TRO Test Results

[gamma]

new_trader:

I find posting on here a great distraction which prevents me from placing bad trades out of boredom. Got nothing better to do with my time basically. hehe. That, and vendors selling nothing of value is a pet hate of mine. How do you define success? If i had £500 million in the bank i'd probably still be posting on here, kicking ass amongst the vendors. I enjoy it. I come on here for the same reasons i enjoy playing the piano. No profit but plenty of other kinds of rewards. Financially, all that counts for me is that i don't have to go back to work for anyone else again- cannot bear the thought!

I second that posting and reading is a great time killer, if you are a position trader and like you say stops you placing trades you should not.

 

[new_trader]

I think the "boredom" motivation may apply to a few here. Certainly does in my case.

Then you would agree that the 'doesn't add up' conclusion might be wrong? Being bored is very different from being altruistic.

 

[BSD]

some people are driven by altruism.

Now I suppose you're on about that prize fool Socrates again as is a certain regularly recurring theme with you.

Well the news RE him is that he wasn't posting his utter nonsense out of altruism.

He was posting because he was a sad old dodderer who only felt alive when he had some sycophantic dimwits on here praying at his altar.

And if TRO were here for altruistic purposes, and not out of pull marketing to sell his 500 bucks books - ridiculous enough already who would pay that much for a trading book lol - then he'd do the only honorable thing:

TRO, I don't want to ask any "questions" about real time trades from you any more than I would ask any "questions" from a hedge fund manager about how much he made and with what drawdown over the last 5 years.

All I am interested in are hard facts that can and do speak perfectly for themselves.

This is not religion in need of interpretation, this is just about very simple net profits and max drawdowns to be endured on the way.

A Fund Manager must have an independently audited track record as proof of his past achievements, and as you are here with an agenda of trying to prove to us that your systems work it is accordingly up to you to convince us not with irrelevant words or pretty charts, but with the only thing that counts in finance, hard facts, and through the only way any finance professional would ever go about marketing their performance, through establishing a credible, proven track record.

As you are not a CTA or otherwise registered it wouldn't do for you to post any past achievements, the scope for fiddling would simply be too great and only open you up to further criticism.

The way I see it is quite simple:

The amount of time you spend posting charts here that do not provide proof of the net profitability of your methods could and in all honesty should be spent trading your systems in real time.

Oanda are a very reputable broker of the highest regard.

Open an account there with a token say 1000 bucks (You're American, no ?)
and give us the account number.

Trade your Never Lose Again method there every single working day for one or two quarters, ie 3 or 6 months, with a minimum of 10 trades /day, and post the results here after each trade is closed with screen shots of every single trade taken on 1 min charts to show us post entry price action off of the 1hr chart triggers. Oanda have the additional benefit that their charts show exactly where you entered and where you exited with symbols.

Now, my part of the deal will be this:

IF you manage one or two net positive quarters with your system- and Oanda confirm that which they are willing to do for people wanting to establish a track record - I will be the first person here to go on record and say that your system is a net winner.

You have my word on that.

Absolutely nobody here bears you a grudge, but equally understandably nobody here has any interest in unproven methods being mass marketed down their throats.

This proposal is WIN / WIN.

Let's be honest here.

TRO is the one trying to convince us of the validity of what he does, trying to convince us that his methods work, albeit laughably enough with nothing than an incredible and incessant supply of meaningless pretty charts.

Any time somebody in finance or anywhere else wants to sell you something but is incapable of providing proof of claims made the reason for that is one, and one only: the seller is a scam artist whose service will provide the gullible taker with a severe disservice.

I've said it before, and I say it again, the reason why a CTA / CPO must by law provide an independently audited track record of his past performance is not only so future clients can evaluate and compare, it is also in recognition of the sad fact that the investment industry is swamped with incompetent con artists whose sole method of surviving is fleecing clueless sheeples whose greed blinds them to the obvious.

And the same goes for somebody like TRO: if his systems worked he would be trading them instead of merely telling us about them.

NO better marketing exists than proof.

If people do not provide proof they do it because they cannot.

QED !

 

[new_trader]

BSD, you are too arrogant and hypocritical for my liking. I get the impression that you revel in attention just like the people you judge without any real proof of what you accuse them of. Get off your high horse, please.

UNSUBSCRIBED

 

[the blades]

BSD, you are too arrogant and hypocritical for my liking.

ROFL....is it just me?

Oh, the irony!

UTB

 

[BSD]

BSD, you are too arrogant and hypocritical for my liking. I get the impression that you revel in attention just like the people you judge without any real proof of what you accuse them of. Get off your high horse, please.

UNSUBSCRIBED

No idea where hypocrisy comes into it.

The only thing I know and the only thing that counts is that the single time Socrates actually condescended to stop spouting watersheds of nonsense and for a change walk the walk in public the sole outcome was that he lost money.

My main contention with him was that his perverted idea of fun was misleading people into thinking that he was some kind of a trading guru through posting nothing but smoke and mirrors, purposefully always vague enough and slippery like an eel so that nothing could ever really be pinned on him, all he ever posted were innuendoes designed to give people the impression that they should indulge in some deep thinking to comprehend their master of a paper tiger.

He was a prize fool because he was trying to con people into believing that markets that in reality are of course nothing than the sum of their participants actions were in his parallel universe guided by some Great Secret Conductor only he could see, and all you needed to obtain the keys to his magic kingdom and one wonderful day join him there was to follow his clues, think really hard, and wait for your epiphany personalised courtesy of Socrates himself.

Nonsense of the highest order being spouted by those who couln't trade their way out of a paper bag if their lives depended on it, and being swallowed up hook, line and sinker by those similarly unaccomplished.

As I said earlier:

As William of Ockham very rightly observed in what came to be known as Occams Razor, "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best."

And all other things are very equal in trading, but by absolutely no means only there.

Most things in life are really simple enough - if not maybe easy always -, once you succeed in seperating the noise from the few, truly success relevant factors.

It's almost always lack of understanding or a need to stoke a bruised ego that leads to undue complexity.

Ego driven efforts at problem solving only make you want to be right over wanting to be successful.

As amazing as it is, but a clear majority of people prefer being right over having success.

A very bad sign is when people aren't able to explain in a few words what constitutes the relevant essence of what they are on about, what the 20% of their effort that generates 80% of their results is.

Jack Welch) said it and did it, Business is simple, undue complexity is almost always nothing than an attempt to camouflage lack of true understanding.

Harvards department of psychology did a famous complexity experiment where two groups of students had to come up with explanations to simple problems. The first group got the correct evaluation from the professors, ie if they had come up with the correct explanation they received a "correct", if not they got a "wrong", while the second group got random evaluations, so that even if they were right they might have received a "wrong" and vice versa.

The first groups solutions were all admirably simple, while the second groups explanations became increasingly complex as they tried desperately to force the inexplicable facts to fit their ever wilder theories.

KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid !

It has always been the modus operandi of the clueless or attention seekers to hide their lack of understanding or to create a semblance of competence behind unwarranted complexity, and, perversely enough, to garner a following that way.

Arrogance ?

My friends that know me would really not say that I am particularly arrogant for what it's worth.

But I do enjoy debunking false prophets and other charlatans.

As UK said so well, that is one of the funnest past times on boards to while away the time waiting for trades.

"Do you see or do you not see" ?



And if you remember I once gave you some very nice advice RE prop firms, and I believe that Trader Dante also offered you help in that regard, that in my book was real, concrete and tangible altruism.

 

[Joey25]

Another mark of a true charlatan is to panic like a golfer with the yips evertime they get filled, never earning more than the odd tick here or there, and then proceed to attempt to mesmerize the audience with grand forecasts of huge moves thereafter.

Who could I possibly be referring to?

 

[TheRumpledOne]

Thank you UKtradergirl for starting the thread and showing the results of the EA.

As I look at the results, this EA shows the win rate is 80%. The other examples from page 1 of the thread have a win rate of between 67% and 73%. I must admit that the equity curves look really bad for this setup.

However, based on the win rate I think it is possible to be profitable with the setup but the problems that would prevent profitability are:

1) How does one know which trade to skip and what are the reasons to pass on the trade?
2) How many pips a day does one really need to reach their goals?
3) Is a 20-pip stop loss suitable?

I think if one can satisfactorily find answers to these questions then yes it can be profitable.

Thoughts anyone?

There IS intelligence on the net!

Good questions.

1) If you look at the time of day, you'll see certain hours have less range on average on others... don't trade that pair, those hours... SIMPLE!

2) That's up to the individual but after you hit your goal.. QUIT TRADING!

3) That's up to the individual's money management and risk management. For purposes of the challenge, I used TP = 5 and SL = 20 to prove that this works. You SEE the win rate, all one has to do is manage the money. By adjust the TP and SL, you can have a winning system.

 

[TheRumpledOne]

I have stated several times: i accept that EA's are not 100% reliable in their results.

Hence, we can allow a margin of error. Let's say 20%. So the EA could be out by as much as 20% either way. Now, that either makes TRO's strategy still a loser- or it makes it an even bigger loser than before. Lose is lose- either way.

Explain to me how it might be possible for an EA coded on a very simple strategy can be out as much as 20%?

Trading this manually is fair enough. Let's do that. What is a reasonable sample size? At least 1000 trades. Better would be 5,000 or 10,000. THat would give us a better idea of the expected results. Do you have these records for manual trades? No? Takes a long time doesn't it? The EA is the best we can do for now, and as i said above we can take a margin of error into account when reviewing it.

--

I am not denying the fact that there are a few people out there who have made a bit of money doing this. You are most likely doing something a little extra, adding your own slant on things though, since if you were following the system directly you would be acheiving similar results to the EA (+/- 20% perhaps?).

--

Since this system shows a good % win rate- it is hardly surprising to see plentiful examples of winning trades posted online. A string of winning trades posted online means absolutely nothing. It is newbies that get taken in by such blatant misrepresentation of data.

It is also possible to have winning days trading this, perhaps a string of winning days- as evidenced above in the one day test i did where we have a postitive result. Flip a coin 20 times in a row and you could get 10 head, 10 tails, you could get 20 heads in a row- if you had 20 heads in a row would you think 'great- this is a winner- i'll just keep betting on heads' ? Same thing can be applied to this, allbeit with a different skew in the odds from 50-50 to 70-30.

Hence the arguement about needing a representative sample, and bringing us back to the manual testing idea being impractical and time consuming, and the fact that an EA is a great approximation and that we can allow a margin of error (in this case i've allowed a huge margin of error!).

--

To ggs14u,

You will have to ask TRO what he considers reasons to skip a trade. From what i understand, news releases are one example of times they avoid.

How many pips a day do you need to reach your goal? I don't know that depends what your goal is and how much per pip you are trading. I personally don't have a daily goal as it impacts on you psychologically in a negative way. I prefer to look for value trades, good setups that fulfill my entry criteria (which includes knowing the exact points i will exit for a profit, or cut my losses). I have multiple other ways to assess my performance- will be happy to explain more if you are interested. I do also look at monthly and yearly goals. Most important though is accurate trading, money follows afterwards on it's own.

In my opinion, a 20 pip stop loss compared to a 5 pip take profit is entirely not acceptable. These were not my rules. Play with the figures in the EA and see what you can come up with- i'm sure there is something much more profitable in it than the setup we currently have. Good luck with your trading.

That was the POINT... to get people to SEE something with their own eyes so they can be profitable.

Short term memory loss (STML) again. I told you this is NOT a system. Remember? If no, then you do have STML. If yes, then you intentionally posting things that you know are not accurate. Which is it?

How many times did I say that I STACKED THE DECK AGAINST ME TO PROVE MY POINT? STML again?

 

[UKtradergirl]

i was going to write a response but i appear to have forgotten what i was going to say.

 

[UKtradergirl]

Oh i remember now!

Why did you stack the deck against you to prove a point? Why not just prove a point by making a deck stacked with you rather than against you? Surely that is better?

 

[TheRumpledOne]

See the winning trades?

How many pips could you have made?

See the draw down... SL = 20 not hit.

Look at the chart, you could have made 50+ pips going short at 1.2778 and almost 50 pips going long at 1.2725 but just trading WITH THE H1 CANDLE COLOR AT THE HORIZONTAL LINE... NO INDICATORS NECESSARY!!

Either you SEE IT or you DON'T... IT'S THAT SIMPLE.

 

[TheRumpledOne]

Oh i remember now!

Why did you stack the deck against you to prove a point? Why not just prove a point by making a deck stacked with you rather than against you? Surely that is better?

Because proving your point when the deck is stacked against you shows the strength of what you are proving and I can't be (fairly) accused of anything like CHERRY PICKING, WAFFLING, ETC...

So by me letting others choose the currency and the entry levels AND having an "unthinkable" risk/reward of 4:1 and still show winners, my point is proved.

If you remember, the challenge was going forward, not a back test challenge.

 

[willkohsg]

hey pierre23 dude..

thanks for standing up for TRO..
i'm on kreslink.com and babypips and t2w and jumping ard seeing all the posts..

it's really getting negative here.. guys we shouldnt spend too much time on these issues,
we're losing time and pips here not trading!!

btw i found this online, i believe TRO is the REAL THING~ just like COKE ~

The TraderInterviews.com Show for November 29, 2007: Trader Profile: Avery Horton aka TheRumpledOne

 

[JTrader]

Hi TheRumpledOne

I've always wondered -

Why did you chose the curious userame - TheRumpledOne??

It always makes me think of Rumpelstiltskin

Rumpelstiltskin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rumpelstiltskin is a character in a fairy tale of the same name that originated in Germany (where he is known as Rumpelstilzchen). The tale was collected by the Brothers Grimm, who first published it in the 1812 edition of Children's and Household Tales. It was subsequently revised in later editions until the final version was published in 1857.

Plot synopsis
In order to make himself appear more important, a miller/commoner lied to the king that his daughter could spin straw into gold. The king called for the girl, shut her in a tower room with straw and a spinning wheel, and demanded that she spin the straw into gold by morning, for three nights, or be executed. Some versions say that if she failed, she would be skewered and then fricasseed like a pig, while others take a less graphic approach and say that the girl is locked in the dungeon forever. She had given up all hope, when a dwarf appeared in the room and spun straw into gold for her in return for her necklace; then again the following night for her ring. On the third night, when she had nothing with which to reward him, the strange creature spun straw into gold for a promise that the girl's first-born child would become his.

The king was so impressed that he let the miller's daughter marry his son, the prince, but when their first child was born, the dwarf returned to claim his payment: "Now give me what you promised". The queen was frightened and offered him all the wealth she had if she could keep the child. The dwarf refused but finally agreed to give up his claim to the child if the queen could guess his name in three days. At first she failed, but before the second night, her messenger overheard the dwarf hopping about his fire and singing. While there are many variations in this song, the 1886 translation by Lucy Crane reads

"To-day do I bake, to-morrow I brew,
The day after that the queen's child comes in;
And oh! I am glad that nobody knew
That the name I am called is Rumpelstiltskin!"[1]

When the dwarf came to the queen on the third day and she revealed his name, Rumpelstiltskin lost his bargain. In the 1812 edition of the Brothers Grimm tales, Rumpelstiltskin then "ran away angrily, and never came back". The ending was revised in a final 1857 edition to a more gruesome version where Rumpelstiltskin "in his rage drove his right foot so far into the ground that it sank in up to his waist; then in a passion he seized the left foot with both hands and then took his left foot and tore himself in two." Other versions have Rumpelstiltskin driving his right foot so far into the ground that he creates a chasm and falls into it, never to be seen again. In the oral version originally collected by the brothers Grimm, Rumpelstiltskin flies out of the window on a cooking ladle (Heidi Anne Heiner).

:cheesy:

 

[JTrader]

Me & TRO have something in common. We both like to mark 00 levels on our chart with a horizontal line.

You can't be too careful where these little bugars are concerned. Marking them on a chart, helps -
1) break the chart up nicely by -
2) giving the chart definition and context.

For me, the 00 levels are often like the start of a new game, or passing go in Monopoly, once it is or is not broken (00 = the psychological level of S/R), a new chapter in the story begins.

 

[zupcon]

So by me letting others choose the currency and the entry levels AND having an "unthinkable" risk/reward of 4:1 and still show winners, my point is proved.

If you pick a miniscule target, and a huge stop what else would you expect other than winner after winner after winner !

You and every other VENDOR on these boards know thats the case.

Posting retrospective screen shots is pointless. On average for every 4 winners you post (which count as 5 pips under the rules YOU picked) someone will post a losing trade for 20.

YOUR SYSTEM, using YOUR RULES has been proved beyond all doubt to be break system even just the same as any other SYSTEM with a random entry and fixed reward to risk. Its simply a cheap marketing strategy used by every other VENDOR on this forum. Reverse the stop and target, and you'll get exactly the same profits, just loads of losing trades with the occassional winner. You know it, I know it, and everyone reading any of your ridiculous threads knows it.

You have proved nothing (other than what we ALL already know) but you have provided entertainment, and for that we are thankfull

 

[BSD]

Losing: no more and no less than a cost of doing business as a trader.

Not being able to handle losing is imo the single most important reason why most fail who endeavour to make it in trading, or why many never maximise their potential.

One reason for losing was perfectly summed up by Mark Douglas excellent and very common-"sensical" observation that there is no Holy Grail, that none can exist because anything can happen anytime at all in markets overthrowing your clever analysis, all it takes is one big order going against you and triggering your stop loss.


Brett Steenbarger post here hits the nail on the head:


"Over the last few days, I've had the opportunity to talk with everyday investors as well as my usual contacts with prop traders and portfolio managers. One of the distinguishing themes in these talks has been stubbornness versus flexibility: the willingness and ability to maneuver and adapt to changing market conditions versus the need to stick with positions and be proven correct.

Among the traders, the ones who have done well in the recent market decline are those who have been selective in their risk exposure, riding short-term market moves, limiting overnight headline risk, and shifting positions tactically to adjust to volatile conditions. They have focused on making money--and limiting loss of capital. They've been quick to recognize when they're wrong, at times getting stopped out once, twice, three times before finally riding the anticipated market move.

The traders who have performed most poorly are those that have been stubborn. They have had strong views of markets and have stuck with those views, even in the face of markets that have moved against them. Convinced that markets are overdue for reversal, they have faced large losses as weakness has led to further weakness. They have been more concerned about being right than making money; they've been reluctant to be stopped out, instead waiting for markets to validate their opinions.

Interestingly, I'm seeing the same dynamics among individual investors. Some have made proactive adjustments to their portfolios to reduce risk, including reducing exposure to vulnerable investments (financial stocks, preferred shares, high yield bonds); some are also revising their views of the financial future, looking for themes and sectors that will benefit in a changed economic environment (firms that generate cash and are less reliant on borrowing; firms that appeal to consumer value rather than luxury; safe yields among beaten down bonds). Other investors are frozen, immersed in hope that "things will come back". They remind me of the dot-com investors who, stunned by losses of 50% in their holdings, insisted that a bottom was at hand. Sadly, many of these shares declined by more than 75% before we saw a durable market bottom--and many of those companies never survived the decline.

This is one of the paradoxes of trading and investing: you need distinct views to put your money at risk, and you need to persist with these views in order to ride winners. At the same time, you can't become married to these views; you need to quickly revise and even abandon your outlooks in order to limit losses. We can trade and invest for ego needs, and we can trade and invest to make money: over the long haul, we can't do both. It takes a strong ego to formulate and act upon one's ideas; an even stronger one to step back from those ideas in the face of non-confirmation."

LINK:
TraderFeed: The Need To Be Right Versus The Need To Make Money



Also keeping in mind his observation from working with top traders that:

Brett Steenbarger:

"...As a rule, maximizing batting average/minimizing drawdown comes at the cost of lowering overall system profitability...."




-Richard Dennis' former Turtles partner William Eckhardt corroborated that in Market Wizards:

William Eckhardt:

The Win/Loss Ratio
“One common adage on this subject that is completely wrongheaded is: You can’t go broke taking profits. That’s precisely how many traders do go broke. While amateurs go broke by taking large losses, professionals go broke by taking small profits. The problem in a nutshell is that human nature does not operate to maximize gain but rather to maximize the chance of a gain. The desire to maximize the number of winning trades (or minimize the number of losing trades) works against the trader. The success rate of trades is the least important performance statistic and may even be inversely related to performance. …

What really matters is the long-run distributions of outcomes from your trading techniques, systems, and procedures. But, psychologically, what seems of paramount importance is whether the positions that you have right now are going to work. Current positions seem to be crucial beyond any statistical justification. It’s quite tempting to bend your rules to make your current trades work, assuming that the favorability of your long-term statistics will take care of future profitability. Two of the cardinal sins of trading - giving losses too much rope and taking profits prematurely - are both attempts to make current positions more likely to succeed, to the severe detriment of long-term performance.
Market Wizards



-Billionaire hedge fund manager Bruce Kovner:

Michael Marcus taught me one other thing that is absolutely critical: You have to be willing to make mistakes regularly; there is nothing wrong with it. Michael taught me about making your best judgment, being wrong, making your next best judgment, being wrong, making your third best judgment, and then doubling your money.

Whenever I enter a position, I have a predetermined stop. That is the only way I can sleep. I know where I'm getting out before I get in. The position size on a trade is determined by the stop, and the stop is determined on a technical basis. I never think about other people who may be using the same stop, because the market shouldn't go there if I am right.
Market Wizards



- Richard Dennis (Turtles daddy, who turned 400 bucks into several hundred million):

When things go bad, traders shouldn't stick their head in the sand and just hope it gets better.

You should always have a worst-case point. The only choice should be to get out quicker.

The worst mistake a trader can make is to miss a major profit opportunity. 95 percent of profits come from only 5 percent of the trades.



- Bill Lipschutz (Biggest earning earning trader for many years at the then investment bank Salomon Brothers before he started his own hedge fund):

I don't have a problem letting my profits run, which many traders do. You have to be able to let your profits run. I don't think you can consistently be a winner trading if you're banking on being right more than 50 percent of the time. You have to figure out how to make money by being right only 20 to 30 percent of the time."
New Market Wizards



An observation echoed by Kenneth Grant, who in "Trading Risk: Enhanced Profitability through Risk Control", depicts his experience as risk manager for some of the best and most successful hedge funds, amongst others Paul Tudor Jones funds and Steve Cohens SAC Capital, that:

ACROSS ALL MARKET CONDITIONS, TRADING STYLES, TIME FRAMES AND TRADERS, ONE RULE HOLDS TRUE:

10% OF ALL TRADES INEVITABLY ACCOUNT FOR 90% OF PROFITS !



- George Soros:

I don't care when I'm wrong. I cut my losses and move on to the next opportunity. Trading is not about being right. It's about how much you make when you are right.

A lot of these people became Billionaires because they understood that losing is part and parcel of trading.

Now all we need is the biggest clown to come piping up here with his 670 winning trades in a row, Mr. Warren Forex himself
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/gen...test-scamming-clown-has-hit-these-shores.html

 

[JTrader]

If you pick a miniscule target, and a huge stop what else would you expect other than winner after winner after winner !

You and every other VENDOR on these boards know thats the case.

Posting retrospective screen shots is pointless. On average for every 4 winners you post (which count as 5 pips under the rules YOU picked) someone will post a losing trade for 20.

YOUR SYSTEM, using YOUR RULES has been proved beyond all doubt to be break system even just the same as any other SYSTEM with a random entry and fixed reward to risk. Its simply a cheap marketing strategy used by every other VENDOR on this forum. Reverse the stop and target, and you'll get exactly the same profits, just loads of losing trades with the occassional winner. You know it, I know it, and everyone reading any of your ridiculous threads knows it.

You have proved nothing (other than what we ALL already know) but you have provided entertainment, and for that we are thankfull

But when you add in the transaction costs - spread/commission - you may well easily end up a net loser as opposed to break even. Break even sounds like a pretty good result for this random entry trigger mullarkey.

 

[JTrader]

The only way that TRO can prove he is profitably using his method, is to post his daily account statements (obviously with his name, account number etc. blanked out).
We have seen enough pretty pictures of multicoloured charts, doused with multi indicators and displays. In order to believe that this dubious looking approach is indeed viable, we need to see the proof in th pudding!!!!!