[DARWIN] YFC by Pompeyboy (ForexAlgoTrading)

[ForexAlgoTrading]

Hi Everyone and it's great to find this forum. I'm the owner of the YFC portfolio - https://www.darwinex.com/darwin/YFC and here is my intro to my Darwin.

So this is YFC and it is a managed forex algorithmic portfolio... it is a selection of the best performing algorithms from a pool of 300-400 running in separate incubation accounts. We select the most suitable for current market conditions and scale / swap out those where the edge has diminished due to market changes. As this is an ever evolving algo portfolio designed to mirror the market, the expectation is that it can stay relevant no matter what the market is doing... and so far, it has been meeting expectations.

In the past 12 months, YFC has won Darwinia allocation for 9 out of the 12 months and we finished 11th in September 2021 with a total allocation of €306k from Darwinex.

A little bit about myself.. I've been trading for over 15 years but found that, with age, I was getting worse and worse headaches with staring at the trading screens for long periods. I knew that there must be a better way to trade with the progress in trading technology and lower cost for retail traders. I initially started to convert my successful manual trading strategies into algos to relieve me from too much screentime but soon discovered AI and Machine Learning technology. A few years learning, researching, testing, trading and refining has led me to where I am now with my trading portfolio at Darwinex and YFC is the cumulation of all this work.

Please feel free to ask any questions you may have and thank you for reading!

 

[ForexAlgoTrading]

We've found another couple of decent algos using our AI technology.. these are now trading in the portfolio... for those tracking, you'll see we're trading EURUSD and USDCAD again.

We will put working algos into the portfolio and take ones out when they are failing due to changes in the markets.

Thanks for reading!

 

[FXforfun]

Nice! Great results, long experience, moderate Darwdawn. Impeccable. Congrats!

 

[morehastelessspeed]

Often I have wondered why some traders who have more than adequate IT engineering skills might nonetheless choose to trade manually instead of running automated systems. Either way there is going to be screen time involved, although I do know somebody who makes calls to their broker to enter orders on the phone.

 

[ForexAlgoTrading]

It's not quite at the end of October 2021 yet but I thought, why not check to see how the portfolio is going...

We've been climbing the ranks again and we're in position 19 out of 4531 other portfolio. With 2 weeks more to go before the Darwinex placement ends, it'll be great to keep climbing but markets can change and this can affect our trades and therefore rank within the Darwinia competition.

For those who don't know anything about the Darwinia allocation that is held with the FCA approved Darwinex broker, Darwinex allocate €7.5 million of funding to the top 120 trading portfolio's every month.. on average there around over 4300 other portfolios competiting and a top ranking position at the end of every month grants you the following:

1. Funding. Finishing within the top 17 every month will grant you over €100k to your portfolio for a 6 month period. Darwinex will pay you performance related pay every quarter if you make trading profits. This can be quite lucrative, you can see the top systems have made over €200k in performance related bonuses.
2. Kudos. Recognition of your ability to trade which can attract funding from anyone interested in a FCA regulated asset based around your trading portfolio... ie people can invest in your fund and you can make money from performance related pay, just like a hedge fund manager.

For those who follow this more closely, you'll note that we're trading some new algos in the portfolio.. we have new USDCAD and EURUSD algos running after showing a period of good results in our Incubation platforms. And so far, they returned some good results in live.

The backtest results from 2018 look like this for the USDCAD algo

Whilst the EURUSD algo's backtests look even better and live results have been similar.

These algos are based on historical data and relatively simple, they are not self adapting so at some stage, I expect them to fail as market conditions change and evolve. And with these principles, that's why the constant scaling and out of algorithms is the key to this portfolio's success... we are only using trading algos which are relevant to current market conditions.

It is a lot of effort to constantly look for algos working in current market conditions so at some stage, self adapting algos maybe the way forward but this is another skill repertoire which I need to add to my trading arsenal!

For the time being, if you would like to take a look / invest at our portfolio, you can check it out at https://www.darwinex.com/invest/YFC

 

[ForexAlgoTrading]

Often I have wondered why some traders who have more than adequate IT engineering skills might nonetheless choose to trade manually instead of running automated systems. Either way there is going to be screen time involved, although I do know somebody who makes calls to their broker to enter orders on the phone.

I actually had this conversation with a few trader friends of mine who are as IT literate as myself yet prefer to trade manually. The reasons that I've had so far have been:

1. Don't trust the algo especially with real money - worried about systems, VPS or algo crashing.. I worry about this too but have all sorts of alerts to tell me when something goes wrong. I also have Metatrader on my phone so can close out of any trades if things go wrong

2. Don't really understand the IT components and how it all fits together. I do believe it's important to understand this as it helps ensure you trading environment is in tip top shape... I have a regular maintenance window of updating Windows, rebooting VPS machines, restarting Metatrader, checking connection speeds, testing broker connectivity etc.

3. Enjoy watching the charts. There is excitement when watching the charts but I've found excitement in the markets is inversely proportional to success in the markets... certainly in my case. I prefer to just let the algos do their thing... I monitor when the algos are starting to fail due to changes in market conditions but this is a weekly activity.

 

[ForexAlgoTrading]

In November and December, the YFC portfolio on Darwinex took it's largest every drawdown since we've been running. We should have known better for December due to the low volatility and holiday period but the algos had been performing so well that I thought I'd let then run through to see if they would recover Novembers losses. Unfortunately, it didn't and we ended up more in the red.
However, I used the time also to reflect and review the algos running in the portfolio. I took out a lot of the ones which did just 'ok' and ended up with a core set of algos which have stood the test of time and based on standard trading principles. As a result, January 2022 resulted in the start of a great comeback with very little drawdown.. in fact, we managed to get to position 5 in the monthly Darwinia contest and won an allocation of €225k (that's the 13th month out of 18 where we've won funding capital). In February, it's been more of the same... the recovery is going well and we've got a few more percentage points to get back to our all time highs. Of course, market conditions are perfect for our algos right now and at some point, this will change.. however, for now, we are going to ride it as long as possible!
Thanks for reading!