Whilst I accept this is true, I believe this leads to the more difficult problem of devising a reliable strategy to classify mkt conditions as trending or rangebound for both testing and trading. Supposing you have devised a method tailored for ...

Traders Needed for New Book!

I agree Miguel76 - a short term model is more likely to extend to longer term but less likely the other way around. Of course you will need more data to test the longer term model, so again if you are looking to develop a model for longer term ...

Position Trading

Just a thought - mathematicians going back to Mandelbrot have published papers demonstrating that mkts are self similar. Self similarity basically implies that the mkt will behave exactly the same regardless of whether you look at 1 second ...

Position Trading

Can I provide some perspective. Up until only a few years ago if you wanted live FX prices piped into your home it would cost about $2,000 a month through the likes of Reuters/Telerate/KnightRidder etc and now through the brokers we get this for ...

Brokers dont want us to make money

The underlying assumption of any system that prescribes exactly when to enter/exit the market is that (at least enough to make a profit)mathematically the market stays within at least some certain parameters. This is false, since the market does ...

Examining the "system" idea logically

I absolutely agree with Twinchell - maximising your % return whilst minimising drawdowns is the key. Large lot sizes tend not to be a problem with brokers upto about $20M - then it's a nice problem to have. However there are things you could do - ...

The Best Way To Choose Lot Size

Not sure if you've seen this but you could try checking out Ralph Vince's optimal F (try googling optimal F money management). This is an increase lot size after winning approach but shows how to easily calculate the 'optimal F' leverage factor for ...

The Best Way To Choose Lot Size

I absolutely agree, the volatility of late has been very low. I expected things to pick up at the end of the northern summer period but it has continued in the traditionally slow holiday mode. I trade an automated intra day portfolio and over the ...

Is the market quiet or what?

I don't feel that anyone is ganging up on the small investors. With every trade there is a transaction cost (the spread) - for intraday trading you need to be correct approx 55% of the time just to break even after the spread is taken into account. ...

who is pushing the market ?

Quathar - I agree that for more than 4 or 5 parameters pair wise visualisations are probably not feasible. Myself and my colleagues only have 2 parameters and yet modelling for just two has been the major challenge for us for several years now. A ...

backtesting, The past...

This discussion is really about understanding how the parameters of your system behave over time. If you try plotting the profit/loss ratio (or some other indicator of model performance that is reasonably bounded such as (sum of profits)/(sum of ...

backtesting, The past...

Following up on Philmcgrew's point - my experience is that parameter optimisation on the fly also has its issues. The primary one being knowing when to decide to re-optimise. The obvious thought is when my parameter settings appear to be going off. ...

backtesting, The past...

After several years of internet trading and many billions worth of real money trades, I can honestly say that this has not been my experience. The brokers that myself and my colleagues have dealt with have in my opinion been generally fair and ...

Is there anything else than FOREX ??? That you can make good money.

My experience is that 4 years of historical data seems to be pretty representative of most mkt conditions. For my own systems I tend not to see any larger drawdowns going back any further than 4 years however like you I often see some of the largest ...

backtesting, The past...

I've often wondered about investigating arbitrage opportunities between the FX futures and spot mkts, but I also don't enough about FX futures mkts to know. Due to FX futures being traded through exchanges is it possible to trade FX futures on a 24 ...

Significance of Forex Options

Akuma99 - you questioned what over leverage means. This is a critical issue. Unless you have the holy grail of trading systems you will need to leverage to achieve large sums because without it you will die before you can achieve your goal. Now if ...

A Trading Experiment

I'm not convinced that it is as simple as needing money to make money. If you need an income whilst you are doing it then it probably is impossible as it is practically impossible to turn $100 in to say an income of $50K within one year. If you ...

A Trading Experiment

Msg back to Vder - fully automated trading is possible. I currently do it through Forex.com - no more button clicking to trade or being woken up by a trade alert. My problem is that forex.com don't offer some of the pairs I'd like to trade. Cheers - ...

Internet brokers offering api's for automated trading