Just Forex Trades all current positions negative (11K)

Just noticed, all open trades negative - total $11,057. Seems very high. Have seen my account approaching margin call.
Would be nice to have a message or explanation from developer.
Stancar

Near a margin call with less than 10% drawdown? How?

Just Forex Trades developer doesnā€™t reply to private messages and doesnā€™t send out broadcast messages.

Most open trades are negative most of the times. The system is ā€œcut your wins short and let your losses runā€ (games the C2 stats.) It had losing trades open for months at a time.

Good luck!

Joseph

[No reviews on C2, although the systems is almost 2 years old. C2 doesnā€™t let subscribers to write reviews. Also it was a ā€˜featured systemā€™ that generates extra revenue for C2.]

This doesnā€™t really ā€œgameā€ the stats as C2 stats show the combined profit of open and closed trades. This is quite an interesting strategy. Looking through the trades I see the max leverage used is much less than many other FX strategies like Conserv Profit. This lets the system keep losing trades open for a really long time without too much drawdown. Also while he adds to losing positions there seems to be a max of 3-4 entries per trade which is also less than the max 12 entries of Conserv.

Heā€™s got a pretty good record almost 2 years long with 74% winning months. Do you guys think itā€™s possible for the system to keep performing like this and not have a major crash?

Thereā€™s only 10 autotraders. Maybe if the developer reduced the price a bit, he would get more subscribers.

The open trades negative is normal, Iā€™ve been on this strategy as an autotrader for 6 months, and what you donā€™t see is all the winning trades that were closedā€¦ They more than offset the open trades negative, as there have been many winning trades and there are only a few losing ones that he decided to keep on.

Regarding the track recordā€¦ for me, a clean 2 year track record means this guy knows what heā€™s doing, heā€™s got a 25% DD, which is perfectly good. He trades full time and invests for companies, and institutions.

I reckon heā€™s solid, and yes, heā€™s too expensive, heā€™d double his base if heā€™d drop the price by 25%ā€¦

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ā€œC2 stats show the combined profit of open and closed tradesā€

[Supposedly it does. I found inconsistent data, sent question to C2, didnā€™t
get reply.]

But this is beside the point. Maybe it does. But winning trades, win/loss
ratio, etc are calculated (obviously) on closed trades only.

Only the average of trade lengths is given, not the full distribution or at
least the stdev of it. For this system (as I mentioned) this is huge.

Same for all the ratios (Sharpe, etc.) Their current value is given, but
not the change over time.

The method for Monte Carlo is not given (so I tend to ignore those values.)

Etc.

Bottom line: there are some stats, not a full data set; you are right,
not *all of them can be gamed all the time. But my point is that
given the set, developers can game some of them to attract subs who
happen to filter on those and not on others.

There are systems that (as far as I can tell) donā€™t try to look good on C2,
they just work (or donā€™t.) And there are systems that game the stats.

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I just checked and open trades currently ($20,150). I started December 5 2016 and saw my account grow to $11,000 before the negative open positions resulted in a margin call and stopped further trading. Turns out to be a blessing in disguise.
My point is however that the graph for JFT does not reflect the ā€œmark to marketā€ position.
Further, the drawdown figure may be correct for closed trades but not for the current position.
Another case of learning by hard experience.

Stan - The graph does in fact reflect marked-to-market positions. You need to keep in mind what the graph shows: it is cumulative account equity over time, including both open and closed positions.

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So a couple of weeks down the line and the DD is now doubleā€¦

I am not sure about this.

I also subscribed to this system and stopped it when the DD was way out of the reported history.

I was (and am) also curious why there are no published reviews of the system. (I am offered to write a review for most of the systems I subscribe to after a few days. This one I subscribed to for several months and I didnā€™t have a chance to share my experience. Apparently others didnā€™t have eitherā€¦) [The system was a featured system on C2.]

At present the last closed trade on C2 is:
2/8/17 15:31 AUD/NZD AUD/NZD SHORT 9 1.06862 5/8 8:07 1.06815 n/a $21

This is a 3 months Martingale trade (and btw the first entry price must be a mistake, it was not trading at that level.) This you can see only if you expand the trade to see the details.

And it has a ā€œn/aā€ DD??? Really??? The first entry was reported to be at 1.05, the last at 1.08 and no DD???

And as I said earlier: the developer doesnā€™t respond to personal messages (when I was a subscriber) but now he is soliciting to raise $150K capital. I think I pass.

<broken record; Please let subscribers write a review about a system when they feel that they have something to share and not when you give them permission. </broken record;

Hence the trade has just been closed i guess this figure will be shown shortly , check the next day .

Thats against the site rules , he is not allowed to solicit for business outside C2 .

You were right, so letā€™s analyze the numbers.

I want to explain on this example again, how JFT games the system and how and why C2 stats could be better.

This was a Martingale trade. Going short 3 times as the trade went against us. C2 summarizes (averages) the entry price and this is what is calls a ā€œtrade.ā€ This actually encourages Martingale because it shows a better entry price.

In reality the first entry had a much bigger DD than the ā€œtradeā€ as defined by C2 (more on this in a minute.)

[I still donā€™t see the first orderā€™s entry price, it never traded at that level, but letā€™s accept it for a minute, maybe it is a bug only in the date.]

The first trade (if we accept the reported price) experienced a 4.71% DD! Given that aud/nzd trades with 33.33 margin, this is 157% on the margin!

The full trade (if we average the entries as C2 does) experienced 3.13% DD, This is 104% on margin.

C2 incorrectly reports 2.5% DD.

So the data itself is in suspect.

But even if accept it, it is 83% DD. This is the real number and of course one can calculate it, but 2.5% ā€œlooks better.ā€

Or put it differently:

The trade reported $30 profit. So one would look at this number only and determine that this is a long term winning strategy, ignoring the ā€œmere 2.5% DD.ā€ But to compare apples to apples you need to convert this to % as well (as C2 doesnā€™t do it for you). This profit represents a 0.04% move in price!

So the ā€œtradeā€ (as incorrectly called by C2) resulted in 0.04% profit, risking (an incorrectly underreported) 2.5%. A 56 : 1 risk/reward ratio.

Reporting DD in price % change (as opposed to leveraged %) and reporting p/l in $ (as opposed to % as well) encourages systems to let losses run and cut winners short. And this is what JFT does and this is why I claim that it ā€œgames the systems.ā€

As long as scaling in and out of a position via a number of orders is recognized as only 1 trade until the position is flat there is always a strong incentive for adding to losers. This way you can keep a very high winning ratio which attracts uneducated investors. Unfortunately there are a lot of them out there so itĀ“s likely a good income for ruthless system developers.
They donĀ“t even need to pay attention to the more indepth stats like those you mentioned because neither their subscribers doā€¦

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Quite frankly I donā€™t see any pattern of martingale trading (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, etcā€¦) with the Just Forex Trades system.

So far his Forex system generated a remarkable 62.2%/ year return for his subscribers while still keeping the maximum drawdown under 25%.

Thatā€™s 6 times more than the average yearly return of the S&P 500 and most Wall Street traders would kill for that kind of results (Buffet and Soros included)!

Anyway.

In fact. whatever built in flaws there are in a system will show up in the drawdown and the winning month category. Just Forex Trades is a good system but it has these 2 weaknesses. In that sense Collective2 really has a nice platform.

This is actually true. You are right. I missed that. Adding to losers is a problem.

You may want to revisit this strategies three year performance. Yes its unique, uses unconventional rules, and even adds to an open losing trade on occasion yet it is a consistent builder of capital.(20k to 100k+).Forex is a unique market and requires unique techniques. The world really is not flat.

Pretty impressed with his trading, but yeah the averaging down into losers would scare me.

Vast majority of trades are closed at a very small gain, thus the massive win ratio. He does seem to pick good entry points as most of his trades win fairly quickly with minimal drawdowns.

His lack of control of losing trades is a concern. One trade in particular he was down well over 10k and held the thing (and added to it) as it worked against him. Held for way over a year and closed at a $3 gain. Granted, currencies do mean revert, but if he had kept going after it and gotten unlucky a margin call could have been in his future.

The Non-TOS would be a dealbreaker for me, as I sense he could add to losers in desperation because itā€™s funny money.

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