Fast Forward - Some Success!

It's been quite a while since I've posted. Since the last post I've given up on the FOREX platform and REALLY did follow my own advice - ally myself with professional traders.

Today, I'm investing with CTA's - commodity Trading Advisers. Essentially, a CTA will maintain a fund, trading it according to his/her strategy in defined markets. I watch a particular CTA for 6 months before even considering investing, and if the CTA performance profile fits what I'm looking for (solid returns, low volatility, 20%> draw downs) I'll invest in one unit of the fund.

After a year, if the unit is performing in a way I expect (based upon what I've seen previously, and my investment expectations) I'll consider purchasing additional units.

As of today, I'm in two funds. One I've been with now for over 2 years, and am currently earning about 2.5% per month on my money. The second, I only recently started in March and have broken even (well, over that time frame I've made under 1% total). The fund manager claims that an account needs to be 'in' for at least 3-6 months to be fully participating in the fund strategy. Per my approach, I'll keep my money in for a year and thus will review results in March of 2013. As an aside, I monitor performance daily, updating a google docs spreadsheet.

A realization

I guess it's about time I take some of my own advice.

I've always told people, if you want something done right, take it to a professional - if your house is on fire, do you want your neighbor with his garden hose trying to put out the fire, or are you calling the fire department? If you need to go to court, will you have your friend across the street represent you or would you get a lawyer?

In this case, do I want to trust my money to a system that was developed by an amateur, and either have to run and/or monitor the system myself? This is what I've been contemplating so far.

First I saw automated systems and could see nothing but dollar signs. Now after 2 months of study, have come to find that systems need to be not only designed for success by people who do that type of work full time, but also need to be closely monitored by people who know what they're doing.

This is especially true if:

1. you intend to invest a substantial amount of money
2. you don't want to have to tend to the system on a regular basis (daily).

Tending to the system includes ensuring the trades are going smoothly, the platform is doing what its supposed to and the data is coming in the way it should. In the forex systems I've been looking at, each of these was a variable even with the best developed systems. On good systems, trades were placed well, but the platform, data, and brokers hosting the platforms are all variables.

So, where am I today? I need to find a brokerage house that runs and maintains the platforms, knows and works with the system authors it trades, and is consistent in its fees and data.

Still working on it!

There's a lot to forex trading, just like any other sort of investing. The difference this time for me is that I'm using what's important to me to provide focus:

• I have a day job
• I don't have time to learn another profession
• there are people good at forex trading out there who tell you exactly what they do
• there are systems that automate those instructions

So, my focus isn't to become a forex trading guru, which is a relief for me. My focus is on understanding the tools that interpret the instructions from the gurus, test them, and if they make sense, use them to guide my trading.

I'm picking up a lot of learning along the way, learning about myself and what sort of trading style appeals to me - mostly fairly non-aggressive trading. I'm happy to make slow and steady gains.

I've found quite a bit of info, as you can see on the right hand side.

I don't think I have the time needed to become a full time trader...I have bills to pay! However, there are tons of systems, auto trading systems, that do fairly well.

I need to be careful not to just throw money at them. Some are free, some are one time fee, some are subscription based. Some are MT4 EA's, some are parts of broker offerings, and some tie into broker offerings. FXCM is the broker that seems to have the most systems working with it, and apparently is one of the more well used brokers, if their claims to $500B moving through their brokerage each day - that's about a third of the entire forex market each day.

I'm testing a few zulutrade systems, and I need to gather up some MT4 EA's to test as well.

I'd like to find one system that does at least OK, and start with that. As my account size grows, I'd like to add in more systems.

For now, the plan is to open a mini account, and grow it until it can handle auto trading systems with full lot sizes.

I think the next step is to continue looking for systems on Zulu, so I can test a batch of them at once. There's only one on Zulu I think is conservative enough so far.

Key elements - short trade times, high win %, low draw down, at least 2.5 months time actually traded.

What's been going on

I've spent the last few months or so traveling down different paths -
- developing a simple real estate investing tool, helps make a decision on whether a particular property is a financially worthwhile investment. Stopped working on this because I got it to the point where it's useful to me. Future - develop it into a website to help small real estate investors.
- developing a simple trading system (in the context of the stock market). Stopped working on this for two reasons - frustration with the tool, and then total information overload to the point of analysis paralysis. I've learned more since I left this project and think I can get past the frustration around the tools, and have ideas on updating my simple system. (note, I didn't say it was good, just simple :-) )
- internet marketing - tried my hand at affiliate marketing, but I think this is just not me. I'm of the opinion that I really need to market my own site, not someone else's. I've found tons of great tools, information resources, etc. This is definitely on hold until I have a site that I'm personally invested in to market.
- forex trading - this is where I've been spending a lot of my recent free time, going through educational materials, and doing practice trades on a demo account. Looking into forex robots, signal providers, as a way to get into the market without having to learn much about it....ha! I've learned a lot about my impatient style, and am learning to trust my trading instincts a little more. So...rather than entering a trade on a positive chart indicator, and then jumping out as soon as there's any sign of a loss, sticking with it for a while to see how it all plays out.

The few times I've traded my plan (either chart indicators or news) I've had a profit. The rest of the time I've had losses.

Added the link lists on the side of this blog.

Test Post

This is to see how easy it is to post MT4 stats pages

For now I'll do this

Current

WTF

Where am I planning to escape from? From corporate America.

Why am I selling my time to make these people rich? I'm smart, I have resources of my own. Why can't I be smart and create something for myself, so I can have my own time?

In the end, I hope and pray I'm not just switching corporate masters, still spending my time for someone else.

We'll see what happens.