Bad choice

As I was saying I`ve switched my FX broker now I trade with FX Open and in case you want to know this broker cheats or tries to do it in the worst way possible. While apparently everything is ok, spread ok (not very good but acceptable) order fills with little delay but acceptable and at the surface you think everything is ok ... they lower your margin level during the trading session without warning. Meaning if you for example have opted to trade with an 200:1 leverage and peacefully place trades thinking the leverage they give you is 0.5% you might find yourself in error. The procedure is one of the most dangerous way of scamming traders, I`m not sure if its legal. Of course I`ve closed the account. As a matter a fact the leverage was lowered to something I`ve never experienced in my life. It was something like 160-170:1, yes, and I say "something like" because I don`t know what leverage they set, I did not had the patience to precisely find it, my software calculates any leverage between 50:1 (2%) and 0.5% or 500:1 but only in 10 step increments, I could not find the precise leverage that I had on my positions with FX Open at that time it was something between 160:1 and 170:1 I`m not sure and for that matter it was not important what was important was that they did that. What happens in this industry especially if trading with non regulated brokers  is incredible.

Futures

For the moment I`m back at my futures demo which, btw, now is on a 1 million account. Even though without being a big issue, on a real million account I might experience some slippage every now and then from what I can say. Of course is hard to say unless you trade on a real account and gradually find out the slippage your strategy can incur and other factors that might affect your trading and in consequence find a way to solve the issues. In any case plunging in was a lot of fun and theoretically I`ve made like 100K in one day, theoretically because like I said unlike on the 100K account where given the big market depth slippage was out of the question on this one things might be a little different in real. By little different I mean that due to some slippage, I have to mention I have traded during the European session when MD was not so large as in the picture, I might not have achieved the same results, however the profit is big enough to mind not even if assuming that due to slippage it would have been cut in to half. My trading today was inspired by this post http://donmillereducation.com/journal/2017/08/30/my-fall-2017-goals-be-the-ball/ of the one and only Don Miller, of course I`m on demo and its different when it comes to emotions involved, but then I`m trading futures for about 1-2 weeks does this not compensate???..probably not but still :))? Oh if anyone reads this I am trading FX for 10 years so do not believe I just come to trade futures and I kick ass already after 2 weeks :D; And here is how profits look on the 2 accounts (demo accounts) of 500K each:

Yes,yes its not 100K but 95K or whatever I don`t have good math or trading skills I`m permanently lucky in the markets. I`ve struggled a lot to make it 100K but at the end of the day I must rise the white flag... I was defeated...or was I? So close, tomorrow I will not do this again even though if you want to bet on 100K real dollars I will do it again :)))

Starting with tomorrow I`ll be back on FX real account with what was one of the best brokers I have ever had in this industry, as I previously said in a post, and should it happen that you got 1 million  real cash and you want to keep 1 million real cash and still spend like a millionaire in the same time ask for help ;)

After a long and painful debate

...with myself, I`ve decided I can not trade futures on a real account yet because the cash would not do under no circumstance. Yesterday for a moment, just for a moment it has occurred to me that maybe, just maybe I could give it a try with some micro futures contracts but after a closer look I came to the conclusion that is not a good idea at all so here I am back with the dinosaurs  having zero trust in the FX market honesty or in the game fair play so to speak. I could go slow but I`ve payed 2.25% commissions on money transfer and such I need like 4 percent only to get it back. I used to make this kind of percents easy in a day but lately this market does not move. I mean is moving but so slow that most of the time I`m quite sure I could get a one hour nap after taking a position without even setting a way to protect my account because it does not go anywhere fast most of the time, its so boring that when I hit the close position button - as an example - my charts make me take a look at the account terminal to double check if they were closed because the chart is not updating due to the fact that there is no tick coming for seconds in row. The only danger that you could face in such a market is the danger of getting pissed off by the fact you can`t make a lot of money not because you can not make a lot of money but because the market is dead most of the times (and when its moving you are not around). At least I`m trading with a new broker, I`ve always planned and wanted to trade with this broker but somehow never got to do it until now. Hopefully its as good as I think it is.  

As for my futures accounts, one of them is dead for some reason (that`s the problem with demo accounts you don`t know when the broker has the bright idea to update something or close it for whatever reason) and I need to open a new one with history being lost half of it. Won`t matter to much though but it is nice to have it just in case someone mistrusts what you write on the blog. Anyway it was only like nine days or something and basically irrelevant. Problem would be now that with me paying attention to the FX I will be trading less on the futures account because that one is a demo this one is real and either I like it or not I am more interested in the real account than the demo,. However when it comes to playing with money not pennies that  demo is closer to the reality because that is where serious traders play and that is where I`ll be doing business also...as soon as...as soon as.

To just explain you how dead is the FX market right now when I`m looking at it the range of the day is 21 points on the pair I am following. 21 pips...you could make the pip value as large as you want but there`s a catch: this market can move 300 pips out of nowehere and all of the sudden in 10 minutes and then you are dead so you would be better of just waiting. Waiting isn`t that bad though, its not a hard job to basically stare at a monitor and do nothing at all however one is always in the danger of sleeping...omg I`ve just finished this text and the range is now 22 pips, amazing.  

Back to the Dino`s

I`m thinking, somewhat horrified, that since Monday or Tuesday I have to go back at trading the FX with the dinosaurs. The game is far of  having fair rules still even if the FX market was opened to the public back in 1998 from what I know and while you would not think anyone can actually pay attention to you if you traded with pennies - after all there are so many idiots in the world why would anyone spot you among them all, you might be wrong as soon as you start to win... Well, even so the times when one can be "played" are limited there`s no doubt about it and such, while I would obviously prefer to be anonymous - I kind of like the term nobody when it comes about others seeing my orders, I am not worried I won`t be able to profit from it. The thing is that the market is to big with to many players to have a market worried about one so despite the dinosaurs second look and lack of order anonymity plus other outrageous rules of the game I believe you are not in danger of being hunted more than everyone else is even if you want to trade with millions. As I`ve always said most likely if you lose money in the markets is only your fault, not brokers fault not anyone`s else but your`s. Obviously anyone with enough capital and a little brain will go trade on an exchange where the rules are for everyone and most likely nobody has an unfair advantage, except if the advantage is given by your strategy which is perfectly legal and valid from what I know - that`s the point of the game isn`t it?
Trading on an exchange would be trading futures not FX but due to capital constraints, with real money, FX would have to do for a while. As for my futures demo I will still continue growing...
The best part of everything is that markets are to big, to big for anyone and anything whoever or whatever that "anyone" or "anything" is...

        

Order Types

Trading futures on demo and trading futures on a real account might not be the same thing in most cases. Not in this particular one though. Unless my sight is damaged the depth of the market available with ES will under no circumstance be a problem for instant fill market orders. If you are on demo and you use limit orders it might be an issue because as you expect limit orders in real are not instantly filled while on the demo at first touch of limit price order is filled. I do not use limit orders when trading, I seldom do in general actually. I`ve remembered the issue with limit orders on demo accounts today when out of nothing better to do I`ve placed one and was filled at touch - the price went trough that level so even if demo it was valid as in real.  

That being said, today I was in the mood to trade but as I am lately without plunging in with everything I have - which btw, after the precision I have I would have made 30K in a day but never mind because its enough to plunge in once and be precise the wrong time so forget about it - however after the fact I`m kind of having regrets, I mean why make 3K in a day when you can make 30K...risk/reward thats why, this thoughts permanently bother me, its like I`m always making to little to satisfy my ...I`m not sure what is it. Anyway I`m not giving up on those thoughts because I would hate to see my equity line drop 30% as I said its the maximum expected drawdown ever. Maybe I`ll do it when I`m up 100% but not sooner. I have to plunge in once I really have to do it its itchy I`m not sure you understand, but not now, not today, not tomorrow not until I have increased the account enough to not care anymore if I lose part of my demo cash. Real or demo I`m still me and I would think and do the same things, especially since there is no difference between this demo and the way it would be in real which is very important. Plunging in is not bad as long as you know that even the worst situation can be fixed and besides nobody could ever explain to you the feeling in case of victory. As it goes now its the same feel like fishing, you know when some people go to the river and drop the stick or whatever in the water and just sit there doing nothing, no thrill, no fun, no nothing...hmmm you know those serious guys that analyze the markets and provide information and "serious"  financial advice? Well, they`re not traders, trading is "putting on the lucky shoes" - I remember one particular movie with one particular trader now - thats trading. In a nutshell what I want to say is that I did not once have to put in "my lucky shoes" up to now, it goes like fishing, profits look good enough though...

Assuming you could do it also how would you go for it? I`m looking at this equity line and I`m realizing I made 12K in 8 days - yes its demo but only coz` I`m short of 100K and for that matter at this speed its really of no consequence if I`m delayed. And where do you put the fact that I told you I feel like fishing I mean I could really do so much more if I really want to...    

Related to https://hnwtrading.blogspot.ro/p/100k-futuresdemo.html, trading is easy but... you should be aware of all the risks associated with alternative investments, the risk of loss in alternative investments including commodities, futures, and foreign exchange, can be substantial. You should therefore carefully consider whether such trading is suitable for you in light of your financial condition. The high degree of leverage that is often obtainable in alternative investments including commodities, futures, and foreign exchange, can work against you as well as for you. The use of leverage can quickly lead to large losses as well as large gains. Only funds you can afford to lose should be placed at risk and anyone who does not have such funds should not participate in alternative investments including commodities, futures, and foreign exchange.  You have been warned...

Now,

Difference between trading FX and trading futures is small, there is some information that you have in first and its missing in the second but viceversa is true also. Like for example this:

Horizontal histogram representing volume at price is very nice to have, anyway for the moment aside from the obvious I have no clue what to do with it, don`t need it anyway but then again I`m looking at it with the hope that one day I will get some ideas.

Aside from that for the moment I find myself often making fat finger mistakes. I can fix or prevent some trough some coding, trying to find the most comfortable trading environment. Actually I`m doing what I`ve always done trying to trade with the smallest effort possible and without mistakes, its not working bad up to now. I`m almost satisfied...  

While waiting

If you read my previous posts you know that I`m in the process of moving (still) my account to other broker. Moving cash is a lot more expensive than I`ve wished to be and because of that I will be delayed a few more days until my account is open and ready to go. Up until then I`m growing my demo futures account - in to what purpose I do not know but since all I know is to trade, demo or real, I`m doing what I know. Trading futures as I said its a delight, far more pleasant than FX since, as you probably know the price action is a bit smoother and looking at my trading platforms all sort of ideas come in to my mind, ideas that has to do with order sending and other automatic processes that can be implemented. Nevertheless, its fine as it is now with just basic order implementation, as I`m lacking motivation to recreate the entire suite of algos that deal with orders and account, which for that matter are not that complicated as the important part its already done.
When I`ve started to trade futures on this demo or better said to adapt my FX trading to futures I could as well do it with 6E which is the futures contract of EURUSD FX spot and I would have been more accustomed with price action however I`m glad I`ve changed to something different like ES because ES is the "ultimate" financial instrument that can be traded due to its huge liquidity and up to now my theory according to which I could trade any financial instrument with the same success was confirmed - actually I did not need to confirm it, I knew it, but as I said its delighting. Speaking of liquidity issues with my strategy as is now is completely irrelevant up to a capital with seven zeroes on ES that`s a fact. If you want to buy or sell and feel important doing it ES is the way to go, I mean...shall we dance? :)  

...brokers!!!

Today the story is with and about brokers. After giving up on Darwinex, not because they as a brokerage house were bad, they were actually one of the best both in providing the right conditions and execution terms, I was searching for a broker that provides a multi account management platform and I`ve found it at Global Prime. Opening the account everything went straight forward and the support was very good, platform conditions almost as good as Darwinex, which I repeat was one of the best if not the best up until now.  Global Prime explains on their website that the leverage when opening the account is 100:1 with the client being able to rise the leverage upon request. Not bad I thought, good conditions, multi account management platform everything looks ok. Yes, I know you might wonder if that`s all I take in to consideration when choosing a broker and the answer is yes that`s all because there is pretty much nothing else that you can find out - they all the same more or less and if you ask and do research you would probably not find anything except a number of bad reviews equal with good reviews on the forums. And do not ask them because they will all ensure you their conditions are the most favorable and honest so...useless. The only way to find out if you can trade with a broker is to actually trade with them on real accounts, most likely you will find out very fast if there`s anything wrong or not. With that in mind I`ve opened the Global Prime account with an leverage of 100:1 as I said. Nothing wrong up to this point. Later on however I`ve asked for a leverage change because my capital is way to small for playing with a leverage of 100:1 and actually making it count. And then it started: after providing them with some answers to some question they have asked I was informed that they can not increase my margin due to the fact that  my risk on the strategy is to high .... WTF!? I mean what do they care about my risk their job is to fill orders and I wasn`t like having 100 mil dollars to put their company in to bankruptcy if I  win and they play against me. Aside from that they state that they do not play against clients so what then? Brokers job is to fill orders and win commissions that`s all. My risk or your risk is not brokers business, period. So before committing more I`ve run as soon as I`ve heard their theories regarding my risk. :)) Of course you can feel free to open a Global Prime account but bear in mind that if they agree with rising margin and they do not involve in your trading business they might have other ideas about your strategy, ideas I do not want to find out about. So here I am very amused and in the same time a little bit mad because I did lost deposit and withdrawal fees for nothing. That with Global Prime, the first broker in history that actually verifies trader`s strategy being to risky or not, I wonder maybe it was not about risk but about reward, you know they are closely related, never mind. Now, I do not want to put Global Prime in a bad position or give them a bad image they actually kindly explained to me everything, they even did the math (well some math because they need a lot more to match mine) what I was unable to understand and made me smile was WHY? HaHa and :( I lost withdrawal and deposit fees which were quite large 3.25% a trip? that`s a lot. Of course between you and me if this guys would have allowed me to trade I would have got those back in no time regardless of their theories. Because I haven`t had pretty much anything to do today I`m having fun with the demo account at Global Prime, demo system that allows margin increase, I repeat again allows margin increase which again is not right if you ask me but whatever. Ask me how I play on the demo :P? Full risk against the obvious trend and honestly speaking the damage on the demo is recoverable as soon as the market goes once my way. You have to wonder, if I win when I`m wrong I wont lose when I`m right right? so maybe that`s the problem ;) You know I consider them very smart actually they found the single way to prevent my business, the single honest way because they could as well f me on all sides when placing orders so from this point of view at least I`m not mad at them but actually respect their choice. That was my experience with Global Prime and again, their trading conditions are almost as good as Darwinex so  in the end they do not deserve bad mouthing and maybe it was just my experience and unique. 

Futures

I have not traded today at all, yesterday I did but not today because I`m playing with Global Prime demo system up until I get my cash transferred. Obviously as soon as I`m having my real FX account moved somewhere I will play less on the futures, its pointless anyway I`ll show you the equity line someday and you will see why.     

The easy way

Adapting my FX to futures is hardly an easy job as the way everything adds up is different than the way is done on the FX market. My luck, so to speak, is that is different in a easier way or other way stated is far more easy (its not easy at all but easy for me) to adapt FX to futures than it would be the other way around. Actually the other way around would be close to impossible in a few days as I`ve done it. Of course as I said even now I`m unsure of all the numbers on the screen but whenever I see something that I forgot I`m fixing it - like today I`ve found a few more mistakes and I`m sure I`ll keep on finding them for a while.

Since the platform used on FX was MT4 the easiest way to go to futures was to choose MT5 as trading platform and its the only platform that could have provided all the required tools to adapt so fast. 

I find futures trading...delighting if I`m allowed to say that. Today I did not trade FX due to the fact I`m moving my account to a different broker so I could entirely focus my attention to futures and I`ve nicely arranged everything just as it should be and peacefully relaxing watching a nice market moving. Excuse me but, FX is an ugly market and I was so used to it that this one (ES) feels like a walk in the park.

The result for the day is positive around 0.5% (+$683) and I`m quite sure I won`t do this for long as its pointless, works as my FX. Speaking of results, in terms of percentages the other two days were -1.41% and +3.42% the calculation was made with only half of balance in the previous two days and was incorrectly showing wins and losses twice as large - told you I discover small mistakes everyday - nevertheless that`s why I`m doing this in the first place.

Oddities

This morning as I was trying to log in in to my Darwinex account I found out that my password does not work anymore. After asking for help at their support desk and get an irrelevant answer to my request to reset the password, you can see their answer in the picture I`ve decided to close the account and move on. The Darwin has nothing to do with my strategy anyway and I rather prefer to control the risk. While I still believe Darwinex is (or can be) a very good choice and their algorithms that lead the Darwins are very good my algos are as good as theirs and such I do not need a Darwin to override my trades. Aside from that another thing happened yesterday when just out of curiosity I logged in to myfxbook to verify the account performance I`ve found out that it differs from the performance verified at Darwinex. My account performance as verified by Darwinex showed an 30% return while on myfxbook shows a 27% return. Not important whichever it is - I did not check the results everyday but I know for sure that this last Monday I was in profit and myfxbook showed a red number so maybe it was wrong there or something - the thing is that with such things happening I prefer to move on.  So for the time being I`m taking a few days break from fx, I`ve ripped a roughly 30% profit up to now and I`ll continue with another broker. Darwinex itself might not be the issue but some of the people that work there might be. I fail to understand how a worker can send this answer to a trader, check the picture bellow :))), I mean come on I did not discovered trading or MT4 platform yesterday. I was searching for a broker that provides MAM accounts anyway so I`m moving, the performance remains though and is verified, in a strange way the two companies that verified my performance showed 2 different results which is real, matters not, what matters is that something is wrong and Darwinex should have not allow it because is their name and their company, nor the next broker I chose should allow such things to happen. I think I need to ask Darwinex why the performance differs on myfxbook I forgot to do that since I was busy with the log in problem. either Darwinex performance was right and my account was somehow hacked which can explain why I could not log in anymore either Darwinex is providing misleading information which is so undesirable for their own business, to be honest I believe Darwinex is an honest broker but then is not in their interest to catch the hackers or at least communicate me what is wrong actually and how a FCA regulated company can have such issues or allow such issues without simply inform the client on what is wrong?... because something is wrong no doubt about it. Its not about cash or something the amounts are insignificant and 3% difference in performance does not matter except from a reliability point of view.  

My account verified by myfxbook:

It writes a red number next to this week gains and while I did not check it I know for sure that both yesterday and the day before (Monday) I was in profit so hacked? Darwinex should check it for the sake of their integrity as personally I don`t care if someone stole 10 bucks from my account :))))))))

Futures 101

The second day trading futures, trading is a bit to much to say because I don`t think I`ve stayed more than half of hour with it, went fast and profitable. As I said I do not have the patience for the demo and mostly I`m trying to double check some numbers and up until now everything seems alright. 

The result for the day is +6.85% or $3375.99 net of commissions. That is not bad at all however I did set the risk on the algos to high so...

Trading futures

A few findings on my first day playing with the ES on the demo:
1) I`ve increased the risk profile to the one used in the old days :)) without any hesitation that is the only way to find limits and errors because only then I`m starting to really become careful without that I`m getting sleepy.
2) I`m often pushing the wrong buttons since its not like fx I find myself doing a lot of "fat finger" mistakes -if you don`t know what a fat finger mistake is well is that mistake that can make a trader lose millions in 5 seconds-
3) My code is not fully adapted...I think, or at least I have doubts and I have to be in the mood to fix things or to actually double check if they`re correct. Obviously I did not check everything yet, I`ll slowly doing so while playing with the demo when I`m in the mood.
4) My computer is screaming "Wtf are you doing? I was already tortured by your fx charts and now you load me more" for that reason I had to drop the fx charts around 430pm but only after I`ve made some profits there and was not going to push more anyway.
5) My demo account has around $500K in it and I was saying that I`ll start with 100K - a mistake when I`ve opened the demo. Looking at the market depth on ES I will most likely drop this demo and make one with one million but only AFTER I`m sure every piece of code is correct until then I`ll use this one as it matters not anyway.
6) I have to much information to process when in a position and while I can follow both futures and forex in the same time I can not have positions open in both because its far to complicated for the moment especially since I`m far by being used with futures.
7) I don`t have the patience required to trade demo and that`s a fact, its kind of useless except for the fully integration of futures. Other than that demo is useless everything works as with the fx, better actually.
8)  I have so many ideas of all sort of nuts and bolts that I can have but I do not have the motivation to create them and first I should sure the current configuration works correctly.
 9) I do not have the patience to trade on a demo....am I repeating myself?
10) My futures platform does not include commissions for that reason I had to code them such as the strategy correctly calculates the PL. While past performance is no representation of future performance, you know the story, read the disclaimer, you should also know that the demo shown here can at any time be converted in to a real account and works precisely the same, good or bad it remains to be seen ;)

That being said the result for the day is -2.82% or -$1409.58 commissions included ($6.5/contract/round turn) which is not bad given the fact I`ve kind of traded with another purpose in mind than getting a profit.

Don't hesitate to contact me via my website if you have any questions

What have I been doing lately

I have not written anything in this blog for a while and forgot about it after the failure of the demo project "trading Like a pro" which you can read about in previous posts. Of course since it was a demo account I lost my patience one day and wiped out the account however since I did not expect to achieve to much from it - the plan was a real account, there was nothing to lose anyway. Since then though I have an account (real one) with Darwinex trading with pennies, account that performs well but slow. Quite frankly its to slow for my taste and I`ve started the account with a different idea in my mind that of doubling in a month at most. That plan however was in a severe contradiction with the markets and the way they move lately so after a deep underwater (almost chocking) trip I`ve decided to play it slow and safe. In fact, the truth is, that even within this very low volatility conditions as of lately I know for sure that if I really want to I can push it just like in the old days except that instead of making 10% in 10 minutes would take me like a whole day to do it and I would be in danger of exhausting my energy and possible wiping out the account because of that - losing focus in this job is under no circumstance recommended so I`ll keep it slow. If you followed the markets for a few years you know what I mean - they have drastically changed the pace, nowadays you need to watch them very closely to see them moving. Markets change, that is what they`ve done for years in the past and that is what they will do in the future, it is trader`s job to adapt to the new conditions and some of us do it successfully other less successfully and from a personal point of view I liked myself a lot more in the days when I was making fortunes (unfortunately in %% terms) in single days but I can`t complain to much now either as my equity line goes as some would only dream of. In the meantime while my equity is growing slowly I have an under construction website  where I will be providing some account management services. Its address is http://414102570892697590.weebly.com/, I do not expect to launch it this year though mostly because the performance is of a to short term. Oh well, that`s the job, and is slow but then again I doubt there is anyone out there who would not like to be able to do it even so and know that at anytime, anywhere, he can do the job and the job is not quite an ordinary one. Other than that since the strategy on the FX markets is at the point where there is nothing left to develop I`m slowly starting (slowly  `coz I`m to lazy to make it fast and I don`t need it right now due to capital constraints) to make the transition to the futures market. Hmmm, transition is a though word actually because all I did up until now is changed the charts and a few lines of code where needed and I`m already a pro futures trader. You know what I like? I like I can not trade on futures without at least a 100K account and obvioulsy I`m using a demo so when I`m looking at the results, in %% terms they are more of less as on the FX but the FX account which is real is of about $500, you know what I mean? Anyway I`ll be showing the strategy on futures market also (well not actually showing you the strategy `coz I would have to kill you after that - hmmm maybe not kill you, its just that expression,  but it would be very expensive as some will sure find out  ;) ) the initial account is around 100K - demo - account and while I keep my eye on the currencies I`m also trading ES - ES is the E-mini S&P 500 contract listed at CME and its probably the most liquid futures contract available right now so there would hardly be any issues to consider in terms of liquidity. And oh, yes, there were a few more changes needed to adapt to futures since I`m obviously not using MT4 to trade the futures market so I had to adapt my MT4 codes to the new platform and I found the shortest way to do it and take only the most required parts leaving the nuts and bolts behind. Everything worked out just fine and most likely I`ll slowly implement all sort of nuts and bolts in this execution platform as well just like I have in MT4 but it will take time.