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Q A M Trading Strategy

  • #1,721
  • Oct 6, 2016 11:52pm Oct 6, 2016 11:52pm
Quoting jayhong
{quote} Thanks for your honesty here. Although we always prepare for this kind of black swan, just like walking on the thin ice, most traders still cannot accept this slash when it really comes (it's definitely not easy...), most might just give up and go away to find other systems. Really honor that your positive thinking and you still keep it up. Hope this acct can climb up and move to ECN soon.
This journey needed this kind of shock.
I think EURGBP options positions advised by the banks prior to Brexit could be the reason for the market manipulators to act just before the employment figures.
A lot of accounts must have been busted by the margin calls.

Your account has passed the major stress test.

"The key point here is to always preserve the initial balance by applying appropriately placed stops."

Can you please explain if the stops were put in by you or by the EA? How did you do it?

Thank you.
Practice makes a person perfect
  • #1,722
  • Oct 7, 2016 12:45am Oct 7, 2016 12:45am
Fattening slaughter ！ CHF GBP ......
  • #1,723
  • Oct 7, 2016 1:59am Oct 7, 2016 1:59am
AJ [M1; 300 - MN 5001; PLS]

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Masterrmind.............
Master your Mind then Master your Trades
  • #1,724
  • Oct 7, 2016 5:01am Oct 7, 2016 5:01am
Quoting Masterrmind
AJ [M1; 300 - MN 5001; PLS] {image} Masterrmind.............
AJ

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Cycle closed out manually.

Masterrmind...........
Master your Mind then Master your Trades
  • #1,725
  • Oct 7, 2016 5:19am Oct 7, 2016 5:19am
Quoting jayhong
{quote} Thanks for your honesty here. Although we always prepare for this kind of black swan, just like walking on the thin ice, most traders still cannot accept this slash when it really comes (it's definitely not easy...), most might just give up and go away to find other systems. Really honor that your positive thinking and you still keep it up. Hope this acct can climb up and move to ECN soon.
Welcome jayhong.

I genuinely appreciate your post as its accurate and not tainted with negativity and that speaks volumes about your character.

This thread is all about honesty and transparency.

What you see is what you get.

The market does produce these black swan type events and they do have a mean streak about them.

Considering all the good work to grow the account to this level and then to have a wicked unpredictable spike is a bit hard to take lightly.

Unfortunate to have been hit by this when the account was tracking very well indeed.

Now instead of an equity curve pullback I'm faced with a growth curve pullback instead and that's a little more serious since dollars have been returned to the market in quick time.

I'm aware of at least a dozen accounts (and there will be far more than this) that margin called with almost instant closeouts.

So although its annoying to say the least the account still has a 20% growth level to work from and I intend to keep applying all the trading techniques I know to keep the growth curve pointed up.

Many things go through a traders mind when events like this occur such as throwing in the towel or hitting reset and starting a fresh account.

Not me!

Simply pick myself off the ground, wipe the dust off and continue towards the goal.

Onward and upward is the only option for this trader.

ps. now they are trying to blame it all on algorithmic trading or a 'fat finger' error ... but what we do know is a spike like that is damn nasty!

Masterrmind.............
Master your Mind then Master your Trades
  • #1,726
  • Oct 7, 2016 11:39am Oct 7, 2016 11:39am
Quoting simnz
{quote} This journey needed this kind of shock. I think EURGBP options positions advised by the banks prior to Brexit could be the reason for the market manipulators to act just before the employment figures. A lot of accounts must have been busted by the margin calls. Your account has passed the major stress test. "The key point here is to always preserve the initial balance by applying appropriately placed stops." Can you please explain if the stops were put in by you or by the EA? How did you do it? Thank you.
Absolutely when considering that higher leveraged positions could have emptied the account due to that spike.

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Some GU trades were applied by the Expert and some manually.

With cycles like these wider stops are usually needed to accommodate the floating DD and to give the trades plenty of room to breathe.

However it becomes a balancing act between too wide a stop and too tight a stop.

Too wide a stop opens up greater loss to the trading account in a stop out event.
Too tight a stop will close out prematurely most trades that may have hit TP.

So what I do is attempt to find a middle ground most of the time.
I must say though that on many of the recent cycles taken on this trading account that when using the Expert the stops are anywhere from 150 pips to 300 pips in general with 300 pips being the norm.

The 300 pip SL based on 0.1 lots represents on average about a US$3 loss per trade and at 0.2 lots its simply US$6
So the total loss at SL is simply the sum of all losses.

I look at PA and key handles in other SL situations especially for longer term cycles of trades.

Traders could argue that had the trades not been running over night then the loss would not have occurred.

This is correct however, that spike occurred right at the start of my trading window slot which means that if I had of opened a cycle on GU at that time there is no way I would have known that such a spike was to follow ... no one knew that!

The loss would have been substantially less though since far fewer trades would have been in action and they would have hit a 200 to 300 pip SL or in fact immediately to TP because in the Asian session I mostly set TPs including in the Expert settings to anywhere from 20 pips to 100 pips.

With a flash spike as witnessed in today's trading it should open your eyes to what the market is capable of throwing at you.

In the future it could be any pair at any time that generates such a spike.

Sounds very dangerous doesn't it?

I haven't looked at the closed out GU positions yet but it will be interesting to determine what the floating DD would have hit had no stops been placed on the trading account and if the account would have survived (I'm guessing it would have but I'll re-visit this later just for interest sake).

In my view however, this is no way to trade (without a SL) and sooner or later a much deeper spike may occur that will simply empty the whole account.

So its simply not worth the risk.

Masterrmind..............
Master your Mind then Master your Trades
  • #1,727
  • Oct 7, 2016 9:57pm Oct 7, 2016 9:57pm
I have not experienced this kind of flash spike for GBP in the past.

But for NZD it has happened quite a few times in the past.When trading NZD this kind business hazard is taken account of it.

This happening to GBP is a serious matter and let us see what BOE investigation reveals.

As a retail trader, your experience is making me re-think about the non-use of stop loss for fx spot trading. Either I should do fx trading with stop loss or just stick to directionless options trading.

As a directionless options traders I trade on both sides - selling puts and calls - and keep adjusting spreads when one side becomes lop-sided.

If the pair loses capacity to provide me enough premium to balance the books, I can roll to other month's strikes as well.

However, the choice of trading this way is restricted to EURUSD and USDJPY, because of their strong mean-reversion tendencies.
Practice makes a person perfect
  • #1,728
  • Oct 8, 2016 1:32am Oct 8, 2016 1:32am
Quoting Masterrmind
{quote} ... The market does produce these black swan type events and they do have a mean streak about them. Considering all the good work to grow the account to this level and then to have a wicked unpredictable spike is a bit hard to take lightly. Unfortunate to have been hit by this when the account was tracking very well indeed. Now instead of an equity curve pullback I'm faced with a growth curve pullback instead and that's a little more serious since dollars have been returned to the market in quick time....
Hi Mastermind,

Thanks for your blog, interesting read and glad to see your account is still alive.

One thing that I notice is that it seems that in this case a lot of the damage was done by the EA. (I'm assuming that all the 1 min trades and that they were all placed within the same minute were placed by the EA). If only one EA trade had been placed then i think this would have made a difference of around 20% from the loss.

I think it would be good to keep this in mind for anyone programming/running any EA. It should be allowed to only place a trade at most one trade per predefined time (e.g. 1 or 5 minuets), and /or check for such large price movements (as I'm sure no human in their right mind would sit there and manually place sell orders so quickly). And as you said unfortunately we need to be prepared for something like this to happen again.

Regards.
  • #1,729
  • Oct 9, 2016 10:43am Oct 9, 2016 10:43am
Quoting Contented
{quote} Hi Mastermind, Thanks for your blog, interesting read and glad to see your account is still alive. One thing that I notice is that it seems that in this case a lot of the damage was done by the EA. (I'm assuming that all the 1 min trades and that they were all placed within the same minute were placed by the EA). If only one EA trade had been placed then i think this would have made a difference of around 20% from the loss. I think it would be good to keep this in mind for anyone programming/running any EA. It should be allowed to only place...
No!

The damage was not done by the EA as it places only 1 order at the close of the M1/5 Candle (M1 = max 1 trade/min; M5 = max 1 trade/5 min.

I will post the logs for the 10 pending Buy Stops on GU for 1 lot each placed manually.

Posted below are the log files for Oct 6 and Oct 7 for the 10 GU long orders:

Oct 6

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Oct 7

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Account History of the 10 GU trades

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If you spend a little time looking over the log files on each order you'll soon discover the following:

1. My stops on almost all orders were close to 200 pips
2. The price that trades were filled at except for 1 trade that made it to market on the 6th were about 100 pips higher
3. Add to this the stop out price being also 100 pips worse than requested.

The 9/10 trades instead of having only 200 pip SLs each actually had almost 400 pip SLs due the incredibly horrific slippage at exit.

It does not take long to then realize that instead of only a US$200 loss I was instead hit with almost US$400 (just under).

To top this all off ... guess how long from entry to exit all this took to unfold?

1 SECOND!!!


Although you might have stops in place to reduce loss it is still very very possible to lose far more than you imagine due to circumstances far outside your control.

GU totally unpredictable and nasty spike rips more out of the account than ever anticipated.

Imagine now if the account was at US$990K (so almost at the ultimate goal of this account) and my stops were very tight at a stop out of 5% and an event like this happens but this time the flash crash adds 400 pips to my stops due to negative slippage .... what would one do then??

Even a few trades at an additional 400 pips to the stops would be very very nasty.
Yes its rare but you can never say that it will not happen .... I'd be betting that it will happen ... only unknown is when!

ps. EJ trades should be ignored in the logs since this is all about the GU pair only.
pps. the rest of the loss can be found in previous GU trades which I have not addressed here since the ones I have mentioned will suffice.

Masterrmind........
Master your Mind then Master your Trades
  • #1,730
  • Oct 9, 2016 11:32am Oct 9, 2016 11:32am
Quoting Masterrmind
{quote} No! The damage was not done by the EA as it places only 1 order at the close of the M1/5 Candle (M1 = max 1 trade/min; M5 = max 1 trade/5 min. I will post the logs for the 10 pending Buy Stops on GU for 1 lot each placed manually. Posted below are the log files for Oct 6 and Oct 7 for the 10 GU long orders: Oct 6 {image} Oct 7 {image} Account History of the 10 GU trades {image} If you spend a little time looking over the log files on each order you'll soon discover the following: 1. My stops on almost all orders were close to 200 pips 2....
To make matters just a little more frustrating on a Pepperstone account the 9 GU longs would not have been triggered and therefore no loss recorded.

This is because the lowest priced entry on the GU longs was at 1.26750 with all others higher again.

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Masterrmind............
Master your Mind then Master your Trades
  • #1,731
  • Oct 9, 2016 8:20pm Oct 9, 2016 8:20pm
Start of a new week

Asian session

AU [M5; 40 - manual]

Shorts in progress.

Expert + other manual entries could be traded throughout the day.

Masterrmind.............
Master your Mind then Master your Trades
  • #1,732
  • Oct 9, 2016 9:17pm Oct 9, 2016 9:17pm
EJ [M5; 40 - manual]

Longs in progress.

Masterrmind...........
Master your Mind then Master your Trades
  • #1,733
  • Oct 9, 2016 11:05pm Oct 9, 2016 11:05pm
Quoting Masterrmind
{quote} No! The damage was not done by the EA as it places only 1 order at the close of the M1/5 Candle (M1 = max 1 trade/min; M5 = max 1 trade/5 min. I will post the logs for the 10 pending Buy Stops on GU for 1 lot each placed manually. Posted below are the log files for Oct 6 and Oct 7 for the 10 GU long orders: Oct 6 {image} Oct 7 {image} Account History of the 10 GU trades {image} If you spend a little time looking over the log files on each order you'll soon discover the following: 1. My stops on almost all orders were close to 200 pips 2....
EMAIL SENT OFF TO FX-TM broker requesting an explanation

I have just emailed a detailed complaint to FX-TM regarding this horrendous fill on both entry and exit considering the fill provided on multiple other broker data feeds.

So I'm looking forward to their timely response.

In time I may share this information here but we'll see how they respond in the first instance.

Should be very interesting to say the least.

If the response and solution provided is sub-par then don't be surprised to see this account shelved permanently.

I will as stated continue this journey but will likely consider many other alternatives for broker choice.

Lets wait and see what happens.

ps. 700 pip on other broker data feeds with virtually no upward additional spike but FX-TM cent server had 1200 pip spike both up and down.

Masterrmind............
Master your Mind then Master your Trades
  • #1,734
  • Oct 10, 2016 6:39am Oct 10, 2016 6:39am
EJ

Loading up on a short strategy.

Increasing lot sequence in the direction of TP.

Range [0.2, +0.2 step, N]

N being the final lot size of the sequence.
Frequency of trades per given lot varies from 5 and upwards.

Major load up phase in action.

Masterrmind..........
Master your Mind then Master your Trades
  • #1,735
  • Oct 10, 2016 8:27am Oct 10, 2016 8:27am
Quoting Masterrmind
EJ Loading up on a short strategy. Increasing lot sequence in the direction of TP. Range [0.2, +0.2 step, N] N being the final lot size of the sequence. Frequency of trades per given lot varies from 5 and upwards. Major load up phase in action. Masterrmind..........

EJ - update

Huge cycle in progress.

All TPs converge at the 1.15 handle.

N will now stop at 3 lots.

Stops of 200 pips each but unlikely to run that far.

ps. highly aggressive stepped cycle to the short side with 160 shorts running on EJ.

pps. quite easily could be the last cycle traded on this account.

Masterrmind...........
Master your Mind then Master your Trades
  • #1,736
  • Oct 10, 2016 8:42am Oct 10, 2016 8:42am
HI Mastermind,

I have launched trading in two pairs EurChf and EurGBP today . NO particular session time observed. Just a window of 6 hours. all totally executed by EA as I had gone out of home for more than 8 hours leaving the trading unattended. The results are attached in the TE. The trading started an hour before Frankfurt start and lasted for 6 hours. The template worked well. The account is of standard size lots and leverage is 500.
Practice makes a person perfect
  • #1,737
  • Oct 10, 2016 8:51am Oct 10, 2016 8:51am
Quoting simnz
HI Mastermind, I have launched trading in two pairs EurChf and EurGBP today . NO particular session time observed. Just a window of 6 hours. all totally executed by EA as I had gone out of home for more than 8 hours. The results are attached in the TE. The trading started an hour before Frankfurt start and lasted for 6 hours. The template worked well.
Yes the template I made for you will work very well on these pairs.

I've been using a similar template for over a year now but on a much larger balance.

The idea was to continually skim profit day after day but at lower lot sizing to keep the risk down low.

I trade EURCHF, EURGBP and EURUSD ........ plus Silver.

Silver is where I make most of my profit.

I tend to apply occasional higher lot small TP entries every so often just to keep the gain rolling along but the idea of this setup is to take consistent small profit most of the time and it does a fantastic job at that.

It is not a set and forget approach though so you'll still need to keep a close watch on cycles of trades and manage the risk.

Great to hear that its working out well for you so far but there will be some difficult times so be sure to be prepared for them.

Masterrmind.............
Master your Mind then Master your Trades
  • #1,738
  • Oct 10, 2016 9:13am Oct 10, 2016 9:13am
Quoting simnz
HI Mastermind, I have launched trading in two pairs EurChf and EurGBP today . NO particular session time observed. Just a window of 6 hours. all totally executed by EA as I had gone out of home for more than 8 hours leaving the trading unattended. The results are attached in the TE. The trading started an hour before Frankfurt start and lasted for 6 hours. The template worked well. The account is of standard size lots and leverage is 500.
Now imagine trading 3 pairs together with this setup on a >>$US100K+ account.

Money for jam as they say ... money for jam.

Enjoy it ... you deserve it simnz.

Masterrmind.............
Master your Mind then Master your Trades
  • #1,739
  • Oct 10, 2016 10:28am Oct 10, 2016 10:28am
Quoting Masterrmind
{quote} Yes the template I made for you will work very well on these pairs. I've been using a similar template for over a year now but on a much larger balance. The idea was to continually skim profit day after day but at lower lot sizing to keep the risk down low. I trade EURCHF, EURGBP and EURUSD ........ plus Silver. Silver is where I make most of my profit. I tend to apply occasional higher lot small TP entries every so often just to keep the gain rolling along but the idea of this setup is to take consistent small profit most of the time and...
Thank you for sharing the system.

How do you plan lower lot sizing ? should I put pending orders when I am not watching charts? What kind of difficult times I could be facing?
Practice makes a person perfect
  • #1,740
  • Oct 10, 2016 11:14am Oct 10, 2016 11:14am
Quoting simnz
{quote} Thank you for sharing the system. How do you plan lower lot sizing ? should I put pending orders when I am not watching charts? What kind of difficult times I could be facing?
My pleasure but remember that an informed and alert trader is a necessary requirement to successfully trade this method or any method.

Calculations for all possible account sizes is via a comprehensively designed Excel sheet which will not be provided here.

However, examples of lot sequencing may be provided for a few different account sizes.

The lot sequencing provided to you comprised low, medium and high risk for a general case only.

I was never told what account size you would be trading and therefore provided only a lot sequence on the information provided knowing it would be a test run in the first instance.

Based on a gain of 4.3% showing so far today on your $50K demo account your growth is looking good.

But the lot sequence being applied is not the best fit for a 50K balance so it would need to be refined.

In your testing mode though I would simply continue on with the current lot sequencing and see how the account progresses over time.

Biggest obstacle will be when an extended trend occurs which will put the account under additional stress due to the lot sequencing.

I hope you learn much from this testing phase and run it for several months until you are familiar with all the oddities of the Expert Advisor and especially the trading ranges and likely volatility of these turtle pairs.

As you can clearly see the $$$ can be made on the turtle pairs very easily.

Keep both the growth curve and the equity curve pointed skyward always.

ps. I appreciate you referencing me in the TE details ... a professional and respectful approach.

ps. nice to see a decent broker being used too!

Good trading,

Masterrmind............
Master your Mind then Master your Trades
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