Financial Planning Q A

Recently I wrote an article for a womens magazine - Citta Bella. Perhaps some of the questions addressed here are your concerns as well. Heres the article:

Q & A For Citta Bella

Case: 30-year old Single Office Lady

1. I have 20K, how do I invest my money?

According to your risk preference, you may invest in fixed deposit, shares or unit trust. Fixed deposit is the safest investment however it generates only 2-3% per year return. As for shares and unit trusts there is certain investment risk involved but the potential returns are much higher than the fixed deposit, in general the gains are usually around 7-12% per year.

For a 30 year old single office lady, you can tolerate much higher risk than those who are married with children and those who are nearing retirement age, hence I would advice a 25:75 asset allocation for you, which means you may put aside RM5000 (25%) in the fixed deposit and invest RM15,000 (75%)in blue chip stocks.

Asset allocation is how much money you put into different asset classes—the percentage of your assets that are in stocks, bonds, cash, real estate, and commodities. Believe it or not, the choices you make in this regard are the most important part of your investing. A good mix of asset allocation will enable you to achieve sustainable profits from the stock market over the long run.

I usually recommend people to invest in blue chip stocks as blue chip stocks are good investment, not only you can gain capital appreciation, every year you’ll receive attractive dividends from these companies. Some examples of the blue chip stocks are: Maybank, CIMB, Genting, and Public Bank. However, if you are not comfortable investing directly in the share market, you may choose to invest in unit trust from a reputable fund management company.


2. How much savings do I need? I’m a 30 yr old single OL (office lady).

Assuming your retirement age is 55 and you live until 75 years old, you should set aside minimum RM500 every month into your retirement fund preferably in stocks or unit trust which will give you RM1,500 every month during your 25 year retirement period.
After deciding how much we need in the future, now, let’s see how we can achieve our retirement goal. Many people have the wrong attitude towards savings, they will choose to pay their monthly expenses first, whatever the balance (if any) will then turn into their savings. Sometimes, they may have impulse buying on branded handbags or hand phones, and they will not hesitate to withdraw from their savings to purchase them.

The right attitude should be to pay into the retirement fund before any monthly expenses. In addition, you should try not to withdraw from the fund for any impulse buying. A good way to help you to achieve your retirement goal is to set up a unit trust regular saving plan with a reputable unit trust company with initial RM1000 investment, followed by auto-debit instruction from your bank account to invest RM300 monthly into an equity fund.

However, if you notice, I did not include the EPF into this retirement fund. The reason why I didn’t include is because most of us, before the retirement age, we have already used up at least one third for purchasing property, and the remaining upon retirement the money is usually used for children’s university expenses, hence, the remaining may not be significant. However, if you do have money left from the EPF that will be a bonus for you.


3. I love traveling to different parts of the world, but I’m afraid I might spend too much on trips and not saving enough for my retirement, what should I do?

As Malaysia is moving towards becoming a developed nation and our society is becoming more affluent, overseas trips has become part of our lifestyle. However, these trips are not cheap, they may cost up to about RM2000 to RM6000 per person. If we lose focus we may ended up spending too much and not saving enough for our retirement fund. My advice is that you need to be disciplined enough to set aside the required amount, say RM500 monthly for your retirement fund first, the remaining you may allocate according to your other needs such as your overseas trip. Hence, it is very important that we must have proper financial planning to safeguard our hard earn money so that our retirement goal can be achieved.


4. Medical cost is getting too expensive, is it advisable to get myself covered with insurance? What is the right amount for my insurance coverage?

Medical expenses are rising faster than the costs of any other service. They are climbing at rates that very much exceeding the inflation rate. On top of that, with the hectic lifestyle and bad eating habits, the chances of contracting terminal illness have increased tremendously in the recent years. Hence it is very important that everyone should buy a medical insurance for protection.

How much medical coverage is enough depends on the following factors: your ability to pay the premiums, your health condition, your family history of terminal illness, your debt obligations and your family commitments and other personal objectives such as whether you need some investment component in it.

In general, for a 30 year old woman with good health condition would need minimum RM200,000 for a lifetime medical coverage. However, if budget allows, you may consider increase your coverage through other add-on benefits such as hospitalization, disability benefits, income benefits, and regular saving feature in it.


5. I am still young, do I need to write a Will?

It’s never too young to write your Will. As soon as you have turned 18 years old, you may start to write your Will. What is a Will? A Will is an important legal document that contains your instructions and wishes for distributing your property and assets after you die. This document contains the names of the people you want to benefit, your beneficiaries, as well as details about your home, land, vehicles, bank accounts, investments, jewelry, artwork, and other possessions. Your Will also allows you to choose a personal guardian to care for your children if you should die when they are still minors. Your Will should be written carefully, correctly and in compliance with the laws of your state to be sure your beneficiaries will be taken care of when you are gone.

In order for your Will to be valid, and accepted by the court, it must be in writing, signed with your signature, and witnessed by at least two witnesses who are neither relatives nor beneficiaries. Otherwise, the court may not accept your Will, and it may be unenforceable. If your Will is found invalid, the court may distribute your assets as if there were no Will (or intestate), and the court will distribute your asset according to the Distribution Act 1958 (amended 1997) and it may take up to seven years for the whole process.

Playing with Bollinger Bands A Likely Long Term Profitable Strategy

Last week I wrote a post about the Bollinger Bands indicator and how I thought it could be exploited to achieve good profitability levels in forex trading. After doing a full analysis going through a visual 5-6 year backtest, a mathematical expectancy analysis and the final coding and testing of the strategy I can tell you that I have come up with a likely long term profitable system based exclusively on Bollinger Bands. Asirikuy members would definitely want to checkout last weeks video in which I explain the whole development process in detail showing you all the steps necessary to go from an idea to an actual, coded expert with great possibilities of long term success. On todays post I want to give my regular readers a look into this strategy and the results it finally achieves.

My first idea for coding this Bollinger Band system was taken from the thoughts I had a week ago regarding this strategy. I based the making of this strategy in the fact that when a bar closes above a certain number of volatility adjusted steps outside 2 standard deviations an important "signal" is given that predicts long term movements in that direction to a good extent. As I pointed last week, this strategy also signals a retracement in conjunction with the trend following aspect but definitely I wanted to explore the trend following aspects of the strategy first.

The mathematical expectancy analysis of this strategy wasnt disappointing at all with positive results for almost all period perspectives on the one hour charts. However - interestingly enough - long periods of time revealed a great characteristic of this system which is the predictive power over a singificantly long amount of time with almost no moves into unprofitable territory. This means that the strategy would definitely lend itself to the making of a system that could use an extremely favorable risk to reward ratio. Designing my systems money management around the conclusions of the mathematical expectancy analysis results I came up with a strategy that held a risk to reward ratio of exactly 1 : 4 meaning that the system can take four loses for each winning trade. For me this is quite unprecedented sine most strategies I coded have a risk to reward ratio oscillating from 2 : 1 to 1 : 3 but I had never been able to achieve such a high expectancy for winning trades with success. The results I achieved for a 10 year backtest (2000-2010) on the EUR/USD one hour chart are shown below.
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I have to say that I was very impressed to see that such a simple strategy with absolutely no internal closing criteria besides the TP and SL could achieve such an incredible performance. This strategy definitely shows that it is not complexity what determines the success of a trading strategy but true understanding of the underlying price action. Once you have some idea of how the market behaves and how indicators can be used to exploit an inefficiency a likely long term profitable system from a very simple set of logic can arise. It is important here to say that the above shown results are unoptimized and simply the variable settngs are the result of the mathematical expectancy analysis (for those who are wondering, yes, I tried a trailing stop but a solid TP works much better)

Simulations of this system are also bound to be quite accurate since the average value of the TP is well above 200 pips, meaning that this EA has an incredibly large take profit value that could not be faked by any type of simulation interference. Moreover, the EA only enters trades based on last bars close and therefore explicitely controls bar opening, something that is bound to make trading systems more reliable and back/live testing consistent. Of course, we would need to test this expert to find out but I believe that this system can be improved a lot more before actually releasing it as a Watukushay EA. It is however important to say that GREAT part of this straegys success is based on its volatility adjusted money management that allows it to adjust to changes in market conditions. Using a fixed SL or TP leads to incredible loses showing how adaptive money management is VITAL to achieve profitability.
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As you see on the above image, the success of the strategy is based in the fact that trades are taken almost always after a successful bollinger band breakout. However the fact that we are not focusing on the actual contraction/expansion of the bands but on the statistical meaning of a highly deviated price result makes us enter only meaningful breakouts while others that might have been entered on a contraction/expansion criteria (which is also hard to define) are avoided. The strategy does take a lot of loses (strategies with high reward to risk ratios are often very hard to trade psychologically because of this) however the great thing is that losing trades become evident after only a small move against us, allowing us to preserve the great 1:4 risk to reward ratio.

Currently I have created a forum post within the asirikuy community forum so that we can start improving this strategy and making it become a solid Asirikuy contribution. Of course, the system lacks any internal closing criteria and coming up with relevant ways to improve the systems closing of positions should be vital if this system is to be released for use in the future. If you would like to learn more about automated trading and how you too can come up with and design systems with long term profitability in mind please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !

What A Fantastic Year 2013!

WD Gann once said, "Everything moves in cycles as a result of the natural law of action and reaction. By a study of the past, I have discovered what cycles repeat in the future." 

How amazing, by studying the historical price data, we look at the statistics and generate the probabilities of how price action repeats itself. After all, thats the most important assumption of technical analysis that "history repeats itself".   

Now, lets take a look at the following chart that I published before in May this year.

Gann was able to forecast the 1929 stock market crash accurately in advance and he shared his secret in his publication that in order to forecast for that particular year, all you need to do is to look at the previous years that end with the same number year. For example, to forecast for 2013, you may study the price action of year 2003, 1993, 1983 and so on. 

Unlike the Dow Jones Industrial Average that has 100 years of history, KLCI only has less than 40 years of data. So I go to this website: Tading Economics to get the required data.

From the data, I see that the year ending with 3 is always a bullish year for Malaysia, the chances are 3 out of 3 bullish. This findings help me in planning for my investment into the stock market this year.

In one of my previous article I mentioned that August to November this year would be volatile and it would be suitable for shorter term trading because I saw that the 1983 chart showed that the second half of that year the price action was zig-zag in a horizontal trend. In addition, there were some important fundamental reasons such as the Fed tappering, our Malaysian Budget and other fundamental reasons that help me to come to that conclusion. 

So if you are wondering whats the market outlook for 2014, let me show you the next chart:

Looking at the chart above, we know that 2014 would be different from 2013, we do not have a clear-cut bullish trend. Investing in the stock market will be more challenging but Im still optimistic about the Malaysian stock market as over the years we have proved that we are less volatile than the regional markets, as we have strong support from the local institutional players.

Below are some thoughts that may affect the market in the near future:

1. Construction and Property Sectors

According to the BMI (Business Monitor International) review on the Malaysian construction sector, they believed there will be some slow down in the construction sector in 2014 due to the falling demand for residential and non-residential buildings. They have maintained their construction growth forecasts for 2013 10.1% and 2014 to be 6.7%.

The property sector will experience some slow down as well due to the cooling measures by our government to curb speculative property activities. I believe this pull back is healthy for our economy as the property market need the necessary consolidation phase to digest the excess supply in the market.

2. Low Interest Rates

With a ultra low interest rate environment globally, the chances of running into a financial crisis is low. Unless there is inflation problem that force the Central bank to raise interest rate, otherwise, we are likely to enjoy this until 2015.

3. Excess Liquidity in the Economy

Ironically, quantitative easing is the biggest driver to drive the financial markets to the ceiling and yet it is currently the biggest risk posed by the financial markets.  In this quantitative easing process the Central Banks from the EU, US, UK and Japan kept pumping in the liquidity into their banking system. In fact JP Morgans Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou, an expert in global monetary flows and liquidity, said the current excess liquidity is the most extreme ever as compared to the past 3 major episodes of excess liquidity namely: 1993-1995, 2001-2006 and 2008-2010. These were periods of strong asset price inflation suggesting that excess liquidity could have been a factor supporting markets at that time.

Since the 1990s the Fed has been playing the money game by pumping in money each time after a financial crisis instead of long term investment in real products and education. The excess liquidity is doing the economy no good as it merely drive up the asset prices and not protecting our purchasing power parity. 

In order to play along with the music, everyone has to dance regardless whether you like to dance or not. Just like in this money printing world, we are losing purchasing power with our fiat money, we are force to invest in this risky asset environment regardless whether we like it or not, as long as we know the Fed is pumping money into the system, we have to participate in the equity and property markets to protect our purchasing power. If we do not dance with the music we will be losing out. 

At the end of the game, we need to win the game beautifully but the problem is how? Because we never know when will the music stop. Right now, keep investing as the music is still playing around the world.

George Soros When I see a bubble Ill buy and I see a flaw in the bubble Ill sell!

The Gods Gift ATR Turning a Good EA into a bad one !

I knew it was only a matter of time before the regular forex crowd took a hold of my gods gift ATR expert advisor. For the past few months I have seen an outdated version of my ea appear on several websites and forums and inevitably, they have started to test the system as they test all other forex expert advisors out there. I really think its a pity. The reason why I keep the ea to myself and my customers is because I think that a certain degree of knowledge is required to trade this expert advisor and I like to serve as a guide to the people that buy my ebook or subscribe to my newsletter in order for them to use the system correctly. Below I point out the main differences between how I use the ea and how others have been testing it in order for you to know what the big differences in trading are :

How I use the system :

• I forward tested the gods gift 7c logic for 14 months before placing it on any live account
• I then programmed the gods gift ATR, backtested it on 15 different currency pairs
• I found out which ones the ea worked with and optimized them from Dec 1999 to Dec 2008.
  
• I made several risk projections to ensure that the ea would trade as safely as possible on live accounts.
  
• I then run these settings on four separate live accounts, two different sets of settings for the EUR/USD one for the GBP/USD and one for the USD/JPY.
• I tested the experts on a realiable vps with triple redundant internet connection and made the investor passwords available as well as an ftp with regularly updated results to my newsletter subscribers.
• I trade through draw down and profit and have confirmed several times the consistency I get between live and backtesting results.
  
• I wrote a manual to further help people understand what goes on under the hood
  
• I started the Gods Gift ATR challenge to include controlled third party results into the experts history.
  

How people are now testing it on forums :

• They dont do proper backtesting and optimization from 1999, the few that do use just the last year or last few months, this extremely curve fits the ea.
  
• Most of them dont have the slightest idea of how this system works
• They dont do any risk analysis and just trade it to "see what happens"
  
• Sometimes they trade it on more than 5 currency pairs on the same account (this by all means is a sure way to wipe the account)(I only trade one per account ! for very good reasons)
  
• They trade it on all pairs with the same settings, without any preoptimization. They also test the ea on some pairs for which I know for certain the ea is NOT long term profitable, sometimes not even short term at all.
• They run an outdated version of the ea which they adapted to use five digit brokers but in doing so they corrupted the ATR money management and market order size logics (again, they seem to lack of an understanding of how the system works)

As you can see, the great differences between how I test the ea and how it gets tested in forums is just too great. Inevitably, they will conlude that the ea is unprofitable eventually because they are trading it the wrong way. Why dont I start posting in forums and share all my results for free with everyone and help them succeed ? I am not interested in that. People that go to forums are sometimes arrogant and unwilling to change their mind sets about expert advisors and automated trading. They want you to explain everything to them and somehow, make them profitable in forex trading. I am not interested in fighting with people about how this should be tested or traded, etc. This is why I never asked the forum Administrator to remove the gods gift atr when this outdated version was posted on a forum a few months ago, because I know that even if the ea is out there for everyone, only one out of ten thousand will be able to find the settings and trade it the correct way and with enough discipline.

For this reason, as I outlined before, I just keep the gods gift ATR ea and testing to those people that are commited enough to read my posts, make a very small purchase and change the way in which they think about automated trading systems. Automated trading requires effort, requires knowledge and most of all, it requires commitment, something which I feel the crowd that is looking for everything on a silver plate fail to have. As you see, people at forums can turn perfectly good systems into terrible ones just by being totally irresponsible and incoherent with their testing. Why in the world would they test the ea on several currency pairs at the same time on the same account ? and all of them with the same settings ? I dont know. It is just a consequence of them not knowing what they are doing.

The worst thing about this is that they may get a month or two of profits and someone, somewhere will run that on a live account and lose money because of the irresponsability of the people that test these systems just for the sake of it. In order to test a trading system you must understand what it does and how it does it best, it is not about throwing the system into testing as you see fit.

If you are interested in learning more about the gods gift atr please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed the article!

Trading like a Couple Correlation in Trading

Through the last few months I have noticed that several of my customers are interested in the use of correlation in their forex exchange trading. Correlation, which is the statistical pairing of two random variables can be used in trading as it can tell us which instruments move together, which ones move opposite to each other and what percentage of the time we can expect the correlation to be true. However, there is usually an overestimation of the power of correlation in foreign exchange trading which can many times lead to invalid conclusions and the formulation of unsound trading strategies. Through this post I will talk about correlation, specifically about how it can and how it cannot be used in automated trading. I will try to discuss the usual ways in which correlation is tried to be exploited and why such uses of correlation usually generate strategies with extremely high draw down potentials.

If you do a small google search for correlation in the forex market you will find a huge wealth of websites that describe currency pairs and their relationships with each other. Of particular informative character is this website which accurately describes the meaning of correlation and how it is usually exploited in trading. Usually correlation can be used as a mean to diversify risk and to avoid the entering of contradictory positions. As per their example, if you enter a long trade on both the EUR/USD and the USD/CHF you are likely to go out with a loss as both currencies move in opposite directions. However, if you enter a trade on the GBP/USD and the EUR/USD you will diversify risk as both currencies move in the same direction, although not in exactly the same way.

So what are the ways in which correlation is exploited in automated trading ? Many people try to use correlation as a "standard" market conditions which must be returned to upon breakup from the relationship. For example, if the USD/CHF had a -90% correlation with the EUR/USD in average for the past 5 years and on a 4 month period this correlation changed to -40% people would take opposite positions on each currency until they regain their -90% "standard" relationship. This trading approach has many problems which lead to an uncapped market exposure. For example, what would happen if the extent of "decorrelation" reached levels far beyond 40% ? What precisely makes a currency unable to "decorrelate" from another ? Clearly the case can be made that while two currency pairs can remain correlated for a long time, they can quickly lose correlation because of fundamental changes.

A perfect example would be the EUR/USD and the GBP/USD which for the past few years have had a correlation above 80%. Nonetheless, after the market crisis in 2008, these pairs lost a lot of their correlation with the EUR/USD rallying towards 1.50 while the GBP/USD stayed in a very wide range from a yearly high it was unable to break. So would it be wise to always assume pairs will return to correlation ? No. Can we say up to which extent pairs will lose correlation ? No. As a matter of fact, all the systems I have seen which use returns from deviations in correlation as a trading strategy have ultimately failed. If you remember your sound training in trading you will remember the old phrase : The market can remain irrational more than you can remain solvent.

Is correlation useful ? Sure, it can be used to diversify risk and to understand and avoid the use of contradictory positions and systems. Does it have a "higher than usual" chance of success as an automated trading system ? No. Is it guaranteed that a system based on correlations will be profitable ? No. As a matter of fact, systems that are traded based on correlations often neglect the use of a stop loss or other order closing mechanism which usually makes them very dangerous and uncapped in their market exposure.

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

The Micro Account Stimulation Project A True Commitment to My Fellow Traders o

Those of you who are newsletter subscribers may have already read about the micro account stimulation project on the newsletter sent to you on last Sunday. I wanted to dedicate todays post to disclose this project to everyone else so that website visitors as well as ebook customers can learn about it and give any comments or suggestions on the subject. Through this post I will discuss with you what the micro account stimulation project is about, what inspired it and what I expect to get from it through the following years.

So what exactly is this micro account stimulation project (from here called MASP) ? (I really like to give things weird names, right ? ;o) ) A few days ago, while I was doing all my weekly analysis for my weekly newsletter as well as planning for all the trading that would go on next week (both on my managed and personal accounts) I realized that the amount of testing that was going on at the website was not enough to actually test all the systems, projects and ideas that will be going on in 2010. I also realized that I was going to need to open a dozen or more trading accounts and that opening such a large number of micro accounts would not be possible due to the current number of accounts I own on all the different metatrader 4 brokers. Therefore, doing all the testing that I wanted to do for my subscribers on 2010 would become almost impossible for me to do in a reliable fashion, with the brokers I wanted with the quality I wanted, etc.

Then I had a great idea ! :o). What if I give people the money to fund their micro accounts ? This way well be able to have a lot of testing information and theyll be able to have funded micro accounts in which they can experience long term profitable systems themselves while we all analyze and see their live trading results. Since the number of subscribers is enough to cover my VPS expenses then why not give the money back to subscribers in a way in which we all can enjoy the tests and results ? Why not build a community with a lot more testing going on ?

The idea of the MASP is exactly this. Once each month, at the end of the month, I will give away 100 USD to one my newsletter subscribers (chosen randomly, feel free to suggest selection mechanisms !!). The only condition is that this 100 USD are used to fund a forex cent account on Alpari US, IBFX, Fxclearing or LiteFX (these are the brokers I know who offer nano lots (one cent per pip with 0.01 lots on the EUR/USD)) and this account is run on a VPS and trades an automated trading system the person chooses amongst different options I give him/her. The account will have to be traded for at least 2 years. After this period of time, the money and any profits will be owned by the subscriber. I am effectively giving away this money so that we can all have a far more varied broker/system/instrument repertoire than what I could obtain by funding micro accounts personally. Add to this the benefit that one subscriber each month will get the experience of running a system "risk free" (in the sense that I gave the money to fund) on a live account. This is a true and effective way of giving back and really helping the profitability of a fellow forex trader. Truly helping someone become profitable in automated trading for the long haul.

Of course, nothing prevents people from taking the 100 USD and running away with them and never opening the cent account or doing the tests. However I will try it for the first few months and see if the idea works. My opinion is that my subscribers are honest people who really want to be profitable with forex automated trading and they will welcome the chance to participate on the tests and open the live account with the money I give them. When a person is chosen I will obviously send him/her an email to ask them if they agree with the conditions and would be willing to carry on the tests, if they dont have the VPS or would not like to make the commitment to trade the account with the selected EA for the next two years then I will pass the offer onto another subscriber. If the idea goes well I will increment the number of accounts funded each month as the number of subscribers increase, hopefully by the end of 2010 I will be able to give away 300 or 400 USD every month :o) (hopefully if more people start to see the value on all the services offered with the newsltter and decide to join)

So what do you think about the MASP ? Do you think it is a good idea ? Do you think it contributes to people becoming long term profitable using automated trading systems ? Please leave any comments you may have abou this, I am really interested in hearing out your opinions ! However if you would like to learn more about all the systems I have programmed as well as how you too can become long term profitable using reliable automated trading systems please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed the article !

The Asirikuy Index A General Performance Indicator

Yesterday while writting all the material which is added weekly to asirikuy and doing the weekly video additions I started to ask myself if there was any way in which I could measure the current performance of asirikuy as a whole. That is, I wondered if I could come up with a given statistical tool which would measure the performance of all the trading systems of asirikuy simultaneously. Then, after a lot of thinking time, I realized that there was a very simple solution to this measuring problem. Todays post will be dedicated to the communication of this new measurement tool called the Asirikuy Index.

So what is the deal with measuring Asirikuy perfomance as a whole ? In asirikuy we use many different trading systems which I have coded (partially or totally) and we have many live accounts currently running these trading systems on different brokers, settings, etc. We know how all these trading systems are working separately but there was no way for me to communicate the joint performance of all asirikuy systems to the world without disclosing the tests. Moreover, there was no way in which members could get an idea "as a whole" of how asirikuy was doing (all the joint trading systems) but they had to go over all the tests to know what the "global performance" was looking like.

Then I had the idea to come up with a number which could be a global indication of the equity production of asirikuy, a number which could be disclosed to everyone to give people a feeling of how asirikuy was doing. This number should be simple enough to give anyone a straight forward idea of how the tests on the website are doing in general - without needing access - while providing a tool for current asirikuy members to understand how asirikuy is performing as a whole. The number I came up with is what I call "the Asirikuy Index".

What is the Asirikuy Index ? It is a measure of the joint performance of all the live accounts traded on the website. The index is simply the sum of all the current equity percentage gains or loses of all the trading systems being traded. The index simply tells you "if you were trading your capital with the exact same systems within the same brokers and with the same number of accounts (of the same size) this would be your current profit/loss". It is a true measure of Asirikuys performance as a whole and lets the world know how we are doing, something which may be something people want to know before joining the website.

For example, if asirikuy currently had only 3 live accounts and their results were +20, +12 and -25% then the asirikuy index would be 7% (20+12-25), meaning that if you had opened three accounts, funded them with equal amounts (for example, three 1000 USD accounts) , on the same brokers and with the same settings you would have gained 7% (of a single accounts investment) up until now. Of course, the Asirikuy index could be manipulated by removing bad accounts from testing but I guarantee that this wont be done as if any accounts are removed from testing their current draw down will be kept as a part of the index, as it was a realized capital loss.

The current Asirikuy Index is 95.18% and it will be updated each week to reflect changes on the weekly profits and loses of all the live trading accounts. Of course, the measurement is not perfect and it has a lot of room for improvement but it is a very basic view of the overall performance of the trading systems. It also provides us with a glimpse of the effect of broker and system diversification since the index is the result of the combination of several brokers and expert advisors. In the future we will also be able to do cool things, like plotting the Asirikuy Index as a function of time !

If you would like to learn more about the trading systems used in Asirikuy and why I consider them to be long term profitable please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !

The SDS or Simple Daily System A Free Worth Testing Expert Advisor

Readers of my newsletter have known about this trading system for a little bit more than a month. The SDS or Simple Daily System was created conjunctively at forex-tsd.com . I, in particular, have been using a version of this ea programmed by a person whose online alias is Derek.

The expert advisor is programmed to follow long term trends based in part on the PSAR market indicator. What I like a lot about this expert advisor is the fact that it uses a money management technique referred to as DAlembert money management. This tecnique simply increases lot sizes linearly with loses in order to ensure faster equity recoveries. It is ideal for expert advisors that rarely suffer from large streaks of consecutive loses but are likely to have several win, loss, win, loss sequences and several profitable trades.

Almost every expert advisor may be extremely improved by additions of proper money management and this is a great example of this. Without this system, the SDS ea would be a practical loser since its winning trades do not overcome its loses by great numbers and even sometimes fall behind as per backtesting. However, introduction of this money management greatly increases the odds of this expert making substantial profits.

You should also take into account that people at forex-tsd.com often overtrade their systems. Most of them have tested this expert on several currency pairs at the same time when this is a sure way of losing with this system as you risk about 25% equity draw down for each 5% of consistent monthly profit you want to make.

I have forward tested this expert (EUR/USD daily) for the past month and up until now, it has fulfilled my expectations. The current rangy EUR/USD market is sure to let us know whether this expert will or will not be considered likely profitable. If you want to take a look at the trading statements or learn more about this and other free and commercial expert advisors I have reviewed please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed the article !

The 8and8 EA A Hopefully Profitable Expert Advisor

During this past few days, I had been implementing the 8and8 daily trading system into a forex expert advisor. When I finished coding the system and started back testing its daily trading results, I realized that the system is unprofitable as an automated trading system due to the excessively large amount of mixed signals generated from the cross of two indicators. As it usually happens with crossing systems, whipsawing becomes a very hard problem to solve. On this months daily chart, which is shown below, I tried to pinpoint the places that caused heavy loses due to intense crossing of the EMA and the RSI indicators.
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The system does much better manually because trades are taken in a very discretionary manner. For example, you would not take a trade against the main trend when there is an important support/resistance level ithat has to be reached in sight. These things are not visible to automated trading systems (that easily), so it becomes very problematic and the experts fail when they have fixed SL and TP orders.

My first attempt was to try to fix the stoploss and take profit problems by making them ATR adjustable (hey ! its my flavour of the month and it really works !). Sadly, the whipsawing problem absolutely killed the idea as too many bad entires happened due to the intense crossing of the two indicators (still it was much better than the original).

I then started to think about the expert advisors I know that are at least likely profitable, Gods Gift, Simple Daily System, etc. I realized that their logic often involves some sort of volatility/range condition filter so that positions can only be entered when strong trends happen.

After struggling for several days with the idea and doing a ton of optimization with several range and volatility filtering ideas, I came up with the expert advisor I am presenting you now. The result ? A very clean equity curve in backtesting from 1999 to 2008 (EUR/USD). The expert advisor does a great job at filtering range conditions and just trading when the conditions are "right". Although the rules changed a little from the original 8and8 system, you could say that the main idea "daily trend following" is alive inside this modified trading system. The main modification is a simple filter based on the ADX indicator which makes the ea not to trade in raning market conditions. Lot sizing adjusted to volatility was also added.

Below you can see the backtesting image of the expert (from 1999 to 2008, modeling quality is n/a because of several mismatch errors in my 1999 and 2000 data but becomes 90% once you test from 2001 (2001 to 2009 is exactly the same anyway)).
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Now, you may be asking yourselves if I intend to sell or give away this ea for free. Of course, it is available to anyone who buys my automated trading ebook or subscribes to my newsletter but feel free to buy me a cup of coffee and email me if this ea is all you want (a link is available at the bottom left for this). The ea is profitable according to backtesting although its maximum draw down and yearly profits are almost alike, so you could expect a 50% yearly profit with a 40% maximum draw down. It will be forward tested from next week.

Other, expert advisors like Gods Gift (specially my ATR modified version if you read the last post !) and the Simple Daily System are free expert advisors that do make profits and will most likely continue to do so in the future, if you would like to learn more about them and their settings please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed the article !

Yes You ARE Looking for the Holy Grail A Message for People New to Trading

It is very interesting to analyze the answers you get when you ask people what they are looking for and if they think that what they are looking for is the automated trading "holy grail". This mythical piece of code is an EA that does NOT exist which achieves "unbelievable" results. However despite the fact that most people will utterly deny that what they look for is the holy grail - they will always say they know the holy grail doesnt exist - when you analyze the answer to the question "what are you looking for in a trading system?" you will realize that the bast majority are indeed looking for this mythical piece of code. On todays post I will talk about the holy grail and new traders and especially the relative character of the definition of this term and why so many people are looking for it even if they categorically reject to be doing so.

What average yearly profit to max DD ratio do you consider realistically achievable ?

So what is this trading "holy grail" exactly ? Its definition is actually simple and yet very complex. In my mind a holy grail is a hypothetical system which achieves results superior to the highest achievable maximum draw down to average yearly profit ratio allowed by the market in real returns over the past ten years. This means that any system that can do better than how the best REAL trader has done within the past 10 years is the holy grail. The best way to measure this "better" character is by using the above mentioned ratio which compares profit to risk.

When we look at the performance of forex traders for the past ten years -and the best registered traders since then- we notice that any system that achieves an average yearly profit to maximum draw down ratio of 5:1 over a ten year period is in fact a holy grail (check my post on the Barclay index to learn more about REAL long term performance of forex traders). This means that - being realistic - a system that achieves a 100% yearly profit with only a 20% maximum draw down over ten years is a holy grail. A system that is extremely unlikely to exist due to the very nature of the markets and the long term limitations on performance it imposes.

When we then ask new traders what they are looking for the answers are actually quite interesting. As a matter of fact, the above mentioned realistically inferred holy grail becomes the "lower standard" of a given set of return figures that are inferred from short term results and "lore" rather than from actual long term real performance records and realistic expectations. The 100% yearly profit with 20% maximum draw down becomes something that new traders perceive can be "easily achieved" and things like a 20% monthly profit with a 5% maximum draw down start to become the "grail" targets.

As traders start to accumulate more experience and they get to know the market and the inherent limitations of profitability and draw down they start to lower these figures. A trader with one year of experience is bound to give a 5% monthly profit with a 5% maximum draw down as a realistic expectation while it usually takes traders 5-7 years to realize that the before mentioned grail of a 5:1 ratio of average compounded yearly profit to maximum draw down ratio taken from real performance data is actually the real "extremely hard to achieve" target.

So chances are that if you are a relatively new trader you are looking for a system which is quite unrealistic and your actual "holy grail" is way beyond the limits of what the market is willing to let you get. In the end, most traders are looking for holy grails, even if they believe they currently have "realistic" and sound expectations of draw down and profitability for their trading systems. If you would like to earn a true education in automated trading and learn how you too can design and build your own systems with realistic profit and draw down targets please consider joining Asirikuy.com, a website filled with educational videos, trading systems, development and a sound, honest and transparent approach to trading systems. I hope you enjoyed this article ! :o)

A New Day for Watukushay FE A Free Likely Long Term Profitable EA

On December 2009 I released a free expert advisor to provide my fellow traders with a likely long term profitable alternative from commercial expert advisors. My idea was to give everyone out there the chance to be long term profitable in automated trading by using a system which was built upon sound trading principles which they could use without having to pay a single dime. I named this system Watukushay For Everyone. Another objective of developing this EA was to document the whole development process and make it available within my Watukushay project, reason why the EA has the name of the project as part of its name. A month after its release and after a lot of work and research on the trading logic of Watukushay FE today I can say that I have achieved an improvement of the experts original setup in such a way that makes it, in my mind, one of the best free expert advisors available on the internet today.

I released Watukushay FE on December 25th with what I believed was a good profit to risk profile. The EA was able to make (according to simulations) approximately a 20% yearly profit with a 40% maximum draw down using an approximate risk of 5% per trade on the EUR/USD one hour chart. The only thing that I certainly did not like very much about the Watukushay FE expert advisor was the fact that the equity curve seemed to be overly centered over the years 2007 and 2008. The EA was able to adequately preserve capital on 2000-2007 with a very low profitability and then the profitability skyrocketed as we reached the years 2007-2008 something which made me believe that the EA may be in some way "curve fitted" to the "crisis type" market behavior which was characterized by very clear trends on very high volatility.

I however published the EA because I believed that the EA was able to adequately preserve capital on unfavorable market conditions so if it was indeed curve fitted to 2007-2008 market conditions then the EA would not be as profitable until a similar period arrived but it would also be able to preserve capital like it did between 2004-2007 on unfavorable market conditions (for the EA).

Nontheless, I am sort of a perfectionist and I knew that there was a lot more potential to the logic of watukushay FE. I had already done a careful analysis of the mathematics of the RSI indicator to develop the expert advisor but I knew that there was something else I could do to improve profitability. Then I realized that I had tied some variables on the expert together such that they depended on each other and tied the exit and entry criteria together. I decided to make the variables independent and redo all my analysis and coarse optimization process for the expert advisor. The results - which have been described in great detail on the ebook update released yesterday - show you how the Watukushay FE trading system was developed, analyzed and improved.

What came out of this process was an incredibly improved version of Watukushay FE. The new version is able to achieve an average yearly profit of 36% (calculated over initial equity) over 10 years with a maximum draw down of about 16% for a Risk 5 setting. The EA also achieves new equity highs every year, removing my fears of curve-fitting for the previous released version. As you see on the backtesting image shown below, Watukushay FE now has a much better risk/profit profile with a much higher quality equity curve (backtesting showed for Risk=1). Also note that Watukushay FE is still as hard to trade as all other long term profitable systems with draw down/break even periods that can last for several months.
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If you would like to trade watukushay FE on your live account, feel free to leave a comment here or on the Watukushay FE website (watukushayfe.blogspot.com) and join the 2 year live testing challenge of the EA ! Challenge yourself to achieve long term profitability :o). If you would like to learn more about the coding of Watukushay FE and how I designed, programmed and improved its profitability or if you would like to learn about other Watukushay experts I have programmed and how they too are likely long term profitable systems please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or subscribing to my weekly newsletter to receive updates and check the live and demo accounts I am running with several expert advisors. I hope you enjoyed the article !

The Reality is Most People are Terrible Losers Are you a Good or a Bad Loser

If you have read my blog for a while you may know that evaluating systems to understand draw down periods is one of my main concerns when using any automated or manual trading system. I have also written a few posts about the way in which the market limits the mass adoption of systems through the use of extensive and deep losing periods and I have also given people a few pointers - mainly based on true understanding of the trading strategies - so that they can survive these periods without simply using "faith" as a resource. However what I have found out is that the truth is quite simple : most people are simply very bad at losing and these makes them particularly vulnerable to fail in trading more than people who are "better" at surviving draw down periods. On todays post I will talk to you about the differences between good and bad losers and why people who do not become "good losers" are bound to end up failing in forex trading.

If you remember a few posts I wrote almost one year ago, I had started a project in which I attempted to train a few people to becomes successful at automated trading. As time has gone by (more on the progress of this project in a later post) I have noticed that their reactions to losing periods have been extremely negative and this often creates a quick aversion to the system they had been using. In general I believe that we - as humans - do not like losing very much and when this happens in trading we tend to look to change our system for another that allows us to profit without this bad side. Of course, most people believe that draw downs are inevitable but most believe that they can have extremely small draw down. Something which is also not possible.

This in turn leads people to get into systems that have very long profitable periods followed by extremely sharp and possibly devastating draw downs. This is why scalpers with large risk to reward ratios and martingales have such a huge fan base amongst new traders. These are systems that show very up trending equity curves with just "a few dips". New traders bite on this quickly because they dont like the feeling of losing and therefore they tend to lean towards systems that make them feel like "winners" most of the time.

This is disastrous since as time goes by and traders see how their accounts start to grow, they decide to take a bigger risk which ends up with a quicker wipe-out (for martingales a wipe-out will ALWAYS happen, this is a statistical certainty). Being a bad loser makes you tend towards systems that stimulate your "greed side" less than your "fear side". The market protects itself by making long term profitable systems fear based and unprofitable systems greed based, pretty clever indeed :o).

For this reason being a "good loser" is a vital part of successful trading and in fact this is a characteristic I have found all the profitable traders I know share. A draw down period doesnt cause them to evaluate or modify their trading systems and they never lean towards trading strategies which are obviously unsound, despite how "good" the simulations may look like (which at a closer look are most of the time flawed to some extent).

Chances are that if you are in the beginning of your trading career you are a "bad loser". If you tend to be happy with winning trades and sad with losing trades, making your emotions inherently tied with your trading results then this is a behavior you need to change as soon as possible if you truly want to become a successful trader. The bad part for most is that this journey is not easy and may be easier for those who can listen than for those who are stubborn about some trading paradigm that is simply not true.

As I have said many times, the solution is simply to gain a true understanding and - as I highlighted on yesterdays post - to acquire a business outlook over your forex trading experience. If you are trading a system you do not understand PERFECTLY and you dont have accurate risk, reward and worst case scenarios then I have to tell you that you have a HUGE probability to fail with its trading in the long term. A draw down period will come and you will fail to interpret if it is too deep or too long and you will promptly modify your strategy or change your system completely. Such a way of trading is very prone to failure and the way most traders approach expert advisor and manual system development in the beginning.

So if you want to succeed in trading, my advice is very simple : you need to become a "good loser", you need to understand that draw down periods (long and probably deep) are a part of the trading experience and that dealing with them is absolutely necessary to survive this game. However leaving through them with faith is bound to have the same devastating results and only TRUE understanding of EVERYTHING you are doing is bound to give you any long term successful results.

If you would like to learn more about what I have learned in automated trading and how you too can use automated trading systems to your advantage in forex trading please consider buying my ebook on automated trading or joining Asirikuy to receive all ebook purchase benefits, weekly updates, check the live accounts I am running with several expert advisors and get in the road towards long term success in the forex market using automated trading systems. I hope you enjoyed the article !

Forex Trading Robot: Trade Forex 24 Hours a Day

You need money to live a comfortable life. You need money to provide education to your children. And, you need money to eat. This is why you work, this is why people put up businesses, and this is why people go to great lengths to make money.

One great money-making career that you should consider is trading in the largest financial market in the world. Not only is Forex or Foreign Exchange the world's largest financial market, it is also the most liquid market in the world that operates 24 hours a day.

With trade exchanges that generates up to 2 trillion dollars a day, who wouldn't get attracted to trade in this very liquid market? If you are a regular person with a regular job who is looking for a way to earn extra money, you can consider entering the Forex market and trade.

However, Forex also has its risks and people who have traded in Forex without the proper knowledge and skill lost large amounts of money, and some have suffered extreme financial losses. This is why it is necessary for you to have enough knowledge and skills when you trade in the Forex market.

Today, there is a software available for you to use that can really make it easier for you to trade in the Forex market and earn that extra money you want. This software is often called the Forex trading robot.

Normally, Forex trading robots are accessed in the internet. It is very much like hiring a Forex broker but instead of a broker being human it would be in a form of a program. Since Forex trading robots don't sleep, this software can run 24 hours a day and therefore, giving you the advantage of not missing any money making opportunities when the Forex market changes.

Just imagine, it is now possible for you to trade in the Forex market like a professional. And, you can trade 24 hours a day. With this benefit, you will never miss another potentially profitable day in the Forex market. Also, you can even do this while you're at work.

All these are possible through the use of a Forex trading robot. However, before you subscribe to a Forex trading robot, you have to first determine if the software can really work to your advantage. You have to determine if the Forex trading robot can really trade effectively and efficiently.

You should also look for advanced trading features that the Forex trading robot can offer you.

Here are a few of the features you should look for in a Forex trading robot:

� 24 hour a day operation � You want this feature in a Forex trading robot so you will never miss a money making opportunity.

� Minimum investment requirements � Investments in a Forex trading robot should be minimal in order for you to afford.

� Trading automation technology � Since your money is at risk, you should choose a Forex trading robot with the latest trading technology existing in the market today.

These are some of the things you should look for in a Forex trading robot. With these features, you can be sure that you can really earn money.

Forex trading robots are perfect for people who wants to get involved in the Forex market but don't have the proper knowledge and skills to trade currencies.

It is also great for people who are afraid to invest their money in Forex. You can also benefit from a Forex trading robot if you want to concentrate on your day job and still earn cash in the Forex market.

Investing in the Forex market is one of the best ways to earn that extra cash you need. However, you should always remember that in Forex, you need to invest money to earn money. Also, you should also be able to afford to lose the money you invest in Forex.

Always remember that Forex, although a great money-maker for lots of people, also has equal risks that may cause you to lose money. With a Forex robot, you will be able to minimize the risk of losing money and increase you chances on earning potential 24 hours a day. With a Forex trading robot, you will never miss another trading day at the Forex market and take advantage of great market trends.