Managed Forex Accounts

Sentiment Funds recovered all the drawdown in the month in the last two days, pretty amazing. It is about break even for January. We talked to the broker about the fund and learned some interesting facts. It is an automated system, but there is a trader watching the live accounts around the clock. There is no build-in hard stop in the system, but the human trader can make discretionary decision to pull the plug if necessary. The market has been especially volatile this month. We were told that the drawdown experienced by the accounts was still within the expected range of the system. Galleon test account also recovered partially, but still down substantially for the month.

DEV closed more profits and it is positive again on the month.

GST stopped trading. I did not lose money in the end because the position did partially recover. I am using the account to test another trader.

Labels: devrim, forex managed account, managed forex accounts

DEV (Devrim) took some losses on both Monday and Tuesday, then made up quite a bit today. It is good to see him limiting damages and cutting losses when he needs to. We know some other money manager kept saying "I am 100% positive the trade will come back, the trade will come back, the trade will..." while trading the accounts all the way to zero! With the recent losses, my DEV account (2X) is down 0.95% in January. He still has plenty of time left to keep his positive monthly return streak going.

Sentiment Funds took some severe beating lately. The drawdown is much larger than its historical high. As of this moment, my SEN account is down almost 10% overall (started Oct 23, 2007), 18% month to date. The drawdown was even higher earlier in the day. There is a saying that "records are made to be broken". So are the historical drawdowns. I am not ready to give up on this one yet though. By the way, I do have a Galleon test account, and it is down a LOT more!

LEO is taking a well deserved vacation, no trading. Up 11.69% on the month till last week. KAN still trades VERY lightly, almost no change from last update. He told me he will likely start to trade more soon.

I was getting updates from my friend's Zurich-1 account, because I did not have a test account directly with the trader. And he was very detail oriented with the accounts so it was as good as my own test account. My friend revoked the LPOA on his Zurich-1 account (started Dec 18, 2007) after it went down over 85%! The trader took huge risks after December drawdown trying to recover quickly and got hit hard repeatedly.

GST still has the large open trade drawdown. Going to test couple of other traders with small accounts soon.

Labels: devrim, forex managed account, managed forex accounts

We attended the PFG conference in Scottsdale, AZ last weekend, had a great time there. Made some good connections and talked to a few money managers who also attended the conference. PFG is bringing many managed forex accounts to retail investors with $5K minimum investments. Some of the money managers normally have high minimums like $100K and up. As always, we will evaluate those managed accounts carefully before offering them to our clients. If past experience is any indication, only a small percentage of these money managers will do well.

LEO is really on a roll this month. He has been flat before the end of NY session every day and had only one losing day (-1.39%). My account is up 11.69% month to date. He will be on vacation next week, but might still trade lightly. Ready to offer this managed account once the paperwork is all done. It might take couple more weeks.

KAN traded very lightly, made some small profit. My overall drawdown is reduced to 5.98%.

DEV carried a moderate open position with some drawdown over the weekend. He did close some winning trades since last week. Account is up 1.09% in January including the open drawdown.

SEN continues to struggle a bit after reaching the peak in late November 2007. Currently I am down 2.2% since starting the account on Oct 23, 2007. Month to date drawdown is about 11%.

GST is still holding on to the losing position. Open drawdown is over 30%. I don't like it. If that's how he wants to trade, he should have used lower leverage. Good thing I only gave him a small test account.

We found out the reason CHB stopped trading for the last few weeks was that the trader wanted to switch broker. The account performed well during the time that he did trade.

Labels: devrim, forex managed account, managed forex accounts

All three of us will travel tomorrow for a conference hosted by PFG, one of the brokers we work with. We hope to talk to some money managers in person.

LEO is trading very well as we are getting closer to the launch of the MA. He is up 5.92% month to date, without much account volatility. We hope to have all the paperwork done and launch this managed account by the end of the month.

KAN had a rocky start so far, with a moderate overall drawdown of 6.48%. He trades fairly conservatively, and I think he will be fine. We learnt that in addition to forex, KAN is also a talented S&P Futures trader as well. So hopefully we will work with him on futures trading too. One thing about futures trading is that it is more regulated than forex. The trader has to register if he trades for more than 15 clients.

DEV had two trading days this week, up on both. My 2X account is up 2.03% month to date. We had a call with the trader Devrim today and discussed trading plans for our new $100K minimum institutional account. It will be traded conservatively targeting 3-5% gross monthly and less than 15% drawdown. DEV indicated that in order to keep account risk/volatility low under the minimum trade size constraint of the institutional broker, it is best to start with at least $300K rather than a single $100K account. So we are working on opening a few client accounts before the actual trading commences. We do plan to offer a 2X leverage choice.

CHB still had no new trades in the account.

I am getting close to giving up on GST for the second time. It has floating drawdown that reached 34%. There are signs that he is reverting to his old self. There is a fine distinction between trading long term trend and letting losers run forever. You simply can't use that much leverage if you really want to trade long term trend. I guess I still have too much patience for them after dealing with so many losing traders.

Labels: devrim, forex managed account, managed forex accounts

This first week of trading in the new year has not been great overall.

DEV only made one trade with a small loss of 0.53%, and performance fees were deducted for Dec 2007.

SEN had another moderate drawdown of 6% or so and recovered a bit, down 4.26% for the month as of this writing. I still feel quite comfortable with its volatility range. Investors should consider to hedge the risk of continued USD weakness by taking advantage of the ability of this fund to keep account balance in three currencies : USD, EUR and JPY. For those who plan to invest a sizable amount, an option is to split the total fund balance into multiple currencies.

LEO made 0.89% for the first week of 2008 (3 days really, Monday belongs to 2007 and Tuesday is new year holiday). I like the fact that his new strategy has much lower risk and account volatility. The overall performance going forward might not be as high as historical numbers, but account safety is more important than aggressive growth.

KAN traded on Thursday and Friday, had a small net loss of 0.41%. The big storm in the San Francisco bay area and the power outage limited his trading on Friday. Our traders will need to be prepared for such events with backup powers. We had a great lunch meeting with the traders of KAN and LEO today in a nice resturant in Sausalito. We had much fun talking business as well as chit-chat.

The Catch-22 of GST continues. He had to trade the medium term trend for now, however, it means pretty high volatility with the leverage he uses. He currently has an open position that gave back most of the gains in the account, equity is up less than 3% only overall as of this writing.

CHB had no new trades.

Labels: devrim, forex managed account, managed forex accounts

Most managed accounts did not trade on the last day of the month, including: DEV, SEN, LEO and KAN. So the previous update on them is still current.

GST had a few good trades on the last day. It still has an open position with a small unrealized profit. Up 21.75% in December.

CHB is up 4.65%, all positions closed.

Labels: devrim, forex managed account, managed forex accounts