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Showing posts with label watukushay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label watukushay. Show all posts

Monday, May 9, 2016

Watukushay No 5 An Excellent System Ready for Release ~ forex trading gambling

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After a few months of testing and development I am glad to announce that the first release candidate for Watukushay No.5 is ready to be traded. Some days ago I talked about the first beta release and how I wanted to explore community based development before releasing the EA and after some limited success with this idea I have found enough profitable results for this system as to release the EA to all Asirikuy members. The release candidate of Watukushay No.5 will be ready for live trading featuring adequate error handling and functional decomposition with high-quality code that will allow us to have reliable and well-executed live trading results. During the next few paragraphs I want to share with you the importance of Watukushay No.5s achievements, a little bit about what I was able to achieve with this system and what it represents to the Asirikuy community.

As I mentioned on the previous post about this experts beta, Watukushay No.5 is a universal daily breakout system that is able to enter the market on a wide variety of circumstances adapting itself to the inherent characteristics of each different daily breakout it enters. Watukushay No.5 therefore belong to the same family as the turtle trading system and Kutichiy, aiming to profit from directional movements by entering the market after a given price value is broken towards the same side. However, Watukushay No.5 also includes a "fade mechanism" which also allows it to trade against breakouts and increases its flexibility to be profitable on currency pairs where fading certain movements is more profitable than trading the breakouts.

When I released the beta I had found the first EUR/USD profitable settings and I had some preliminary results for other currency pairs. Right now I am proud to say that I have reached profitable settings for this EA on the EUR/USD, USD/CHF, USD/JPY and GBP/USD. This is important since we only have a few systems that are able to trade the 4 majors and Watukushay No.5 will be able to introduce a lot of diversification power through its results on different currency pairs. Adding to this is the fact that the most profitable results (achieving a higher than 2:1 average compounded yearly profit to maximum draw down ratio) belong to the USD/CHF currency pair and NOT to the EUR/USD, giving us the power to diversify greatly against other trading systems like Teyacanani and Watukushay No.2 which achieve excellent results on this currency pair.
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Perhaps one of the most important things about this EA is its ability to constitute a viable portfolio on its own. The above image shows you the equity curve with yearly balance restarts (meaning that the internal balance of each instance is reset to the general account balance every 12 months) for Watukushay No.5 when trading the 4 majors at the same time. during the past 10 years. The portfolio of this EA achieves an average compounded yearly profit of 44% coupled with a maximum draw down level of 16% an excellent result only achievable up until now with a few other portfolios.

Despite the fact that all instances trade the same system it seems that maximum draw down periods do not tend to overlap since the different currency pairs are able to exploit their particular breakout inefficiency only under select market conditions that rotate amongst them. This in turn allows the different instances to hedge their draw down periods and achieve the above mentioned results which show this to be the case. Below you can also see the monthly profit chart for the portfolio obtained with 10 year backtests and a 1 year balance restarting technique. The system shows a high population of profitable months with a good number of highly profitable months that ensure the portfolios draw down remains under control. It is also worth mentioning that Watukushay No.5 was developed with all Watukushay Project principles in mind. The system was therefore developed with great care so that reliable simulations could be achieved.
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In summary, Watukushay No.5 is a great addition to Asirikuy featuring profitable results with similar draw down and profit targets on the 4 majors, a milestone achievement for Asirikuy portfolio system development. The system also showed excellent portfolio results, reason why its contributions to our long term profitability are bound to be important. Right now I have opened a poll within the Asirikuy community forum to choose a name for this EA and when the name is ready I will release the systems live trading version coupled with at least 2 account for live testing within Asirikuy.

If you would like to learn more about my journey in system development and how you too can develop your own likely long term profitable systems based on sound trading tactics please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !

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Sunday, May 8, 2016

Broker Conspiracy Theories Are they True ~ forex trading get rich quick

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If people new to forex trading have anything in common it is the overwhelming belief in the broker conspiracy theories. Ask ten people on their road to become successful traders about what they think regarding forex brokers and they will tell you that the main reason (or one of the main reasons) why they cannot profit as much as they want is because their brokers "play with them" in such a way that trading profitably becomes impossible (or much harder at least). The reasons why there is such a widespread belief in the broker conspiracy are many but the real question to ask is, is this conspiracy real ? Do brokers willingly play with their customers and mess with their execution and accounts in such a way that profitability is removed ? On todays post I will talk about these issues, giving you my opinion about the broker conspiracy theory and the consequence this has on your trading.

You have just bought your first extremely profitable scalping system, simulations show great results (although they are unreliable for this type of systems), your demo account shows great results and you are ready to jump into a live account with your first forex broker. You open up the account, fund it, get your VPS and start to trade your EA only to notice that your demo and live accounts almost never agree and your demo account is taking almost twice as many positions as your live trading account. Upon checking your live account you see a lot of spread widening, re-quotes and slippage that makes you think : the rumors were true, my broker is messing up my execution.

To tell you the truth, I do not believe in broker conspiracy theories because it is not in the main interest of a broker to harm their customers performance due to the fact that they make money from the spreads and this means that the longer it takes for a customer to lose their account, the more money they make. Generally what people perceive as their broker "messing with them" is nothing but the harsh reality of trading in the real market. Sometimes if the broker is a "market maker" this may become a little bit shady since the broker may make some decisions to protect itself from quick positioning or scalping, which they do not like due to the fact that they cannot properly hedge their exposure when such small and fast positions are opened. Such decisions may include spread widening, re-quotes, etc.

I have had my fair deal of experience with people in the broker industry (well known brokers at least) reason why I can tell you that most of the things you hear about are nothing but myths. Brokers are not "evil market makers" making money when you lose money, that to me seems like a childish way of putting things such as the brokers are "the bad guys" and you become the poor good guy/gal who could only make it if he or she wasnt screwed as much by the big guys. The first thing you need to do here is to take responsibility for your profits and your losses. Forex brokers are not responsible for your opening and closing of positions and therefore the fact that you attempt to use systems that simply dont work under real market conditions is not their fault.

However I always believe that you should always work with the worst possible case available such that your trading and decisions are as robust as possible. If there is a broker conspiracy and brokers will relentlessly prosecute and make certain systems (like scalpers) totally nonviable then you should focus on trading a system that is shielded from the power your broker has over your trading. Certainly it would not be very intelligent to trade a given system that you know depends greatly on execution variables your broker controls. If brokers do seek to make traders lose, then why in the world would you want to make it easier for them ?

In the end, if you profit or if you dont depends entirely on the decisions you make. If you trade systems that are very vulnerable to your brokers bidding then you will fall prey to the problems of real market execution and - if existent - to your brokers endless hunger for new traders flesh. As I said before the key here is to take responsibility for your trading and find systems that will allow you to trade with the smallest degree of dependency on live execution variables. Systems that trade in the medium or long term which do not have small take profit and stop loss targets will make you "immune" to any conspiracy since your broker will not be able to control your trading through the manipulation of execution variables.

However it is interesting here to note that I have never heard a profitable trader complain about execution related problems as a "broker conspiracy" since experienced traders know that this is a characteristic of the real market and that being successful despite their existence is one of the jobs YOU have as a profitable trader. It is irrelevant if these problems are or arent caused by your broker, if they are there and you want to be profitable then make your trading style such that these problems will have a small effect on your account balance. If you are suffering because of execution issues you should know that your trading style is what gives them the room to harm your wallet.

If you would like to know more about automated trading system development and how you too can design likely profitable trading systems please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !

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Thursday, May 5, 2016

Five Common Mistakes in System Optimization ~ forex trading jobs in new york

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I believe that one of the most important aspects of system design and use is system optimization. This step in system design is vital since it allows us to adjust a given trading system so that it can more efficiently exploit the market inefficiency it is based on. When done correctly, the optimization of a trading system gives you a more profitable version of your logic with better profit and risk targets in long term performance and a very robust strategy which is not likely to fail even if market conditions change significantly. When done incorrectly, optimization leads to curve-fitted systems which are "fit" to test profitably in the past but fail to profit in the same way in the future. What is the difference between correct and incorrect optimization ? On todays post I will talk to you about this very important aspect of system design and what mistakes system designers and traders usually make that make their optimizations invalid and the resulting trading system useless.

In the end, there is a good way and a bad way to optimize a strategy and definitely all systems can be adequately optimized if certain precautions are taken into account so that the most important "curve-fitting pitfalls" are avoided. I will now describe the five most common and dangerous mistakes made when optimizing and I will attempt to give some solutions to these very usual and sadly lethal blows to long term profitability.

1. Optimization period length. I think that the most common mistake when doing optimization is -without a doubt- the length of the testing period used to optimize. Strictly speaking, optimizations are not bound to be meaningful fit they are done within periods of less than 5 years given that smaller periods of time are not statistically relevant according to long term changes in market volatility. So if you want to optimize your system and avoid curve fitting, use a period of at least five years. Using a smaller period will most likely "fit" your strategy to very specific market conditions and will make it unable to perform correctly as the market changes.

2. Reliability of the simulations. It is very important to note that in order for optimizations to be valid, simulations need to be valid. Optimizing a scalper or a similar strategy which cannot be simulated accurately does not make any sense since the trading results - and thus the optimization results - are not going to represent live testing to any accurate extent. Designing systems that explicitely control one minute bar opening and that use adequate profit and risk targets - large enough to avoid interpolation errors - is critical for adequate optimization.

3. Ignoring the results surroundings. One of the most important aspects of system optimization is to take into account the results "around" the most profitable result you found. For example, if the optimal value for an indicator period for your strategy is 20 when doing a 5 year optimization what happens when the indicator value is changes to 19 or 21, what about 18 or 22 ? It is very important to consider the surrounding since they give you an idea of the possible changes of profitability you will get if the market changes enough so that your "optimal" settings are no longer that good. If your system is very profitable with 20 and then loses 70% of its profitability with 19, then the strategy is not robust enough and it IS bound to fail in the future as market conditions may drift - even if only slightly - from your set results.

4. Fine grid optimizations. Another common problem with optimizations is the use of very fine grids when optimizting. In general, the coarser the optimization the less risk there is to curve fit a strategy since the fitting is done in a "lose way" and results that may over estimate profits and underestimate future draw downs are also avoided to a good extent. In general you should not optimize to any grid lower than 2% and better 5% so if you are doing an optimization of a strategys SL from 20 to 200 do not use steps smaller than 4 to accomplish this.
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5. Reoptimizing after Optimizing. When you optimize a parameter for given strategy, then optimize another one and then reoptimize the first one to the new profitable results you are most likely doing a sort of "fine grid" optimization in the sense that you are "fine tuning" the first variable to the seconds "best results". This is similar to doing a fully correlated optimization (although less computationally intensive) but it has similar dangers in the sense that increased correlation and probably further curve fitting is introduced. My advice here is to only optimize variables from a first set of parameters in order and avoid reoptimization of a variable after it has been optimized once.

As you see, these common mistakes in optimization are made by most people who want to improve their automated trading systems and all of them are bound to generate very good results using optimizations that are possibly going to be an over estimation of profit and underestimation of draw down in the long term. In a future post I will give you a diagram for optimizations explaining a little bit how I optimize my systems and what "general procedures" I follow so that my systems end up being robust, profitable and with a high like hood of maintaining their risk and draw down characteristics in the long term.

If you would like to learn more about my journey in automated trading and how you too can start to design and program your own likely long term profitable strategies please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !

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Wednesday, May 4, 2016

The Metatrader 5 Series Trying Metatrader 5 Porting Watukushay FE ~ forex trading jobs in dubai

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I have to confess that I was pretty excited last week when I learned about the release of the full metatrader 5 strategy tester. Being a fan of simulations to accurately model past trading I was dreaming about all the great enhancements that were now available and how all current Asirikuy systems would benefit from these implementations. This week I have been playing extensively with this new platform, mainly getting to know the MQL5 new programming language and all the "new ways" of doing things we must now relearn. I started by analyzing and understanding the sample experts released with the platform and later coded a few very simple systems to get to know the way in which things are done, indicators called, etc within this new trading program. On todays post I want to talk to you about my first "real exercise" which involved the porting of a preliminary version of Watukushay FE to metatrader 5. I will describe the process I went through, what I achieved and some of the things that surprised me when comparing results obtained with the Metatrader 4 backtester.

First of all, I have to say that coding experts for MQL4 has almost nothing to do with coding in MQL5. Almost everything is done differently and even though previous knowledge of MQL4 is useful, the truth is that several things like order placement, reading of indicator values, reading of bar values (high/low/open/close) and order selection are done differently. I found the approach implemented in MQL5 to be a little bit harder but yet a ton more flexible. This is particularly true of the new implementation of indicator and order handling which will now lend itself to an incredible coding flexibility. There are also some very useful functions included within the Trade.mqh file (downloaded with the platform) that will make EA programming a ton easier for those of you looking towards an "easier transition" from MQL4 to MQL5.

After familiarizing myself with the platform I decided to code the system that would be most easily available to all of you. Since Watukushay FE is the most widely used Asirikuy system -due to its free character- I decided to give the porting of Watukushay FE first priority. It is however important to say here that I did this porting merely as an exercise and it wont be the final release version of this EA for metatrader 5 which will probably take a few more months of polishing to develop (since we are currently developing a common MQL5 framework for Asirikuy systems taking advantage of the new classes implementation in this language). However the preliminary EA version I coded contains all the logic of Watukushay FE and follows the exact same logic as the MQL4 version in backtesting.

I have to say that I am amazed with the capabilities of Metatrader 5 regarding speed of execution. Simulations are not only fast but about an order of magnitude faster than in Metatrader 4. Watukushay FE runs a 10 year simulation in MQL4 in about 5 minutes while the Metatrader 5 implementation takes a little bit more than 30 seconds. Added to this absolutely great feature is the fact that multithreading is available for optimizations meaning that I can run a full 200 run optimization in less than half an hour when it previously took about half a day. Being able to run optimizations in parallel is a blessing and it will most likely open up the doors towards the finding of many profitable instruments and setups not currently used with Asirikuy systems. Below you can see an image of an optimization running on the 4 cores of one of my beloved quad processors.
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You are probably also wondering how the Metatrader 5 backtesting results compare with the Metatrader 4 results and I would have to tell you that the results are a little bit puzzling to me. Watukushay FE is definitely long term profitable on both platforms but results are overall much better in Metatrader 5 when compared with the MQL4 version. The nature of this difference seems to be the difference between data sets. Since this version of Metatrader is new, we could assume that the data quality and interpolation mechanisms are better but such an assumption would have to be proved. Right now I am pleased to tell you that the EA - with the exact same settings - performs better on MQL5 and the Metatrader 5 data than on the Metatrader 4 version, meaning that -if anything- Watukushay FE is as good or better than what we think.
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There is also a ton more of things to discuss regarding the optimizations of Watukushay FE and the new features and results available within the Strategy tester but for today I think that all the above information is enough :o). I have now started this series of posts called "The Metatrader 5 Series" which will deal with topics related to simulations, programming and overall features of this new Metatrader 5 platform which is bound to become the standard within the next few years in automated trading. During the next few weeks I will release several new posts on Metatrader 5 and probably Asirikuy members will also be able to enjoy a few videos on the matter :o)

If you would like to learn more about automated trading and how you can code your own likely long term profitable systems based on sound trading tactics please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !

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Friday, April 15, 2016

Intelligent Trading Answering Every What if ~ forex trading journal spreadsheet

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I believe that the worst characteristic a person can have as a trader is unfounded optimism. When I started trading I possesed this very undesirable character trait and it took me a long time to get rid of this pest that would keep profits away from my account. It is very easy for traders -especially new ones - to get lured into believing simulations or past live testing results and jump into systems with high risks believing that a certain scenario will not happen. I cannot tell you how big a mistake it is to ignore every possibility and to act on faith and hope. Time after time I have seen traders do this and get burned in the process with their hopes in one hand and their empty accounts on the other. On todays post I want to talk to you about the great importance of the "What ifs" of trading and why it is important for you to answer every possible "what if" question you can ask until you are satisfied with every answer.

One of the most vital things when you want to succeed at something in life is definitely preparation and trading is simply not the exception to this rule. Often people will venture into trading manual or automated trading systems with little preparation and without a good plan for every possible outcome that can arise. The truth is that most people who attempt to succeed at trading with expert advisors dont even have a clue of what they do if certain scenarios arise and in the worst cases they consider some scenarios "extremely unlikely" or "impossible to happen".

I remember clearly how a person told me a few years ago that it was "almost impossible" that his Martingale system would get 7 consecutive loses since such a market situation was simply extremely rare and such a case would never appear. I told him that everytime a trade is entered the possibility to lose exists but he continued to tell me that it wouldnt and that I was simply "not understanding" the nature of his system. The years passed and his system did trade profitably for a while and after a year or so of trading it took 8 consecutive loses and wiped his account clean. It was not the fact that the consecutive loses happened what killed my friends account, it was the obvious lack of preparation for such a scenario.

This happens all the time. People trade systems believing that a certain "what if" question does not deserve an answer because it is simply "extremely unlikely" when the truth is that the mere possibility of it happening should make a trader have a plan against it. If you are trading a system believing that A or B or C wont happen then you are setting up yourself for disaster. Every unanswered "what if" question is a void in your system, a void that will one day be filled, catching you completely unprepared for the consequences.

I always answer any possible question about a trading system - especially losing situations - so that I can avoid having a situation where I am simply caught with no answer. What if system A has 6 consecutive loses ? I will suffer an X draw down and the system will be Y% away from a worst-case scenario. What if a draw down level of X% is reached ? I will stop trading the system since it is below the worst-case scenario which is double the max draw down infered from reliable simulation results, etc. One of the things I have found helps me keep up with my systems and maintain my success as a trader is to ALWAYS have a plan. The most important part of doing this is to answer EVERY "What if" question you can think about. What if you have 5 onsecutive loses ? What if you have a 2 year draw down ? What if... What if ?

As you see, one of the most important parts of success in trading is nothing more than preparation. Knowing the answer to every possible question about your system and having a plan for every possible trading outcome is vital for you to achieve success. There cannot be a lethal "What if" question. If there is any of these questions that ends in "I would lose my account" then there is something inherently wrong with your trading strategy, as a safety every system must be able to give signals of "being too risky and not worth trading" before reaching a wipeout status. For example, a system with a worst-case scenario of 30% will be stopped at this equity level, preserving the other 70%, while a system that wipes the account at 5 consecutive loses simply has no such "time" to warn its user about a problem before it is already to late. Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

Are you answering all your "What if" questions ? Having an answer to all of them and having a plan for every draw down and profit outcome is vital for success, that is my humble advice. If you would like to learn more about automated trading and how you too can learn to design systems based on sound trading tactics please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !

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Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Watukushay FE An Intra Instrument Experiment Part No 1 ~ forex trading journal excel

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One of the best things about the new metatrader 5 platform - as I mentioned on a previous post - is the extreme quickness in which backtesting and optimizations can be done. It is remarkable how I can now do a 200 run optimization in less than an hour while previously it took more than 5 or 6 hours and even 24-48 for certain trading systems. After porting Watukushay FE and enjoying this very fast simulations capability I decided that it was time to try a multi-instrument approach for this freely available trading system. Certainly I had donde some experiments before on the USD/CHF and the GBP/USD but I had never been able to try as many combinations and settings as I wanted to due to the inherent slowness of MQL4 based backtesting. On today and tomorrows post I want to show you some of the results of my studies on several currency pairs for Watukushay FE and how these results show us a very wide and unique perspective about the Watukushay FE trading system. For those of you who do not know anything about Watukushay FE it is a freely available trading system I coded available at http://watukushayfe.blogspot.com.

It is important to note here that I coded Watukushay FE based solely on my observations of the RSI and trend behavior on the EUR/USD and I had never thought about making this expert trade on other instruments when I first designed and implemented its logic. It is a fallacy that a "good system" should work on "all" currency pairs as it tackles a "vital aspect of market psychology" since different pairs have different trading makeups and volumes which make their particular price action very different. Pairs that people may regard as similar such as the EUR/USD and the USD/CHF are in fact tremendously different with many systems that work on the EUR/USD failing to work on the USD/CHF and vice versa. Some of the reasons why this happens include bank intervention, liquidity, volume, trade deficit difference, etc.

However it is always interesting to look at the performance of systems on other currency pairs since it brings a hint about the differences between instruments, showing us why a system may work on one and not on another. Understanding and knowing the true nature of these differences allows us to develop systems that are "adapted" to each different currency pairs trading nature. An analysis of these differences also allows us to change the design of a system- particularly its exit logic- to better exploit inefficiencies found in a particular instrument.

The first think I did with Watukushay FE was to run the "standard" settings derived from very coarse optimizations on the EUR/USD on the GBP/USD, USD/CHF, AUD/USD and USD/CAD (10 year backtests on Metatrader 5). The results are indeed good -as shown in the graphs below- in the sense that the system is profitable in the long term on all of these currency pairs, however it is important to say here that profitability is much lower than on the EUR/USD with most of these pairs reaching only a compounded yearly profit to maximum draw down ratio of 1:3 to 1:5. This shows us that the system tackles a market inefficiency that is present to a certain extent on all these currency pairs but unfavorable conditions are much more frequent than on the EUR/USD.
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It is evident when comparing the different equity curves that the smoothest of them is the EUR/USD which - of course - achieves the best results. We see that Watukushay FE has smooth periods of profit on most of these instruments but unprofitable periods are simply very destructive for the other pairs while they are only mild for the EUR/USD. Even tough the equity curves seem to show us that all instruments could be traded profitably the potential reward for instruments other than the EUR/USD is simply not enough to compensate for the risk taken. The deeper draw down periods also make Watukushay FE on other currency pairs far more difficult to trade also limiting risk escalation to a great extent.

However it is clear that some very interesting questions arise. Is it possible to do coarse optimizations on other pairs to find more EUR/USD-like results ? It is possible to implement small modification to the logic that improve the trading technique significantly ? Are there any other instruments worth trading for Watukushay FE besides the EUR/USD ? I will tray to address some of these questions on tomorrows post. If you would like to learn more about Watukushay FE and all the Watukushay Project experts please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !

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Watukushay No 5 The Aussie and the Kiwi More Encouraging Results ~ forex trading guide for beginners pdf

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During this weekend I released the first official version of Watukushay No.5 coupled with all its 10 year backtesting data showing profitable results on 6 different currency pairs in Asirikuy. From my last post about this EA you might remember that Watukushay No.5 had been tested on the EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/JPY and USD/CHF, however at that time I hadnt completed my analysis on two other currency pairs that also show us great results with this strategy despite their overall lack of liquidity, the AUD/USD and the NZD/USD. On todays post I want to share with you some of the results of the EA on these currency pairs and how the EA is able to use a completely different trading technique to profit from the different trading mechanics of these two instruments.

As you may already know, Watukushay No.5 attempts to exploit breakout inefficiencies on the different currency pairs. On the 4 majors this is done by exploiting periods of low volatility when the currency pairs form significant ranges, entering breakouts when important moves develop within the following trading sessions. However, these trading tactics do not work well on the AUD/USD and NZD/USD, not only because they tend not to form areas of compact trading but due to the fact that this areas do not lead to successful or unsuccessful breakouts with any statistical significance. In the end if you try the same tactics as with the majors you will obtain slightly profitable results which are definitely not worth using in live trading.

Upon my analysis of these two instruments it became clear that I needed to think the problem from another perspective if I was going to find any profitable results for this EA on these two pairs. This meant going back to a meticulous analysis of the currency pairs and the way in which the medium and long term trends develop within them. After spending a few days working on this I finally realized that the key was to rely on breakouts of more volatile sessions but aiming at much higher take profit and stop loss targets. The idea was that this large breakouts do allow us to predict long term trend direction with a good statistical edge in the long term.

Backtesting results were indeed very encouraging showing me that my analysis had been right. When you exploit this different and larger breakouts on the AUD/USD and the NZD/USD, you obtain some very profitable results which are achieved as the EA is able to follow long term trends through the periodical entering of this large session breakouts. The effect resembles the accumulation technique used by the turtle trading system, allowing us to follow a trend and greatly profit from its long term direction. Below you can see a picture of how this trading works on the NZD/USD, notice how the EA got a lot of profit from a developing trend.
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The 10 year backtesting results also give us great results for both of these currency pairs. We arrive at results which have average compounded yearly profit to maximum draw down targets better than Watukushay FE and the same as Teyacanani on the EUR/USD in the case of the NZD/USD. Surprisingly, the best trading results for this EA have been found on the NZD/USD, showing us the robustness of this strategy as a portfolio solution. The EA shows us its robustness and its ability to exploit two completely different market inefficiencies based on the same trading mechanics but aiming for entirely different things.
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Later today 3 live accounts with real money will be added to Asirikuy to start the testing of the system on the USD/CHF, NZD/USD and a full portfolio setup. Hopefully within the next year we will be able to gather some very useful information about its trading system, its tactics and its ability to tackle changing market conditions. The ability of this EA to adapt to each particular market situation and its very large set of adaptive parameters will probably lead it to succeed in this quest against market changes.

If you would like to learn more about automated trading and how you too can develop your own likely long term profitable systems please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !

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Monday, March 28, 2016

Liquidity in Forex Part No 2 Analyzing the Liquidity of Different Pairs ~ forex trading good or bad

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On yesterdays article - which was part No.1 of this post - we talked about the definition of liquidity and the implications of high and low liquidity levels on the forex market. Today we are going to give an in-depth look to liquidity in the forex market, particularly I will talk about recent literature in economics dealing with the evaluation of liquidity on several different currency pairs and what we can conclude and use from this analysis. After reading this article you will have an idea about which are the most liquid and illiquid currency pairs, something which should give you a good idea of what pairs you would want to focus on for the development of mechanical trading strategies.

First of all, it is important to understand that liquidity in forex in simply a pain to research. In order to investigate the liquidity levels of any given market instrument we need to have all transaction information including, type, volume and time. This means that we need access to the "books", the registry where all the transaction information of a given broker is kept. Since there is no central exchange in forex, we cannot get the real liquidity values but if we choose a broker that uses a large array of liquidity providers and we take a look at all their transaction we might be able to draw some general conclusions regarding overall pair liquidity values (at least relative to each other).

The Swiss National bank published a paper a few months ago dealing with the evaluation of liquidity on the FX market (you can access it here). Besides discussing previous literature findings regarding forex liquidity the authors investigated the liquidity levels of several different currency pairs using data from 2007 to 2008. The authors used a daily reversal measurement (explained within the paper) of liquidity in order to get a comparable to number to use between the different currency pairs.
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The studys first findings show us that the EUR/USD and USD/JPY were the most traded instruments during the testing periods while the AUD/USD and USD/CAD had the lowest trading volume. The authors also emphasize on the fact that even though the GBP/USD is an important pair it is very illiquid when compared to the EUR/USD, confirming the findings of previous studies and pointing to the reason why the development of GBP/USD based systems is far more difficult than for the EUR/USD since the lower liquidity makes inefficiencies harder to exploit in a mechanical fashion.

Another interesting conclusion is the high liquidity of the USD/CHF and EUR/CHF during this period which the authors attribute to the safe-heaven status of the frank and the economic crisis during 2007-2008. The study also shows us that liquidity is not constant but changes considerably over time with most currency pairs starting to lose liquidity around August 2007 (carry trade unwinding) rebounding slightly and then resuming the downtrend at the end of this year. This analysis shows that stressful periods in the market are characterized by important drops in liquidity having a very strong relationship with risk sentiment.

Perhaps the most important contribution of this article is the development of ways to measure liquidity and the finding of correlations of FX pairs liquidity with other financial instruments or markets where liquidity is more easily measured. This in turn would allow investors to watch for drops of liquidity, something that could be especially important to those investors looking to shield themselves from crisis periods (investors involved in carry trades for example).

Of course, for us the most important findings are the relative levels of liquidity of the different pairs and their relative relationship. From the above mentioned study we can see that definitely system development should be focused on the EUR/USD and USD/JPY while longer term strategies aimed at "harder" to trade instruments should be used on pairs like the GBP/USD and the USD/CAD.

If you would like to learn more about system development and how you too can develop systems for these currency pairs with sound trading strategies please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !

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Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Trading the Noodle Soup Discovering the Power of Guppy MA trading ~ forex trading faq

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I have always believed that the best trading techniques are the simplest ones. I have realized time after time that complexity is not always the key to success in forex trading and system development and that the use of very simple trading techniques that tackle fundamental aspects of market behavior brings us better results and -more importantly- far more robustness than the more "fancy" and complex trading techniques. One such trading technique which I have always found simple and very good at giving us a general picture of overall market behavior was developed by Daryl Guppy, an Australian trader. Within this article I will talk a little bit about the idea behind the GMA technique (Guppy Moving Averages) as well as its application for the development of successful systems.

The Guppy Moving Average method - which is how I believe it should be called - is nothing more than a simple template that puts certain indicators on the chart in the hopes that they will make trending price action much more evident and easier to handle. This method tells us to use the 30, 35, 40, 45, 50 and 60 slow moving averages and the 3, 5, 8, 10, 12 and 15 fast moving averages. The Guppy method teaches that the first group corresponds to the "long term trader behavior" while the short group corresponds to the "short term trader behavior". Guppy seems to have understood these moving averages as the representations of the behavior of short term and long term traders within the currency market.

Obviously when you look at a chart - especially at strong trending periods - through the Guppy lens, things seem to align perfectly with what you would expect and trending price action seems to become crystal clear. Below you can see an example of such a period on the EUR/USD. You can notice perfectly how the fast moving average group "collapses" when we are within the retracement of a long term trend while the slow group remains showing us overall trend direction. Guppy Moving Average charts have always reminded me of noodle soups (because of all the lines and their interactions) reason why when I trade with Guppys indicator setup I like to refer to it as trading the noodle soup.
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However after you spend sometime studying the GMA and its actual use to create a real trading system which succeeds in time you will notice that it is not very straightforward to do. Although many websites on the internet talk about the GMA method, how to setup the charts and the general information given by the interaction of the moving averages none of them describes a real system which allows us to mechanically apply the GMA to obtain long term profitable results. As always it seems that all we have is some pretty noodle soups and no idea of how to interpret this information to arrive at a system that is able to exploit the information shown on the screen to our advantage.

It is fairly obvious that the GMA method is not without its problems and obviously this makes its mechanical application difficult at first. However after analyzing a lot of the characteristics of the GMA and the way the two groups of moving averages interact I was able to come up with a simple yet powerful system that allows us to exploit long term trading behavior within the daily charts in a mechanical way with precise sets of rules on several different currency pairs (ten year backtest of the EUR/USD shown below). This is indeed a fairly simple moving average based system (with the moving averages used by Guppy) that achieves profits in the long term (note that these simulations on daily charts are bound to very live/back testing consistent).
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The specifics of this trading systems rules will however remain hidden for the moment as I believe this idea and its results will form part of a future Currency trader magazine article and they will be further polished to become a future Asirikuy trading system. If you would like to learn more about my automated trading systems and how you too can design and build your own reliable strategies with sound risk and profit targets please consider joining Asirikuy.com, a website filled with educational videos, trading systems, development and a sound, honest and transparent approach to trading systems. I hope you enjoyed this article ! :o)

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Saturday, March 19, 2016

Watukushay FE An Intra Instrument Experiment Part No 2 ~ forex trading jobs miami

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On yesterdays post we talked about Watukushay FE and the first essays to test the intra-instrument compatibility of this trading system. We arrived at some good results which showed that Watukushay FE did achieve long term profitability on all of these instruments while the yearly compounded profit to maximum draw down ratio was always much lower than for the EUR/USD. Since I left yesterdays post with some questions regarding the optimization and modification of Watukushay FE to improve results on these currency pairs today I will dedicate this post to the answering of these questions. I will talk to you about the optimizations I have done on the Watukushay FE system on different currency pairs, what their results have been and what they tell us about the inefficiency exploited by Watukushay FE and its potential to be used on several different instruments, effectively diversifying the usage of this trading strategy.

Many of you may be thinking that the results shared yesterday point to the fact that just a few coarse optimizations would lead us to a gigantic improvement in performance which would leave us with a multi-currency Watukushay FE system, something which is very reasonable to assume given the fact that systems usually improve significantly with only moderate optimization. However what reality shows us is somewhat different. The Watukushay FE trading system fails to improve significantly on almost all trading instruments despite coarse or even finer optimization which attempt to fine-tune the systems variables to each currency pair.

For example, the GBP/USD and USD/CHF achieve compunded yearly profit to maximum draw down ratios of about 1:5 and the usage of even fine grid optimizations is not able to bring this down to a 1:3 level. When we examine the trading characteristics of this system on these pairs we see that the overall market inefficiency exploited by the EA disappears for significant periods of time in which the instruments consolidate or experience wide ranges that are not at all favorable for Watukushay FE. It becomes obvious that the system is simply not able to cut loses short on these currency pairs with its present logic. However a few ideas have come to my mind to "adapt" Watukushay FE to the trading mechanics of these pairs and improve its trading characteristics, something which I will probably leave for a future post.

Perhaps the most important achievement of Watukushay FE comes when you analyze its results on the AUD/USD and USD/CAD instruments. With only very coarse optimizations on these currency pairs we are able to obtain marked improvements that show us that -for example- in the case of the AUD/USD only a modification of the RSI period grants a significant improvement of the compounded yearly profit to maximum draw down ratio from 1:5 to almost 2:1 in a ten year run. This shows that the modification of only one variable is enough to fit a system to another currency pair when the overall inefficiency has a similar presence than in the initial instrument it was designed for. Below you can see the backtesting results for the AUD/USD before an after an RSI period change, leaving all other variables -including SL and TP - intact.
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The USD/CAD also improves its results incredibly only after small RSI period changes but results are improved much more significantly after the TP and SL are optimized in a coarse manner changing the risk to reward ratio of the SL and TP to almost 1:2, this in turn changes the compounded average yearly return to maximum draw down ratio to a little bit more than 1:1 from a previous value - before optimization- of nearly 1:4. The images below show you how the overall results for this currency pair also change as a function of this very limited optimization which is most likely not going to introduce any curve fitting into the system due to its coarse nature and the overall adaptive character of the trading system.
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After doing this analysis of Watukushay FE it is also worth noting that the optimization of this EA are heavily populated by profitable results showing you that future deviations from optimal values are not going to drastically change the risk and profit characteristics of this trading system. We have also learned that when the inefficiency is present to a good extent only minor optimizations are needed to greatly increase performance while very fine and extensive runs -when the inefficiency is absent a significant amount of time- bring us only marginal improvement to pre-optimization results.

From the above results it seems that Watukushay FE will be exploring Canada and Australia soon enough :o) Probably during the next few weeks I will release EA modifications and set files on the experts website so that people can start doing their own evaluations and tests on these currency pairs. A couple of live accounts to test these new pairs will also be added. Right now I am also exploring logic modifications to trade on the GBP/USD and USD/CHF, results I will be sharing with you once they are ready. It seems that Watukushay FE likes more instruments than what I originally thought :o)

If you would like to learn more about Watukushay FE and how you too can build your own long term profitable system based on sound trading tactics please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !

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