Lesson Learned - Managed Account Abu Awaad (Please comment on this trading)

Lesson Learned - Managed Account Abu Awaad (Please comment on this trading)
Dear FF member,

I am opening this thread not to complainin nor to bring Abu Awaad down. I respected him as
a trader & Still do today but here are a few points to think about b4 you decide to invest serious money.
I have been a long time follower of the great Cable Update(GBP/USD) thread. And like all people active on
that thread read about Abu Awaad Analysis.I was impressed mind you his analysis i believe is right on the
money. N e ways so i decided to inquire about his Managed account.He advice me to open with a min 10K account.
As i did not have much experience about his trading style i told him i will start with 5K and add on as i feel
confortable. As excited i was opened an account with FXCM. My account lasted a full 48 Hours. Here is my Story

My first trade was placed on the cable a beautiful sell
@ 1.4051 Lot size 0.5 SL NONE! TP 1.3650
ok it was a beautiful entry i couldnt have asked better to start my journey.At a point i was in profit
of 200 pips..to my suprise no profit taking was done.His plan was to TP at 1.3650.I did not complaining
since he is the managing the trade didnt want to offend him. For those who know what happened on march 18 2:15 PM
eastern there was a big news annoucement.This was the last time i smile on this journey. Profit around 60 pips
juz b4 the news. No SL was placed i was looking at my account unable to do nothin. Yes to cut the story short.
from a winning 1000 trade. It was closed at -1400 $ .
My questions asked to Abu.
Why no partial TP . Close half maybe???? and move SL to BE ..no answer
Why no SL . Said he was testing a new strategy??? on my hard earned money??? what about demo?
And told me dont worry i will go back to my old ways.
To my suprise he opened a sell at the top
@ 1.4322 Lot Size 0.1 closed @ 21 pips profit
mY ACCOUNT NOW STANDING AT ABOUT 3615.00 $
OPENS A buy
@ 1.4287 lOT sIZE 0.4 !!! EVEN AFTER TELLIN ME HE WILL DO 3% OF THE ACCOUNT.
NO sl IN PLACE!!! I email him and he says dont worry....He closed -61 pips!!! -278$
My longest night of stress...
in the morning he opens a SELL @
@ 1.4475 TP ??? SL ?? NOne again ... And LOT 0.5 on a account now down to 3400$!!
Result after looking at a loss of another -570$ i call to cancel with FXCM ASAP. While talking
to the dealing desk ..i had juz finished closing the order that Abu now decides to BUY
0.2 Lots @ 1.4578 wich i closed right away again.

Please tell me...I did not expect my account to managed this way...What are your opinion because this is the response
i got from Abu :
you running from the first day. i'm sorry that your luck is bad with me for the first day. but thats what happen for you and other clients for me.
same my personal account,
anyway one day is not the key to say something about my trading. you ask for History trading and you see the performance.
sorry again...
Nizar.
To wich my reply :
I am sorry but I could not blame it on luck forex is not luck ...Did I learn a lesson or what first rule is money management its not luck that wipes 50 percent almost of an account in 48 hours . I was a fool to let you continue after the first trade that was greed on ure behalf u were making 200 pips never took profit nor partial and to top it no SL and we went from possible 1000 to -1400.I feel like you scammed me with fxcm because my luck has nothin to do about my account half gone in 2 days.they say never let a winner become a looser I didn't open with u with greed to be a millionaire. But it sure seemed u want to be one on my expense I am truly shocked I feel like the person on forexfactory is not the one who traded my account. Where were ure stop loss???I have no words to describe it. Its a lesson learned a hard way and not that it matters to u but my hard earnd money wasn't there to test a new system.. there are demo accounts for that. I tell myself this wasn't traded by abu awaad its not possible. Have a good day

I Dont want to ruin his business this is my story sure i only lasted 48 hours...Can you blame me
Out of the many rules broken
- Money Management
- SL
- Never let a winner turn into a looser...
I lost practicaly 50% of the account in 48 hours. So please Think twice and know what ure getting
into.

From 5K to 2.6K

Sounds like you handed controll of your money over to an Idiot. Be more carefull in future.

I'd never trust my money to be managed by anyone but myself period.

Hell I wouldn't even give it to Ed Seykota, if I lose money I want it to be for a mistake I make why should I lose my money for someone else's mistake.

I am sorry for your bad experience. I have to ask though, You are in Canada and this guy is in Saudi Arabia. That is as far as you can get from Canada, just about. Why would you even consider giving this guy money? There is no way you could have done any meaningful Due Diligence for the price of your $5k. I mean really, the guy is an IB for some dealer. Did you ask for any official credentials? I feel sorry for you man and I hope no one else uses this guy.

Did you solicit him, or did he solicit you, for the account?

I reported him to Admin, because he is obviously a system seller, selling managed accounts according to his web site.

At lest you learned your lesson. I can tell that you are quite lazy even from your "texting" writing style and therefore I don't feel sorry one bit. Get to work, trade with mini-micros and get some experience.

My personal opinion is that I am the best manager of my money. I may not have the best returns and make errors, but my number one priority is protecting myself. Abu Awaad, or any other trader, isn't going to treat your money like they would theirs. That's just my 2 cents.

Holy crap. After 10 years in the Gulf, I wouldn't trust a local to wash my car properly, never mind manage my money.

Close your account... now.

Worst trading I have ever seen. The quickest I have ever lost that much is 3 months. The guy trades like a complete idiot

All I can say is, remeber the old saying "A fool and his money are soon parted"

You may as well have replied to one of those scam Emails from Nigeria asking for you bank account details.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking Abu, personally I always read his analysis and found a lot of it very good, along with Sofia, Wormboy et al.

The whole point of this forum is for people to learn, it is not for the lazy to hand someone else their money and say 'here, make me rich'

A few weeks ago I was following Abu's posts and quickly came to the conclusion that although his analysis may generally be ok his application of it in trading was very vague. I also noticed that he didn't update his blog with all his losing trades that he posts on the forum. I found that disingenuous at best and gave up on him then. I didn't pull him on the losing trades as I couldn't be bothered with the slanging match that would most likely follow.

If you really are going give your money to somebody then some due diligence is order. On here that means at the very least reading and cross checking everything they have posted here and elsewhere.

MM is absolutely key to success and it seems his is non existant. You just shouldn't be losing that much of your account that quickly. I have been slowly getting to grips with trading for 2 years now, first on shares, now on forex. I'm nearly near to making decent money now but I've yet to blow my account, though it is running lower than I started. How? MM, MM and MM.

Sorry you lost your money, hope it's a lesson learnt.

Tim

Thats a pretty rookie style of trading. Any half decent money manager would only risk 2 to at most 5% on any one position, and it seems that even as he lost, he didn't adjust his position sizing, causing you to have that type of severe drawdown. There's no excuse for that, actually anytime you give your money to a money manager, you should investigate the type of trading that person does, the criteria being used, the leverage, and the frequency. Their style of trade has to suit yours, and usually managers will have conservative, medium, aggressive types of funds with varying styles and leverage used for each type of fund. So I don't fault you for giving your money to a "professional" to trade, but I do fault you on your lack of research.
And not all of us have time to learn to trade and then spend time researching news and then make trades on our account, some of us have businesses and jobs to goto so I don't fault you for giving money to a professional. A lot of FF members are traders or wannabe traders so they don't like the idea of giving money to someone else to manage. But Lebron James or Steven Spielberg, they don't trade their own money, they hire people to look after that. Although Spielberg too got caught up in that Madoff scam. But thats just the risk that you run sometimes in this game.
So do your research, and understand that even conservative forex managed accounts can be risky and you shouldn't put in most of your necessary funds in FX or commodity managed accounts. After you see results, you may want to increase slowly and add to the account but never put in the max in the beginning.
Anyways I'm sorry to hear about your loss, but its an expensive lesson to learn, and maybe in the future, you will do better research in anything related to investments, whether its fund managers, mentorships, products, etc.. And always ask around, there's plenty of qualified people here that can give you advice.

Ron

Another one bites the dust. Sad.

why not? spread the word of your experience to everyone man.. because theres no professional trader in the world that that performance would be acceptable. i remember joking with a friend at the time of that move.. saying "wow.. someones getting really rich.. and someones losing their account right now..", while i personally stood aside because its untradeable. sorry to hear you were the guy losing the account.

1) not using a stop is unacceptable, UNLESS you're maybe running some type of hedge or basket strategy or using incredibly small leverage
2) not using a stop BEFORE news is suicide.
3) being +60 before news and not using a stop is just wreckless. even a worst case stop thats just like 100pips or something to prevent exactly this scenario would be fine.

This guy shouldve had a % amount he was willing to lose in a certain timeframe and stopped when he hit that. Alot of professionals use 5,10,maybe 20% cutoff for drawdown. For example if they hit 20%, stop and reevaluate whats happening, etc.

talk to FXCM about this. my buddy is a money manager that uses them.. they look at drawdowns and they do warn the money manager if they think hes overtrading, trading alot just to make rebates, or wreckless in general. i mean chances are they cant do anything.. bc you sign the risk disclosure agreement.. but you never know.

anyway, you learned a very expensive lesson. sorry. =/

Sorry to say, your post is not the first where someone in FF posts they will start a Managed Trading account, but only to blow the account in record speed [well close to it].

You will see the individual post his trading method, how he trades, his money management, blah, blah, but only to find out in the end the hard way that this person cannot trade to save his life.

Whatever you see posted in this forum is not live trading, but after the fact so anyone can say this is whatever he did or what you should have done to make his system impreccable with an occasional "oh well....you can't win them all."

If you like a method with what you see, demo trade it for yourself to find out if its for you. There are many systems here which I have also tried which I have a hard time replicating good results that I will just eventually abandon it. But if you are successful with it, try it live with a mini-lot, don't trust anyone with your hard earned money to see it being blown away.

Yes, I also have loss money with Managed Accounts to the point of nothing in the account, and all you would hear is excuses one after another or not even a response anymore from the person. I trade part-time also, I do not know what I was thinking that someone else can trade better than me by leaving money to him to see it all go to zero. In fact, my trading is over 90% winners, don't let greed take the best of you....

Some of these people remind me of those who flood your mailbox with EAs, enticing you with talks and impressive charts of many PIPs. Its all hype as far as I am concern.

maybe a way to make your money back is to follow his thread and do the exact opposite of his trade calls? lol.

haha. "99.9% Accurate Robo Strategy! Made 1000 pips last month!" lol. didnt tell u they risked 3000pips to get that 1000... lol

theres no easy way in this forex business. the closest you come to easy money is investing with a skilled money manager... so instead of risking your money per trade, you're risking your money on whether or not the guy you invest in is skilled or not =x

chalk this lesson up to a bad trade(1 big bad trade) and keep learning to trade.

Here we see the danger of those amateurish but yet very popular threads where tons of newbies who don't have the experience (yet) to understand whats useful or not. Seems like it's easy getting blinded by those "thread-superstar-traders". I bet, you cannot find a single long-term profitable "thread-trader" who shares his live trades almost every day. We know thats not how things work.

Those threads share the characteristics of an class without any teacher or casino just without the free booze. Everybody is yelling, bashing on each other, having ego-trips etc.

And for god sake, if you want someone trading your money, make sure you don't find him in the dirt ! Isn't plan logic that someone who successfully trades the world largest market couldn't care less about managing a 5k $ account nor hanging around posting live trades on a forum trying to convince people that he is indeed successful ! ?

Someone remember the "thread-superstar-trader" Moe who lived at the Bahamas ?

We are all here for the same reason; to make money. Tons of people never learn or find it too difficult learning how to trade, so they seek other and easier opportunity's like fooling/scamming others. And that's not unique within the forex market, no sir.

Cant agree more. Well said.

i agree. you probably could.. because they are out there, but they are far and few between and itd be tough to validate anyone unless you saw their account statements.

anyway, since i've made my pips for the day/week... im going to look into anything you can do to get back at this fool legally. because i really feel for you.. even if you didnt do your due dilligence before opening an account.. thats no reason for this guy to be so wreckless with your hard earned money. if he blew 10-20% over the course of a number of trades.. then that might be more acceptable as a drawdown, and you could decide not to do business with him. but 50% in a few days because of no stop losses? ridiculous.

Also - responding to your post caused me to miss a EURJPY long that would've been at breakeven or slightly drawing down at the moment.. and that would've probably cut my profits for the day in half. So I owe you 50% of my profits for the day. lol.

I read the 1st post and it described exactly how i trade when i first started....and sometime even to this day. its called revenge trading , which is so irresponsible.