if this is your first time reading this blog, i would guess that you have just been bitten by the “get rich trading with an Expert Advisor” bug.  no offense though… as i’ve been bitten as well… too many times in fact :O)

Time to Reflect

got my first bite in early 2007 after the conclusion of the Automated Trading Championship 2006.  that’s 3 years ago.  nowadays, whenever i see one of those emails or ads that say “Double your money every single month!“, it makes me wonder if there are still people out there who belief such ludicrous claims.

after realising that most of the commercial stuff out there are crap, i went on a journey of searching… and later attempted to build… to see if there was indeed a way to achieve 100% ROI a month.  saw some promising results from a couple of EAs that came my way, but they either could not perform consistently, or the creator just vanished and stopped responding to my emails… still wondering why… :O)

worked with a few talented traders, and the best we could confidently achieve (still testing) was 5% - 10% per month with reasonable risks, which was very good ROI IMO.  the more i dabbled into the EA business, the more i understood why real winning systems will never be sold.  intellectual property concerns and lucrative earnings from trading activity are just 2 of them.  you’re more likely to see them being marketed in other creative ways.

Trading for a Living

…more accurately, i was disillusioned by the thought of an EA trading “FOR” my living :O)  i realised that it takes a lot more than just buying an EA off the shelf.  even with a truly profitable mechanical manual trading strategy, automating it and keeping it constantly optimised to make consistent profits is probably going to take as much time as trading it manually.  very challenging, but not impossible :O)  manual trading has taken center stage for me lately, after being exposed to a few strategies and approaches to trading that all seem to point in the same direction : (1) money management, (2) trade with the trend, (3) don’t chase the price, and (4) the importance of knowing currency strength*

Continuous Learning

is there an end to learning?  i guess not.  a very successful trader that i know who have been at it for over 25 years swears by it.  he researches extensively, and keeps refining and innovating to stay ahead of the game.  but who are we really up against?

anyway, 2009 has been a year of learning and growing for me.  objective was to be able to trade independently, and to be consistently profitable month after month.  i’m not there yet, but i can feel i’m getting close :O)  ego aside, discipline is one of the key areas i really need to work on.

Basket Trading System

as my first “investment” in my continual trading education in 2010, i’ll be traveling 360km north across the border with 18 other trading friends to attend a seminar by Mr Julius Figueroa (aka Trader101).  revealing his Basket Trading Strategy in ForexFactory back in Sep 2008, it has received many accolades from traders all over.  it’s neither technical nor fundamental…. it’s trading what price is showing, with an emphasis on currency strength and an innovative way to detect when its likely to change.  18th Jan 2010… a date i’m really looking forward to :O)

New Goals for 2010

…and time to review 2009 as well :O)  i’ve not achieved my 2009 goal of becoming a full time trader, but i did trade and did nothing else for a short duration last year which probably doesn’t count :O)  i’m not giving up, although my perspective towards trading full time has changed.  personally, it’s not about how much time one spends trading, but more about how well one can trade while living a well balanced life.

(1) family, (2) career, and (3) making baskets of money at the same time!  these will be my areas of focus this year.  these goals will need to be well defined and precise… so that’s what i’m going to do.  i’ve got till Chinese New Year - that’s 14th Feb… yes… i’m buying time :O)  if you have not set your own 2010 goals yet, i hope you are glad to know that you still have some days left before Chinese New Year arrives :O)

Happy New Year Everyone!

:O)

..and he’s giving away his EA too!

i got to know Daniel Fernandez in early 2008.  we were both reviewing EAs and finding it a challenge to find a commercial one that delivers what it claims.  as you know, i gave up reviewing EAs sometime last year and went on to collaborate with traders to create some systems.  Daniel, on the other hand, kept his blog active by reviewing EAs after EAs.  he had also invested time to build his own and is now giving it away for free!  called the “Watukushay F.E.” EA, you can read more about it here : http://watukushayfe.blogspot.com

recently, Daniel also contributed an article in Currency Trader Mag on “volatility-adjusted position-sizing rules” that were part of the Turtle system.  a rather technical read, but useful if you are into designing your own trading systems.  you can downlod the Currency Trader Mag here  : http://www.currencytradermag.com (it’s free too!)

2010 has come, and there are a lot of thoughts in my mind that i would like to share on this blog.  a lot has to do with my journey towards being a profitable and successful trader, be it with EAs or not.  i can feel that the cumulation of knowledge and experiences over the last couple of years is finally showing some light.

will share more about that on the next post.  in the meantime, do visit Daniel’s blog, and also a page that i’m currently working on called “CK Recommends” (sorry… no EAs there)

Happy New Year to all!

Only 56 seats remaining! Registration will close once we reach max capacity of 230 pax.

Register and reserve your seat here : http://forextrading.meetup.com/152/calendar/11692709/

Looking forward to see you there!

CK

wow… this must be the longest sabatical in the entire 25 months since this blog made it’s first appearance on 31st july 2007!  almost 25 months… and i’m glad that readers are still finding the dated material useful in some way… especially the “VPS Guide for MT4″ :O)

googling “average lifespan of a blog” returned approximately 100 days or just over 3 months… so i guess i’m still surviving despite the very irregular updates :O) …nonetheless, the number of subscribers to the mailing list keeps growing… although at a much slower rate these days.

just a brief on what’s been happening.

since early this year, i’ve started working on some EA development projects with a couple of hand-picked traders and EA developers.  the process has been slow (due to many factors) but things are chugging along and making slow but steady progress.  however, one of the projects stalled due to the unavailability of one of the developers… a pity because he was probably one of the best in Singapore in my opinion.

besides making EAs, i have, for some unknown reason, been sent a couple of EAs to test and review over the last 2 weeks.  one is not trading yet, and the other is pipping away… trading in an interesting way that has caught my attention.  both of them are commercial products (or ultimately will become one)… so i’m not going to mention their names (and give them free publicity) without a proper test and review.  will talk more about the EAs when i’ve gathered more data/trades to make an analysis.

besides EAs, a lot more have happened after the webinar on 27th april.  some good and some not so good.  but on the whole, i would say that the months ahead are going to be exciting to say the least, for both myself and readers of this blog as well.  more updates about this later (it won’t be months this time or sure :O)

take care and good trading!!

CK

just a quick one to keep everyone updated on what’s happening or what’s keeping me pretty busy these days…

27th April 2009 : Mark your calendars…  :O)

in mid-March 2009, a reader of this blog introduced me to a fine gentleman who is currently based out of Hong Kong, the “financial hub” of the eastern world… the other one being sunny Singapore :O)

pioneering forex trade automation back in 2001, the company that he co-founded with a few other partners brought a new way of trading to the world.  actually, that’s about the same time MetaQuotes Software Corp released their first trading platform that allowed automation.

A Different Approach to Automated Forex Trading

it’s obvious now that MetaTrader is clearly the industry’s leader,  but these 2 companies took different routes.  MetaQuotes conquered the retail market, but this company went for the institutions and fund houses.  it’s only recently that they started offering their services to retail traders like you and me.

instead of providing blackbox EAs or the platform for them, this company focused on harnessing the benefits and power of algorithmic trading, and backing it up with professional traders and expert system developers, 24hrs a day. it’s like a hybrid between EAs and Managed Accounts.

i’ve spoken to him a few times already and have also attended one of his very informative webinars.  that said, i am pleased to announce that i’ve managed to book a time slot with him and will be running an exclusive webinar just for my blog members on 27th April 2009.

An EXCLUSIVE webinar not to be missed!

webinar details and registration link will be sent out within the next 24 hours.

if you would like to attend this webinar to find out more, please make sure that you are in my mailing list. simply fill up your name/email below and join me and the other 1600+ on this journey.

i’m already invested, and i’m sure you will find this webinar very interesting and enjoyably informative.  see you on the 27th! :O)

IMPORTANT UPDATE :

Due to the intended interactive nature of the webinar, we have decided to limit the capacity of the webinar to just 100 seats.  This is to ensure that the Q&A session at the end of the webinar is effective.  The speaker will endeavor to reply to ALL questions raised.  Sorry for any inconvenience that this may cause.  Webinar link will be sent out in the next few hours.  - ck

PS : i apologize if i’ve not replied to your emails or FaceBook messages lately. however, if you leave a comment on this blog, i will endeavor to reply to every single one as soon as i can. just click on the “comment” link below to leave a message.

just in case you are wondering, this post is not about PIPforia :O)

A Glimpse of Hope

something’s been brewing for about 5 months now.  it all started with a gentlemen showing me an account that doubled within a month.  it intrigued me and we discussed about the possibility of commercializing it.  that’s about the time i sent out a private message to all my subscribers (then about 1350+), asking if anyone would be interested in a system that could generate 80% to 100% per month.  well… needless to say, the excitement did not last long.  the system was excellent in the beginning, but started to have difficulty making new equity highs from the 2nd month on.

of the 1350+ blog subscribers that got my private message, about 470 people responded with interest.  who wouldn’t??!!  even at 20% a month, the EA would be selling like hotcakes (in my opinion).

then it dawned on me!  this blog is titled “Finding the Best Forex Expert Advisor”.  it’s been running for more than 20 months already.  readership wise, i now have 1557 subscribers / EA enthusiasts in my mailing list, 1388 members in my FaceBook group, and 603 members in my MeetUp group.  everyone’s looking for it… but no one (as far as i know) has found one yet (PIPforia’s HGM does not count since it’s more like a tool rather than a 100% fully automated expert advisor).

there has been recent big launches like FapTurbo, MegaDroid, GOmega, etc etc… with very slick and professional looking selling pitches.  they are getting so convincing (because they are marketed by professionals) that their stuff are selling like crazy even without showing (in true 100% transparency) a LIVE “real money” MT4 statement!  it just did not make sense to me at all.  showing LIVE account statements are very easy to do with the MT4 publisher feature, HTML statements and investor read-only passwords.  however most sellers are still not able to show their LIVE trading accounts without holding back something.

The DEMAND and SUPPLY Mismatch

looking at the situation from a higher level, it’s obvious that there is a rapidly growing population of investors/traders looking for truly genuine and profitable expert advisors.  at the same time, there is a constant chain of expert advisors being released into the market place, all claiming that they are highly profitable.  however, there’s a very disturbing fact in this DEMAND and SUPPLY picture.

ideally, the supply should meet the demand and an equilibrium should be formed.  buyers and sellers should both be happy, but that’s not the case.  what’s being created by the this unique case of demand and supply is a VACUUM… one that’s building up gradually… the pressure getting more and more unbearable each day.  it’s getting uncomfortable… and many people are getting frustrated.  i’m getting frustrated and tired too.  aren’t you?

A New Direction

it was in Jan 2009 when it struck me.  why search and evaluate commercially available EAs?  there are already countless EA review sites these days.  i then made a decision that i no longer wanted to be on the DEMAND side of the equation since i can’t control the quality of the SUPPLY.  so the journey began… (more about my journey on the next post)

PS :if you would like to receive timely updates on what’s happening on this blog (and in my endeavors), do consider joining my mailing list by filling up the fields below.  your privacy is my priority… and i guarantee you that i’m not one of those who sends out “offers” after “offers” to make you buy something.

NB : this new journey has kept me really busy for the last 4-5 months.  i apologize if i’ve not replied to your emails or FaceBook messages lately.  however, if you leave a comment on this blog, i will endeavour to reply to every single one as soon as i can.  just click on the “comment” link below to leave a message.

ok ok… i could almost hear some saying… “why does ck keep talking and blogging about PIPforia?”  well… simply because it’s the best thing working for me right now.  i’m not saying that nothing else out there beats PIPforia.  but if you have found something that works well for you, please leave a comment at the bottom of this post and let us know about it ok? (thanks in advance!!… we all need your help :O)

if you are bored to death hearing about PIPforia, you might want to read the previous post that i did about 1 hour ago first.  i talked about “The World’s Top 3 Expert Advisors”.

so… how have i been doing with PIPforia in Jan 2009?  taking a break after the new year, i started trading only on 12 Jan.  must admit that Jan has been quite tough.  had to cut loss a few times.  the below equity graph for the month reflects that.

since trading exclusively with the PIPfori HGM EA from Sept 2008, last month has been my worst performing month.  however, i’m still happy to be able to end it with a positive gain.  it’s nothing to scream about, but i’m pleased nonetheless :O)

CK’s LIVE Account : 102627
Password : readonly1
Broker : InterBankFX
Server : InterbankFX-MT4 Standard Accounts
Online Statement : http://ckowyong.com/live/statement.htm
(updated every 15 mins)
*** please ignore all trades before Sept 2008 ***

if you are my friend in FaceBook, you’ll probably know that Kevin Capozzi and i are honored to be able to bring the PIPforia seminars to Dubai in about 2 weeks time.  if you are living in Dubai or in a neighboring country, you might wanna drop by at one of the sessions where Kevin shares with you his experiences in trading with the PIPforia strategies.  you should click on the image below if you would like to find out more about the PIPforia-Dubai Seminars happening on 17th, 18th and 19th Feb 2009.

i’m going to take it easy with my trading this month and enjoy a well deserved holiday in Dubai with me wifey starting next week!  till then… HAPPY TRADING!! :O)

in the last 36 hours, i received 2 emails from the #1 and #2 winners of the Automated Trading Championship 2008

if you are new to Expert Advisors or are not familiar with the annual Automated Trading Championships, here’s what the winners did :

#1 : Kiril Kartuniv(Liliput) from Bulgaria : grew $10,000 to $169,584.64 in 3 months

#2 : Vladimir Lekhovitser(Prizmal) from Israel : grew $10,000 to $156,650.22 in 3 months

#3 : Nauris Žukas(Nauris) from Latvia : grew $10,000 to $155,936.98  in 3 months

wondering what the 3 gentlemen are up to right now?  you’ve found the right place! :O)

#1 : Kiril Kartuniv : undoubtedly the most humble of the 3, Kiril has chosen to auction out his winning EA and donate the proceeds to charity.  today (2nd Feb) marked the end of the bidding process.  if you were on Kiril’s mailing list, you would have received news of it too.   in the email, he mentioned something that may come to you as good news.  from the values of the bids and comments from his mailing list members, the champion realised that there is a great business opportunity staring right at him.  i quote :

“Basically all this made my decision to lunch a comercial site during the year.”

so… if you want to be informed when he launches the commercial version of his champion EA, you might want to consider adding yourself to his mailing list here : http://liliputfx.notifylist.com/atc08.html

#2 : Vladimir Lekhovitser : of the 3 winners, Vladimir seems to be the most established developer.  professionally, he works for a company that develops and codes AI (Artificial Intelligence) for automated trading in the Forex and Futures markets (WOW!!).  yesterday, he sent out an email to all those who have contacted him before, announcing that he is now “selling” his EA.  you don’t really get the actual EA.  what you get is an EA that acts as a signal receiver that receives trade signals from Vladimir’s signal generator… which is (in my opinion) one of the most secure way to “sell” an EA given all the unethical decompilers out there!

Vladimir sells his “signal receiver” EA at http://www.prizmalea.com at US$100 per month… quite a reasonable price i must say.  so… does that mean that you can pay US$100 per month and expect to make 1460% in 3 months just like what it did at the competition?  if only i knew!

here’s the catch :

for the PrizmaL EA signal service to work optimally, Vladimir asks buyers these questions on his website :

1. Does your broker give a fixed spread of 3 pips or less for EUR/GBP ?
2. Does your broker have a stoplevel of 7 pips or lower ?
3. Does your broker have a minimum time period per trade ?

when i asked if Alpari(UK) is a suitable broker, he came back with an email that said it not… and suggested that i use Velocity4X and specify him as my Introducing Broker.  i’m not too sure about the broker… so you might wanna do a bit of research on them before making any decisions.

#3 : Nauris Žukas : the first of the 3 to go commercial, Nauris has been selling his Indian EA on his website shortly after the championships ended.  at US$1000 for a full license to trade on 1 account, his EA is priced the highest.  a 1-month demo-only copy would already set you back US$300!  this is his website : http://test-abeiks.ucoz.com

price is not really the concern here.  like Prizmal, Indian needs some conditions for optimal performance.  if you read the website carefully, Nauris states :

“Before you acquire EA, you have to find a broker with EUR/GBP Spread in Asian session 2-3pips and StopLimit not exceeding 15pips.”

seems like #2 and #3 have a lot in common!

so there you have it… a summary of what the winners of the ATC2008 are doing now.  i hope this post have saved you some time in tracking them down yourself. if you find such information useful (as well as other parts of this little blog), you might wanna consider joining my mailing list so that you’ll be notified whenever there’s an update.  i blog about 1 to 2 times a month…. so you can be sure that i won’t be flooding your mailbox :O)   just fill up the form below to join the list.  it would be my honor :O)

so… am i excited about the fact that the top 3 performers of ATC2008 are selling their EAs commercially?  not really.  not unless they post LIVE account performance results with reputable brokers and/or provide investor passwords to prove that their systems are really profitable when traded with real brokers.

would appreciate if you can leave a comment if you find this post useful, ok?  coffee would be nice too! :O)

for the record, i’m not a professional trader.  neither am i a successful trader by any count.

after publishing my LIVE statement on the blog, i’ve received a number of very encouraging emails (THANKS!! :O)… and also a few not so encouraging ones that insinuated that the statements were doctored or that i was hiding things by showing only snapshots of my account.

like i said in the comments in the last post, i am not trying to boast my performance, nor am i trying desperately to market PIPforia’s EAs and seminars.  i’m merely telling the world what has worked for me.  to be totally transparent, here’s the investor read-only password to my LIVE account at InterBankFX.  you can see every trade that i’ve made since June 2007.

** account info removed.  please refer to earlier post for trading history **

this small account was trading purely with the PIPforia HGM since Sept 2008.  have withdrawn a big chunk out to put into Alpari(UK) which seems to have better spreads than IBFX.  if you have been trading with IBFX, you’ll know how ugly the spreads get at times.

although i’ve been singing praises about HGM, i must also add that it’s not a strategy that would suite everybody’s trading psychology.  having a drawdown or floating loss is part and parcel of the hedging/gridding strategy.  the way i use it, i prefer to specify my own entry prices.  with a relatively good entry, the drawdown can be reduced significantly.  however, when an entry is bad or when the market is ranging and choppy without a good trend, the drawdown can sometimes grow to 5-20% if left unattended.

how much time do i spend trading the HGM?  well… i would say about 1 to 2 hours a day.  i sometimes watch more than i should, but frankly… watching it more did more harm than good :O)  anyway, i just specify the entry levels and the EA does most of the work.  however, i do watch it closely and do an assessment of the situation when the DD gets above 10%.  i’ve had to bail out of a trade cycle that brought the account down 15%. in Nov, but it was still a profitable month in the end.

personally, i like the fact that it’s not a 100% automated Expert Advisor.  trading it semi-automated has it’s benefits.  a friend once termed this “Cyborg Trading”.  he runs a blog too : http://optionstrader.joymastery.com

“Cyborg Trading“… half man half machine.  that’s trading with the human’s intuition and intelligence, and execution with the precision and speed of a robot.  and since the entry levels are decided by the trader, this, in essence, is “real-time” optimisation :O)

i’m happy enough getting  15% to 20% per month…. so “Cyborg Trading” it is.  having a 100% automated EA that is consistently profitable would be wonderful!…. but we all know how difficult it is to find one.  i believe they do exist… but not commercially :O)

good trading to all!!

ps : i like coffee  :O)

time really flies!  it’s been almost 3 months since the last post.  thought i better write something before readers think this blog is dead :O)

what a year!  although i’ve not been directly affected by the financial meltdown, 2008 has been a year that i’ll never forget for the rest of my life!  i’ve lived the past 36 years of my life in passive-mode… basically going with the flow, sticking to the norm, and avoiding everything that sounds like hard work.  well… 2008 has changed all that… and i can feel it in my bones that 2009 is going to be freaking awesome!

since my last post, there’s has been a lot of interest building up around PIPforia.  quite a number of people have also been asking how i’ve been doing trading with the PIPforia Hedge Grid Management (HGM) EA.  before you say “…on no!  ck’s going to tout PIPforia again!”… i beg you to hold off your judgments for now.

although i am a friend of the founders of PIPforia, i would never let my relationship with them affect my judgment.  i hope my LIVE trading results in this post will show that everything i say is factual.  all i want to do is to provide you with information and facts that could help you in your trading.  “Why?”… you may ask.  well… like what someone said in a comment from the previous post, i believe in “The Law of Reciprocity” :O)

i would like to share with you an incident that happend 2 days after i posted my last post on 6th Oct 2008.  a reader unsubscribed to my mailing list and left this comment :

You keep talking about the same EAs over and over again, its getting boring. If you want a good honest review about EA go have a look at this site: http://xxxxxxx

…he left a link to a “review” site that was filled with affiliate links and hyped-up sales pitches.  i guess he’s still after the “excitement factor” of reading about new and amazing EAs that can make one freaking rich overnight.  don’t get me wrong… i have nothing against him.  i’ve been there too… so i can understand how he felt.  well… out of 1300+ subscribers, 3 have unsubscribed.  so i guess this blog’s still doing ok *i hope* :O)

if you remember, i’ve set myself a goal of achieving 15%-20% per month consistently back on 6th Oct 2008.  i’m happy to report that I’VE DONE IT!! :O)

in fact, i’ve been averaging 25.39% per month :O)

here are my monthly trade statements if you are interested to have a look.

Sept 2008 : http://ckowyong.com/blog/sep2008.htm
Oct 2008 : http://ckowyong.com/blog/oct2008.htm
Nov 2008 : http://ckowyong.com/blog/nov2008.htm
Dec 2008 : http://ckowyong.com/blog/dec2008.htm

November was tough.  had to abandon a trade cycle that got caught in a ranging market to stomach a 15% drawdown.  but on the whole, it was still a good profitable month :O)

with 4 months of experience trading exclusively with PIPforia’s HGM, i have more or less managed to fit my trading activity into my lifestyle comfortably.  so much so, i’m now dedicating more of my time learning how to trade manually.  i’m blessed to have met with a few excellent mentors here in Singapore… so 2009 is going to be an exciting year for sure! :O)

what else is planned for 2009?  heaps!! :O)  i have the honor of bringing the PIPforia seminars to Dubai in Feb 2009 together with a friend.  also planning to run them in Malaysia and Singapore again in March 2009.  one of Stella and David’s vision is to be able to travel the world and teach people how to become profitable traders with their unique automated trading strategies.  i’m glad to be able to help them achieve their vision!  if you would like to see the PIPforia seminars in your country, do drop Stella, David or me (ck@ckowyong.com) an email.  we’ll see how we can work together to make it a reality.  you can reach the founders of PIPforia at clientservices@pipforia-asia.com

Wishing you a Joyous and Profitable 2009!!

the best has yet to come!

ps : i’m still addicted to coffee.  do send a cuppa over if you’ve found this post useful, ok?
gracias! :O)