The Asirikuy Forum Making Asirikuy a True Community

If you have read my blog frequently then you are aware of the fact that I have never liked the way in which automated trading forums work. I have outlined their problems several times in the past which are mainly summarized as a "cyclic development syndrome" in which systems are developed without any significant evolution towards long term profitability. This problem has many causes which range from the lack of knowledge about the requirements for a system to be likely long term profitable to the inherent difficulty in the development of sound trading strategies. The over-development of entry criteria and the use of unsound trading tactics are amongst the main consequences of the traditional "automated trading forum" approach.

However after several Asirikuy members suggested the creation of a forum to me (and after I refused several times) I decied to ask myself a simple question. Can the asirikuy community do any better ? Can you create a forum in which the possibility to develop long term profitable systems in a community environment becomes real ? The creation of such a forum demands the overcoming of all the problems which have been evident on automated trading forums in the past.

How could you overcome all these issues ? My first thought has always been that the lack of direction and knowledge is the main reason why forums fail to develop sound trading systems. The problems that arise from these two are almost endless. You always have the use of backtests with limited quality or with the obvious exploitation of backtesting faults coupled with the suggestion of unsound trading techniques - such as Martingales - to improve trading systems which have exit-related problems (which are never addressed due to the over development of entries found in forums). There is a lack of systematic evaluation and the lack of any judgement over the quality of the trading system ideas proposed.

I plan to solve all these problems on the Asirikuy community forum. How ? We will have very directed and efficient development. I will receive all system ideas and I will strongly moderate the development forum so that asirikuy members are able to learn and development can stay away from trading ideas which wont work and implementations which are detrimental to long term profitability. This does not mean that we will only develop "what I want" but we will develop what "can work". I am convinced that if development is centered around systems which can be backtested reliably, which use adaptive techniques and which use sound money management it will only be a matter of time before we get our first community developed long term profitable systems.

On top of serving as a center for development, the asirikuy forum will also deal with questions people have about the material available on the website, backtesting, programming, system design, etc. The Asirikuy forum will become another key knowledge base so that people can exchange ideas and grow their knowledge about automated trading system development.

One of the main objectives of the Asirikuy Forum will be to make Asirikuy a lot more like an online community. Having the ability to know and interact with the different members will help us create that community-feeling which I have always wanted Asirikuy to have. By working together and building content in a community type environment I am hopeful that we will be able to make Asirikuy much more than what it already is today. We will have a community with a high knowledge-standard in automated trading which will be committed to the development of trading systems, not be sold, but to be traded for our long term capitalization.

If you would like to learn more about the forum or about the trading systems we are currently trading at Asirikuy 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 !

Diposting oleh Unknown 19.00 0 komentar

Managing Money in Forex Trading A Practical Approach

Yesterday I wrote a post about how successful forex traders develop their ability to make money and how anyone interested in making a living from trading should absolutely consider the managing of other peoples funds as the easiest way to achieve their financial freedom. The reason for this is that simply most people wont have the necessary amount of money to make a living (about 250-350K USD) with the risk levels necessary to preserve capital through the draw down periods which are characteristic of all long term profitable trading strategies. Today I want to write a post about the practical aspects of money management and the technical and legal aspects of this journey.

First of all, I consider that if you want to be a money manager you need to have a track record that shows net profitability through a statistically relevant amount of time. This means that you should have a real live account that can show a verified track record of at least 5 years. This will show that you are able to tackle a wide variety of market conditions and that your systems and abilities are able to both make and preserve capital. The initial balance of this account is actually not that relevant and even a 5 year, 1K account with net profitability will be enough.

What next ? Well, the most popular model for account management is done through a limited power of attorney in which you receive permission from a client to manage their funds but you dont have the ability to withdraw any money. Effectively either the broker or your client have to make the payments for you when they are due. Payments are usually made on new equity highs as a percentage of profit from equity high to equity high. For example, if an account was at 110 and then reached 120 the client made 10 and if you charge a 20% commission then you keep 2.

One of the most important aspects you need to consider here is that the limited power of attorney approach - even if it does not give you power to withdraw your clients funds - is a type of money management practice and it is therefore subject to the pertinent regulations. In the US - for example - you can manage up to 140K USD or 15 clients without becoming a CTA (Commodity Trading Advisor) but anything above that requires registration by law, bear in mind that the waive of registration also requires you NOT to advertise yourself as a money manager so you will be limited to a small crowd of investors (probably friends). This however only applies to US customers and to manage money from investors from other parts of the world you will need to deal with their own countrys regulations as you will be subject to the regulations of the customers home country.

Now, managing 140K from US customers is a very good start (even more if you have customers from other countries) but if you are truly serious about your business then you need to become a Commodity Trading Advisor. Registering requires you to pass a Series 3 exam and to pay almost 1000 USD in annual fees and this is therefore a step you may want to take only after managing your first small customer base for 2-3 years. Once you reach this point you will be able to start a business and manage a limitless pool of investors which effectively makes your income potentially VERY large. Even if you only manage an average yearly return of 10% (a return many new forex traders would laugh at), managing 20 million dollars this will already mean a 400K income for you at a 20% commission.

In conclusion, if you really want to live from trading and if you really want to make a lot of money from it then probably you will have to work hard for the next 8-10 years to perfect your ability to make money and to begin your journey as a successful money manager. This indeed sounds MUCH more realistic that what expert advisor and forex system sellers told you, doesnt it ?

If you would like to learn more about the use of automated trading systems to achieve success in trading and how you too can learn to code, evaluate and use your own 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 !

Diposting oleh Unknown 11.00 0 komentar

Forex Trading Course: A Must for Forex Beginners

In the world's largest financial market where exchanges reach up to trillions of dollars each day, many people would really want to participate in this market. Aside from being the largest financial market in the world, Forex is also the most liquid market in the world where trades are done 24 hours a day.

A lot of traders have become very rich trading in the Forex market. And, many people who trade in the Forex market everyday have found a great way to replace their day jobs. Some even became millionaires almost overnight by just trading in this financial market.

Trading in the Forex market can be very attractive. However, you should also know that there have been people who suffered extreme financial losses in the Forex market. It is true that the Forex market offers a very good money-making opportunity to a lot of people, but it also has its risks.

It is a fact that people who didn't have the right knowledge and skills trading in the Forex market suffered huge financial losses and some even went into debt. So, before you enter the Forex market, it is essential that you should have the necessary knowledge and skills as a Forex trader in order to minimize the risk of losing money and maximize the potential of making money.

Many people who were successful in the Forex market have went through a Forex trading course to get the knowledge and skills needed to successfully trade in this very liquid and very large financial market.

In a Forex trading course, you will learn about when it is the right time to buy or sell, chart the movements, spot market trends and also know how to use the different trading platforms available in the Forex market.

You will also be familiarized with the terminologies used in the Forex market. Even the basic knowledge about trading in the Forex market can be a great help with your money-making venture in the world's largest market.

There are different Forex trading courses available, all you need to do is choose one that suits your needs as a trader. There are crash courses where all the basic things about Forex will be taught to you in a short period of time, full time online courses, where you will learn all about Forex through the internet and there are also full time real life classroom courses where you can learn the ropes about Forex in a real classroom with a live professor.

You can also become an apprentice. However, in order to learn a lot about Forex as an apprentice, you need to make sure that you have a seasoned Forex trader who can share a lot of things to you about the Forex market.

Here are some of the basic things you should look for in a Forex trading course in order for you to get the sufficient knowledge about Forex trading:

� Margins
� Leveraging
� Types of orders
� Major currencies

A good Forex trading course will also explain a lot about the fundamental and technical analysis of charts. As a trader, knowing how to analyze a chart is an essential skill that you should have. So, when you are looking for a Forex trading course, you should look for a course that offers fundamental and technical analysis instruction.

Stress plays a vital part in Forex traders. Knowing how to deal with stress is also a skill that you should develop. A good Forex trading course should teach you how to deal with stress and trade effectively and efficiently.

As much as possible, you should look for a Forex trading course that offer actual trading systems where students can trade real money on the Forex market or at least trade on dummy accounts in a simulated Forex market. This hands-on experience will greatly benefit you. Besides, the best way to learn about anything is by actually experiencing it. Live trading and simulations should be offered in a Forex trading course.

So, if you plan on getting involved in the Forex market, consider finding all these things in a Forex trading course. Developing the right knowledge and skills in trading in the world's largest and most liquid market in the world will definitely help you make it to the top and achieve your dreams as a Forex trader.

Diposting oleh Unknown 01.16 0 komentar

Evaluating Trading Systems Characteristics and Quality

The evaluation of trading strategies is certainly one of the most necessary processes in the trading of mechanical manual or automated systems. The value of evaluation is great since it allows traders to loose their irrational fear and greed emotions and gain a true understanding about the characteristics of the trading system they intend to trade. Part of the evaluation of trading systems involves the judging of different quality parameters to distinguish what makes a system better and what makes it worse, a process which although seemingly intuitive is not so straightforward. Adequate knowledge about the information pertaining to each parameter of the test and what it conveys the user is necessary to know what its consequences actually are in real trading and what their power is from a comparative standpoint. On todays post I am going to talk about how to look at a systems characteristics and what you should be looking for to judge the quality of a given strategy.

New traders are often confused when it comes to the evaluation of trading strategies something which is not surprising if you take into account the whole amount of information which can be derived for a given system. People new to trading first seem to focus on the absolute values of the profit and maximum draw down percentages but judging the quality of a trading system merely by looking at these two values without prior experience is very hard. It is also true that judging a system just through one of these two values is misleading in the sense that it doesnt represent a good overall picture of the strategys characteristics. For example, saying that a system makes 100% a year does not make any sense if the actual potential draw down is not known and even if it is, other characteristics need to be taken into account.

The most simple way to compare a trading system to another effectively is to use ratios of profit and draw down variables. The profit factor, which compares the gross profit against the gross losses of a strategy is an initial measure of system quality. However, although this type of ratios do give us some information about the past risk to reward long term expectation (especially when evaluated over 10 year periods) they do not talk a lot about the problems the strategy would run into with increases in future risk. For this reason I believe that although these ratios are useful to some extent to compare simulations they do not fully represent the inherent market exposure of the system in a way in which a true comparison is made.

System quality - without a doubt - needs to include an analysis of increases in risk over the projected values achieved in simulations to know the true problems that the user may be running into if - for example - risk in the future increases or the estimation of profit and draw down targets is not accurate. For this reason it seems better to evaluate strategies based on projections of increased risk to know the true quality of the system and how dependent it may be on small glitches in simulations.

In this case our best shot at accurate quality comparisons seems to be the average compounded yearly profit to worst case scenario ratio in which the average yearly profit (over a 10 year period) is compared to twice the maximum draw down of the strategy (worst case ratio). To add more meaning to this increased risk comparison a careful user might also want to test the average compounded yearly profit to double consecutive loses after maximum draw down ratio (worst streak ratio). In this ratio, the average compounded yearly profit is compared to the maximum draw down percentage plus a string of loses equal to twice the number of maximum consecutive losing trades. The idea here is to get an idea about the robustness of the strategy and how bad things can turn before a bad scenario is bound to happen.

Systems that are very sensitive to small changes in the number of consecutive loses will give very unfavorable ratios in both cases while systems that have less dependency on individual trades will get better results. This way of evaluating strategies eliminates by default a lot of systems that use unsound trading tactics such as martingales and systems with very bad risk to reward ratios due to the fact that this ratio comparison makes them show their flaws if increases in risk are presented. One thing all traders should understand is that in the future the risk of any given strategy is bound to increase to some extent and having systems that are able to handle this risk increase is not only vital but necessary for successful long term trading.

The above evaluation criteria also allows you to use systems that dont need to wipe accounts to demonstrate that the market has become too risky for them. For example, a strategy with a worst case ratio of 1:2 targeting a 20% yearly profit may be stopped from trading at a 40% draw down while a system that has a 1:5 ratio in the same situation would end up killing the account before we realize it has become to risky. It is also important here to note that sound systems will have a "worst case ratio" better or only slightly worse than their "worst streak ratio" while systems that use unsound techniques -which will be sensitive to small increases in consecutive loses - will have a much worse "worst streak ratio".

In summary my advice is that you focus on the profit to draw down ratios when evaluating trading strategies but -most importantly - that you evaluate ratios in which the maximum draw down and maximum number of consecutive loses are increased so that you get a true idea about your systems robustness. If you would like to learn more about automated trading and how you too can start designing 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 !

Diposting oleh Unknown 17.00 0 komentar

Are You Up for a Challenge A Likely Daily Long Term Profitable System That Takes 5 Minutes a Day to Trade Part Two System Performance

Yesterday we talked about the use of a likely long term profitable system that takes only five minutes to trade everyday. The system is based on the following of momentum using the 10 period moving average inclination allowing us to get in early on long term trends and get profits in the long term on the EUR/USD. We discussed the systems rules including entries, exits, position sizing and accumulation of positions in favor of the trend if favorable movements happen. Another great aspect of the system we discussed - especially for busy people - is the fact that the system can be traded at the same time every single day, requiring very little time from the trader to actually execute the system.

In order to find out if this system actually has an edge and achieved long term profitability during the past 10 years of trading I carried out a simulation of this strategy by hand using Umaki and the metatrader 4 backtester. This showed me that the decision to entry/exit positions can be taken in a very small amount of time and that anyone trading this system would be able to do so every single day with just a few minutes available (I then performed a back test with the strategy coded mechanically to confirm that my results were accurate). Please take into account that the simulations were done on the EUR/USD daily charts - based only on past closed candles - making sure that backtesting interpolation errors remain to the absolute minimum. Daily simulations are most certainly back/live testing consistent due to the high reliability of this data.
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So does the strategy achieve profit ? The above graph shows you the performance from January 05 2000 to June 05 2010. As you can see the system achieved profits quite consistently over the past ten years, capturing almost every major trend that developed on the EUR/USD during this whole trading period. The system took 170 positions during the past 10 years, averaging about 2 positions every three months. The average compounded yearly profit of the system is 15.85% and the standard deviation of the yearly profits is 13.41%. The best year during the test gave a profit of 35.51% while the worst one was -6.94%.
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The draw down characteristics of the strategy are also very important to discuss with a maximum historical draw down of 13.81% and a maximum draw down period length equal to 554 days with an average draw down and draw down period length of 8.15% and 242 days. This gives the system a pain index value of 4.92 meaning that it will be easier to trade than the Turtle Trading system from a psychological stand point given the fact that its draw down characteristics are easier to handle.
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Another very important aspect to evaluate is the distribution of monthly returns which is shown above. Months were divided into classes grouping months within a 1% profit/draw down range ((-8)-(-7)%.... 1-2%, etc) giving the final distribution shown. This analysis gives us invaluable information about the system which will help us understand how the system trades and what we can expect from it. We can see that the system took trades through only 48 of the 120 months of the test and that the probability of one of those months to come out as a winner was 45% while the probability to have losing month was higher, at 55%. However the losing months were much smaller than the winning months with the average winning month being 11.7% while the average losing month loses only -3.7%. This reflects the risk to reward ratio of this system which along the ten year testing period was a little bit above 1:3.

So what we have here is a system that will only give you trades for about 50% of the months in which you trade it, there is a higher probability that one of those months will come out as a loser but any winning month you may have will be in average three times higher than your average losing month. This behavior is classic of daily trend following systems that aim to profit from long term trends that develop on the forex market.

After this analysis I think that there are simply no excuses. The above is the first manual system - to the best of my knowledge - which only requires 5 minutes to trade everyday, is offered absolutely for free and has a full 10 year historical analysis showing you exactly what you can expect and how your performance is likely going to be in the longer term. Sure, it wont be easy to trade and you are bound to have a few losing years within a ten year period but the system will allow you to develop your trading skills and most importantly your discipline and your ability to execute a trading plan. Finally trading this will become even easier during the following months as an indicator I developed for this system will be shared in a magazine Ill be writing for from October... Stay tuned to find out more !
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If you would like to learn more about other trading systems and how you too can design and trade your own mechanical trading systems knowing exactly what the average compounded yearly profit and maximum draw down figures are please consider joining Asirikuy.com, a website filled with educational videos, trading systems, development and a sound, honest and transparent approach automated trading in general . I hope you enjoyed this article ! :o)

Diposting oleh Unknown 07.16 0 komentar

Free Expert Advisor Portoflio Week 10 Final Words

As I had feared, the expert advisor portfolio we had been testing for the past two months didnt leave up to our expectations. The experts accumulated an abnormally high 42% draw down this week.

The main reason why this happened was an incredibly horrible losing rally shown by the Ichimoku5 expert. Against all the things I would consider logical, this expert advisor sold the usd/jpy all the way up on an uptrend. It got several, almost 10, consecutive stop loss hits.

My final words about this expert advisor portfolio is that it did just about as how 99% of us would have expected. Even though we may have had our hopes up sometime in the past, the expert revealed one of the many absolute truths in the forex market. Past records are no indicative of future results. But I bet that any person with an ea who has, sometime in the past, forward tested profitably for 2, 4 or more months will have no problem in selling it to the willingly believing.

So beware !

If you want to look at the final picture, you can see the final trading statement here.

Diposting oleh Unknown 21.30 0 komentar

Calculating Support and Resistance My First Solution

Yesterday I wrote a post about the mathematical definition of support and resistance levels and why it is so hard to accurately define these levels in a way a computer can understand. We talked about several of the problems which affect this definition mainly the fact that most of the currently used approaches do not have any way of discriminating between the importance of different levels, something which has a devastating effect over system profitability. At the end of yesterdays post I also highlighted that there are mainly three steps that have to be taken into account to successfuly tackle the problem of mathematically defining support and resistance levels for forex trading :

• Defining the S&R levels
• Eliminating unimportant levels
• Defining S&R zones

On todays post I am going to tell you how I intend to solve each one of these issues and how I believe this will lead to a reliable definition of S&R levels.

The first problem seems to be the one people have worked the most on. As I said on yesterdays post there are several ways of defining these S&R levels but the technique I find the most reliable involves the use of the fractal indicator. Since fractals signal reversals, they are useful in determing the global position of S&R levels. This concept is not new and it is a quite typical way of defining support and resistance in a mechanical fashion.

Now the next problems are a little bit harder to solve. How do we discriminate between the importance of levels and define their zones ? From the definition of support and resistance levels it becomes quite clear that the importance of a support or resistance level is given by the number of times this level has been tested (either as support or resistance). Therefore, if we save an array containing all fractals and we then assign each fractal a frequency value depending on the number of times this exact level was tested then we will have a reliable indication of which levels are "strong" and which levels are "weak". Staying only with the strong levels will definitely allow us to trade S&R strategies in a much more reliable fashion.

Of course, several of you may be thinking that I wont be able to succeed with this tactic given the fact that fractals are bound to be many times similar but almost never identical. For example a level around 1.5343 on the EUR/USD could be tested 3 times to give fractals at 1.5341, 1.5343 and 1.5345, within my definition, these three levels would be discarded since they are all different and therefore "insignificant". The solution to this problem is the addition of a "tolerance" zone around each fractal to group them according to the zones they cover. For example, two fractals will be considered as belonging to the same support or resistance zone if their values are within X distance of each other. How do we define this distance ? Volatility seems to be the best candidate since this is the main factor which affects the width of S&R zones. We can define X as a given percentage (for example 10%) of the standard deviation of price within the last Y number of periods.

Then we have the problem of having only a "huge" important price level given that all fractals are bound to be close to another one. We need to define a "center fractal" for each level which will be defined as a fractal which has more than Y fractals within its tolerance zone. This takes care of the importance problem and level definition at the same time.

This simple grouping of fractals will let us define the important S&R zones and simulatenously the width of these zones which of course will be limited to +/- X% of the standard deviation (however they can still be smaller than this). The steps this S&R indicator would need to do are highlighted below :

• Calculate all fractal levels
• Calculate each fractals population within its tolerance zone
• Assign "level status" to fractals with the highest populations
• Determine the highest and lowest fractal within each central fractal population zone

In the end this indicator will give us each important S&R zone coupled with its width, a criteria which is bound to be extremely useful for the making of long term profitable systems based on S&R trading. I will start developing this indicator soon and hopefully youll be able to see some graphical results within the next few weeks. Do you have any suggestions to improve this technique ? Leave a comment and Ill be glad to discuss it with you. :o)

If you would like to learn more about the automated trading systems I have coded and how they were developed step by step 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 !

Diposting oleh Unknown 13.15 0 komentar