DaxZair's Trading Journal

[daxzair]

Stats:
Alpari-UK Live account on Classic-2 servers running GI since 14th of July 2011.


Initial deposit: 3000USD in GLD. GLD is a gold stock with higher spreads than gold.

Short term trading objectives: Invest most of my capital in the Genuine Invest bandwagon for the duration of this summer if the trend continues.
Long term trading objectives: Expand investments in commodities that earn a small, but steady ROI (long term).

Some time this October, split my funds in half to keep in a safer account and do so every 2 months. This will bring down the ROI of 85%/month to approximately 45-50% per month.

Gold update: So far I'm very glad of the earnings made from gold.


Here's my take on gold. Historically, gold offers an exponential upward trend (40 last years). Gold supply increases linearly. Far too slow for the world economy. With the current Euro crisis, I believe that some countries will seek commodities to back their currencies instead of letting them float or be manipulated by countries and banks. I cannot foresee a different trend unless big changes to the economy system are made. If it is in gold's favor, gold might end up skyrocketing while all currencies hit rock bottom. Sounds like a doomsday scenario.

[daxzair]

Please submit any suggestions anytime

My name is Tim. I am 20 years old and I'm in college in Quebec, Canada in electrical engineering. I've been working as of march 2008 in the Canadian military reserve. I currently occupy a commanding post and I love my job. It's the best student job offered in my area. With an income of over 20,000$ a year as a student, I'm looking at areas in which I can invest in order to get best ROI in the long term.

When anyone first reads about Forex they have two possible reactions. Too good to be true scam or I'll be rich tomorrow. The truth is Forex is like poker. Something I've been avoiding all my life. 90% are net loosers. I know a guy living in my neighbourhood that made 400,000$ on poker this year. The truth is that Forex like poker is skills + emotion control. And I know emotions are something I'll have to go over because loosing months are guaranteed and I'm going to have to learn because there aren't any shortcuts.

I've been doing a lot of reading in e-books and research in the Forex hype that started when NASDAQ was loosing investors. All this time I've been researching and testing out techniques in scalping without the use of EAs. A few months ago I've reached the conclusion that it would be too time consuming and that I wouldn't know how my emotions would play on trading.

A lot of research I've done is inconclusive due to obsolete or risky strategies like EA scalping. I've recently stumbled upon pipcop.com in a world where 95% of websites who promote their affiliates regardless of performance. Once I've read Rick's Journal, I've realised that I've stumbled on a true gold mine of information. I'm going to trust his recommendations and test them out for myself. With the help of his journal, I'll start-up my first live account on ForexVPS.com on alpari-UK with the Euro currency . I trust the Euro more than the USD as of december 2010. I have a hunch that the USD could fall lower than the historical support level. I do not trust the American market and that is why I'm in FX and not the stock exchange. Note that these are all personal opinions.

Anyhow, my current plan is to open a 1000euro account on Alpari-UK with ForexVPS.com 35$/mo plan hosted in the US. I do not believe that ping lag will have a big impact on trades made with long term EAs. I will not be using any form of scalpers nor will I even do research on them. They are disasters waiting to happen. I might migrate the VPS to the UK some day if my income is sufficient. As mentioned previously, I'm looking for an ROI of 40%/yr. If I find a system that works at 80%/yr with a level of risk that I can cope with, I'll be more than happy. Hopefully I'm not delusional.

My thanks to rick for reviewing the EAs I'll be starting out with:
Teyacanani from asirikuy member's section
Move_V1 from Tradingsystemforex.com mermber's section

Here's a personnal list of things I would like to avoid in Forex:
MarketMaker Brokers, Scalper EAs
I will add or remove things to and from this list.

[daxzair]

A lot of research I've done is inconclusive due to obsolete or risky strategies like EA scalping. I've recently stumbled on pipcop in a world where 95% of websites who promote their affiliates regardless of performance. Once I've read Rick's Journal, I've realised that I've stumbled on a true gold mine of information. I'm going to trust his recommendations and test them out for myself. With the help of his journal, I'll start-up my first live account on ForexVPS on alpari-UK with the Euro currency . I trust the Euro more than the USD as of december 2010. I have a hunch that the USD could fall lower than the historical support level. I do not trust the American market and that is why I'm in FX and not the stock exchange. Note that these are all personal opinions.

Anyhow, my current plan is to open a 1000euro account on Alpari-UK with ForexVPS. 35$/mo plan hosted in the US. I do not believe that ping lag will have a big impact on trades made with long term EAs. I will not be using any form of scalpers nor will I even do research on them. They are disasters waiting to happen. I might migrate the VPS to the UK some day if my income is sufficient. As mentioned previously, I'm looking for an ROI of 40%/yr. If I find a system that works at 80%/yr with a level of risk that I can cope with, I'll be more than happy. Hopefully I'm not delusional.

[daxzair]

My thanks to Rick for reviewing the EAs I'll be starting out with:
Teyacanani from asirikuy member's section
Move_V1 from Tradingsystemforex mermber's section

Here's a personnal list of things I would like to avoid/dislike in Forex:
MarketMaker Brokers, Scalper EAs
I will add or remove things to and from this list.

[rsmereka]

Hi Tim,

Glad to made it here.

I have a couple of comments.

Alpari UK is interpreted to be a market maker by some people. The reviews on forexpeacearmy.com (FPA) are mixed. I have been with them for two years now (I think today is my two year anniversary) and I am not concerned about these comments. I make my money. I have spent hundreds of hours researching ECN and STP brokers and cannot find any compelling reason to switch. I almost switched a while ago to TheCollectiveFX but backed out when I realized that the leverage was 100:1 and I was running scalpers at the time which required a high lot size (and deadly risk:reward) and needed at least 200:1 leverage .

I was determined to move my VPS to forexvps.com UK servers thinking that the latency would improve. So I called the forexvps.com support people and asked them to ping my Alpari UK server from one of their UK container's (that's what they call the virtual environment). The result was within 1ms of what I am getting now from a US-based container (19-20ms). I deemed the switch not worth the time, effort and extra cost.

40%/yr ROI is totally doable IMHO. Your risk on this would also be low. 40% over 12 months is about 3.33%/mo. If I were you, I would run Teyacanani at risk 3 and Move_V1 at about 4. I think that is a good place to start your 10+ year backtests.

Rick

[daxzair]

Wow that'll get me started for sure. I've been meaning to ask ForexVPS the latency on their US servers to Alpari-UK. I've known it to be around 1-2ms for thir UK servers, but I was worried that it was over 200ms from the US.

I believe that market makers hunt scalpers more than other type clients due to their spread tactics. If I were a scalper I would definitely pick a different broker , but if Alpari-UK has worked for you then why risk trying another broker . I want a well established broker with good support that will not put me at rick of loosing everything because they're bankrupt. That's probably my biggest fear and I don't know if it's well founded or not.

Thanks for the risk recommendations. Tho I'll have to take in consideration my VPN fees. I wouldn't want to make 33euro with a 1000eur investment and a vpn that costs me 35$. That's like making no profit. I understand I'll either have to invest more or raise the risk until I can transfer additional funds.

[rsmereka]

Originally Posted by daxzair

Wow that'll get me started for sure. I've been meaning to ask ForexVPS the latency on their US servers to Alpari-UK. I've known it to be around 1-2ms for thir UK servers, but I was worried that it was over 200ms from the US.

I believe that market makers hunt scalpers more than other type clients due to their spread tactics. If I were a scalper I would definitely pick a different broker , but if Alpari-UK has worked for you then why risk trying another broker . I want a well established broker with good support that will not put me at rick of loosing everything because they're bankrupt. That's probably my biggest fear and I don't know if it's well founded or not.

Thanks for the risk recommendations. Tho I'll have to take in consideration my VPN fees. I wouldn't want to make 33euro with a 1000eur investment and a vpn that costs me 35$. That's like making no profit. I understand I'll either have to invest more or raise the risk until I can transfer additional funds.

I ran scalpers with Alpari UK for almost two years on my live/real money account in profit so I can safely say there is no issue there. Alpari is also a big (not the biggest) multi-national broker . I feel perfectly secure with them in the knowledge that they are not going to disappear with my funds.

If you start with a very small live account, you are just going to have to eat the VPS fees. I know that's a drag but the alternative is to run your trading platform at home using your ISP's connection which is not good. I did that for over a year and I have a good (not terribly fast) but stable ISP and there issues at times. The last thing I want is to be at work and find my trading platform has lost connection because of Internet connection issues. You can figure a budget for the VPS based on your account size and estimated ROI. I think you mentioned 40% annual which is 3.33%/month. Here is the way I calculated it:

1,100 * 0.0333 = 36.63

So, you would need around a minimum 1,100 of equity to start just to pay for the VPS. Keep in mind that this is based on a monthly average ROI. Some months will be higher and some will be lower. This also assumes that your EA(s) of choice do not enter a prolonged period of DD which may happen.

Rick

[daxzair]

I purchased a basic ForexVPS server and so far so good. I like the service and the package. The server chosen is in the US and has a nice 17ms average ping with Alpari-UK.


Added info in first post. See edit.

[rsmereka]

Originally Posted by daxzair

I purchased a basic ForexVPS server and so far so good. I like the service and the package. The server chosen is in the US and has a nice 17ms average ping with Alpari-UK.


Added info in first post. See edit.

Great stuff,

I went to your MyFXBook link and nothing was there.

You are getting a faster response that I am. Your ping was 17ms on a demo account and I am getting about 19 on a live/real money account

I also noticed that you are using Google Chrome browser. Note that Google put a lot of big brother stuff into Chrome (because Google is essential a marketing company and they make money by collecting stuff about us). I use a variant of Chrome called Iron. Iron has been stripped of the big brother stuff and there is a portable version that can be put on a stick and does not need to be installed (I love portable apps). Check this for a comparison between Google Chrome and Iron.

Rick

[daxzair]

2 ms difference is negligible and the time of day in which you ping will influence the ping by some degree. Note that I've pinged Alpari-UK's web servers. Their web servers may not be hosted at the same place as their live/demo servers, but that is unlikely. I'll try to find the IP of their live servers and re-ping then or do a whois query to determine their geographical location. In any case 2 ms very negligible. A ping of 200ms+ would be something to worry or consider.

I'll definitely check out chrome. I've been considering getting chromium before. I'll look at Iron vs Chromium support for extensions and I'll use it on my main OS as well. Thanks for the privacy tip!