Wow, with today’s moves it looks like we will see another wave of failed systems and unfortunately I will be joining them. Bye bye Broadsword Forex.
One thing is certain, it is absolutely my own fault. I had been playing around with it over the last 6 months, experimenting with position size and leverage, as it has always been very volatile, and I knew the spikes and troughs were too severe and would make real-life trading intolerable.
In the last few days I started to get a lot of divergence signals that the downward trend in most pairs (dollar strength) is weakening (which bizarrely is still the case) but as any seasoned veteran knows oversold can become more oversold and the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
I recklessly increased my leverage in the face of further moves against me as each signal triggered repeatedly and to cap it all I had no stops in place. Utterly stupid and completely inexcusable. I spent most of today away from the screen blissfully unaware of what was transpiring and returned to absolute carnage. I can still barely believe it happened, much less that I allowed it to happen, breaking all the rules.
I feel a whole plethora of emotions tonight; regret, loss, shame, embarrassment, humility. The market never stops teaching us lessons, and that is something to be thankful for.
Don’t feel bad Jon. Take it as a good lesson against averaging into losing positions. It may work sometimes, but that one time when it does not work, it will negate everything you made and more. Before entering any trade, one must determine the “out”. Stops are still king.
Kudos to you for being honest about the mistakes. Not many people have the bravery to come out in public and say what you said.
Wow Jon,
Quite spectacular and with no stops? Hopefully not too much real $$$ traded.
On the plus side you know how this happened - sad thing is you knew that before it did. Owning up, though, will get you back on that saddle. Best to you (and subs?).
Regards,
Gilbert
[LINKSYSTEM_30873120]
Sorry to hear it, Jon, and frankly I’m surprised that it happened that way to you, whom I consider a master of risk management.
Goes to show that acting on our knowledge every single time is humanly just impossible, even when it would logically lead to better results.
I myself did the same today: against my belief and despite my previous writings against this practice, I doubled down against the market not once but four times in a row, digging ever deeper to avoid closing a losing position.
In the end it did work, but only because it was not forex and I was following the market very closely.
And of course it was just a demo trade and not real money!.. I wouldn’t have done it with real money.
Well, good luck extricating yourself from your next system. The temptation to gamble is always hard to resist.
Thanks for your comments. It just shows you can know all the rules but that still doesn’t guarantee you’ll be able to implement them. It is so annoying because deep down I knew the risk of what I was doing but still did it anyway, it makes you feel so foolish. I’ve been thinking about it ever since trying to work out why (as there is always a real reason) and it’s almost as if subconciously I wanted it to happen. I know that may sound ridiculous but how else do you explain it? Maybe it no longer being available to trade gives me some other benefit and it is only through some dramatic climatic event that I would realise it. It’s like purposely inviting in disaster just to see what would happen. I mentioned in another post the other night that I will likely not be able to continue to trade systems on here soon because of a new trading venture I’ll be joining (which of course is excellent news) so maybe knowing it was going to be coming to an end I felt there were no consequences to failure as one of my personal aims of putting systems on here in the first place had already been achieved. A kind of ‘nothing to lose, what the hell, last throw of the dice, let’s go all in’ reasoning. That’s all I can think it could be. As bizarre as that might sound it kind of makes sense to me that way.
Jon -
Congratulations on your new hedge fund type of relationship that has been cultivated. I can’t help but have the same dream of one day successfully managing a large fund, so good luck to you my friend. I hope you make the clients a ton of money.
As far as the forex debacle, it is a mute discussion, unless the system had subscribers. Which brings us to the subject matter that has been discussed in the past from time to time.
To ensure that as a subscriber, I would not suffer a catastrophic loss is a concern I would have if I were a subscriber to a C2 system.
Is there a “safety” setting in C2 which if someone is subscribed to a system, and for whatever the reason the system blows up, is there a “max loss” type of setting somewhere that can be activated or allowed?
If not, then now might be a good time to visit again this subject. To protect the subscriber capital as well as to demonstrate that C2 cares about the quality / relationship between vendor and subscriber would seem to me to be an important issue for the credibility of C2 when it comes to the systems that are allowed to be placed on the site.
my 2 cents,
aspire trader
Hear, hear!
Great idea - I am surprised it isn’t yet a feature. Some systems do instruct subs to "set your daily stop losses at your brokerage to “$x”, but I don’t think all brokerages offer this service or all subs know how to go about implementing it.
Having it at C2 is the right thing to do.
Well, you’ll definitively be missed around here.
I’m not a mind reader, but you are onto something with your analysis of the cause. After all these years carefully building the system, it is surprising that this lapse would occur right now - unless this system has become a weight on you and you subconsciously wanted to get rid of it. But like I said, I’m no expert or psy major.
Regardless of cause, now you DO have more time available… enjoy it! 
I remember proposing something like this a while back, and Matthew replying that it was in their plans to implement it.
Hi Jon,
I was a subscriber of your system and lost some thousend $. But my account was not blown up. I had implemented stops for the positions and did not overleverage my account. This is a recommendation I give to other subscribers to survive the next major drawdown. But the best would be, if the owner of the system would use stops.
Hi Herbert,
Yes towards the end I could tell from the real-life fills that you had protective stops in place. I hope you also received my private message with my regrets and sincere apologies some of which I have replicated here publicly. I thank you again for your support, and wish the best to your trading.
Hi Jon,
a forex system, which survived more than two years in C2 is something special. You were on a good way. It´s a pity, that we will not get more systems from you. in the near future. But who knows…
All the best for you!
Herbert
I agree, I noticed on the Best Systems ‘Forex’ list there are only 6 systems which now make the entire list, and the no.1 is a test system! That tells you how difficult it has been I guess. Several people have bemoaned the lack of quality forex systems on here or that it’s an area not worth venturing into, to me it sounds like there’s an opportunity there, anyone producing a long term successful forex system would have a virtual monopoly on subscribers right now. I have known this for a while and have been working on a system that can run via the TS C2 tray so it requires no intraday human intervention, I have also been talking to several other vendors on here privately so I may even do something thru a third party in the near future, there is a definite market on here for a consistent short-term system and I will be back in some form to try and tap into it.
Go John, go!
I agree that you would have a monopoly with a real FX system. No virtual about it.
Steve Theobald
