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Saturday, November 17, 2007

Create a Forex Strategy That Will Provide Massive Returns

Saturday, November 17, 2007
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Forex is a foreign-exchange currency market, where investors from all over the world buy and sell different currency pairs. The development of the Internet and computer programs have made it possible for people from all over the world to enter this multi-billion dollar market. But, most of them get caught up by the system. Start-ups with as much as $250 in their account are highly-likely to fail. If you want to invest in this market, you need a strategy. The goal behind a Forex trading strategy is to provide profit for the investor. The whole scheme is based on the idea of buying a given currency when it's undervalued and exchange it for another currency of normal or higher value. The difference will be your profit. This is a very simple strategy, but brings out the main idea of FX strategies.

No matter what type of strategy you apply, always remember that the chances of loosing are as real as the chances of winning. Be prepared to loose those money, but at the same time, do your best to be on the receiving end. Your strategy must be based on accurate and thorough studies of the market, up-to-date financial tools and information.

The big corporations that deal on the Forex market are able to make constant profits, because their strategies are made by professionals that have extensively researched the market, have special education and years of experience. Watch what large traders do and try to get some advices from them regarding the strategies available to you.

A Forex trading strategy must be influenced by the current economical and political news, situations and factors. You must follow the government issued reports, political news from all around the world, and economic trends in order to forecast the moves of the different currencies. Other strategies can be based on mathematical analysis of the forex charts for a given currency pair. The best idea is to combine both methods but no matter how good a given strategy is, unexpected events will always occur at one moment or another. Remember that it’s not the events the drive the market, but the anticipation of those events.

This is a two-sided market, as there are always two currencies that are involved, two different countries. It’s the news about those countries that make the difference. The goal when investing in currency is to be holding a currency that increases in value relative to another currency.

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The Five Secrets of Successful Forex Trading

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I think I had better start off by clarifying that there really are no “secrets” to trading in the forex market, but there are certain things that successful traders do that unsuccessful traders do not do – and vice versa.It seems to be a well established fact that 95% of all the people that trade the forex lose some or all of their investment while a small percentage of traders make a very handsome return. Why is this?

If we were able to make a detailed study of every successful trader, we would find that there is a common thread that runs through these people. The details that we could take from this thread could be considered to be the five secrets of successful forex trading.So here is the first “secret”. Successful Forex Traders love to trade. They love everything about trading. They love the studying, the planning, the scheming, the waiting, the anticipation, the execution, the result, the atmosphere and of course they love making lots of money.

These traders talk, eat, sleep and dream trading. It is not a job. It is a way of life. They DO NOT do it just for the money!In my forex trading business, one very common question that I am asked is “how do you overcome the boredom of being stuck in front of your PC all day?”.The answer is of course that I do not find it boring. I love trading and if I didn’t, I would find a different way to make a living.

The next “secret” is emotional control. Successful traders have learned the ability to trade without emotion. This does not mean that they do not care about the outcome of their trade, quite the opposite. Successful traders always trade to win, but they do not let their emotions play a part in the process. They just look at the cold hard facts and then either trade or wait. Successful traders also accept that there will be both winning and losing trades and they treat both with the same lack of emotion.The next “secret” is to have a system. Now it really does not matter what system you use so long as it produces more and bigger winning trades than losing ones. This is referred to in trading circles as “an edge”. If you do not have an edge, then I highly recommend that you consider the trading system that I co-developed called The Amazing Stealth Forex Trading System. It is available from the website: www.stealthforex.com

The penultimate “secret” is to be disciplined. This means having the self discipline to STICK TO THE PLAN. There is a great maxim in trading. Plan the trade and trade the plan. If you have a winning system, make sure that you have the discipline to stick to the rules exactly.

The final “secret” is to have enough money to trade safely. In many ways this should be RULE NUMBER ONE. More people fail to make money when trading on the forex through insufficient trading capital than for any other single reason.

When trading it is vital to adhere to strict money management and capital conservation techniques. Money management must be an integral part of any good trading system, and of course you should never trade with money that if lost would cause you or your family financial difficulty.If you can take onboard and learn these not so secret “secrets”, there is no reason why you should not be able to join the ranks of successful forex traders.

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Sunday, October 28, 2007

Backtesting System

Sunday, October 28, 2007
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How long should you backtest a system?




I am frequently asked how long one should backtest a trading system. Though there's no easy answer, I will provide you with some guidelines. There are a few factors that you need to consider when determining the period for backtesting your trading system:

  • Trade frequency
    How many trades per day does your trading system generate? It’s not important how long you backtest a trading system; it’s important that you receive enough trades to make statistically valid assumptions*: If your trading system generates three trades per day, i.e. 600 trades per year, then a year of testing gives you enough data to make reliable assumptions*. But if your trading system generates only three trades per month, i.e. 36 trades per year, then you should backtest a couple of years to receive reliable data.
  • Underlying contract
    You must consider the characteristics of the underlying contract. The chart below shows the average daily volume of the e-mini S&P:

    Backtesting System graphic

    It doesn’t make sense to backtest a trading system for the e-mini S&P before 1999, because the contract simply didn't exist! In my opnion it doesn't make sense to backtest an e-mini trading system before 2002 because at that time the market was completely different; less liquidity and different market participants. I believe that a reliable testing period for the e-mini S&P are the years 2002 – 2004.


* What is "statistically valid"?


Recently I received an article from a Ph.D in statiscs. He explained the correlation between the sample size and the "margin of error" in the table below. The bigger the sample the smaller the margin of error, but usually a sample date of 200 trades should be sufficent. If your trading system generates enough trades, then you should use 500 - 600 trades.

Back testing a System

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