Measuring System Vulnerability The Market Exposure Index

If you have been reading my blog for a while you may be familar with my use of the term "market exposure", as a matter of fact, most of you may be aware that this is a concept I use most the time to describe trading systems and gauge their possibility to be long term profitable. But, what is exactly market exposure and more precisely, how can it be measure ? Well, those of you who are subscribed to my newsletter may already have seen the video I posted on the FTP about market exposure and how this is vital for the description of a trading system. However, since this concept is pretty important and mentioned throughout my whole website I have decided to dedicate todays post to the analysis of the concept and the formal introduction of what I like to call "market exposure index".

The first thing we need to do if we want to talk about market exposure is to define it. What is market exposure ? There are actually several ways to explain the concept but the simplest one is to think about market exposure as the magnitude in which your system becomes vulnerable to loses as a consequence of the opening of a position. That is, whenever you open a position in the market you are getting "exposed" to losing your money as the market can take a move against you. The vulnerability of any system against taking loses is what I call "market exposure".

Now that we know what market exposure is we are left with a more challenging task. How do we measure market exposure ? How do we measure the vulnerability of a trading system against the market ? The first thing we need to do is think about the factors that affect market exposure, what affects the exposure of a system against the market ? The most important things that determine market exposure are the systems risk to reward ratio and the overall winning percentage of the EA. That is, the probability to win a trade. You must take into account that these two variables have to be deduced from extensive historical or live testing as short tests could bring unreliable results. Also take into account that the probability to win a trade, is never 1, that is, there is ALWAYS the possibility to lose a trade. Stubborn systems, like grid trading systems that assume the market will always "come back" to achieve a profitable result eventually lose as, even though the probability to lose can be low, it is still present and the fact that you are putting your whole account balance at stake makes the system to eventually wipe your account.

So how can we measure market exposure ? This is the reason why I came up with what I call, the market exposure index. This quantity, which is expressed by a simple mathematical formula can tell us if the market exposure of a system is capped. The formula is very simple

market exposure index = 100*(fraction of losing trades)/(average reward to risk ratio)

For example, the gods gift ATR, GBP/USD has a market exposure index near 60. Any market exposure index below 100 implies that the strategy is profitable and adequately capped. Any result above 100 indicates that the system is unprofitable, the higher the market exposure index, the higher the risk of a wipe out. For example, Martingale systems, whose risk to reward ratio increases exponentially with every losing trade have a market exposure which is generally equal to equity over the fraction of profitable trades. Grid trading systems have the same risk to reward ratio, something which lets us know from the start, through the market exposure index, that those are strategies with very important market exposures that WILL cause account wipe outs in the long term.

Hopefully, if you liked the idea, you can start using the market exposure index as a way to gauge the viability of trading strategies and the way in which they protect your equity from the market. Strategies with very low market exposures are the best since ideal strategies would have a very low risk to reward ratio with a very high winning probability. Most of the time, the best systems have a compromise between these two things.

If you would like to learn more about trading systems I have developed and how you to can evaluate and trade automated systems profitably please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed the article !

Diposting oleh Unknown 15.45 0 komentar

Trading Reality and Automated Trading Realistic Profit Expectations Looking at the Barclay Currency Traders Index

Yesterday I received a very interesting email from an Asirikuy member pointing me to a database showing the past 20 years of performance of top forex traders and funds (the data was originally discussed in this article). Although I had seen the indexed performance of several currency traders before this is the first time in which I had found this data in such an organized and reliable fashion, put together by Barclay Hedge. The Barclay Currency trader index,- in their own words- contains "An equal weighted composite of managed programs that trade currency futures and/or cash forwards in the inter bank market. In 2010 there are 119 currency programs included in the index". To sum it up, the Barclay Currency trader index gives you a snapshot at what the proffesionals in the field are achieving showing you exactly what profit expectations are more realistic and which ones are to be considered completely dilusional. On todays post I want to write a little bit about this data to get those of you who are unaware of what the "industry standard" is, a better perspective of what is and what is not realistically achievable in currency trading.

In the world of currency trading - and particularly in automated trading - people are often pointed out that it is "very easy" to achieve huge amounts of profit in the forex market. Moreover, real live results that show you increases of 100-1000% in a few months are not uncommon in the forex market and they appear to show new traders that you can actually make a small fortune quickly from a small investment in currency trading. However new traders often have absolutely no idea of what the industry proffesionals are achieving or what hedge funds that deal with currency instruments actually get and therefore they often believe the paid actors that pose as traders on automated trading sales sites saying that they have earned millions in currency trading in a few months.

The fact is that huge returns are possible with a huge market exposure and the problem with a huge market exposure is that it causes huge wipeouts of capital as the market evolves. So this is analogous to a person who wins the lottery. You get a huge amount of return in one run but if you spent all your lottery money in tickets, you would hardly ever win again or if you do, keeping on doing this will eventually wipe you clean. The market - I believe - has a self-limiting character which makes the systematic exploitation of market inefficiencies to achieve huge profits impossible due to the fact that huge profits require huge exposures, and huge exposures - lead to wipeouts.

The golden question is then what is realistically possible ? Since there is no way in which the "top" possible average profitability can be inferred the best measurement we have of what can be systematically achieved is what the average people in the field are actually doing and have been doing for a long time. I have to stress here that the "long time" part here is very important since long periods of time imply robustness and statistical significance. Anyone can triple an account in 2 months, but doing it for 20 years is something very different. When you have been trading for a long amount of time it means that you have very sound risk and money management tools that guarantee your long term success by limiting your present market exposure.
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If you check the Barclay Currency Traders Index you will see that the average compounded yearly returns are not to die for. Currency traders average a 7.71% compounded anual return with a worst draw down of 15.26%, certainly traders are in average conservative. However looking at all the profit and draw down figures of the particular traders you will see that average compounded returns and maximum draw down figures are often in a 1:2 to 2:1 ratio, meaning that the average yearly return is actually never better than twice the maximum draw down. If you are thinking that these figures dont apply to you because these traders dont have the "flexibility" of small account holders, you are wrong. Many of these traders are NOT trading billions and many of them have access to liquidity you would only dream of so if anything trading conditions for most of these guys are only better than for the average forex trader.

A very important thing about this index is also that it shows that diversification is the key to long term success with the sum of all traders giving a very smooth equity curve over a 20 year long period. So probably a good lesson to learn here is that using several strategies that are all long term profitable will probably help us reduce draw downs as it helps the Barclay Currency Traders Index smooth its performance. As we have seen with the Atinalla project, having a large amount of diversification is very beneficial in the long term for trading strategies.

However the most important thing about these profit and draw down figures is that they show us the true face of market exposure and what you can expect to be realistic. If in the best case your maximum draw down level is likely going to be around one half your average compounded yearly profit then a monthly 100-200% return or a 100% yearly return for that matter are unrealistic or excessively risky for any sound investor. In the end, this currency trader index tells us that for moderate risks, forex investors should aim for a yearly profit of 20-30% if their risk appetite is moderate.

Currently our Atinalla No.1 portfolio would hold a place near the top of the Barclay Index and for this reason I would be tempted to say that it is very profitable. However we must consider here that the portfolio has not been run for 20 years on a live account and only time will tell us what its real profit and draw down targets are. Nonetheless the most important thing about Atinalla project portfolios is that they are traded with a very good profit expectation and a VERY clear worst case equity-loss scenario in mind, which is 36% for the Atinalla No.1 Portfolio.

If you would like to learn more about forex automated trading and how you too can design your automated trading systems based on sound risk and profit targets 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 16.15 0 komentar