Items Tagged With april 2007

I just wanted to throw it out there one last time that you have until 11:59 p.m. EST this evening to enter the 2 week April trading contest.   Since making a call out yesterday, we've added 6 more participants for a total of 20.  Very good turnout.   Join now.  http://www.forexproject.com/Forex_Contests/

The April trading contest is at the tail end with only 3 real trading days left and the mighty have fallen.  QLaun who led most of last week and the first couple of days this week has fallen from the top.  

 
The top 6 traders sorted by portfolio returns have maximum drawdowns between -4.20 and -17.99.  I found details of some other contests and how they determined an acceptable maximum drawdown level.  

Acceptable maximum drawdown level for aggressive trading should not exceed 15%.

Acceptable maximum drawdown level for conservative trading should not exceed 10%.

Acceptable maximum drawdown level for fund managers should not exceed 5%.

So if I were to use these figures, I would rank contestants as of today this way: 

TOP THREE AGGRESSIVE TRADERS

1. Dumb Luck +24.26%
2. MartinFXUY +14.66%
3. RotcaX +12.52% 

TOP THREE CONSERVATIVE TRADERS 

1. Dumb Luck +24.26%
2. MartinFXUY +14.66%
3. RotcaX +12.52% 

TOP THREE MONEY MANAGERS

1. RotcaX +12.52%
2. Milton +2.91%
3. Netman +1.86% 

Good job guys.  I'm not doing too well.  I'm at -3.05%.  The only thing I have going for me is that my maximum drawdown is -1.17. 

I just wanted to give a quick update on the state of my forex trading.  I'm clearly in a transitional state personally and trying to find the time to trade not unlike a lot of you, I'm sure.  My full-time job has moved in line with forex trading as a priority as it probably should have all along.  After all, in order to make money trading or attempt to reach that ultimate goal, you need to have money to do it.  It's certainly a lot easier collecting that paycheck every other week opposed to making that same amount of money trading.  

I'm approaching my two year anniversary of forex trading and though sometimes it doesn't seem like I've made progress, I would find it hard to believe that I haven't.  I'm a bit confused these days about my trading and not sure what to do about it yet.  I'm definitely still on the "keeping it simple" side of things and I feel the need to concentrate more of my time on risk management.  Other than that, I can't say where I'm going to be with my trading next year or even next week.

Due to these times of confusion and limited time, I'm trading a lot less and haven't traded live this month.  I'm still trading my GBP reversal strategy but there was only one opportunity so far this month (on Thursday) and I missed it.  I'll make it through these hard times like I always have.  My expectations aren't what they once were and I'm willing to crawl towards my goal because I know it can take years (if ever) to be successful as a trader. 

I hope everyone else is progressing with their trading.

Brent from over at Forex2Stay has decided to rid himself of Oanda.  He decided to go with an STP/ECN broker, EFX Group or MB Trading.   

I was reading Bain's blog and want to mention some of what he wrote because I have had similar observations.  This information, for those of you have been trading forex for a while may be more common knowledge at this point.  

Peter simply states that forex traders should be aware of the clock due to price swings associated with certain times of the day.   These swing points can be noticed most often during the following:

1. London open (3 am EST or 8:00 GMT)
2. London close (10:30 am EST - 12:00 Noon EST or 15:30 GMT - 17:00 GMT)
3. New York open (8:00 am EST or 13:00 GMT)

Swing points are most evident when London is opening, in session, or closing due to London's majority in Forex trading volume.  

I've always said if I were ever to trade forex full-time, it would most certainly be during the hours of 3am EST (London Open) and 12 Noon EST (London close).  Outside of these times, things can be pretty low a majority of the time. 

There has been a good turnout for the April Trading Contest where currently there are 14 participants.  Anything traded in your Oanda FXGame account starting from this Sunday, April 15th until Monday, April 30th will be counted.   You still have until Saturday (1 day left) to join the April contest.  It's for fun but I'll be competing to win.  I hope you will too. 

Join now.  http://www.forexproject.com/Forex_Contests/ 

I've already received some interest in the two separate Forex Trading Contests; one for April and one for May.

I've created a link in the "Trader Rich" menu to the left titled, Forex Contests or you can browse to http://www.forexproject.com/Forex_Contests/ directly for all information on joining.  

I got a couple of comments about the top 200+ forex website rankings; mostly how they weren't accurate.  The rankings before were dependent on how Alexa sorted the sites in their category listings.  I was pulling data in the order in which they gave it to me.  As some of you noticed, some sites were listed ahead of others even though their Alexa Rank wasn't higher.  The one website that got shafted the most in the rankings was Oanda which had the highest Alexa traffic rank but was listed as #19 in the rankings.  I fixed this tonight and now the rankings are based on traffic rank.  You can see that Oanda benefited greatly from this change. http://www.forexontop.com

In addition, every forex websites Alexa traffic rank is also listed.  More enhancements coming soon.

Jimmy Atkinson from forexblog.org compiled a list of what he believes to be the top 100 forex resources.  This seems to have taken a lot of time and effort to compile and he certainly deserves thanks for doing so.  I also should thank him because my site is listed.  

Take a peek at http://www.forexblog.org/2007/04/top_100_forex_r.html 

I know we aren't competing for anything "material" but nevertheless, good luck to the other 22 participants.  A demo account is what it is and you can't turn it into what it isn't but hopefully the competition will bring more "realness" into the contest.  

Anyone can check up on the progress of all 23 traders involved at https://fx2.oanda.com/mod_perl/fxcontest/fxcontest.pl?rm=contestDetails&contestId=150

You can view number of trades, volume of trades, maximum drawdown, sharpe ratio, and portfolio return.