Our friends at FXstreet, who is by far the leading portal for unique information regarding Forex has launched this week a new website which is a lot cleaner and faster to use.
I have to say that I’ve been using the site daily and moving the navigation to the top does make the overall site much more readable and the improvement in the loading speed is definitely noticeable – great work!
The thing I like most about FXStreet is the fact that they bring unique and well thought out content and they have done it daily for more than 10 years. This is impressive given most of their competitors are just aggregating data and are merely SEO maniacs.
Keep up the good work.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results. Investor returns may vary from Trade Leader returns based on slippage, fees, broker spreads, volatility or other market conditions.
This video is too funny to watch. And apparently catching Bernanke lie on National TV is a new national sport.
Apparently, for those of you who thought otherwise, the Quantitative Easing II which is the sequel to Quantitative Easing I is simply a computer adjustment. It shows companies having less debt than they actually do – sounds like money printing to me.
Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results. Investor returns may vary from Trade Leader returns based on slippage, fees, broker spreads, volatility or other market conditions.
Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont gave a very passionate speech regarding the US economy comparing the US to a banana republic where the majority of the money and the power is concentrated with a very small percentage of the population who also control the government. This is a must see speech if you are interested in the economy, in the US, or if you have the slightest perception that things in the US are getting better.
Main takeaways from the speech.
Top 1% of the population earn 23.5% of all income which is more than the bottom 50%
80% of all new income created between the 1980′s and today went to the top 1%
CEOs on Wall Street are earning more money today than they’ve earned before the bailout
Q: The gap between rich and poor in this country has never been greater. In fact, we have the biggest income disparity gap of any industrialized country in the world. And I wonder where you think that’s taking America.
A: Well, it’s a very bad development. It’s creating two societies. And it’s based very much, I think, on– on educational differences The unemployment rate we’ve been talking about. If you’re a college graduate, unemployment is five percent. If you’re a high school graduate, it’s ten percent or more. It’s a very big difference. It leads to an unequal society and a society– which doesn’t have the cohesion that– that we’d like to see.
I have to say that in my view, greed and the accumulation of wealth is a predatory phase and though a lot of people in the US make a lot of money the country as a whole is losing. The reduction in social services like health education and social security for elderly are only increasing the gap between the rich and the poor and are assuring that even college graduates will have a hard time affording the cost of living if they try to give their children the same quality of life they have.
If anyone is looking at the public companies filing or Wall Street as any indication that the US is stepping out of the crisis, they should take a closer look. Not only are things not getting better but they are getting worse every day.
Latest unemployment report that was released Friday indicates that unemployment continues to grow. As a country that manufactures everything in China and relies so much on consumer spending in the GDP, high unemployment is a very bad thing.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results. Investor returns may vary from Trade Leader returns based on slippage, fees, broker spreads, volatility or other market conditions.
Goldman Sachs published last week that their 2010 Top Currency Trades Were ‘Unsatisfactory’. Thomas Stolper, a London based economist for GS recommended to buy the zloty against the Japanese yen which lost 15.6 percent, and also recommended to buy the pound against the New Zealand dollar which lost 12.5 percent. Nice one Thomas – please update us all on the 2011 recommendations.
The main thing I take away from this is that the so called “professional” analysts do not have any advantage in the Currencies market, they can’t get exclusive access to decision makers like they do in the equities world and they are basically consuming the same information everyone with an internet connection can get at exactly the same time.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results. Investor returns may vary from Trade Leader returns based on slippage, fees, broker spreads, volatility or other market conditions.
There has been a lot of chatter in forums and blog posts by some well-respected people in this industry about the final ruling of the CFTC regarding forex trading for US residents, and I’d like to express my opinion on the matter.
It seems like the leverage restriction has become less of an issue for traders, especially after Japan has already decided to restrict leveraged trading in FX with similar restrictions.
So we’re left with mainly two restrictions that traders for some reason feel limit their ability to trade or make more money than they already make. The restrictions are the good old “FIFO rule” and “No Hedging” rule, which have been in place for US traders for some time now.
A little explanation of these rules and what they mean (or don’t mean) in reality:
The FIFO rule indicates that positions that were opened on a certain instrument (currency pair) have to be closed in the same order. This means that if I open a 1 Lot position on the EUR/USD and an hour later open another 1 Lot position on the EUR/USD, when I want to close a position I have to close the position that was opened first before I close the second position. The perception of traders is that it’s possible that the first position is losing money and the second position opened later is making money. Therefore, if I close my first position I would be booking a loss, whereas if I close only the second position I would be booking a profit and I can keep my eyes closed and say a prayer hoping for the other position to turn around, booking profit there as well. The reality is that it absolutely doesn’t matter which position you close first to the overall P&L, and closing the losing position first and letting the second one run for additional profit is going to get exactly the same result.
The second restriction is the “No Hedging” rule, which means that a trade cannot hold opposing positions on the same instrument at the same time. The rule is a little more forgiving than this, but in reality this is how it’s implemented in most brokers. Some traders are under the impression that they can open a LONG position and then if it goes south open a SHORT position that would balance out the LONG position. In reality opening a SHORT position though enabling the trader to keep his eyes closed and not realize losses on the LONG position is exactly the same as closing the original LONG position and realizing the losses and it doesn’t really matter what the market is going to do next.
So to sum this up, there is no way in the world that hedging and non-FIFO would have any affect (positive or negative) on the ability of a trader to succeed or limit the profitability of a trader – so stop complaining :)
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results. Investor returns may vary from Trade Leader returns based on slippage, fees, broker spreads, volatility or other market conditions.
I came across this blog post and apparently there are trade training programs out there targeting successful online poker players. The main assumption is that playing poker is all about risk management and money management. You never have the certainty that you have a better hand, but with proper money management and risk management you can decide on the better move to play.
It sure seems like trading is providing similar qualities as gambling: “It’s easy to participate, difficult to sustain success. Many just play for the thrills of winning and losing; relatively few systematically learn from experience and build skills over time,” or at least according to Brett Steenbarger.
All of this makes perfect sense when I see the success that eToro, a gambling site for Forex traders, is giving traders the thrill they want and the ability to easily participate in the Forex arena.
The big question I have is while there are so many people trying to make a living from trading, is treating trading as gambling the right approach? What do you think?
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results. Investor returns may vary from Trade Leader returns based on slippage, fees, broker spreads, volatility or other market conditions.
I’ve visited a few sites that claim they don’t charge any money and only increase the spread by a mere 1 pip, which doesn’t even make a difference at the end of the day. Zulutrade is an example of such a site and I though I’d take the time to try and explain to people how much is 1 pip.
I took one of the leading signal providers on Zulutrade. The photos shows one of their top 20 strategies there. I looked at the summary of that strategy.
As you can see, this strategy made 296 pips and has executed 141 trades. This means that if you pay 1 pip for every trade, you would have made only 155 pips on this strategy (296 minus the 141 pips that would have paid for per trade). That is about 50% of the reported performance. So in this specific example, 1 pip equates to 50% of the gain you could have made. I would say that’s pretty expensive, not to mention the same 144 pips would have been paid if the strategy had lost you money.
The big problem of charging traders with a spread increase is that you are not only defining a pricing structure that is not properly defined, but you are also creating a motivation of the signal provider to trade more often as opposed to incentivize them for successful (and profitable) trading.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results. Investor returns may vary from Trade Leader returns based on slippage, fees, broker spreads, volatility or other market conditions.
I’ve been hearing a lot of comments about different sites that enable traders to display their performance to the entire world. The comments were mostly claiming that these sites have unrealistic performance, and that the calculations are not even close to being right.
I decided to check for myself, and have connected a single real account to both Currensee and myfxbook to measure for myself just how far off the performance is. The reason I chose myfxbook is not to prove anything against them – as all the other sites seem to calculate performance in a similar way – but because myfxbook seemed to have the most complaints against them for inaccuracy. This is probably due to the fact that a lot of amateur traders and non-professional money managers use them.
The first picture shows the performance as recorded by myfxbook; the second is the performance as recorded by Currensee on the same account.
Performance on myfxbook
Talk about a difference in performance! I was very surprises to see how myfxbook is displaying a twisted version of reality, making this account actually look really good. Now I know why non-professional money managers use it.
Performance on Currensee
Here is how Currensee (and the rest of the professional world) calculates performance, and why performance shown on an amateur site is misleading:
Account Balance vs. Account Equity
Currensee receives its price feed from hundreds of brokers, and we compare the open positions of any user at any given point of time to the open prices that their broker has for the instrument they are currently trading. By doing that we prevent traders from logging their profits while holding large losing positions for a long time until the market changes. I couldn’t find any site that does what we do. The others, myfxbook included, log the closed positions against the account balance and completely disregard any open positions. The risk in doing that is that, as you can see, performance can be presented in a much more attractive (and wrong!) way, making it impossible for any trader or investor without the proper tools to evaluate the actual performance.
Measuring Risk
Most amateur performance sites measure risk as either the max drawdown or the max losing trade. We measure three parameters for risk:
Daily Standard Deviation – This is for us the most important measurement, and represents that volatility of the performance. In other words, does this trader advance his account in a gradual and consistent manner, or is the ride choppy and risky?
Percent Days Losing – We measure the percent of the days the account is down to give fellow Currensee members an indication of the short- and long-term risk in the account. Having a high percentage of losing days usually means that the account would achieve performance on a long-term basis, while having a low percentage of losing days usually means that the account growth would be more gradual and consistent.
Max Drawdown – Like others, we measure the max drawdown in the account – the only difference is that we measure it on the equity and not on the balance (See section “Account Balance vs. Account Equity” above).
Displaying a Risk Adjusted Return Parameter
Currensee uses a unique algorithm that measure a trader’s performance and risk, and displays a single number that evaluates the trader. Lately Tradency has replicated the concept we have been advocating for more than 6 months, calling their version the T-Score. Like Orli wrote, we are always flattered by others copying our concepts.
Currensee’s TAI (Trade Authority Index) takes the following parameters into account:
Performance parameters, including return (based on equity, not balance),
History in the account,
Number of closed positions, and
Volume traded in the account and the consistency of the trader (consistency is calculated based on deviation from a strategy).
Risk parameters include:
Daily standard deviation (or as we call it, daily volatility),
Max drawdown, and
Percent days losing.
We take all these numbers, crunch them together, and give you who has the highest return for the lowest risk.
As you may know, I was also shocked to see the performance of some of the traders on myfxbook, and now that I know this is fake, I am relieved. I hope you are too.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results. Investor returns may vary from Trade Leader returns based on slippage, fees, broker spreads, volatility or other market conditions.
About a month ago I was meeting with the CMO of the largest broker in the US and he expressed his frustration in the commercial EA industry, where people sell their EAs for a few hundred dollars and there is no way to really validate how the EA is really performing. He claimed that his sales team was being asked over and over again how these EAs are really performing.
I then started researching the issue and found out that there are a few forums out there that have a dedicated EA section. People mostly complain about their experience with the purchased EAs and trying to warn other traders from using these EAs.
I started thinking about an idea on how to help the EA developers to properly present their performance information instead of a back testing graph that they all show.
We’ve approached some of the famous EA developers and made the following offer to them:
Link a real account that was traded using this EA to Currensee, which will cost you nothing, and use our performance metrics to measure the performance of the EA over time, including historical performance. Given that this is a real account, if the performance is good we’ll advertise your real performance to our entire trader base (more then 30,000 at this point), and it will still cost you nothing.
As you can probably imagine, none of the EA developers that we’ve talked to have taken us up on our offer. They have decided to hide behind fancy pictures of gold coins falling from the sky, open wallets with $100 bills or traders sitting in front of multiple trading monitors (which always made me wonder why do you need all those monitors if it’s an automatic program, but lets leave that aside).
So here is the proposal one more time:
If you are a commercial EA developer and are willing to stand behind your performance, link your account to Currensee by registering to the free social network and we will dedicate a special spot for you on Currensee highlighting your performance. Any takers?
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results. Investor returns may vary from Trade Leader returns based on slippage, fees, broker spreads, volatility or other market conditions.
So it all started when some of our traders requested we provide an easy way for them to publish their trades directly to Twitter and also comply with the StockTwits’s format so their real trades could be published on both.
So being a responsible company, we’ve implemented the feature exactly how our traders requested it, and we now have a few hundred traders that automatically post their real trades directly from their real broker account into Twitter in real time.
Surprisingly enough, StockTwits has decided to block all the traders that post real trades from Currensee. These trades are flagged as spam, even though this can only be real people posting real trades directly from their real accounts. These traders are not even trying to advertise themselves, as there is not advertisement planted in the feed.
It seems that when the entire world is demanding more transparency from the financial world, StockTwits has decided to block the reality and engrave fake and fraudulent activities on their flag. FAIL.
So if you want to shake off the imaginary world of StockTwits and see what real trades do with real money you can follow our trades on Twitter.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results.
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Be sure to read the full risk disclosure before trading Forex. Please note that Forex trading involves significant risk of loss. It is not suitable for all investors and you should make sure you understand the risks involved before trading. Performance, strategies and charts shown are not necessarily predictive of any particular result. And, as always, past performance is no indication of future results. Investor returns may vary from Trade Leader returns based on slippage, fees, broker spreads, volatility or other market conditions.
Currensee is the first social network for forex traders. We bring Forex traders from around the world together to make trading decisions in real time using live trading data.
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