Ed Mamula.com

My month to date results for May 2007:

 # closed winning trades : 1

# closed losing trades : 4

Net monthly profit (loss)% :  -14.2%

Last equity peak : April 11th, 2007

Trouble in paradise!  Well I guess real life is rougher than a backtest.  Despite multiple assurances from my FX broker that I am allowed to trade up to 50 lots per click, it turns out that the actual maximum is 20.  Well guess how big an order the Cable Glider tried to open…21!  The trade was rejected, and set off a chain of events that put me into my present hole.  Yuck!  The system itself is showing a 3.5% gain for the month, but here in real life, things are much worse.  As luck would have it, I get to brood a while over this misfortune, as the Cable Glider is idle until next Wednesday night, May 16th. 

That lesson about the maximum one-click trading size was an expensive one.  The results this week are the second-worst weekly loss ever, and the current drawdown is the second deepest one as well.  While I am presently demoralized, I do remain well capitalized and profitable for the year.  We’ll see if things turn around or continue to slide.  Time for another trading mini-vacation to get my head on right…

My month to date results for May 2007:

 # closed winning trades : 1

# closed losing trades : 1

Net monthly profit (loss)% :  9.6%

Current drawdown : 12.7%

Last equity peak : April 11th, 2007

I did hang on to that modest 2.9% gain for the month of April, and May is off to a decent start.  It is interesting that the last couple of trades on the long side have been losers, while the last couple of trades on the short side have been winners…this despite the fact that the longer term trend seems to clearly still be UP.  Today, the system is idle, and will become active following tomorrow’s employment report.  One of these months, the market might actually pick a direction after this report, and I’ll catch a nice trade…a good percentage of the results in the backtest are from gains immediately following the employment report.  However, in the past few months, the system hasn’t generated any trades on employment Friday.

On another note, I’ve been posting fewer entries lately due to my preoccupation with the idea of trading full time so that I will be able to create more trading systems.  Sometime last week, when my mind had really accepted that idea, suddenly the result of every trade carried more psychological stress.  I don’t think my mind or my trading account are quite ready to support me full time here, but I have managed to work out a reduction of hours in my day job for 3 months, effective May 15th.  The job income will still pay the bills, and I’ll have a couple days a week to really focus on further system development.