Steviet's Live Trades!

hello,

this is my first visit to this thread.....uh, so basically no trades will be posted here and that i need to have an auto-trader to place the trades on my a/c using Steve's signals......am i right ?

Not meaning to sound harsh here but I posted every single trade I made for a year and I really haven't the time or inclination to do it any more.

I've worked very hard putting in hours and hours of study to come up with a method that suits me. I suggest you do the same - there is no free lunch in this business and if you want to be successful long term then you can't rely on someone else for your success.

As far as the auto-trader is concerned, don't even think about it unless you have at least $50k account balance. Anything less than that on a mini account and you will get roasted in drawdown periods.

Kind Regards
Steve

Hey Steve,

I admire how you've diligently kept this thread going. Shows some true dedication, which is key in this business. Of course, that alone doesn't guarantee success, but I'm sure everyone here roots for a success story like yours.

See you around,

Tom

Thanks Tom

I've always read your posts with great interest - you're a real 'out of the box' type thinker which I like.

Happy New Year to you!

Kind Regards
Steve

Hey Steve,

Now that we know what happened with your broker on those trades, have you thought about where you would be now had it not been on holiday and those stops were hit? In other words, worse case scenario up to this point?

Well, the 2 stops were hit - it was the 3 limits that were ignored so instead of the 1700 pips I picked up, it should really have been 150. Still, I wasn't going to query it

On three other trades Thursday I picked up 150 pips & a further 490 pips on nine trades Friday.

Since November 1st have banked 9924 pips, so I guess worst case scenario it would be reduced to around the 8400 area.

% wise, October was around 40% (although too risky), November around 15% and December around 4%.

Kind Regards
Steve

Steve,
by looked your trades via zulu, you have done supper in last 24 hrs, 500 pips! (1% of acct balance)
i have not done much lately due to all the stop-outs --- hurts. http://www.forexfactory.com/images/icons/icon9.gif
i will try re-positioning...

take care.
S

Yup, yesterday was a pretty good one. Over 300 pips on the live account plus another 150 in the last few hours.

Hi Steviet,

I could understand where they may be coming from. 20/21 = 95% accuracy, just to break even. So unless you hit 100% accuracy, you wouldn't be profitable? That's an incredible feat!

So let me see if I understand how this is accomplished - instead of taking what many would define as "normal" size positions & stop losses for your account balance level, you take much smaller positions, but shoot for very high pip returns per trade, with equally large stop losses. Is that roughly correct?

I've heard of this wild notion of a "no-interest broker" but never actually stumbled across one. They really don't charge you for holding short carry positions overnight? That seems to me that they would be setting themselves up for some arbitrage players if they allowed such a thing (on sizable positions). Go long $10M G/J on Oanda, short $10M G/J on your broker, market fluctuations cancel each other out, and you pocket the long swap. They must have some type of limitation, no?

Do you end up coming out ahead overall from no interest debited/credited? I guess it comes down to whether you've held a short or long bias over a given time period.

Interesting system!

Hi

OK, stop loss is 1000 pips and limit is 50 pips. 1000 pips equates to 2% account balance. So far I have made over 650 trades on this system with only 2 losses. As I can get away with 5 losses per approx 100 trades to break even you can see I'm well ahead of the game.

I trade GBPJPY exclusively & although taking trades from the 5 minute charts, I'm looking at dailys for the general direction. I have a maximum of 10 trades on at any time and often have both longs and shorts on at the same time.


The broker I use is Marketiva - they don't allow accounts from the US - it subscribes to those traders who cannot pay/receive interest for religious reasons. I think its called Sharah Law. I've used the account to practice on & only have e few thousand with them.

I have just opened an account at SaxoBank where swap is paid/earned but my belief is that overall the swap will cancel l out over time and therefore not be too much of an issue.

Kind Regards
Steve

Hi Steviet

First of all, Happy New Year.

Having losers of 1,000 and winners of 50 FORCES you to have a winning % above 95.

In fact, if you hit 95 winners and 5 losers, you'll end up losing 250 pips.

I think you are in the "I never want to lose a trade" phase and I hope that you'll soon realize that the winning% by itself means nothing, absolutely nothing.

I've been there last year for a few months...yes, it was really nice to have very long winning streaks and getting accustomed to winning on a trade-by-trade basis...

However, late October 2007 I sat down and thought of the huge risks that such strategies demand in order to keep up a high winning%. High winning% systems are HIGH MAINTENANCE.

I figured that the day I want to increase my size and do many more contracts per trade...will I be able to accept huge losses even if they only come sporadically?

Something stunk about the whole thing. Seriously, there was something in the back of my mind that kept whispering "be careful".

I spent the months of November and December digging into my strategies and finding a way to minimize risk.

I am a big believer of ratios. Not on a single trade basis, but overall risk ratio. Over a large number of trades, average losers should never be larger than average winners.

If you think about it, it's pure logic. Why would I want to risk $1,000 of my capital to only make $50???

From a business standpoint, it makes no sense at all.

I am not going to tell you how costly it's been to traverse from winning almost all the times to winning 60-70% of the times. Especially until late December before the Holidays, I've been struggling big time simply because it's really difficult to have small losses without being shaken out and still manage to have larger winners.

However, that is what good traders do. And traders who can accomplish this will stay in business in the long run.

I know that trading mini-micro accounts 1,000 pips is nothing...however, think about trading standard lots of $10 per pip? Would you be willing to risk $10,000 to make $500?

Don't get me wrong here, I find your recent performance very impressive...yet, bear in mind that you don't have to impress anybody, especially yourself.

I think the majority of bad traders could manage to hit well above 80% with 1,000 pip stop losses.

Basically, you are giving the market so much room that unless you are playing against a HUGE TREND, at some point the market will move in your favor just enough to hit your small target.

However, I am warning you against such strategy for one simple reason:

if you lose the habit of "losing" - no pun intended - your learning process will go flat.

Losing is something that is part of this business. There is no way out of losing. One way or another we are all gonna lose at some point.

However, if you win most of the times thanks to a HUGE STOP LOSS, you'll rarely be able to see your trading mistakes and correct them.

If you think about it, it makes a lot of sense from a psychological standpoint. Why would you change anything if you hit 96% of your trades?

It would be like asking a 75% basketball 3-pt shooter to spend extra hrs at the gym during the week to refine his shooting...why would he want to do that when the best in the league can't get above 60%???

In summary, losing humbles us and is not a bad thing as long as we manage our losses properly.

By your recent comments in this thread, I can tell by your words that you are somewhat scared of these big stops being hit...you keep highlighting the fact that you are far ahead of the game thanks to all the winners you've been collecting, etc...but how few consecutive losers would wipe away all the hard work you put into those hundreds of winners?

Always expect the UNEXPECTED. Anything can happen, trust me.

Goldman's Hedge Fund lost over 50% of its capital in one single week back in July 2007. That was a fund Goldman was very proud of and had been launched by presumably very capable traders who were into algorithms, computer programming, and all that stuff...supposedly, the fund should have never experienced a drawdown larger than 8% at any given time...They had backtested decades of market data and every single variable had been accounted for.

Yet, in one single week some new variable popped out of nowhere and erased more than half of their capital.

All in all, I am very proud to say that 10-20 years from now I'll still be around and do this business - as long as I feel like it of course -

There is no unexpected to me simply because I take my losses and move on. One bad week won't ever even dent my capital.

Only way I could understand your new approach would be if you were making a race against the market with a pre-set target in mind.

For instance, my goal is to make 100,000 pips.

As soon as I reach that, I am done and collect the cash.

That way the time variable could play in your favor. But if you catch the bad habit of having average losers 20 times larger than average winners, it's going to take a lot of effort to modify this - bad IMO - behavior in the future.

As always, something to chew for your brains.

Good Luck

IS

Happy New Year to you too IS

Isn't it funny that I started where you are now, with a method of around a 30% success ratio where I was taking a lot of small losses and a few large winning trades.

I too in the summer completely re-evaluated how I wanted to trade and came up with this method. Now, I believe people are looking too much into the 1000 pip stop loss and thinking whoah, hang on. However, the stop loss is just 2% of my account balance and that's what it's all about as far as I'm concerned. Generally, I would make that back in less than a week.

I don't feel any pressure trying to keep the winning % high enough to make a profit because as you rightly say, any fool could do it with such a wide stop loss! Actually as you know it's not as easy as it sounds because I always need to keep in mind the daily ranges and not to have too many positions stuck at the extreme of a range in case it breaks out of that range.

It's also funny that you mention stepping up to trade larger amounts and the psychological aspect of it all. In the next week or two I start trading a pretty large six figure sum with this method. This is why I'm always talking %'s and pips - as far as I'm concerned it's all relative and I musn't get phased whether I'm trading a $1,000 account or a $1,000,000 account.

You mentioned Goldman Sachs and I completely agree with your points. However, remember I rarely have more than 10% on the line at any given time - I've live tested this on a range of nearly 3,000 pips (over 240 to 213.50) and still managed to come out with just the 2 losses. I could've taken nearly 20 losses over that time and still come out ahead.

As you well know there are many ways to trade this market and no one way is better than another in itself. It's what the trader is comfortable with themselves, together with a sound plan and good momey management that is what ultimtely matters.

Thanks again for your comments and good luck with your trading this year.

Kind Regards
Steve

Steve:

I am trying to follow your GBP/JPY trading. However, because
you have over 1800 posts, I am having difficulty finding the post
which explains your method trading the pair. Do you have the
post number or even the page number that explains your method?
Thank you for sharing your trading experience. I look forward
to reading your method.

regards

Morning Steviet:

A quick note to avoid any misunderstandings:

1. My winning% used to be well above 90% - like yours currently - and when I fixed my win:loss ratio it dropped to 68%, which is still decently above the 50% mark.

I would never use a strategy that gives me less than 65% of winners, simply because anything below that doesn't provide me with a real EDGE.

However, I am currently better off with a 68% winning rate - lower than what it used to be - and a much better risk:reward ratio both in terms of profits and downside risk.

Basically, I am risking less per trade and making more money in the long run. Gotta love it when you lower your risk and increase your profits.

2. The capital % you risk per each trade is irrelevant to my observations simply because you risk 1,000 to make 50.

If 1,000 represents 2% of your capital, 50 will then represent 0,1%.

It's just another way to look at it. You risk 2% to make 0.1%. Still a "losing" business proposition IMO.

3. When I said that even bad traders could have over 80% of winners with a 1,000 pip stop loss, I didn't mean to overshadow your strategy. I don't have enough information to judge your strategy in terms of entries, exits, and other technical stuff so I can't really tell whether you are a good trader or a bad trader.

From what I read in the past, it sounded you were becoming a good "technician".

However, I feel I can express a negative opinion on the math related to your strategy.

I can't overlook the fact of risking 1,000 to only make 50. I am sorry if I keep stressing this, but having a ratio of 1 to 20 is just a losing business proposition to me.

As you said, to each his own. However, as long as you make the pips you certainly won't change anything and probably will fail to understand the importance of what I am stating above.

You win all the time, right? And those big losers never come around, and if they do they won't come in bunches but one every once in a while.

I wish you lots of success with this. You are a really nice person indeed.

Have a good day.

IS

LOL, I understand completely what you're saying & yes, on occasion losers may come in bunches. They haven't yet but I'm more than prepared for it - I could've taken 7 losses in November & still come out in rofi because I banked over 7500 pips.

As it was I took no losers but as I said, I am completely aware it will happen. I just back myself to make more than I lose and so far history backs me up.

Let's agree to differ

Kind Regards
Steve

12/05/07 -- 01/10/08 2:00pm ET
Realized +1082 pips
Drawdown -427 pips
Positions open:
4
Acct +2.1%
(if all positions were closed, acct would be 1.3%)

Looks like you took a rather large hit in the last few days of 2007. How many trades does this represent, and did you follow the 1000 pip SL rule during this period?

Still, anything over 2% in a month beats the best hedge funds, a good investment in my books.

Are you going to continue with this strategy?

Steve's works if you follow religiusly.
I have used Steve method, S/L 1000 pip with 2% of the account balance.
something i have done not exact same as Steve's:
At times I had traded not just G/J vs. only G/J;
At times I had more than 10 positions open vs. max no is 10 of Steve's;
I have used 1 hr TF for the entry and exit vs. 5 min TF.

Those derailed have costed the trades.
I am working on the re-positioning.

Yes, I do continue the method of S/L 1000pips of 2% acct.

S

Mate, thank you for your comments above...EXCELLENT!!!
You certainly got me thinking with that and for my goals for 2008, this is gold...may been seemingly obvious to some, but for me it has been a case of focusing so much on the winning that I have been losing!
This is about to change and you got me hanging on every word you said.

Steve, good going and hope 2008 is a winner for you

OK, well January has not been easy but here are my results so far...

Jan 3rd banked -136 pips over 8 trades
Jan 4th banked +490 pips over 9 trades
Jan 7th banked +51 pips over 1 trade
Jan 8th banked +315 pips over 7 trades
Jan 9th banked +316 pips over 7 trades
Jan 10th banked +266 pips over 6 trades
Jan 11th banked +180 pips over 4 trades

Results using this method so far...

Nov +7585 pips (approx 15%)
Dec +1985 pips (approx 4%)
Jan so far +1482 pips (approx 3%)

Next week I start trading someone else's money for the first time and I'm very much looking forward to the challenge. However, it is going to take my full attention so I'm not sure how much I'll be around, at least for a while.

With that said it's been a great journey and I owe a great deal to all of those (they know who they are) who have helped in the last 15 months.

Just remember, there are plenty of ways to consistently make money from this market - the important thing is to find something that you are comfortable with.

Have a great weekend one & all

Kind Regards
Steve