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Former investment bank FX trader: news trading and second order thinking
Thanks to everyone who responded to the previous pieces on risk management. We ended up with nearly 2,000 upvotes and I'm delighted so many of you found it useful. This time we're going to focus on a new area: reacting to and trading around news and fundamental developments. A lot of people get this totally wrong and the main reason is that they trade the news at face value, without considering what the market had already priced in. If you've ever seen what you consider to be "good" or "better than forecast" news come out and yet been confused as the pair did nothing or moved in the opposite direction to expected, read on... We are going to do this in two parts. Part I
Introduction
Why use an economic calendar
How to read the calendar
Knowing what's priced in
Surveys
Rates decisions
First order thinking vs second order thinking
Introduction
Knowing how to use and benefit from the economic calendar is key for all traders - not just news traders. In this chapter we are going to take a practical look at how to use the economic calendar. We are also going to look at how to interpret news using second order thinking. The key concept is learning what has already been ‘priced in’ by the market so we can estimate how the market price might react to the new information.
Why use an economic calendar
The economic calendar contains all the scheduled economic releases for that day and week. Even if you purely trade based on technical analysis, you still must know what is in store. https://preview.redd.it/20xdiq6gq4k51.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=6cd47186db1039be7df4d7ad6782de36da48f1db Why? Three main reasons. Firstly, releases can help provide direction. They create trends. For example if GBPUSD has been fluctuating aimlessly within a range and suddenly the Bank of England starts raising rates you better believe the British Pound will start to move. Big news events often start long-term trends which you can trade around. Secondly, a lot of the volatility occurs around these events. This is because these events give the market new information. Prior to a big scheduled release like the US Non Farm Payrolls you might find no one wants to take a big position. After it is released the market may move violently and potentially not just in a single direction - often prices may overshoot and come back down. Even without a trend this volatility provides lots of trading opportunities for the day trader. https://preview.redd.it/u17iwbhiq4k51.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=98ea8ed154c9468cb62037668c38e7387f2435af Finally, these releases can change trends. Going into a huge release because of a technical indicator makes little sense. Everything could reverse and stop you out in a moment. You need to be aware of which events are likely to influence the positions you have on so you can decide whether to keep the positions or flatten exposure before the binary event for which you have no edge. Most traders will therefore ‘scan’ the calendar for the week ahead, noting what the big events are and when they will occur. Then you can focus on each day at a time.
Reading the economic calendar
Most calendars show events cut by trading day. Helpfully they adjust the time of each release to your own timezone. For example we can see that the Bank of Japan Interest Rate decision is happening at 4am local time for this particular London-based trader. https://preview.redd.it/lmx0q9qoq4k51.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c6e9e1533b1ba236e51296de8db3be55dfa78ba1 Note that some events do not happen at a specific time. Think of a Central Banker’s speech for example - this can go on for an hour. It is not like an economic statistic that gets released at a precise time. Clicking the finger emoji will open up additional information on each event.
Event importance
How do you define importance? Well, some events are always unimportant. With the greatest of respect to Italian farmers, nobody cares about mundane releases like Italian farm productivity figures. Other events always seem to be important. That means, markets consistently react to them and prices move. Interest rate decisions are an example of consistently high importance events. So the Medium and High can be thought of as guides to how much each event typically affects markets. They are not perfect guides, however, as different events are more or less important depending on the circumstances. For example, imagine the UK economy was undergoing a consumer-led recovery. The Central Bank has said it would raise interest rates (making GBPUSD move higher) if they feel the consumer is confident. Consumer confidence data would suddenly become an extremely important event. At other times, when the Central Bank has not said it is focused on the consumer, this release might be near irrelevant.
Knowing what's priced in
Next to each piece of economic data you can normally see three figures. Actual, Forecast, and Previous.
Actual refers to the number as it is released.
Forecast refers to the consensus estimate from analysts.
Previous is what it was last time.
We are going to look at this in a bit more detail later but what you care about is when numbers are better or worse than expected. Whether a number is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ really does not matter much. Yes, really. Once you understand that markets move based on the news vs expectations, you will be less confused by price action around events This is a common misunderstanding. Say everyone is expecting ‘great’ economic data and it comes out as ‘good’. Does the price go up? You might think it should. After all, the economic data was good. However, everyone expected it to be great and it was just … good. The great release was ‘priced in’ by the market already. Most likely the price will be disappointed and go down. By priced in we simply mean that the market expected it and already bought or sold. The information was already in the price before the announcement. Incidentally the official forecasts can be pretty stale and might not accurately capture what active traders in the market expect. See the following example.
An example of pricing in
For example, let’s say the market is focused on the number of Tesla deliveries. Analysts think it’ll be 100,000 this quarter. But Elon Musk tweets something that hints he’s really, really, really looking forward to the analyst call. Tesla’s price ticks higher after the tweet as traders put on positions, reflecting the sentiment that Tesla is likely to massively beat the 100,000. (This example is not a real one - it just serves to illustrate the concept.) Tesla deliveries are up hugely vs last quarter ... but they are disappointing vs market expectations ... what do you think will happen to the stock? On the day it turns out Tesla hit 101,000. A better than the officially forecasted result - sure - but only marginally. Way below what readers of Musk's twitter account might have thought. Disappointed traders may sell their longs and close out the positions. The stock might go down on ‘good’ results because the market had priced in something even better. (This example is not a real one - it just serves to illustrate the concept.)
We know that interest rates heavily affect currency prices. For major interest rate decisions there’s a great tool on the CME’s website that you can use. See the link for a demo This gives you a % probability of each interest rate level, implied by traded prices in the bond futures market. For example, in the case above the market thinks there’s a 20% chance the Fed will cut rates to 75-100bp. Obviously this is far more accurate than analyst estimates because it uses actual bond prices where market participants are directly taking risk and placing bets. It basically looks at what interest rate traders are willing to lend at just before/after the date of the central bank meeting to imply the odds that the market ascribes to a change on that date. Always try to estimate what the market has priced in. That way you have some context for whether the release really was better or worse than expected.
Second order thinking
You have to know what the market expects to try and guess how it’ll react. This is referred to by Howard Marks of Oaktree as second-level thinking. His explanation is so clear I am going to quote extensively. It really is hard to improve on this clarity of thought: First-level thinking is simplistic and superficial, and just about everyone can do it (a bad sign for anything involving an attempt at superiority). All the first-level thinker needs is an opinion about the future, as in “The outlook for the company is favorable, meaning the stock will go up.” Second-level thinking is deep, complex and convoluted. Howard Marks He explains first-level thinking: The first-level thinker simply looks for the highest quality company, the best product, the fastest earnings growth or the lowest p/e ratio. He’s ignorant of the very existence of a second level at which to think, and of the need to pursue it. Howard Marks The above describes the guy who sees a 101,000 result and buys Tesla stock because - hey, this beat expectations. Marks goes on to describe second-level thinking: The second-level thinker goes through a much more complex process when thinking about buying an asset. Is it good? Do others think it’s as good as I think it is? Is it really as good as I think it is? Is it as good as others think it is? Is it as good as others think others think it is? How will it change? How do others think it will change? How is it priced given: its current condition; how do I think its conditions will change; how others think it will change; and how others think others think it will change? And that’s just the beginning. No, this isn’t easy. Howard Marks In this version of events you are always thinking about the market’s response to Tesla results. What do you think they’ll announce? What has the market priced in? Is Musk reliable? Are the people who bought because of his tweet likely to hold on if he disappoints or exit immediately? If it goes up at which price will they take profit? How big a number is now considered ‘wow’ by the market? As Marks says: not easy. However, you need to start getting into the habit of thinking like this if you want to beat the market. You can make gameplans in advance for various scenarios. Here are some examples from Marks to illustrate the difference between first order and second order thinking. Some further examples Trying to react fast to headlines is impossible in today’s market of ultra fast computers. You will never win on speed. Therefore you have to out-think the average participant.
Coming up in part II
Now that we have a basic understanding of concepts such as expectations and what the market has priced in, we can look at some interesting trading techniques and tools. Part II
Preparing for quantitative and qualitative releases
Data surprise index
Using recent events to predict future reactions
Buy the rumour, sell the fact
The trimming position effect
Reversals
Some key FX releases
Hope you enjoyed this note. As always, please reply with any questions/feedback - it is fun to hear from you. *** Disclaimer:This content is not investment advice and you should not place any reliance on it. The views expressed are the author's own and should not be attributed to any other person, including their employer.
From the first half of the news trading note we learned some ways to estimate what is priced in by the market. We learned that we are trading any gap in market expectations rather than the result itself. A good result when the market expected a fantastic result is disappointing! We also looked at second order thinking. After all that, I hope the reaction of prices to events is starting to make more sense to you. Before you understand the core concepts of pricing in and second order thinking, price reactions to events can seem mystifying at times We'll add one thought-provoking quote. Keynes (that rare economist who also managed institutional money) offered this analogy. He compared selecting investments to a beauty contest in which newspaper readers would write in with their votes and win a prize if their votes most closely matched the six most popularly selected women across all readers: It is not a case of choosing those (faces) which, to the best of one’s judgment, are really the prettiest, nor even those which average opinions genuinely thinks the prettiest. We have reached the third degree where we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. Trading is no different. You are trying to anticipate how other traders will react to news and how that will move prices. Perhaps you disagree with their reaction. Still, if you can anticipate what it will be you would be sensible to act upon it. Don't forget: meanwhile they are also trying to anticipate what you and everyone else will do. Part II
Preparing for quantitative and qualitative releases
Data surprise index
Using recent events to predict future reactions
Buy the rumour, sell the fact
The trimming position effect
Reversals
Some key FX releases
Preparing for quantitative and qualitative releases
The majority of releases are quantitative. All that means is there’s some number. Like unemployment figures or GDP. Historic results provide interesting context. We are looking below the Australian unemployment rate which is released monthly. If you plot it out a few years back you can spot a clear trend, which got massively reversed. Knowing this trend gives you additional information when the figure is released. In the same way prices can trend so do economic data. A great resource that's totally free to use This makes sense: if for example things are getting steadily better in the economy you’d expect to see unemployment steadily going down. Knowing the trend and how much noise there is in the data gives you an informational edge over lazy traders. For example, when we see the spike above 6% on the above you’d instantly know it was crazy and a huge trading opportunity since a) the fluctuations month on month are normally tiny and b) it is a huge reversal of the long-term trend. Would all the other AUDUSD traders know and react proportionately? If not and yet they still trade, their laziness may be an opportunity for more informed traders to make some money. Tradingeconomics.com offers really high quality analysis. You can see all the major indicators for each country. Clicking them brings up their history as well as an explanation of what they show. For example, here’s German Consumer Confidence. Helpful context There are also qualitative events. Normally these are speeches by Central Bankers. There are whole blogs dedicated to closely reading such texts and looking for subtle changes in direction or opinion on the economy. Stuff like how often does the phrase "in a good place" come up when the Chair of the Fed speaks. It is pretty dry stuff. Yet these are leading indicators of how each member may vote to set interest rates. Ed Yardeni is the go-to guy on central banks.
Data surprise index
The other thing you might look at is something investment banks produce for their customers. A data surprise index. I am not sure if these are available in retail land - there's no reason they shouldn't be but the economic calendars online are very basic. You’ll remember we talked about data not being good or bad of itself but good or bad relative to what was expected. These indices measure this difference. If results are consistently better than analysts expect then you’ll see a positive number. If they are consistently worse than analysts expect a negative number. You can see they tend to swing from positive to negative. Mean reversion at its best! Data surprise indices measure how much better or worse data came in vs forecast There are many theories for this but in general people consider that analysts herd around the consensus. They are scared to be outliers and look ‘wrong’ or ‘stupid’ so they instead place estimates close to the pack of their peers. When economic conditions change they may therefore be slow to update. When they are wrong consistently - say too bearish - they eventually flip the other way and become too bullish. These charts can be interesting to give you an idea of how the recent data releases have been versus market expectations. You may try to spot the turning points in macroeconomic data that drive long term currency prices and trends.
Using recent events to predict future reactions
The market reaction function is the most important thing on an economic calendar in many ways. It means: what will happen to the price if the data is better or worse than the market expects? That seems easy to answer but it is not. Consider the example of consumer confidence we had earlier.
Many times the market will shrug and ignore it.
But when the economic recovery is predicated on a strong consumer it may move markets a lot.
Or consider the S&P index of US stocks (Wall Street).
If you get good economic data that beats analyst estimates surely it should go up? Well, sometimes that is certainly the case.
But good economic data might result in the US Central Bank raising interest rates. Raising interest rates will generally make the stock market go down!
So better than expected data could make the S&P go up (“the economy is great”) or down (“the Fed is more likely to raise rates”). It depends. The market can interpret the same data totally differently at different times. One clue is to look at what happened to the price of risk assets at the last event. For example, let’s say we looked at unemployment and it came in a lot worse than forecast last month. What happened to the S&P back then? 2% drop last time on a 'worse than expected' number ... so it it is 'better than expected' best guess is we rally 2% higher So this tells us that - at least for our most recent event - the S&P moved 2% lower on a far worse than expected number. This gives us some guidance as to what it might do next time and the direction. Bad number = lower S&P. For a huge surprise 2% is the size of move we’d expect. Again - this is a real limitation of online calendars. They should show next to the historic results (expected/actual) the reaction of various instruments.
Buy the rumour, sell the fact
A final example of an unpredictable reaction relates to the old rule of ‘Buy the rumour, sell the fact.’ This captures the tendency for markets to anticipate events and then reverse when they occur. Buy the rumour, sell the fact In short: people take profit and close their positions when what they expected to happen is confirmed. So we have to decide which driver is most important to the market at any point in time. You obviously cannot ask every participant. The best way to do it is to look at what happened recently. Look at the price action during recent releases and you will get a feel for how much the market moves and in which direction.
Trimming or taking off positions
One thing to note is that events sometimes give smart participants information about positioning. This is because many traders take off or reduce positions ahead of big news events for risk management purposes. Imagine we see GBPUSD rises in the hour before GDP release. That probably indicates the market is short and has taken off / flattened its positions. The price action before an event can tell you about speculative positioning If GDP is merely in line with expectations those same people are likely to add back their positions. They avoided a potential banana skin. This is why sometimes the market moves on an event that seemingly was bang on consensus. But you have learned something. The speculative market is short and may prove vulnerable to a squeeze.
Two kinds of reversals
Fairly often you’ll see the market move in one direction on a release then turn around and go the other way. These are known as reversals. Traders will often ‘fade’ a move, meaning bet against it and expect it to reverse.
Logical reversals
Sometimes this happens when the data looks good at first glance but the details don’t support it. For example, say the headline is very bullish on German manufacturing numbers but then a minute later it becomes clear the company who releases the data has changed methodology or believes the number is driven by a one-off event. Or maybe the headline number is positive but buried in the detail there is a very negative revision to previous numbers. Fading the initial spike is one way to trade news. Try looking at what the price action is one minute after the event and thirty minutes afterwards on historic releases.
Crazy reversals
Some reversals don't make sense Sometimes a reversal happens for seemingly no fundamental reason. Say you get clearly positive news that is better than anyone expects. There are no caveats to the positive number. Yet the price briefly spikes up and then falls hard. What on earth? This is a pure supply and demand thing. Even on bullish news the market cannot sustain a rally. The market is telling you it wants to sell this asset. Try not to get in its way.
Some key releases
As we have already discussed, different releases are important at different times. However, we’ll look at some consistently important ones in this final section.
Interest rates decisions
These can sometimes be unscheduled. However, normally the decisions are announced monthly. The exact process varies for each central bank. Typically there’s a headline decision e.g. maintain 0.75% rate. You may also see “minutes” of the meeting in which the decision was reached and a vote tally e.g. 7 for maintain, 2 for lower rates. These are always top-tier data releases and have capacity to move the currency a lot. A hawkish central bank (higher rates) will tend to move a currency higher whilst a dovish central bank (lower rates) will tend to move a currency lower. A central banker speaking is always a big event
Non farm payrolls
These are released once per month. This is another top-tier release that will move all USD pairs as well as equities. There are three numbers:
The headline number of jobs created (bigger is better)
The unemployment rate (smaller is better)
Average hourly earnings (depends)
Bear in mind these headline numbers are often off by around 75,000. If a report comes in +/- 25,000 of the forecast, that is probably a non event. In general a positive response should move the USD higher but check recent price action. Other countries each have their own unemployment data releases but this is the single most important release.
Surveys
There are various types of surveys: consumer confidence; house price expectations; purchasing managers index etc. Each one basically asks a group of people if they expect to make more purchases or activity in their area of expertise to rise. There are so many we won’t go into each one here. A really useful tool is the tradingeconomics.com economic indicators for each country. You can see all the major indicators and an explanation of each plus the historic results.
GDP
Gross Domestic Product is another big release. It is a measure of how much a country’s economy is growing. In general the market focuses more on ‘advance’ GDP forecasts more than ‘final’ numbers, which are often released at the same time. This is because the final figures are accurate but by the time they come around the market has already seen all the inputs. The advance figure tends to be less accurate but incorporates new information that the market may not have known before the release. In general a strong GDP number is good for the domestic currency.
Inflation
Countries tend to release measures of inflation (increase in prices) each month. These releases are important mainly because they may influence the future decisions of the central bank, when setting the interest rate. See the FX fundamentals section for more details.
Industrial data
Things like factory orders or or inventory levels. These can provide a leading indicator of the strength of the economy. These numbers can be extremely volatile. This is because a one-off large order can drive the numbers well outside usual levels. Pay careful attention to previous releases so you have a sense of how noisy each release is and what kind of moves might be expected.
Comments
Often there is really good stuff in the comments/replies. Check out 'squitstoomuch' for some excellent observations on why some news sources are noisy but early (think: Twitter, ZeroHedge). The Softbank story is a good recent example: was in ZeroHedge a day before the FT but the market moved on the FT. Also an interesting comment on mistakes, which definitely happen on breaking news, and can cause massive reversals.
Former investment bank FX trader: Risk management part 3/3
Welcome to the third and final part of this chapter. Thank you all for the 100s of comments and upvotes - maybe this post will take us above 1,000 for this topic! Keep any feedback or questions coming in the replies below. Before you read this note, please start with Part I and then Part II so it hangs together and makes sense. Part III
Squeezes and other risks
Market positioning
Bet correlation
Crap trades, timeouts and monthly limits
Squeezes and other risks
We are going to cover three common risks that traders face: events; squeezes, asymmetric bets.
Events
Economic releases can cause large short-term volatility. The most famous is Non Farm Payrolls, which is the most widely watched measure of US employment levels and affects the price of many instruments.On an NFP announcement currencies like EURUSD might jump (or drop) 100 pips no problem. This is fine and there are trading strategies that one may employ around this but the key thing is to be aware of these releases.You can find economic calendars all over the internet - including on this site - and you need only check if there are any major releases each day or week. For example, if you are trading off some intraday chart and scalping a few pips here and there it would be highly sensible to go into a known data release flat as it is pure coin-toss and not the reason for your trading. It only takes five minutes each day to plan for the day ahead so do not get caught out by this. Many retail traders get stopped out on such events when price volatility is at its peak.
Squeezes
Short squeezes bring a lot of danger and perhaps some opportunity. The story of VW and Porsche is the best short squeeze ever. Throughout these articles we've used FX examples wherever possible but in this one instance the concept (which is also highly relevant in FX) is best illustrated with an historical lesson from a different asset class. A short squeeze is when a participant ends up in a short position they are forced to cover. Especially when the rest of the market knows that this participant can be bullied into stopping out at terrible levels, provided the market can briefly drive the price into their pain zone. There's a reason for the car, don't worry Hedge funds had been shorting VW stock. However the amount of VW stock available to buy in the open market was actually quite limited. The local government owned a chunk and Porsche itself had bought and locked away around 30%. Neither of these would sell to the hedge-funds so a good amount of the stock was un-buyable at any price. If you sell or short a stock you must be prepared to buy it back to go flat at some point. To cut a long story short, Porsche bought a lot of call options on VW stock. These options gave them the right to purchase VW stock from banks at slightly above market price. Eventually the banks who had sold these options realised there was no VW stock to go out and buy since the German government wouldn’t sell its allocation and Porsche wouldn’t either. If Porsche called in the options the banks were in trouble. Porsche called in the options which forced the shorts to buy stock - at whatever price they could get it. The price squeezed higher as those that were short got massively squeezed and stopped out. For one brief moment in 2008, VW was the world’s most valuable company. Shorts were burned hard. Incredible event Porsche apparently made $11.5 billion on the trade. The BBC described Porsche as “a hedge fund with a carmaker attached.” If this all seems exotic then know that the same thing happens in FX all the time. If everyone in the market is talking about a key level in EURUSD being 1.2050 then you can bet the market will try to push through 1.2050 just to take out any short stops at that level. Whether it then rallies higher or fails and trades back lower is a different matter entirely. This brings us on to the matter of crowded trades. We will look at positioning in more detail in the next section. Crowded trades are dangerous for PNL. If everyone believes EURUSD is going down and has already sold EURUSD then you run the risk of a short squeeze. For additional selling to take place you need a very good reason for people to add to their position whereas a move in the other direction could force mass buying to cover their shorts. A trading mentor when I worked at the investment bank once advised me: Always think about which move would cause the maximum people the maximum pain. That move is precisely what you should be watching out for at all times.
Asymmetric losses
Also known as picking up pennies in front of a steamroller. This risk has caught out many a retail trader. Sometimes it is referred to as a "negative skew" strategy. Ideally what you are looking for is asymmetric risk trade set-ups: that is where the downside is clearly defined and smaller than the upside. What you want to avoid is the opposite. A famous example of this going wrong was the Swiss National Bank de-peg in 2012. The Swiss National Bank had said they would defend the price of EURCHF so that it did not go below 1.2. Many people believed it could never go below 1.2 due to this. Many retail traders therefore opted for a strategy that some describe as ‘picking up pennies in front of a steam-roller’. They would would buy EURCHF above the peg level and hope for a tiny rally of several pips before selling them back and keep doing this repeatedly. Often they were highly leveraged at 100:1 so that they could amplify the profit of the tiny 5-10 pip rally. Then this happened. Something that changed FX markets forever The SNB suddenly did the unthinkable. They stopped defending the price. CHF jumped and so EURCHF (the number of CHF per 1 EUR) dropped to new lows very fast. Clearly, this trade had horrific risk : reward asymmetry: you risked 30% to make 0.05%. Other strategies like naively selling options have the same result. You win a small amount of money each day and then spectacularly blow up at some point down the line.
Market positioning
We have talked about short squeezes. But how do you know what the market position is? And should you care? Let’s start with the first. You should definitely care. Let’s imagine the entire market is exceptionally long EURUSD and positioning reaches extreme levels. This makes EURUSD very vulnerable. To keep the price going higher EURUSD needs to attract fresh buy orders. If everyone is already long and has no room to add, what can incentivise people to keep buying? The news flow might be good. They may believe EURUSD goes higher. But they have already bought and have their maximum position on. On the flip side, if there’s an unexpected event and EURUSD gaps lower you will have the entire market trying to exit the position at the same time. Like a herd of cows running through a single doorway. Messy. We are going to look at this in more detail in a later chapter, where we discuss ‘carry’ trades. For now this TRYJPY chart might provide some idea of what a rush to the exits of a crowded position looks like. A carry trade position clear-out in action Knowing if the market is currently at extreme levels of long or short can therefore be helpful. The CFTC makes available a weekly report, which details the overall positions of speculative traders “Non Commercial Traders” in some of the major futures products. This includes futures tied to deliverable FX pairs such as EURUSD as well as products such as gold. The report is called “CFTC Commitments of Traders” ("COT"). This is a great benchmark. It is far more representative of the overall market than the proprietary ones offered by retail brokers as it covers a far larger cross-section of the institutional market. Generally market participants will not pay a lot of attention to commercial hedgers, which are also detailed in the report. This data is worth tracking but these folks are simply hedging real-world transactions rather than speculating so their activity is far less revealing and far more noisy. You can find the data online for free and download it directly here. Raw format is kinda hard to work with However, many websites will chart this for you free of charge and you may find it more convenient to look at it that way. Just google “CFTC positioning charts”. But you can easily get visualisations You can visually spot extreme positioning. It is extremely powerful. Bear in mind the reports come out Friday afternoon US time and the report is a snapshot up to the prior Tuesday. That means it is a lagged report - by the time it is released it is a few days out of date. For longer term trades where you hold positions for weeks this is of course still pretty helpful information. As well as the absolute level (is the speculative market net long or short) you can also use this to pick up on changes in positioning. For example if bad news comes out how much does the net short increase? If good news comes out, the market may remain net short but how much did they buy back? A lot of traders ask themselves “Does the market have this trade on?” The positioning data is a good method for answering this. It provides a good finger on the pulse of the wider market sentiment and activity. For example you might say: “There was lots of noise about the good employment numbers in the US. However, there wasn’t actually a lot of position change on the back of it. Maybe everyone who wants to buy already has. What would happen now if bad news came out?” In general traders will be wary of entering a crowded position because it will be hard to attract additional buyers or sellers and there could be an aggressive exit. If you want to enter a trade that is showing extreme levels of positioning you must think carefully about this dynamic.
Bet correlation
Retail traders often drastically underestimate how correlated their bets are. Through bitter experience, I have learned that a mistake in position correlation is the root of some of the most serious problems in trading. If you have eight highly correlated positions, then you are really trading one position that is eight times as large. Bruce Kovner of hedge fund, Caxton Associates For example, if you are trading a bunch of pairs against the USD you will end up with a simply huge USD exposure. A single USD-trigger can ruin all your bets. Your ideal scenario — and it isn’t always possible — would be to have a highly diversified portfolio of bets that do not move in tandem. Look at this chart. Inverted USD index (DXY) is green. AUDUSD is orange. EURUSD is blue. Chart from TradingView So the whole thing is just one big USD trade! If you are long AUDUSD, long EURUSD, and short DXY you have three anti USD bets that are all likely to work or fail together. The more diversified your portfolio of bets are, the more risk you can take on each. There’s a really good video, explaining the benefits of diversification from Ray Dalio. A systematic fund with access to an investable universe of 10,000 instruments has more opportunity to make a better risk-adjusted return than a trader who only focuses on three symbols. Diversification really is the closest thing to a free lunch in finance. But let’s be pragmatic and realistic. Human retail traders don’t have capacity to run even one hundred bets at a time. More realistic would be an average of 2-3 trades on simultaneously. So what can be done? For example:
You might diversify across time horizons by having a mix of short-term and long-term trades.
You might diversify across asset classes - trading some FX but also crypto and equities.
You might diversify your trade generation approach so you are not relying on the same indicators or drivers on each trade.
You might diversify your exposure to the market regime by having some trades that assume a trend will continue (momentum) and some that assume we will be range-bound (carry).
And so on. Basically you want to scan your portfolio of trades and make sure you are not putting all your eggs in one basket. If some trades underperform others will perform - assuming the bets are not correlated - and that way you can ensure your overall portfolio takes less risk per unit of return. The key thing is to start thinking about a portfolio of bets and what each new trade offers to your existing portfolio of risk. Will it diversify or amplify a current exposure?
Crap trades, timeouts and monthly limits
One common mistake is to get bored and restless and put on crap trades. This just means trades in which you have low conviction. It is perfectly fine not to trade. If you feel like you do not understand the market at a particular point, simply choose not to trade. Flat is a position. Do not waste your bullets on rubbish trades. Only enter a trade when you have carefully considered it from all angles and feel good about the risk. This will make it far easier to hold onto the trade if it moves against you at any point. You actually believe in it. Equally, you need to set monthly limits. A standard limit might be a 10% account balance stop per month. At that point you close all your positions immediately and stop trading till next month. Be strict with yourself and walk away Let’s assume you started the year with $100k and made 5% in January so enter Feb with $105k balance. Your stop is therefore 10% of $105k or $10.5k . If your account balance dips to $94.5k ($105k-$10.5k) then you stop yourself out and don’t resume trading till March the first. Having monthly calendar breaks is nice for another reason. Say you made a load of money in January. You don’t want to start February feeling you are up 5% or it is too tempting to avoid trading all month and protect the existing win. Each month and each year should feel like a clean slate and an independent period. Everyone has trading slumps. It is perfectly normal. It will definitely happen to you at some stage. The trick is to take a break and refocus. Conserve your capital by not trading a lot whilst you are on a losing streak. This period will be much harder for you emotionally and you’ll end up making suboptimal decisions. An enforced break will help you see the bigger picture. Put in place a process before you start trading and then it’ll be easy to follow and will feel much less emotional. Remember: the market doesn’t care if you win or lose, it is nothing personal. When your head has cooled and you feel calm you return the next month and begin the task of building back your account balance.
That's a wrap on risk management
Thanks for taking time to read this three-part chapter on risk management. I hope you enjoyed it. Do comment in the replies if you have any questions or feedback. Remember: the most important part of trading is not making money. It is not losing money. Always start with that principle. I hope these three notes have provided some food for thought on how you might approach risk management and are of practical use to you when trading. Avoiding mistakes is not a sexy tagline but it is an effective and reliable way to improve results. Next up I will be writing about an exciting topic I think many traders should look at rather differently: news trading. Please follow on here to receive notifications and the broad outline is below. News Trading Part I
Introduction
Why use the economic calendar
Reading the economic calendar
Knowing what's priced in
Surveys
Interest rates
First order thinking vs second order thinking
News Trading Part II
Preparing for quantitative and qualitative releases
Data surprise index
Using recent events to predict future reactions
Buy the rumour, sell the fact
The mysterious 'position trim' effect
Reversals
Some key FX releases
*** Disclaimer:This content is not investment advice and you should not place any reliance on it. The views expressed are the author's own and should not be attributed to any other person, including their employer.
Someone posted on here a few days ago asking about forex and forex trading in Kenya, I have gone through the responses and clearly, most people don’t have an idea. It is 3am in the morning and am in a good mood so let me make this post. This will be a comprehensive and lengthy post so grab a pen and paper and sit down. We’ll be here a while. FIRST OF ALL, who am I..? I am a forex trader, in Nairobi, Kenya..i have been actively involved in forex since I found out about it in Feb 2016 when I somehow ended up in a wealth creation seminar (lol) in pride inn Westlands, the one close to Mpaka Rd. Luckily for me, it was not one of those AIM global meetings or I’d be on Facebook selling God knows what those guys sell. I did not take it seriously till August of the same year and I have been active ever since. I don’t teach, mentor or sell a course or signals, I trade my own money. I am also posting from a throwaway account because I don’t want KRA on my ass. What the fuck is forex and forex trading. In simple plain English, forex is like the stock market but for currencies. Stock Market = Shares, forex = currencies. If you want more in-depth explanation, google is your friend. These currencies are pegged on specific countries, united states- dollar, UK- pound, euro zone- euro, Switzerland- Swiss franc, Kenya- Kenya shilling.. you get the point. Now, there are specific events and happenings between these economies that affect the movement and values of the currencies, driving their value (purchasing power up and down). Forex trading exploits these movements to make money. When the value is going up, we buy and vice versa (down –sell) Is forex trading illegal in Kenya? Is it a scam? Illegal, no. scam, no. All the banks in the world do it (KCB made about 4 billion from trading forex in 2019) Have there been scams involving forex in Kenya? Yes. Here is one that happened recently. This one is the most infamous one yet. Best believe that this is not the end of these type of scams because the stupidity, greed and gullibility of human beings is unfathomable. However, by the end of this post, I hope you won’t fall for such silliness. What next how do I make it work..? Am glad you asked. Generally, there are two ways to go about it. One, you teach yourself. This is the equivalent of stealing our dad’s car and hoping that the pedal you hit is the brake and not the accelerator. It is the route I took, it is the most rewarding and a huge ego boost when you finally make it on your own. Typically, this involves scouring the internet for hours upon hours going down rabbit holes, thinking you have made it telling all your friends how you will be a millionaire then losing all your money. Some people do not have the stomach for that. The second route is more practical, structured and smarter. First Learn the basics. There is a free online forex course at www.babypips.com/learn/forex this is merely an introductory course. Basically it is learning the parts of a car before they let you inside the car. Second, start building your strategy. By the time you are done with the babypips, you will have a feel of what the forex market is, what interests you, etc. Tip..Babypips has a lot of garbage. It is good for introductory purposes but not good for much else, pick whatever stick to you or jumps at you the first time. Nonsense like indicators should be ignored. The next step is now the most important. Developing the skill and building your strategy. As a beginner, you want to exhaust your naivety before jumping into the more advanced stuff. Eg can you identify a trend, what is a pair, what is position sizing, what is metatrader 4 and how to operate it, what news is good for a currency, when can I trade, what are the different trading sessions, what is technical analysis, what is market sentiment, what are bullish conditions what is emotion management, how does my psychology affect my trading (more on this later) an I a swing, scalper or day trader etc Mentors and forex courses.. you have probably seen people advertising how they can teach and mentor you on how to trade forex and charging so much money for it. Somehow it seems that these people are focused on the teaching than the trading. Weird, right..? Truth is trading is hard, teaching not quite. A common saying in the industry is “Those who can’t trade, teach” you want to avoid all these gurus on Facebook and Instagram, some are legit but most are not. Sifting the wheat from the chaff is hard but I did that for you. The info is available online on YouTube, telegram channels etc. am not saying not to spend money on a course, if you find a mentor whose style resonates with you and the course is reasonably priced, please, go ahead and buy..it will cut your learning curve in half. People are different. What worked for me might not work for you. Here are some nice YouTube channels to watch. These guys are legit..
After a short period of time, you will be able to sniff out bs teachers with relative ease. You will also discover some of your own and expand the list. Two tips, start with the oldest videos first and whichever of these resonates with you, stick with till the wheels fall off. How long will it take until things start making sense Give yourself time to grow and learn. This is all new to you and you are allowed to make mistakes, to fail and discover yourself. Realistically, depending on the effort you put in, you will not start seeing results until after 6 months. Could take longeshorter so there is no guarantee. Social media, Mentality, Psychology and Books Online, forex trading might not have the best reputation online because it takes hard work and scammers and gurus give it a bad name. However, try to not get sucked into the Instagram trader lifestyle as it is nowhere close to what the reality is. You will not make millions tomorrow or the day after, you might never even make it in this market. But that is the reality of life. Nothing is promised, nothing is guaranteed. Your mentality, beliefs and ego will be challenged in this market. You will learn things that will make you blood boil, you will ask yourself daily, how is this possible, why don’t they teach this in school..bla bla bla..it will be hard but growth is painful, if it wasn’t we’d all be billionaires. Take a break, take a walk, drink a glass of whatever you like or roll one..detox. Chill with your girl (or man) Gradually you will develop mental toughness that will set you up for life. Personally, I sorta ditched religion and picked up stoicism. Whatever works for you. Psychology, this is unfortunately one of the most neglected aspects of your personal development in this journey. Do you believe in yourself? Can you stand by your convictions when everyone is against you? Can you get up every day uncertain of the future? There will be moments where you will question yourself, am I even doing the right thing? the right way? It is normal and essential for your growth. People who played competitive sports have a natural advantage here. Remember the game is first won in your head then on the pitch. Books: ironically, books that helped me the most were the mindset books, Think and grow rich, trading for a living, 4 hour work week, the monk who sold his Ferrari..just google mindset and psychology books, most trading books are garbage. Watch and listen to people who have made it in the investing business. Ray Dalio, warren, Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn. This is turning out to be lengthier than I anticipated so I’ll try to be brief for the remaining parts. Brokers You will need to open up an account with a broker. Get a broker who is regulated. Australian ones (IC Market and Pepperstone) are both legit, reliable and regulated. Do your research. I’d avoid local ones because I’ve heard stories of wide spreads and liquidity problems. International brokers have never failed me. There are plenty brokers, there is no one size fits all recommendation. If it ain’t broke..don’t fix it. Money transfer. All brokers accept wire transfers, you might need to call your bank to authorize that, avoid Equity bank. Stanchart and Stanbic are alright. Large withdrawals $10k+ you will have to call them prior. Get Skrill and Neteller if you don’t like banks like me, set up a Bitcoin wallet for faster withdrawals, (Payoneer and Paypal are accepted by some brokers, just check with them.) How much money can I make..? I hate this question because people have perceived ceilings of income in their minds, eg 1 million ksh is too much to make per month or 10,000ksh is too little. Instead, work backwards. What % return did I make this month/ on this trade. Safaricom made 19.5% last year, if you make 20% you have outperformed them. If you reach of consistency where you can make x% per month on whatever money you have, then there are no limits to how much you can make. How much money do I need to start with..? Zero. You have all the resources above, go forth. There are brokers who provide free bonuses and withdraw-able profits. However, to make a fulltime income you will need some serious cash. Generally, 50,000 kes. You can start lower or higher but if you need say 20k to live comfortably and that is a 10% return per month, then you can do the math on how big your account should be. Of course things like compound interest come into play but that is dependent on your skill level. I have seen people do spectacular things with very little funds. Taxes..? Talk to a lawyer or an accountant. I am neither. Family? Friends? Unfortunately, people will not understand why you spend hundreds of hours watching strangers on the internet so it is best to keep it from them. Eventually you will make it work and they will come to your corner talking about how they always knew you’d make it. The journey will be lonely, make some trading buddies along the way. You’d be surprised at how easy it is when people are united by their circumstances (and stupidity) I have guys who are my bros from South Africa and Lebanon who I have never met but we came up together and are now homies. Join forums, ask questions and grow. That is the only way to learn. Ideally, a group of 5-10 friends committed to learning and growth is the best model. Pushing each other to grow and discovering together. Forex is real and you can do amazing things with it. It is not a get rich quick scheme. If you want a quick guaranteed income, get a job. And now it is 5am, fuck. This is oversimplified and leaves out many many aspects. Happy to answer any questions.
eToro: impressions, doubts and (ignored) lessons from copy trading
(no promotional content, no affiliate links) Hi, exactly four years ago, I started copying eToro investors / traders that I selected using the broker's built-in search engine (profitable in last two years, already being copied by others), followed by manual filtering, to take into account fluctuations in yearly returns, composition of their portfolios etc. With that, I got a list of 10 people whom I started to copy on a demo account: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u52f0XHfr-LauIscKcFDYF0yGTTUr6VY/view?usp=sharing In the screenshot you can see that in case of the first two of them the amount invested was $10,000, while for the rest it was just $100. This is because I started copying the first two a couple of weeks earlier; eventually I changed this into $100 the same day I made the screenshot and this is when my calculations start - so this thing is irrelevant, I just cannot travel in time to make another screenshot. What I did after that? Well, within the next six weeks my profits oscillated between -$11 and +$9.50 (the biggest profit was on Nov 9, a day after US presidential elections). I found this "boring" and discontinued experimenting with copy trading. Today I looked back at those ten traders. Here is what I found. Firstly, seven of them are not with eToro anymore; investorNo1, Simple-Stock-Mkt, tradingrelax, 4exPirate, primit, Gallojack, xjurokx. The other three traders are:
toppertrader: not being copied by anyone and for a good reason: his loss this year alone is 61.16%!
Jean-marcLenfant: copied by only 67 people; his loss this year is -1.09% but in general he is quite successful, with yearly profits ranging from 3.57% to 7.32%.
Girem2: he has no copiers, his profit this year is 41.45% but in 2018 he experienced a loss of 83.15%!
My observations and thoughts are as follows:
Seven out of ten traders are not with eToro anymore, which makes me wonder why. I have no proof but my guess is they simply performed poorly, lost their copiers and closed their accounts. This is already alarming but what if they opened another account? Or, even worse, multiple accounts? They could be investing small money and try different risky approaches, hoping that at least one account will turn out profitable in the long turn, attracting potential copiers. (I'm not claiming that those 7 particular traders did this, it's just my general suspicion regarding some of eToro traders)
I'm unable to calculate what would be my profit if I never stopped copying them, because I cannot check at what day and with what profit those seven traders left eToro. I'm guessing this would be an immense loss. On the other hand, considering the three traders who are still with eToro, I would lose more than a quarter of my assets!
What now? I must be a quite adventurous person or at least an incorrigible optimist, because a month ago (exactly on Aug 26th) I started copying three traders with real money. Here is who they are. rubymza (Heloise Greeff)
invests in stocks, with GOOG, INTC, BLDP, MA, MSFT, AMZN, V, MU, IBM and NXPI making up 50.3% of her portfolio (allocation of each of them is in between 3.02% and 6.85%)
active since 2016 (only the year 2016 ended with a loss)
has 3044 copiers and $2M-$5M of copy assets under management
strategy (her own words): "My investing strategy focusses mostly on US indices, tech and pharma, promising future (5-10years) growth. My trades are based on technical analysis using machine learning to understand patterns and trends in the markets. I prefer to keep a diverse portfolio to spread risk while achieving great returns."
he is a Forex trader, making typically 21 trades per week; his favorite currency pairs are EURCHF (12% of trades), CADCHF and GBPUSD; the trades, however, typically make up below 5% of his portfolio (at least whenever I'm checking it), making most of my funds unused
active since January 2017: surprisingly enough, he has every single month profitable, though monthly profits are in the range of 0.03% to 3.34% only
has 8977 copiers and more than $5M of copy assets under management
strategy (his own words): "I monitor currency pairs all day to find the best entry. There is some management/scaling position for perfect entry. The risk control is a big part of my strategy," (quite vague, to be honest)
commodities compose 76% of his portfolio and his favorite assets are Gold and Oil (at the moment, Gold makes up half of invested amount)
active since July 2016, with the following yearly profits, starting from 2016: 6.56%, 10.05%, 13.09%, 32.26% and -2.03% (the current year)
has 1493 copiers and $1M-$2M of copy assets under management
strategy (his own words): "My system is based on patterns, and a variety of technical analysis tools and some fundamental analysis. I primarily trade in commodities. " (quite vague as well)
own experience: my profit with rayvahey is 2.56%
What was my strategy to hand-pick these particular traders? First I did some basic scanning using eToro's built-in search engine. The most important filter was that the trader was profitable within the last two years: unfortunately, eToro does not allow to reach details of earlier performance automatically. To know how the trader performed before 2019, I had to look at stats in the profile of each of them. I was also taking into account how often they trade (to avoid those who do only a couple of trades yearly), whether they were trading recently and whether they write posts regularly in their feed. With this, I got a list of fifteen candidates to copy:
olivierdanvel
marianopardo
rubymza
rayvahey
martidg97
overit
misterg23
knw500
jianswang
reinhardtcoetzee
miyoshi
alderique
jarodd76
benson9904
big-profits
As you already know, I finally chose three of them. Rubymza seemed to be the most trustworthy stock trader, based on profits, posts feed and regular trading, among other things. Regarding OlivierDanvel, his uniqueness is the ability to record continuous profits with the Forex market. Finally, with rayvahey I wanted to increase my exposure to the commodities market. Wish me good luck! Michael P.S. You might find those copy-trading related readings interesting:
Disclaimer: None of this is financial advice. I have no idea what I'm doing. Please do your own research or you will certainly lose money. I'm not a statistician, data scientist, well-seasoned trader, or anything else that would qualify me to make statements such as the below with any weight behind them. Take them for the incoherent ramblings that they are. TL;DR at the bottom for those not interested in the details. This is a bit of a novel, sorry about that. It was mostly for getting my own thoughts organized, but if even one person reads the whole thing I will feel incredibly accomplished.
Background
For those of you not familiar, please see the various threads on this trading system here. I can't take credit for this system, all glory goes to ParallaxFX! I wanted to see how effective this system was at H1 for a couple of reasons: 1) My current broker is TD Ameritrade - their Forex minimum is a mini lot, and I don't feel comfortable enough yet with the risk to trade mini lots on the higher timeframes(i.e. wider pip swings) that ParallaxFX's system uses, so I wanted to see if I could scale it down. 2) I'm fairly impatient, so I don't like to wait days and days with my capital tied up just to see if a trade is going to win or lose. This does mean it requires more active attention since you are checking for setups once an hour instead of once a day or every 4-6 hours, but the upside is that you trade more often this way so you end up winning or losing faster and moving onto the next trade. Spread does eat more of the trade this way, but I'll cover this in my data below - it ends up not being a problem. I looked at data from 6/11 to 7/3 on all pairs with a reasonable spread(pairs listed at bottom above the TL;DR). So this represents about 3-4 weeks' worth of trading. I used mark(mid) price charts. Spreadsheet link is below for anyone that's interested.
System Details
I'm pretty much using ParallaxFX's system textbook, but since there are a few options in his writeups, I'll include all the discretionary points here:
I'm using the stop entry version - so I wait for the price to trade beyond the confirmation candle(in the direction of my trade) before entering. I don't have any data to support this decision, but I've always preferred this method over retracement-limit entries. Maybe I just like the feeling of a higher winrate even though there can be greater R:R using a limit entry. Variety is the spice of life.
I put my stop loss right at the opposite edge of the confirmation candle. NOT at the edge of the 2-candle pattern that makes up the system. I'll get into this more below - not enough trades are saved to justify the wider stops. (Wider stop means less $ per pip won, assuming you still only risk 1%).
All my profit/loss statistics are based on a 1% risk per trade. Because 1 is real easy to multiply.
There are definitely some questionable trades in here, but I tried to make it as mechanical as possible for evaluation purposes. They do fit the definitions of the system, which is why I included them. You could probably improve the winrate by being more discretionary about your trades by looking at support/resistance or other techniques.
I didn't use MBB much for either entering trades, or as support/resistance indicators. Again, trying to be pretty mechanical here just for data collection purposes. Plus, we all make bad trading decisions now and then, so let's call it even.
As stated in the title, this is for H1 only. These results may very well not play out for other time frames - who knows, it may not even work on H1 starting this Monday. Forex is an unpredictable place.
I collected data to show efficacy of taking profit at three different levels: -61.8%, -100% and -161.8% fib levels described in the system using the passive trade management method(set it and forget it). I'll have more below about moving up stops and taking off portions of a position.
And now for the fun. Results!
Total Trades: 241
Raw Winrates:
TP at -61.8%: 177 out of 241: 73.44%
TP at -100%: 156 out of 241: 64.73%
TP at -161.8%: 121 out of 241: 50.20%
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account):
TP at -61.8%: 5.22%
TP at -100%: 23.55%
TP at -161.8%: 29.14%
As you can see, a higher target ended up with higher profit despite a much lower winrate. This is partially just how things work out with profit targets in general, but there's an additional point to consider in our case: the spread. Since we are trading on a lower timeframe, there is less overall price movement and thus the spread takes up a much larger percentage of the trade than it would if you were trading H4, Daily or Weekly charts. You can see exactly how much it accounts for each trade in my spreadsheet if you're interested. TDA does not have the best spreads, so you could probably improve these results with another broker. EDIT: I grabbed typical spreads from other brokers, and turns out while TDA is pretty competitive on majors, their minors/crosses are awful! IG beats them by 20-40% and Oanda beats them 30-60%! Using IG spreads for calculations increased profits considerably (another 5% on top) and Oanda spreads increased profits massively (another 15%!). Definitely going to be considering another broker than TDA for this strategy. Plus that'll allow me to trade micro-lots, so I can be more granular(and thus accurate) with my position sizing and compounding.
A Note on Spread
As you can see in the data, there were scenarios where the spread was 80% of the overall size of the trade(the size of the confirmation candle that you draw your fibonacci retracements over), which would obviously cut heavily into your profits. Removing any trades where the spread is more than 50% of the trade width improved profits slightly without removing many trades, but this is almost certainly just coincidence on a small sample size. Going below 40% and even down to 30% starts to cut out a lot of trades for the less-common pairs, but doesn't actually change overall profits at all(~1% either way). However, digging all the way down to 25% starts to really make some movement. Profit at the -161.8% TP level jumps up to 37.94% if you filter out anything with a spread that is more than 25% of the trade width! And this even keeps the sample size fairly large at 187 total trades. You can get your profits all the way up to 48.43% at the -161.8% TP level if you filter all the way down to only trades where spread is less than 15% of the trade width, however your sample size gets much smaller at that point(108 trades) so I'm not sure I would trust that as being accurate in the long term. Overall based on this data, I'm going to only take trades where the spread is less than 25% of the trade width. This may bias my trades more towards the majors, which would mean a lot more correlated trades as well(more on correlation below), but I think it is a reasonable precaution regardless.
Time of Day
Time of day had an interesting effect on trades. In a totally predictable fashion, a vast majority of setups occurred during the London and New York sessions: 5am-12pm Eastern. However, there was one outlier where there were many setups on the 11PM bar - and the winrate was about the same as the big hours in the London session. No idea why this hour in particular - anyone have any insight? That's smack in the middle of the Tokyo/Sydney overlap, not at the open or close of either. On many of the hour slices I have a feeling I'm just dealing with small number statistics here since I didn't have a lot of data when breaking it down by individual hours. But here it is anyway - for all TP levels, these three things showed up(all in Eastern time):
7pm-4am: Fewer setups, but winrate high.
5am-6am: Lots of setups, but but winrate low.
12pm-3pm Medium number of setups, but winrate low.
I don't have any reason to think these timeframes would maintain this behavior over the long term. They're almost certainly meaningless. EDIT: When you de-dup highly correlated trades, the number of trades in these timeframes really drops, so from this data there is no reason to think these timeframes would be any different than any others in terms of winrate. That being said, these time frames work out for me pretty well because I typically sleep 12am-7am Eastern time. So I automatically avoid the 5am-6am timeframe, and I'm awake for the majority of this system's setups.
Moving stops up to breakeven
This section goes against everything I know and have ever heard about trade management. Please someone find something wrong with my data. I'd love for someone to check my formulas, but I realize that's a pretty insane time commitment to ask of a bunch of strangers. Anyways. What I found was that for these trades moving stops up...basically at all...actually reduced the overall profitability. One of the data points I collected while charting was where the price retraced back to after hitting a certain milestone. i.e. once the price hit the -61.8% profit level, how far back did it retrace before hitting the -100% profit level(if at all)? And same goes for the -100% profit level - how far back did it retrace before hitting the -161.8% profit level(if at all)? Well, some complex excel formulas later and here's what the results appear to be. Emphasis on appears because I honestly don't believe it. I must have done something wrong here, but I've gone over it a hundred times and I can't find anything out of place.
Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%
Winrate: 46.4%
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 5.36%
Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%
Winrate: 65.97%
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): -1.01% (yes, a net loss)
Now, you might think exactly what I did when looking at these numbers: oof, the spread killed us there right? Because even when you move your SL to 0%, you still end up paying the spread, so it's not truly "breakeven". And because we are trading on a lower timeframe, the spread can be pretty hefty right? Well even when I manually modified the data so that the spread wasn't subtracted(i.e. "Breakeven" was truly +/- 0), things don't look a whole lot better, and still way worse than the passive trade management method of leaving your stops in place and letting it run. And that isn't even a realistic scenario because to adjust out the spread you'd have to move your stoploss inside the candle edge by at least the spread amount, meaning it would almost certainly be triggered more often than in the data I collected(which was purely based on the fib levels and mark price). Regardless, here are the numbers for that scenario:
Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%
Winrate(breakeven doesn't count as a win): 46.4%
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 17.97%
Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%
Winrate(breakeven doesn't count as a win): 65.97%
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 11.60%
From a literal standpoint, what I see behind this behavior is that 44 of the 69 breakeven trades(65%!) ended up being profitable to -100% after retracing deeply(but not to the original SL level), which greatly helped offset the purely losing trades better than the partial profit taken at -61.8%. And 36 went all the way back to -161.8% after a deep retracement without hitting the original SL. Anyone have any insight into this? Is this a problem with just not enough data? It seems like enough trades that a pattern should emerge, but again I'm no expert. I also briefly looked at moving stops to other lower levels (78.6%, 61.8%, 50%, 38.2%, 23.6%), but that didn't improve things any. No hard data to share as I only took a quick look - and I still might have done something wrong overall. The data is there to infer other strategies if anyone would like to dig in deep(more explanation on the spreadsheet below). I didn't do other combinations because the formulas got pretty complicated and I had already answered all the questions I was looking to answer.
2-Candle vs Confirmation Candle Stops
Another interesting point is that the original system has the SL level(for stop entries) just at the outer edge of the 2-candle pattern that makes up the system. Out of pure laziness, I set up my stops just based on the confirmation candle. And as it turns out, that is much a much better way to go about it. Of the 60 purely losing trades, only 9 of them(15%) would go on to be winners with stops on the 2-candle formation. Certainly not enough to justify the extra loss and/or reduced profits you are exposing yourself to in every single other trade by setting a wider SL. Oddly, in every single scenario where the wider stop did save the trade, it ended up going all the way to the -161.8% profit level. Still, not nearly worth it.
Correlated Trades
As I've said many times now, I'm really not qualified to be doing an analysis like this. This section in particular. Looking at shared currency among the pairs traded, 74 of the trades are correlated. Quite a large group, but it makes sense considering the sort of moves we're looking for with this system. This means you are opening yourself up to more risk if you were to trade on every signal since you are technically trading with the same underlying sentiment on each different pair. For example, GBP/USD and AUD/USD moving together almost certainly means it's due to USD moving both pairs, rather than GBP and AUD both moving the same size and direction coincidentally at the same time. So if you were to trade both signals, you would very likely win or lose both trades - meaning you are actually risking double what you'd normally risk(unless you halve both positions which can be a good option, and is discussed in ParallaxFX's posts and in various other places that go over pair correlation. I won't go into detail about those strategies here). Interestingly though, 17 of those apparently correlated trades ended up with different wins/losses. Also, looking only at trades that were correlated, winrate is 83%/70%/55% (for the three TP levels). Does this give some indication that the same signal on multiple pairs means the signal is stronger? That there's some strong underlying sentiment driving it? Or is it just a matter of too small a sample size? The winrate isn't really much higher than the overall winrates, so that makes me doubt it is statistically significant. One more funny tidbit: EUCAD netted the lowest overall winrate: 30% to even the -61.8% TP level on 10 trades. Seems like that is just a coincidence and not enough data, but dang that's a sucky losing streak. EDIT: WOW I spent some time removing correlated trades manually and it changed the results quite a bit. Some thoughts on this below the results. These numbers also include the other "What I will trade" filters. I added a new worksheet to my data to show what I ended up picking.
Total Trades: 75
Raw Winrates:
TP at -61.8%: 84.00%
TP at -100%: 73.33%
TP at -161.8%: 60.00%
Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%: 53.33%
Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%: 53.33% (yes, oddly the exact same winrate. but different trades/profits)
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account):
TP at -61.8%: 18.13%
TP at -100%: 26.20%
TP at -161.8%: 34.01%
Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%: 19.20%
Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%: 17.29%
To do this, I removed correlated trades - typically by choosing those whose spread had a lower % of the trade width since that's objective and something I can see ahead of time. Obviously I'd like to only keep the winning trades, but I won't know that during the trade. This did reduce the overall sample size down to a level that I wouldn't otherwise consider to be big enough, but since the results are generally consistent with the overall dataset, I'm not going to worry about it too much. I may also use more discretionary methods(support/resistance, quality of indecision/confirmation candles, news/sentiment for the pairs involved, etc) to filter out correlated trades in the future. But as I've said before I'm going for a pretty mechanical system. This brought the 3 TP levels and even the breakeven strategies much closer together in overall profit. It muted the profit from the high R:R strategies and boosted the profit from the low R:R strategies. This tells me pair correlation was skewing my data quite a bit, so I'm glad I dug in a little deeper. Fortunately my original conclusion to use the -161.8 TP level with static stops is still the winner by a good bit, so it doesn't end up changing my actions. There were a few times where MANY (6-8) correlated pairs all came up at the same time, so it'd be a crapshoot to an extent. And the data showed this - often then won/lost together, but sometimes they did not. As an arbitrary rule, the more correlations, the more trades I did end up taking(and thus risking). For example if there were 3-5 correlations, I might take the 2 "best" trades given my criteria above. 5+ setups and I might take the best 3 trades, even if the pairs are somewhat correlated. I have no true data to back this up, but to illustrate using one example: if AUD/JPY, AUD/USD, CAD/JPY, USD/CAD all set up at the same time (as they did, along with a few other pairs on 6/19/20 9:00 AM), can you really say that those are all the same underlying movement? There are correlations between the different correlations, and trying to filter for that seems rough. Although maybe this is a known thing, I'm still pretty green to Forex - someone please enlighten me if so! I might have to look into this more statistically, but it would be pretty complex to analyze quantitatively, so for now I'm going with my gut and just taking a few of the "best" trades out of the handful. Overall, I'm really glad I went further on this. The boosting of the B/E strategies makes me trust my calculations on those more since they aren't so far from the passive management like they were with the raw data, and that really had me wondering what I did wrong.
What I will trade
Putting all this together, I am going to attempt to trade the following(demo for a bit to make sure I have the hang of it, then for keeps):
"System Details" I described above.
TP at -161.8%
Static SL at opposite side of confirmation candle - I won't move stops up to breakeven.
Trade only 7am-11am and 4pm-11pm signals.
Nothing where spread is more than 25% of trade width.
Looking at the data for these rules, test results are:
Winrate: 58.19%
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 47.43%
I'll be sure to let everyone know how it goes!
Other Technical Details
ATR is only slightly elevated in this date range from historical levels, so this should fairly closely represent reality even after the COVID volatility leaves the scalpers sad and alone.
The sample size is much too small for anything really meaningful when you slice by hour or pair. I wasn't particularly looking to test a specific pair here - just the system overall as if you were going to trade it on all pairs with a reasonable spread.
Raw Data
Here's the spreadsheet for anyone that'd like it. (EDIT: Updated some of the setups from the last few days that have fully played out now. I also noticed a few typos, but nothing major that would change the overall outcomes. Regardless, I am currently reviewing every trade to ensure they are accurate.UPDATE: Finally all done. Very few corrections, no change to results.) I have some explanatory notes below to help everyone else understand the spiraled labyrinth of a mind that put the spreadsheet together.
I'm on the East Coast in the US, so the timestamps are Eastern time.
Time stamp is from the confirmation candle, not the indecision candle. So 7am would mean the indecision candle was 6:00-6:59 and the confirmation candle is 7:00-7:59 and you'd put in your order at 8:00.
I found a couple AM/PM typos as I was reviewing the data, so let me know if a trade doesn't make sense and I'll correct it.
Insanely detailed spreadsheet notes
For you real nerds out there. Here's an explanation of what each column means:
Pair - duh
Date/Time - Eastern time, confirmation candle as stated above
Win to -61.8%? - whether the trade made it to the -61.8% TP level before it hit the original SL.
Win to -100%? - whether the trade made it to the -100% TP level before it hit the original SL.
Win to -161.8%? - whether the trade made it to the -161.8% TP level before it hit the original SL.
Retracement level between -61.8% and -100% - how deep the price retraced after hitting -61.8%, but before hitting -100%. Be careful to look for the negative signs, it's easy to mix them up. Using the fib% levels defined in ParallaxFX's original thread. A plain hyphen "-" means it did not retrace, but rather went straight through -61.8% to -100%. Positive 100 means it hit the original SL.
Retracement level between -100% and -161.8% - how deep the price retraced after hitting -100%, but before hitting -161.8%. Be careful to look for the negative signs, it's easy to mix them up. Using the fib% levels defined in ParallaxFX's original thread. A plain hyphen "-" means it did not retrace, but rather went straight through -100% to -161.8%. Positive 100 means it hit the original SL.
Trade Width(Pips) - the size of the confirmation candle, and thus the "width" of your trade on which to determine position size, draw fib levels, etc.
Loser saved by 2 candle stop? - for all losing trades, whether or not the 2-candle stop loss would have saved the trade and how far it ended up getting if so. "No" means it didn't save it, N/A means it wasn't a losing trade so it's not relevant.
Spread(ThinkorSwim) - these are typical spreads for these pairs on ToS.
Spread % of Width - How big is the spread compared to the trade width? Not used in any calculations, but interesting nonetheless.
True Risk(Trade Width + Spread) - I set my SL at the opposite side of the confirmation candle knowing that I'm actually exposing myself to slightly more risk because of the spread(stop order = market order when submitted, so you pay the spread). So this tells you how many pips you are actually risking despite the Trade Width. I prefer this over setting the stop inside from the edge of the candle because some pairs have a wide spread that would mess with the system overall. But also many, many of these trades retraced very nearly to the edge of the confirmation candle, before ending up nicely profitable. If you keep your risk per trade at 1%, you're talking a true risk of, at most, 1.25% (in worst-case scenarios with the spread being 25% of the trade width as I am going with above).
Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -61.8% - not going to go into huge detail, see the spreadsheet for calculations if you want. But, in a nutshell, if the trade was a win to 61.8%, it returns a positive # based on 61.8% of the trade width, minus the spread. Otherwise, it returns the True Risk as a negative. Both normalized to the 1% risk you started with.
Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -100% - same as the last, but 100% of Trade Width.
Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -161.8% - same as the last, but 161.8% of Trade Width.
Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -100%, and move SL to breakeven at 61.8% - uses the retracement level columns to calculate profit/loss the same as the last few columns, but assuming you moved SL to 0% fib level after price hit -61.8%. Then full TP at 100%.
Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread take off half of position at -61.8%, move SL to breakeven, TP 100% - uses the retracement level columns to calculate profit/loss the same as the last few columns, but assuming you took of half the position and moved SL to 0% fib level after price hit -61.8%. Then TP the remaining half at 100%.
Overall Growth(-161.8% TP, 1% Risk) - pretty straightforward. Assuming you risked 1% on each trade, what the overall growth level would be chronologically(spreadsheet is sorted by date).
Pairs
AUD/CAD
AUD/CHF
AUD/JPY
AUD/NZD
AUD/USD
CAD/CHF
CAD/JPY
CHF/JPY
EUAUD
EUCAD
EUCHF
EUGBP
EUJPY
EUNZD
EUUSD
GBP/AUD
GBP/CAD
GBP/CHF
GBP/JPY
GBP/NZD
GBP/USD
NZD/CAD
NZD/CHF
NZD/JPY
NZD/USD
USD/CAD
USD/CHF
USD/JPY
TL;DR
Based on the reasonable rules I discovered in this backtest:
Date range: 6/11-7/3
Winrate: 58.19%
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 47.43%
Demo Trading Results
Since this post, I started demo trading this system assuming a 5k capital base and risking ~1% per trade. I've added the details to my spreadsheet for anyone interested. The results are pretty similar to the backtest when you consider real-life conditions/timing are a bit different. I missed some trades due to life(work, out of the house, etc), so that brought my total # of trades and thus overall profit down, but the winrate is nearly identical. I also closed a few trades early due to various reasons(not liking the price action, seeing support/resistance emerge, etc). A quick note is that TD's paper trade system fills at the mid price for both stop and limit orders, so I had to subtract the spread from the raw trade values to get the true profit/loss amount for each trade. I'm heading out of town next week, then after that it'll be time to take this sucker live!
86 Trades
Date range: 7/9-7/30
Winrate: 52.32%
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 20.73%
Starting Balance: $5,000
Ending Balance: $6,036.51
Live Trading Results
I started live-trading this system on 8/10, and almost immediately had a string of losses much longer than either my backtest or demo period. Murphy's law huh? Anyways, that has me spooked so I'm doing a longer backtest before I start risking more real money. It's going to take me a little while due to the volume of trades, but I'll likely make a new post once I feel comfortable with that and start live trading again.
Copy trading with eToro: impressions, doubts and (ignored) lessons
(no promotional content, no affiliate links) Hi, exactly four years ago, I started copying eToro investors / traders that I selected using the broker's built-in search engine (profitable in last two years, already being copied by others), followed by manual filtering, to take into account fluctuations in yearly returns, composition of their portfolios etc. With that, I got a list of 10 people whom I started to copy on a demo account: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u52f0XHfr-LauIscKcFDYF0yGTTUr6VY/view?usp=sharing In the screenshot you can see that in case of the first two of them the amount invested was $10,000, while for the rest it was just $100. This is because I started copying the first two a couple of weeks earlier; eventually I changed this into $100 the same day I made the screenshot and this is when my calculations start - so this thing is irrelevant, I just cannot travel in time to make another screenshot. What I did after that? Well, within the next six weeks my profits oscillated between -$11 and +$9.50 (the biggest profit was on Nov 9, a day after US presidential elections). I found this "boring" and discontinued experimenting with copy trading. Today I looked back at those ten traders. Here is what I found. Firstly, seven of them are not with eToro anymore; investorNo1, Simple-Stock-Mkt, tradingrelax, 4exPirate, primit, Gallojack, xjurokx. The other three traders are:
toppertrader: not being copied by anyone and for a good reason: his loss this year alone is 61.16%!
Jean-marcLenfant: copied by only 67 people; his loss this year is -1.09% but in general he is quite successful, with yearly profits ranging from 3.57% to 7.32%.
Girem2: he has no copiers, his profit this year is 41.45% but in 2018 he experienced a loss of 83.15%!
My observations and thoughts are as follows:
Seven out of ten traders are not with eToro anymore, which makes me wonder why. I have no proof but my guess is they simply performed poorly, lost their copiers and closed their accounts. This is already alarming but what if they opened another account? Or, even worse, multiple accounts? They could be investing small money and try different risky approaches, hoping that at least one account will turn out profitable in the long turn, attracting potential copiers. (I'm not claiming that those 7 particular traders did this, it's just my general suspicion regarding some of eToro traders)
I'm unable to calculate what would be my profit if I never stopped copying them, because I cannot check at what day and with what profit those seven traders left eToro. I'm guessing this would be an immense loss. On the other hand, considering the three traders who are still with eToro, I would lose more than a quarter of my assets!
What now? I must be a quite adventurous person or at least an incorrigible optimist, because a month ago (exactly on Aug 26th) I started copying three traders with real money. Here is who they are. rubymza (Heloise Greeff)
invests in stocks, with GOOG, INTC, BLDP, MA, MSFT, AMZN, V, MU, IBM and NXPI making up 50.3% of her portfolio (allocation of each of them is in between 3.02% and 6.85%)
active since 2016 (only the year 2016 ended with a loss)
has 3044 copiers and $2M-$5M of copy assets under management
strategy (her own words): "My investing strategy focusses mostly on US indices, tech and pharma, promising future (5-10years) growth. My trades are based on technical analysis using machine learning to understand patterns and trends in the markets. I prefer to keep a diverse portfolio to spread risk while achieving great returns."
he is a Forex trader, making typically 21 trades per week; his favorite currency pairs are EURCHF (12% of trades), CADCHF and GBPUSD; the trades, however, typically make up below 5% of his portfolio (at least whenever I'm checking it), making most of my funds unused
active since January 2017: surprisingly enough, he has every single month profitable, though monthly profits are in the range of 0.03% to 3.34% only
has 8977 copiers and more than $5M of copy assets under management
strategy (his own words): "I monitor currency pairs all day to find the best entry. There is some management/scaling position for perfect entry. The risk control is a big part of my strategy," (quite vague, to be honest)
commodities compose 76% of his portfolio and his favorite assets are Gold and Oil (at the moment, Gold makes up half of invested amount)
active since July 2016, with the following yearly profits, starting from 2016: 6.56%, 10.05%, 13.09%, 32.26% and -2.03% (the current year)
has 1493 copiers and $1M-$2M of copy assets under management
strategy (his own words): "My system is based on patterns, and a variety of technical analysis tools and some fundamental analysis. I primarily trade in commodities. " (quite vague as well)
own experience: my profit with rayvahey is 2.56%
What was my strategy to hand-pick these particular traders? First I did some basic scanning using eToro's built-in search engine. The most important filter was that the trader was profitable within the last two years: unfortunately, eToro does not allow to reach details of earlier performance automatically. To know how the trader performed before 2019, I had to look at stats in the profile of each of them. I was also taking into account how often they trade (to avoid those who do only a couple of trades yearly), whether they were trading recently and whether they write posts regularly in their feed. With this, I got a list of fifteen candidates to copy:
olivierdanvel
marianopardo
rubymza
rayvahey
martidg97
overit
misterg23
knw500
jianswang
reinhardtcoetzee
miyoshi
alderique
jarodd76
benson9904
big-profits
As you already know, I finally chose three of them. Rubymza seemed to be the most trustworthy stock trader, based on profits, posts feed and regular trading, among other things. Regarding OlivierDanvel, his uniqueness is the ability to record continuous profits with the Forex market. Finally, with rayvahey I wanted to increase my exposure to the commodities market. Wish me good luck! Michael P.S. You might find those copy-trading related readings interesting:
Extons || Let's get familiar with its tools and features
crypto is well known for its volatility and unpredictable nature. Many projects show good improvement when they first launched but at the end of the campaign, they failed to deliver a promising product to its community. This is a crypto and it gave us a lot of good and useful projects. Binance doesn't become binance in one day. It takes time to build up a quality exchnage. Though crypto is a very unpredictable sector of finance still there are some qualities that we can judge to know about the project merits. Today I am going to talk about an upcoming exchange that offers so much good tools and service. The name of that exchange is Extons. For those who are already with me for quite a few days, you all must have known about my previous article about Extons. Today I am going to talk about its service, tools, and potential in the market. Then let's jump into it. https://preview.redd.it/4lcgkmj17co51.jpg?width=3319&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d5fe887e3de8a277f1559217ae2ad76fe3e9cfd8 Quick introduction: Before we jump into details about that exchange I want to give you guys a quick introduction about the exchange. Extons is a centralized cryptocurrency exchange that is a part of the thisoption ecosystem. Extons offers multiple payment gateways and a wide variety of crypto trading pairs for its users. They also have some amazing programs for users that can give them an opportunity to make some passive income. Let's talk about different tab of Extons exchange and their use. Markets: The very first tab a user will see in that exchange when they log in is the market tab. By clicking this tab users will see an interface where they will see various market pair and their annual return based on their investment products. This is a very basic and common tab that every other exchange has. Trade: In this tab, the user will see the 3 subcategory tab. They are accordingly Basic, Classic, Advanced. Basic one offers the simplest way of trading. The user just needs to select the coin he wants to convert and the coin he wants to receive in return. The conversion rate will be in the current market price and current market price details will be shown right below. In classic trading, users will get old charts and tools but in advanced trade, users will get the most advanced tools and charts for trading. Finance: In this tab, there are two options available for the user. One is saving and another is staking. Both of them give users a chance to make some passive income by putting their assets into saving program or staking program. The saving program is pretty unique in the Extons platform. Ecosystem: In this tab, there are 5 components. At first, came white paper. In this project whitepaper, users will be able to know about project details, roadmap, and other project related information. By clicking the Binary option tab it will redirect users to another website called thisoption where users can take a part in options trading. It is also a product of the Thisoption company. By clicking the Forex trading tab user will be able to see the Thisoption company's forex trading website. Forex is also a form of trading where cryptocurrency and fiat currency can be traded with each other. https://preview.redd.it/p43fb2797co51.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=eebc0c39fd27e0001d6a55f34ae975df4f48f4f0 The payment gateway tab will take the user to a page where they will be able to use different payment options offered by the Extons platform. There are traditional and crypto payments system. The communication portal will help traders to keep in touch with other traders in the extons community. They can talk and share with each other will news, trading experience, and opinion. More: This tab contains News and support. Users can contact support for any help or know about project developments. Fund: In the fund's tab users will be able to know about their overall portfolio and they can deposit or withdraw their funds from this tab. Also, users will be able to check their deposit and withdraw history from here. Orders: In the orders, tab users can check their current order status and old order history. They will be able to cancel their current order or modify them as they can. My savings: In this tab users can see the currently active saving packages they are in. They can join different saving packages based on their portfolio. Also, they can check their income form their savings packages. I.B Program: In this tab users will be able to check their invitation record and their commission from their referrals. Also, they can find their referral link here that they can share with others to get more referrals commissions. Profile tab: In this tab, users will get to know about their profile information, security settings, and Address management. They can change their profile information, profile security, and also be able to change their withdrawal address for a different cryptocurrency. Also, they can log out from the platform by clicking log out from this tab. Wrap up: Extons doing a massive bounty program for their community. They are super active in social media and keep updating their community about new listing and partnership. I am very impressed with the project and its dedication.
Extons. IO An Easy Step-Through Crystal Financial Trade
Premiere I have spoken before about Extons in my article so there's no cause to talk again about it, but I'd like to give any new visitors a quick introduction. Extons is a central platform established in 2020 that strives first and foremost to serve a wide range of crypto assets. It will help traders and companies grow quickly with its low-cost and fast transactions. This is a product of the ecosystem Thisoption. EXTONS, what are they? EXTONS is an exchange of cryptocurrency that supports a broad range of crypto active assets for trading. There are https://preview.redd.it/lk8jflln97i51.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b460d349f9bea89fb5aac61dc617ce1898160789 five ecosystems of this option designed for traders around the world to launch. Its central crypto-monetary exchange is part of the ecosystem and technology of this Option. This supports many payment platforms that have fiat and crypto properties, and KYC wants to use this platform's software. This site was created in June 2020. Business Framework Security The most important thing is the safety of a multi-model structure. A reliable business service would be offered to the consumers, with the best front end and back end services with a multilingual interface. There are many protection mechanisms used to avoid fraud and business manipulations. An experience by strongest consumers: The interface is quick and user-friendly. It is essential to provide the customer with the best market trading experience. Customer service is accessible online 24/7 to assist the dealer. This will ensure that all transactions are carried out smoothly. Supports a broad variety of crypto assets: Big cryptocurrency pairs and their trading practices are eligible for sale. This service is quite large, but it's very simple. Traders from around the globe will be able to use this platform and be part of the potential growth of this ecosystem. The big crypto assets have already been identified, so adding is one direction. Liquidity: Liquidity is also a crucial element that other exchanges have struggled to accomplish. Without ample liquidity, the trader would not be able to use this platform easily. Liquidity can offer more than 250 market parameters of new technologies and services. What's Thisoption? Thisoption is a Binary Options Trading System that is a part of the environment of this choice. It was founded in 2016 and has more than 700,000 members and continues to grow in numbers. The team is working to render this application simpler and easy to use. Investors will gain up to 80% of their investment in just 60 seconds. Users will get more than 100 trading assets that can be accessed from any device. Is this choice perfect for trading? This is a huge platform for traders to make a good return on investment in a short period of time. This platform provides specialized resources and apps for trades, and their support team is really helpful and supports users in any case. Every type of traders, whether pro or new, can participate on the platform, and support is there to help them learn about markets and how to trade. https://preview.redd.it/94ybzc9n97i51.jpg?width=960&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=751f33db79c4200d0889ae7ffbf21d42999b5f7c The ecosystem of TONS Token There are five components of the TONS Environment. They're-
Thisoption:(Thisoption is a Binary Options Exchange)
TONSPAY:(Its a payment portal in the ecosystem.)
TONSTRADE:(APP TONSTRADE)
EXTONS:(Cryptocurrency exchange)
TONSFX:(TONSFX is a Forex exchange)
conclusion A cryptocurrency is a huge place and one of the fastest-growing financial industries. There are over 300 active exchanges and several of them also supply the markets with ample liquidity. The EXTON.IO team is committed to delivering the finest trading experience for all its customers. They're also a lot of cool features and services for traders and willing to add more as their users want. It's a market that will help a wide variety of traders and customers around the globe. With its wide range of services, it can attract traders and investors to its ecosystem.
USD shorts are now the most popular Forex trading strategy
The market is driven by emotions. If the EUUSD bulls are taken by the euphoria, no negative economic data will hold them back! The U.S. industrial production data have exceeded the forecasts, the U.S. retail sales are back at the pre-crisis levels. In the euro-area, however, the euro-area employment has dropped the most on record since the series begun in 1995. But the euro buyers are going ahead. Investors are confident that the euro-area economy will recover, and the U.S. growth will face a recession amid the coronavirus pandemic. BofA Merrill Lynch notes that 36% of asset managers surveyed by the bank said the U.S. dollar sell positions are their favourite trading strategy, the highest in the history of research. This strategy is much ahead of all the others, its proportion increased by 6% from 30% in July, and, most likely, it will continue to gain popularity. BofA Merrill Lynch names, among other reasons, the loss of the greenback's position as a reserve currency. In fact, the countries that are under pressure from the USA are active participants in the process of de-dollarization. The proportion of the US currency in the trade settlements between Russia and China has been for the first time below 50%. In 2015, for example, the dollar’s share in the Russia-China trade settlements was more than 90%.
Dynamics of USD share in China-Russia trade settlements
Source: Wall Street Journal Washington tries to affect Moscow using sanctions, but it uses much more sophisticated measures concerning Beijing. President Donald Trump ordered ByteDance to divest the U.S. operations of its app TikTok as the social media will cease to work in the USA in 90 days. A U.S. reprieve that had allowed some US companies to work with Huawei without a license now expires. The USA warns that the sanctions will target other China’s corporations, including Alibaba. The US-China relations are getting tense, the parties even delayed the meeting planned for August 15 to assess the fulfilment of obligations under the trade agreement signed in January. The EUUSD bulls, however, are not concerned about the trade conflict escalation. They expect that amid such a scenario the euro’s share in the global FX reserves will increase. According to 40% of asset managers polled by BofA Merrill Lynch, this process will start already in 2021. Forex seems to be taken away by euphoria. Hedge funds’ dollar longs versus the world eight major currencies have been in the red for the first time since May 2018. The main reason is said to be speculators’ growing interest in the euro.
Dynamics of speculative dollar positions and Treasury real yields
Source: Bloomberg Of course, bulls’ enthusiasm used to quickly result in the capitulation in the past. However, under the current conditions, I mean the difficult epidemiological situation in the USA, Fed’s grim projections, and the upcoming presidential election in November, the US stock indexes are growing, and the EUUSD can well grow as well. Amid the current situation, it is important to check buyers’ willingness to continue the rally anyway. If the resistance at 1.188 is broken out, the pair can well continue rising. For more information follow the link to the website of the LiteForex https://www.liteforex.com/blog/analysts-opinions/eurusd-forecast-dollar-is-out-of-fashion/?uid=285861726&cid=79634
With Bitcoin Suddenly Surging, Canaan Stock Is Also Going Up Today
By signing up, you may receive emails concerning CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms & conditions and privacy policSTER ON THE SITE We need all users to enroll on our platform to access the Bitcoin Trader platform. The sign up method is easy and solely takes a couple of minutes. You'll be able to forever contact our customer service team if you wish helpour Bitcoin Trader account for our trading robot to position trades on your behalf. We tend to need all users to possess a minimum of $250 in their account before accessing our web trader platform. This quantity is enough to require positions price lots of thousands of dollars when using leverage. https://preview.redd.it/e63kae9rz9j51.png?width=3116&format=png&auto=webp&s=eeb8869dbccb0fca7c64d3c91f83cebcdb446e84 You do not would like any expertise to trade with the Bitcoin Trader app. We tend to are ninety nine.99percent automatic, that means that live trading involves terribly little manual input. 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A number of them are mentioned below Decentralized and digital Bitcoin offers the freedom of exchanging the price without representatives that proves helpful in controlling the lower fees and high funds. Bitcoin is that the faster method of transaction than others. It is secure as it is free from theft and frauds and is constant. The main advantage is that bitcoin has its homeowners whereas the bank controls the money. Makes online looking Normally, bitcoin will be used for on-line shopping too. Bitcoin is the opposite face of e-wallet, that is created by blockchain technology that is used to store money and will easily pay everywhere digitally. For this reason, it also makes your searching easy by which you'll be able to look from your home solely Bitcoin is accepted globally at each corner of the planet, which makes it less volatile than local currencies or cash. This feature makes it superior because it enables us to form transactions on-line and across the boundaries Bitcoin unable the means of tracking cash https://preview.redd.it/4vpws3gtz9j51.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=179af0fcc33f85322d48b6be65fce2e4442c6cd6 Bitcoin is created by blockchain technology. Blockchain is the sole technology which will either make it or break it. There are many computers which are used to keep up a permanent record of each bitcoin transactions with the help of cryptographic technique. In this approach, it becomes a lot of valuable together with the tracking of the payment. At the same time, there's no method of tracking the cash While not any transformation method, it will be used over the entire world. It provides the simplest platform for the investment as it is free from the restrictions of governments or banks. It provides an open market and combines the simplest of gold and money. Bitcoin provides the power to access the balance of the users with a password which is named a personal key. It additionally permits the exchange of values through the web without any middle person. Thus, bitcoin becomes safer, stuffed with privacy, and open to everyone Unlike cash, it is not possible to form the duplicate quite bitcoin that makes it more efficient. It's protected with the technology of blockchain. Even if anyone tries to form a replica of bitcoin to use it, then the system will automatically reject it as the system recognize it as unknown Bitcoin Freedomfailed to allow two persons to transact on the one price. Once the bitcoin is transferred, its possession is also transferred. So this is the simple approach of maintaining records for any tax functions. It conjointly makes it a easy and healthier metho Bitcoin is the foremost reliable manner of online transactions. Many questions arise in folks’s minds that are solved on websites like bitcoin revolution. One in all them was the above-mentioned question. Bitcoin provides many facilities, and it comes with more and a lot of blessings which makes it distinctive and special over different cryptocurrencies. It can be preferred as the simplest digital platform for transac BITCOINADOPTIONABOUT USMEET THE TEAMCAREERADVERTISE WITH USCONTACT USTERMS AND CONDITIONSPRIVACY POLICYPARTNERS Disclaimer: AMBCrypto US and UK Market's content is informational in nature and is not meant to be investment advice. Buying, trading or selling crypto-currencies ought to be considered a high-risk investment and every reader is advised to do their due diligence before making any decisions. People, businesses, and developers: get the support you would like with our straightforward Browse the FAQ'sn news, CoinDesk is a media outlet that strives for the very best journalistic standards and abides by a strict set of editorial policies. 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Weekly Update: The Parachute culture, $COTI on Gate.io, Pynk crowdfunding campaign live, Voyager + Sterling Trading Tech…– 22 May - 28 May'20
Heyo! Continuing with our six-part catch up series to get up to date on the May and June news from Parachute and partners, here’s Part II of VI (22 May - 28 May'20): If you're in crypto, there's often the random pump/moon/wenBinance talk that props up from time to time in groups. Especially, when someone new joins a project and is unfamiliar with the community culture. At Parachute, we have always made it a point to have more meaningful discussions than price. Cap shared some of his thoughts on this as well. For the #culturalweekend prompt this week, Jason got Parachuters to share about “something weird your family does that is a tradition for them but not a traditional tradition”. Peace Love’s Big Trivia in TTR was quite fun as always. The beta testing group for ParJar swaps was set up this week. Also, Chris organised something amazing this week which will possibly remain a secret amongst Parachute admins (and Doc Vic 😊 ). But if word of it ever goes out, you’ll realise why Parachute is the most wholesome project in all of crypto. Chris also gave out some cool $PAR to folks in the Parachute channel to talk about "something that you didn't spend much money on that had a big impact on your quality of life". This week's Two-for-Tuesday featured music from "female artists, including bands with at least one female member". Click here for the playlist. Thanks Sebastian! Some good cheer from Alexis all the way from Germany aXpire’s May recap video covers product updates from Bilr, PayBX etc. To track this week’s 20k $AXPR burn, click here. The team also shared success strategies for law firms. 2gether co-founder Salvador Casquero wrote about best security practices in finance. A new update was pushed to Wednesday Coin’s dApp, WednesdayClub. In this week’s XIO discussions, Citizens talked about ideal time allocation strategies for research and execution. Top Citizens on the Leaderboard stand a chance to win some cool merch. Also, watch out for pesky scams. Voyager announced a partnership with Sterling Trading Tech to launch a crypto trading widget. Proactive Investors covered Voyager in its latest piece chronicling their growing user base. As mentioned in a previous update, CEO Stephen Ehrlich’s crypto investment webinar happened this week. Switch crew did a community AMA just before the $GHOST airdrop snapshot. The team expanded with new dev hires. In preparation for the $GHOST airdrop, ProBit completed its $VSF:$ESH swap and Stex announced support for $ESH/$GHOST airdrop. $ESH was listed on HitBTC and Changelly. Folks who guessed these exchanges correctly won some tokens as well. Founder Josh Case sat down with Mr. Backwards for an interview. Among several updates to the Ghost website, a staking calculator was added. Click here to read the latest technical update from Fantom. $FTM was in the running to be added as a collateral for DAI. Congratulations to Uptrennd for becoming the highest ranked blockchain-based social media platform as per Alexa. They started a SmartLink campaign with 2key Network. The first Uptrennd halvening went live this week. The team is reachable on Discord from now as well. District0x’s latest District Weekly and Dev Updates can be read here and here respectively. Hydro team shared their thoughts on how virtual cards for independent contractors (otherwise referred to as 1099 employees) could improve reimbursement practices. Entries for their Decentralization Ambassador program were opened this week. These look great, XIO team This is what is planned for the GHOST ecosystem currently SelfKey compiled a master list of crypto lending platforms. The Loans Marketplace will feature many of these. Full transcript of the May 12th AMA was released. SelfKey advisor Edmund Lowell spoke at the BlockConf DIGITAL conference this week. Mongolian exchange AIS-X joined the Exchange Marketplace. Pynk’s crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs went live this week. Check out their campaign video here. Amazing production! Plus, this cool feature in City A.M. was the perfect way to close off the week. Wibson hosted a meetup (online of course!) for its Spanish speaking community this week. The crew also introduced the app at an Ethereum event in Buenos Aires. Harmony burned all mainnet tokens mined before Open Staking going public. The latest staking stats and validator data can be seen here and here respectively. That’s right, 3B+ $ONE is already staked. Woohoo! With its latest CoinDCX listing, $ONE got its first INR trading pair. Saweet! The major improvement proposals that were discussed with the community this week were making Open Staking more decentralized and creating a more liquid staking market. This led to the first release after Open Staking. The winners of the effective-median-stake contest were announced. Hope you got a chance to take part in the Flash Quiz. Do you know about all the projects that have been built in the Harmony ecosystem? Here’s a rundown. The team hosted an AMA as well. BitMax changed some of its rules for $ONE staking. Check out COTI’s latest network growth stats here. And super congratulations on winning the Gate.io listing vote! $COTI was also added to Binance’s Locked Savings staking program. Broking platform Troy Trade partnered with COTI to improve its scalability. DoYourTip’s $DYT now has 2500+ HODLers. Neat! Mycro was invited to join BitForex’s app platform CAPP Town. GET Protocol’s GUTS Tickets was covered in Cryptogeeks’ latest blogpost on blockchain-based ticketing. And with that, it’s a wrap for this week in Parachute and partners! See you again with another update. Cheerio!
Open EUUSD position according to the euro-area PMI data
Financial markets base on mathematics. The divergence in the economic growth, having supported the EUUSD bulls during the summer, looked like an equation with one unknown. A better epidemiological situation in Europe than in the USA has almost convinced investors that the euro-area economy will be recovering faster than the US GDP. As a result, the rise of the major currency pair depended on the US economic data. A better economic performance, together with the Fed’s unwillingness to ease its monetary policy (which signals hidden optimism), sent the euro down to $1.18. However, once there appeared some negative, the euro bulls went ahead. The US jobless claims are again back to a level of above 1 million, the manufacturing PMI data reported by the New York Fed and Philadelphia Fed are weak. These reports show that the US economy is not revering as rapidly as the dollar buyers would like. I have many times stressed that the market turns out to be more fundamental amid the interest rates of the world’s leading central banks, which are close to zero. Investors are quite responsive to the reports on the US domestic data, especially since the US economy has been that unknown in the growth- gap equation. The experts’ projections for the euro-area economy have been optimistic. In my opinion, too optimistic. Since the French-German stimulus plan was adopted, the euro risk reversals have been up by 60-80 basis points. The indicator has increased so rapidly only three times since the records began in 2006, and each time, the EUUSD was up by 5% and more in a few net months. There is an increased demand in the options market for call options with strikes of 1.22, 1.23, 1.25, and even 1.28.
Demand for euro-dollar options
Source: Bloomberg Investors completely forgot that an equation with one unknown could transform at any moment into an equation with two unknowns. In Europe, the second wave of the pandemic unfolding. In Spain, about 4,800 new COVID-19 cases are registered per day, which is the highest since April; in France, the number of coronavirus cases has increased by 50% in a week, in Germany, the figure has exceeded 1,500, the highest since early May. Yes, European relative indicators still fall short of the US, where 150 cases for 1 million of the population (in problematic Spain, there are 110 cases for 1 million), Yes, most infected are young people. Hence, the number of hospitalizations and deaths is small, but who knows how the situation will develop further? The difficulties will increase amid the expiration of programs to retain the non-working population in the labor force, which could result in a surge in unemployment and weigh on the consumer activity. The ECB stressed this problem at its July meeting, the central bank is willing to expand QE if necessary. It is a bearish factor for the EUUSD, but traders ignored it. The euphoria about the euro is still present and could end up bad for the euro buyers. The uncertainty about the euro-area economic recovery increases the risk that the euro will roll down to $1.18 if the euro-area PMI data for August are weak. For more information follow the link to the website of the LiteForex https://www.liteforex.com/blog/analysts-opinions/eurusd-forecast-euro-took-up-math/?uid=285861726&cid=79634
Forex Trading: a Beginner's Guide The forex market is the world's largest international currency trading market operating non-stop during the working week. Most forex trading is done by professionals such as bankers. Generally forex trading is done through a forex broker - but there is nothing to stop anyone trading currencies. Forex currency trading allows buyers and sellers to buy the currency they need for their business and sellers who have earned currency to exchange what they have for a more convenient currency. The world's largest banks dominate forex and according to a survey in The Wall Street Journal Europe, the ten most active traders who are engaged in forex trading account for almost 73% of trading volume. However, a sizeable proportion of the remainder of forex trading is speculative with traders building up an investment which they wish to liquidate at some stage for profit. While a currency may increase or decrease in value relative to a wide range of currencies, all forex trading transactions are based upon currency pairs. So, although the Euro may be 'strong' against a basket of currencies, traders will be trading in just one currency pair and may simply concern themselves with the Euro/US Dollar ( EUUSD) ratio. Changes in relative values of currencies may be gradual or triggered by specific events such as are unfolding at the time of writing this - the toxic debt crisis. Because the markets for currencies are global, the volumes traded every day are vast. For the large corporate investors, the great benefits of trading on Forex are:
Enormous liquidity - over $4 trillion per day, that's $4,000,000,000. This means that there's always someone ready to trade with you
Every one of the world's free currencies are traded - this means that you may trade the currency you want at any time
Twenty four - hour trading during the 5-day working week
Operations are global which mean that you can trade with any part of the world at any time
From the point of view of the smaller trader there's lots of benefits too, such as:
A rapidly-changing market - that's one which is always changing and offering the chance to make money
Very well developed mechanisms for controlling risk
Ability to go long or short - this means that you can make money either in rising or falling markets
Leverage trading - meaning that you can benefit from large-volume trading while having a relatively-low capital base
Lots of options for zero-commission trading
How the forex Market Works As forex is all about foreign exchange, all transactions are made up from a currency pair - say, for instance, the Euro and the US Dollar. The basic tool for trading forex is the exchange rate which is expressed as a ratio between the values of the two currencies such as EUUSD = 1.4086. This value, which is referred to as the 'forex rate' means that, at that particular time, one Euro would be worth 1.4086 US Dollars. This ratio is always expressed to 4 decimal places which means that you could see a forex rate of EUUSD = 1.4086 or EUUSD = 1.4087 but never EUUSD = 1.40865. The rightmost digit of this ratio is referred to as a 'pip'. So, a change from EUUSD = 1.4086 to EUUSD = 1.4088 would be referred to as a change of 2 pips. One pip, therefore is the smallest unit of trade. With the forex rate at EUUSD = 1.4086, an investor purchasing 1000 Euros using dollars would pay $1,408.60. If the forex rate then changed to EUUSD = 1.5020, the investor could sell their 1000 Euros for $1,502.00 and bank the $93.40 as profit. If this doesn't seem to be large amount to you, you have to put the sum into context. With a rising or falling market, the forex rate does not simply change in a uniform way but oscillates and profits can be taken many times per day as a rate oscillates around a trend. When you're expecting the value EUUSD to fall, you might trade the other way by selling Euros for dollars and buying then back when the forex rate has changed to your advantage. Is forex Risky? When you trade on forex as in any form of currency trading, you're in the business of currency speculation and it is just that - speculation. This means that there is some risk involved in forex currency trading as in any business but you might and should, take steps to minimise this. You can always set a limit to the downside of any trade, that means to define the maximum loss that you are prepared to accept if the market goes against you - and it will on occasions. The best insurance against losing your shirt on the forex market is to set out to understand what you're doing totally. Search the internet for a good forex trading tutorial and study it in detail- a bit of good forex education can go a long way!. When there's bits you don't understand, look for a good forex trading forum and ask lots and lots of questions. Many of the people who habitually answer your queries on this will have a good forex trading blog and this will probably not only give you answers to your questions but also provide lots of links to good sites. Be vigilant, however, watch out for forex trading scams. Don't be too quick to part with your money and investigate anything very well before you shell out any hard-earned! The forex Trading Systems While you may be right in being cautious about any forex trading system that's advertised, there are some good ones around. Most of them either utilise forex charts and by means of these, identify forex trading signals which tell the trader when to buy or sell. These signals will be made up of a particular change in a forex rate or a trend and these will have been devised by a forex trader who has studied long-term trends in the market so as to identify valid signals when they occur. Many of the systems will use forex trading software which identifies such signals from data inputs which are gathered automatically from market information sources. Some utilise automated forex trading software which can trigger trades automatically when the signals tell it to do so. If these sound too good to be true to you, look around for online forex trading systems which will allow you undertake some dummy trading to test them out. by doing this you can get some forex trading training by giving them a spin before you put real money on the table. How Much do you Need to Start off with? This is a bit of a 'How long is a piece of string?' question but there are ways for to be beginner to dip a toe into the water without needing a fortune to start with. The minimum trading size for most trades on forex is usually 100,000 units of any currency and this volume is referred to as a standard "lot". However, there are many firms which offer the facility to purchase in dramatically-smaller lots than this and a bit of internet searching will soon locate these. There's many adverts quoting only a couple of hundred dollars to get going! You will often see the term acciones trading forex and this is just a general term which covers the small guy trading forex. Small-scale trading facilities such as these are often called as forex mini trading. Where do You Start? The single most obvious answer is of course - on the internet! Online forex trading gives you direct access to the forex market and there's lots and lots of companies out there who are in business just to deal with you online. Be vigilant, do spend the time to get some good forex trading education, again this can be provided online and set up your dummy account to trade before you attempt to go live. If you take care and take your time, there's no reason why you shouldn't be successful in forex trading so, have patience and stick at it!
8 Most Predictable Forex Trading Pairs. The nature of the free market, and the sheer number of factors that can affect the value of a nation’s currency, means that forex trading pairs will never be wholly predictable – but that hasn’t stopped the world’s leading traders, analysts and finance experts trying their hardest to get a handle on things. Dynamics of New York, London, and Asian trading sessions is important so a trader can pick the best currency pair to trade. Everyone is different. New York or London sessions may not be the best solution for your plans. Sometimes it may be at night. This article will help to find out when is the best time to trade. Most Active Currencies Futures The Most Active Futures page lists the commodity contracts with the greatest volume for the day. You can view the "Full List" - the contracts from all groupings with the greatest volume - or you may select from specific Commodity Grouping to see all contracts. 9 Comments on Most Active Forex Currency Pairs (Note: See Most Traded Currency Pairs for up-to-date info) The question comes up a lot as to what the most actively traded currency pairs are. A lot of forex traders end up responding based on what they think people trade most without necessarily knowing the statistics. New York . New York (open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.) is the second-largest forex platform in the world, watched heavily by foreign investors because the U.S. dollar is involved in 90% of all trades ...
The volatility of the most popular currency pairs increases significantly after the start of the trading session in the London currency market. The trading activity slows down a little at lunch ... The AUD NZD is the best Forex pair to trade, and I explain why. Those who want to trade the No Nonsense Forex way need to pay close attention to this one. No... The EUR:GBP and GBP:CHF have huge advantages over most of what others would consider to be the "best Forex pairs to trade". Watc... There are many currency pairs offered by binary option brokers. This video teaches about currency pairs and gives personal insight into which currency pairs should be traded. #forex #forexlifestyle #forextrader Want to join my VIP group? Get my signals, education, and live chat! Link to join: https://tradernickfx.com/ // SOCIAL FR...
