Hello all,
I'm sorry for not being active on the forums, but I really don't have too much time. This is gonna be little bit longer, I want to cover few things here
I'd like to give my statement to the recent FMT results.
It is true that the system is not performing as well as I'd wanted it to. There were quite many losing months (actually only 3 out of 9), which is more than it "should" be from the historical perspective.
But the system is still profitable. I'm always looking at the long term view, not at the day or week results. Monthly results is a minimum time range I consider.
And what are the monthly results?
If we consider only the last 9 months since I started offering the system (Aug 10 - Apr 11), it is 26% in profit, which means return around 3% per month (using conservative risk 2% per trade).
And I don't count the power of compounding there.
Is it a lot? Or too little?
I personally expected little bit better results, and according to the longer history performance I still believe the system will prove itself better in the future months.
But still, 3% monthly is MUCH MORE than most of the big funds are making, and I don't think there are that many traders in the world who are able to make at least 3% monthly return CONSISTENTLY by trading with a conservative risk.
The biggest enemy of an unexperienced trader is a short term look. I can partially understand a person that abandons a system that has 1-2 losing months in a row, but this could be exactly the reason why this person isn't successful in trading.
FMT is not some miracle EA that will only make you money. It is a real system for real traders who know that there isn't profit guaranteed every month.
Another problem is if somebody counts the profit only in pips. I personally don't care if the system makes 30 or 1000 pips per month. Profit in pips is an abstract value that doesn't tell me anything.
What I evaluate is how much I have to risk to get this profit, and what are the results in the % monthly return.
Last thing, I cannot predict the future. Nobody can guarantee that this is the last losing month and the next few months will be profitable.
I make my judgments only by evaluating the historical results. I try to keep the emotions (fear/greed) out of my decisions, so I don't increase my risk in the good times, and I also don't abandon the system in a bad times. This is not the first system I traded, manually or automatically, and I've made my mistakes and learned my lessons.
The point that I want to say is - when exactly would I consider to stop using the FMT system?
I don't have clear answer. Two losing months in a row aren't a big problem for me. Three losing months in a row would open a question if something changed in the market. After three losing months I'd probably not abandon the system, but perhaps decrease my risk.
It depends also on how the system behaved during the losses. For example April 2011 was a losing month, but only because of a wave of break evens, many times we got just 1-2 pips from the profit.
So it was mostly a bad luck, not that the system lost it's edge. Should we consider it a losing month or not?
Knowing when to stop the system is in my opinion one of the most complicated problems when trading with robots.
So far nothing shows that we should stop using the system, and I'll definitely run it. Because it makes me money in the long term
Enjoy your trading,
Mark Fric
Right on Mark. It's nice you leave this forum to the devices of it's membership. But when you post , I beleive everyone reads. I'm with you all the way.
