a month.

out of curiosity, i found that if you wiki-search for "risk adjusted return" then they take you to the sharpe ratio!

after a little research, there is a risk adjusted return metric that is similar to romad called raroc. one of the definitions is:

RAROC = (Expected Return)/(Value at risk)

where value at risk (or VaR) is similar to the maximum drawdown in romad, but is defined as the probability of "mark to market losses" (or drawdown) exceeding a set level.

so it would seem that these ratios are justing taking different views of the same topic, with some easier to grasp than others (romad), and some set as industry standards (sharpe / sortino)

let's say we have a ff ratio (similar to a quick ratio in accounting) that just combines sharpe, sortino and romad, then for my account this would be:

sharpe (0.46) + sortino (1.15) + romad (here i use return so far - as opposed to expected return - of 30.1 / max drawdown of 8.4 = 3.58) = 5.19

if i "normalize" romad (in other words adjust the magnitude so it is similar to the other two - lets call it nomad) then i get: 1.61 + nomad (30.1 / (8.4 * 8.4) = 0.42) = 2.03

so my hypothetical FF ratio is 2.03. is that good or bad?

now if this could be calculated for all traders on the leaderboard, i think you would get a good first glance of what the real ranking is, rather than the current rolling list of short term traders who will most likely dominate. as one account blows up, another replaces them.

adding to the earlier wish list:

* remove demo accounts from the leaderboard

(or alternatively shift it to the rookie discussion area)

* remember all that nonsense with 1kt and the trading room? you could have "profitable member" or "real trader" badges earned by submitting live accounts that have a track record of at least 3 months, a certain number of trades and a minimum ratio score (ff ratio anyone?)

* all commercial members submitting live accounts so that everyone has a better idea of who to trust before they sign up and pay. they would have to demonstrate their techniques for at least 3 or 6 months on a (small) live mt4 account (that perhaps mirrors their actual trades). all testimonials replaced by live accounts to show that their teaching methods work.

* a way of filtering threads by profitable traders (see earlier point), so that you can better evaluate what is worth reading

here is a quality control example:

* using my ff score of 2, give me the ability to start a new thread, that others with a minimum score of 25% less than mine be allowed to contribute (i.e. 2 - 25% = 1.5). statistical deviations could also work.

* script the extraction of such threads (on a daily schedule) into a professional traders section, graded by ff scores. so for the top quintile of rated traders, their threads go into an 'A' section, the second quintile into 'B', and perhaps finally a 'C' section. (similar to bond ratings, this would imply all other sections - or the current forum right now - as 'junk')

(so after all that wrangling of a few years ago, you get your trading room back)

* FF could perhaps expand this service into a recruiting tool for the industry, matching up long term profitable traders with acceptable risk profiles to those looking for potential cta's or fund managers

this is a REAL opportunity for FF to improve the forum beyond recognition, i hope they can consider some of the measures outlined here

I think these are great ideas. I've heard some arguments as to why posting real performance is not a good idea, but none of them have been very convincing. Something about having a "leaderboard" mentality promoting high risk behavior, of course this is possibility, but I think people can draw their own conclusions as to whether someone is "high risk" or not, and being able to filter performance according to certain risk criteria would take care of that.

I like this feature very much. I'm studying the charts of real live profitable traders. I agree, the demo-ers should go elsewhere.

Left-click "(ff->Trades tab ->) 2011 Leaderboard / XXXX Accounts" and select 'demo' or 'live' accounts, as well as select period.

I like the idea of allowing demo or live accounts to be listed.
Why:

A) The objective is to make money long-term consistently.
B) 99 1/2% (one source, after five years) of traders fail at trading.
C) You can only lose time on demo.

Thus, demo is a better place for most. Would-be traders can compare their results there,
while the few who are capable enough to handle a live account are on the live side.

Extremes that support this:

The demo side is useful --
For instance, an experienced trader may be experimenting with new trading ideas and post results there.
As another already noted, the live side can be dangerous --
Some ill-explaining fly-by-nighter runs their live account up, dragging along wannabes to their ruin when the crash inevitably happens.

here is the leaderboard, filtered by live accounts for this year, with max
drawdowns < 20% (leaderboard ranking first column, adjusted ranking by FF ratio
last column)

FF ratio is just the sum of three risk adjusted returns (sharpe and it's
derivative - sortino, plus nomad (normalized romad) - see earlier posts)

(data sampled 12-17-11)

#1 RBlackburn: 0.86 + 0.18 + ( 525.8 / 41.2^2) = 1.34 (4)
#3 Normy: 1.22 + 3.40 + ( 268.4 / 13.2^2) = 6.16 (1)
#5 efficiency: 1.78 + 2.08 + ( 254.7 / 14.9^2) = 5.01 (2)
#9 TheMine: 0.56 + 1.27 + (148.4 / 19.6^2) = 2.22 (3)

so should normy be top of the list?

my score:
(unranked) chacha: 0.62 + 1.78 + (37.3 / 8.4^2) = 2.93 (3rd on above list)

so that means i would probably look at trading records of the two higher
ranking traders.

even a simple ranking by sharpe should give a better top ten list than the
current approach

side discussion (feel free to skip):

i prefer nomad to romad since it means that for the same overall scores, the
one with the lower drawdown is ranked higher.

i.e. two systems with romads of 16/4 and 8/2 = 4 but their respective nomads are 1 and 2 since the former has twice the drawdown of the latter. to get the same overall
return you would put up twice the capital with the latter trading system.