Ed Mamula.com

# winning trades (CG/ER) : 3/2

# losing trades (CG/ER) : 2/2

CG Return: 54.3%

Hedge (ER) Return: -1.9%

Current Allocation (CG/ER): 75% / 25%

Total Return Month to Date: 40.3% 

Performance Chart is Here

Okay, I was wrong.  This was not my best month so far in terms of percentage return, but I’ve had very few months where the return for the Cable Glider piece of the total program has returned in excess of 50%.  In the new year, I’m going to start keeping a tally of how many times I do something that is outside of my trading plan.  The goal will be to keep the number as close to zero as possible, and when the number is non-zero, to amend my trading plan appropriately.  In the past two months, I’ve hurt my returns with a couple of system overrides, and by now, I should know better than to do this.

Volatility in the British pound continues to be high, and I see that the CME has raised the margin requirement on both the Euro and British pound contracts significantly.  In the case of the pound, the requirement has increased from $1822.50 to $2700.  This bothers me a little bit, as it will require me to keep more capital in my brokerage accounts instead of earning interest in a money market reserve account, but I suppose that other than that, it’s not a problem.

It’s also notable that Colin McGinley at ForexSpirit.com blew up his account this week.  It serves as a reminder of how difficult this game is, and that all traders need to stay humble in the face of success and always manage risk appropriately.

My resolution for 2008:  Continue to develop trading systems and trading plans.  Always strive to improve the systems and plan.  FOLLOW THE SYSTEM.  Of course, the key to following the system is to focus on returns over a longer period of time, rather than obsessing on the results of every trade, or “getting even” from a previous losing trade.

We had a death in the family this week that was more stressful than I expected.  As such, I discovered that the stress of trading and the stress of the family situation was too much for me to handle.  I shut down the system prematurely on Wednesday night, and while I did have a profitable week, I missed out on having an even bigger gain.  Maybe I’m being too hard on myself, but in the future, I expect that I should be able to handle the day to day stresses of trading even when other things are going on…after all, this is supposed to be one of the benefits of using an automated system.

At any rate, I’m done trading for the year and I expect to post my final numbers tomorrow.  I believe that this has been my best month ever in terms of absolute dollars and percentage returns, but I don’t have my results spreadsheets with me here.