My Trade Ideas and Observations

How to Avoid Margin Closeouts
(https://www.oanda.com/resources/lega...l/margin-rules)
Take proactive measures to avoid getting a margin closeout on your account. For example,

1. Monitor the status of your account continuously.
2. Use a lower leverage so you can impose a higher margin requirement on yourself. This way, you will not be tempted to enter into positions beyond your comfortable leverage level. You will also be aware of a potential margin closeout sooner, and be able to increase leverage as a last resort to head it off.
3. Specify a stop-loss order for each open trade to limit downside risk. You can specify the stop-loss rate at the time you issue a trade, or add a stop-loss order at any time for any open trade. You can also change your stop-loss orders at any time to take current market prices or other conditions into account. (Click on an open trade in the "Trades" table, then click "Modify" in the pop-up window to change the stop-loss.)
   Note: Your trade is closed at the current fxTrade rate, which may vary from your stop loss price -- especially when trading resumes after periods of market closure.

If you happen to be close to a margin closeout, the unique features of the fxTrade platform provide some simple strategies to avoid it:

1. Incrementally reduce the size of your positions as you get close to a margin closeout. (fxTrade allows you to trade in arbitrary units, as opposed to fixed lots, which makes this simple to do.)
2. Close individual positions to reduce the amount of margin required.
3. If you are using a lower leverage, you can increase the leverage on your account as a last resort.
4. Transfer additional funds into the account from another subaccount.
5. Add funds to the account. Note, however, that the time it takes to add funds could mean your funds arrive too late.

Disclaimer: Not an agent of Oanda.

The Probable Cause of Flash Crash and Repeat Fire of Numerous Trades

The problem could be due to repeat fire of trades at price equilibrium.
Think of price equilibrium like a pendulum swing from side to side.
Left Right, Fire.
Left Right, Fire.
Left Right, Fire.
It will fire repeatedly until the direction changes decisively to one direction.

Why knowing this is important?
Because repeat fire of trades if the end result is a certain win, will bias the win ratio towards the positive. Opposite is true if it is a straight losing streak.

To prevent this from happening, find the EPS for the maximum clusters that can be formed for the timestamp of each signal.

I manage to come up with 4 minutes for my sample but of course this number might change.
What this means is that, the system should wait for 4 minutes. if there is a trigger within 4 minutes, should ignore.
After 4 minutes then trigger the last trade.

So in total, it should be just a maximum of 2 trades per repeated signals.

First trade is when you first receive the signal. The last trade is after 4 minutes of no repeat signal.

I hope with this finding, we can prevent future flash crashes together.

Short NZDCAD.
Always follow the trend.
Just broke out of the noisy channel.
If you want to play it safe, you can wait till pull back to resistance at 0.90231 or higher.

Keep short it down, people.

Resistance: 0.90231
Support: 0.89683

The reason why traders should cooperate and share capital

1. Improve group overall returns
2. Improve trust
3. Sharing strategies to improve trade performance

Unfortunately in reality, traders tend not to work together, which is a pity.

Noteworthy thread on Forexfactory:

The only thread you will ever need: FX Exposed!

https://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=768090

Sentiment is building up on EURNZD. I am not sure if it is just solely on NZD. I look at pairs, rather than the base/quote currency itself.

Update (Jul 19, 2018 Thursday): A trade call was made on FF by yours truly on EURNZD to see if anyone follows me bullish (See post here).

On Friday, Jul 20, 2018, there was stagnation in the price before it dropped to 1.72167.

These are the trades done for EURNZD recently.



If there is any change in direction, it should only start from Tuesday.

Differences between a trade, and a position

A trade is usually smaller compared to a position. It is like your every day scalping/swing/day trade that maintains your account.
There is risk calculation to ensure that the overall expected returns remain positive.

As for the position in the market, you know it is going to win one day but do not know when. It is for the long term.
Rewards are slow but can be certain.
You normally will never tell people what price your position is at.
A position trader usually holds large positions in the market.
Letting the world know your real position is a dead give away, and make your position vulnerable to other market players.

As the trader grows his account from small to large, he will have to transit from being a small scalping trader to a position trader over time.

A fast fighting young frigate vs a slow moving old mothership.

Just an observation from my side.
I am coming to 40 this year.

Normal Distributions vs Skewed Distributions

Depending on the market condition, a flat market usually offers normal distribution for price movements, while a high volatility market usually offers skewed distribution for rewards/gains.

The quant model usually fails when the market becomes too "skewed" against back-tested history, with several standard deviations on the usual pip movement.
My definition for black-swan events.

Large Lot Traders and their psychology

Noteworthy thread: https://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=505253

P.S. You need to convert their currencies to your home currency, then you know how they truly fare.
I am however interested in how people do their money management, disregarding normal risk%.

As we all know, the more we optimise our trading system to increase win ratio, the less trades we will do.
You probably have to increase the risk to maintain the same level of ROI like before.

Risk may not not be conventional for such optimized systems. And I am working on this aspect as well.
There are traders who say, you may need to adjust the length of the runway. Point taken.

But this runway may not be extended far enough for the trade to still hold. So eventually you have to increase the risk.

We know however, risk is related to maximal drawdown, and the need for extra buffer during black swan events.

Disclaimer: Not a promoter of commercial threads.

There are tiers in the exchange

When your order is not filled, it gets passed to the wider net to be filled.
Generally it is easier to get your order filled at the broker level, but as your lot size gets larger, it needs to be cast to a wider area of liquidity providers who will try their best to fill your order.

And it is like climbing a vertical ladder of increasing difficulty.
The bigger you are, the bigger you will be visible to others on the international stage.
And every trade that you do has an id that is traceable to you (unless you are trading cryptocurrency).

There is bound to have bigger sharks monitoring the market on your every movement, and slice you up without giving you a chance to succeed.
There is a reason why some large cap investors find special firms to hide their orders, or break up their orders into smaller pieces.

I have painted a picture of the futures market.

I believe fx will also behave likewise.

The higher you go, the harder to win. It is like reaching game level 999.

No one will let you get the piece of the pie so easily.
What works before, may not work after.

Perhaps, it is better to expect little and live with little.

So, I have a challenge here:
I believe it is possible for the same edge to be reduced over time the bigger cap we become, unless someone can prove me wrong.

Of course, one may try to find a strategy that is impossible to lose in all cases. But how is that possible, when the moment we trade, we already show hand what is on our mind? There is always a risk to every trade, no matter how negligible. And there is a chance of long streaks of non-recoverable losses the bigger cap we go. How far can we push to, then say, we have to stop for the day, and go for a vacation?

Disclaimer: Not an agent of any cryptocurrency broker.

Is it possible to trade to a million manually?

(hypothetical chart deleted by thread starter)

This is a hypothetical chart generated using a hypothetical trading system on a hypothetical demo account.
It is not real. It really depends on the depth of market.

Of course, no one can produce this chart by trading manually or even using a machine.
The market liquidity will have dried up when you reach higher amounts. In this case, it is $11m.
The account has reached a maximum limit of 10k lots, so the account growth is becoming stagnant at this level.

Think about this.
The more you trade bigger amounts, the more it is like trying to fly a rocket to space.
Your nose will bleed.
Your hands will tremble.
(See the large gaps in the chart? Those are deep losses.)

Think about the acceleration, approaching the speed of light.

Soon, we will be bleeding all over the place when we reach space.
That is anti-gravity.

Alright, this is meant to be a joke.
Comments welcomed.

Are you able to take the pressure of trading larger and larger amounts to a million?

Disclaimer: Everything is hypothetical here. Don't pm me whether this is real or not.
You can easily find an expert adviser on the web to produce this type of chart.

yup it is, but managing positions is difficult part, which most people just dont think or lack in knowledge. normally when one is trading huge sum they should split their position in chunks from entry and exit point of view or what ever they prefer. if one is trading in FX 28 pairs area then they should manage their exposure too in each individual currency as keeping in mind not to over load 1 boat because of correlation

its normal human tendency to think about just one entry and exit but when they start to get liquidity issue then its time to get in another pond or make change in their management and learning how to manage with situation
the more smaller chunk you make the more easier it will be for market to digest but more harder for you to manage if they are in multiple on multiple pairs

Think around it : why dont you trade your full account in one single trade but you always try to trade just a part of your account in single trade ?

This is what happened to LTCM.

Yes that's right.

Something happened recently this week
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/06/the-...e-futures.html
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/do...nge-2018-12-05
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic..._medium=social

"There are so many forces weighing against markets right now, whether it's the China slowdown, weak European data, Fed hikes, uncertainty around trade and now Brexit as well."
"The CME Group said it had to intervene with multiple 10-second pauses to prevent a steeper decline in the equity futures."
"The CME's Velocity Logic is designed to detect market movements of a set numbers of ticks up or down in a predetermined amount of time and halt trading if necessary."

And I suffered 3 massive losses at different times on my demo account.
No one will have expected it is not just 1 massive cut loss, but 3 on the same day.
If I have continued further, it will have been a total wipe out.

Lesson has made me learn that maybe I should just cut the massive loss and continue on another day.
There are times when the system predictability fails.

Full Apology by James Cordier


Not easy video. Hope he is fine.
There are days when black swans occur. You just have to stop being aggressive and stay on the defensive.

The way he was aggressively risking (like newbie) in options for quick money was very bad. i hope he had learned from it.....

Painful lesson last week. All because the stop loss is not triggered.
I shall do a Cordier Apology to myself. ;/

Not to worry, it is not a real account.

Cordier Apology: A term to mean heartfelt apology with tears dripping.

Traders need to rest well

We are sometimes so focused in our trading, that we din't do anything else.
When the task is done, we should just rest and once recovered, do other important things in life too.

Trading is not everything. What if we fail?
I think I am done with improving my trading system.
Next few weeks and coming year, I will focus on my other endeavors.

That is all for now.

Merry x mas and happy new year!

A good reference on what really caused OptionSellers collapse.

https://steadyoptions.com/articles/j...oes-bust-r429/