British Pound Futures

[tjnoon 10]

I decided to post up the Euro's cousin, the British Pound/USD Futures. Mainly, because I am trading it live every day and I've been able to put together a reliable and robust tradeplan using UTA. I trade a 144 tick chart and like the Euro, I begin my trading at the start of the US Equity Session, 9:30 est. Also like the Euro, the BP trades on the CME so we'll use exchange times as our time reference.

 

Like the EC, I backtested about 6 weeks of trading, Feb 1 thru Mar 12th. I researched a tight plan with the intention of getting my trading done early each session. Two wins and a positive result meant I was done for the session, or, by 11 am cst if I hadn't yet hit my goal, I'd be done. Over the first 6 weeks I tested 83 trades, 60 winners and 23 losses! Not bad. 72.3% winners and a nifty +505 points.

 

Since then, as of today's date, I've been posting my real trades (the trades I take and call live in the traderoom that I host every day). I now have 191 total trades, including the backtested trades; 132 winners and 59 losses for a respectable 69.1% win rate. April was a tough sideways month, with wins and losses evenly distributed, yet we were able to hang out just below our equity highs and remained poised to break out to new profit levels, which happened last week. Today we hit new equity highs again, and have amassed +819 total points. The stair stepping is forming nicely as you can see from the attached screen shot of our equity curve.

 

I am using HVMM 2010 for this market as well. It's a great compliment to the EC. The different timeframes 144 vs 233, and the different rhythm that each trade in, make them not correlated enough to worry about. Their results do not track too closely day to day, other than the fact that they both seem to be consistent performers. Too much correlation is something to be concerned with but I just don't see it being a real factor in this case.

 

Check out the Trade Distribution Frequency Histogram too. What a beautiful distribution of trades. Notice the strong bias on the positive side with the majority of our winners hitting around 16 to 18 points. Notice also how our tight trade mgt plan has ended up with about 10% of our trades stopping out with just 1 point. Many of those trades would have wound up losing, but we were aggressively eliminating our risk while also covering the cost of our commission. No pip spreads to worry about with futures! Notice also how our longs and shorts were very simimlar in personality. This is the type of thing we like to see. It shows a stable trade system that does equally well going long or short.

 

Feel free to post comments, questions or whatever is on your mind. Start a new thread and share the results that you are discovering on your favorite markets. It's amazing what the UTA reveals to us. Get in the habit of posting your trades to UTA every day and soon you'll build up a valuable history of trade data that will help you improve your trading.

[SIUYA 11]

what the f is UTA..... sounds like a one of those fail safe system that costs money both in expenses and then when it does not really work.

6 weeks of back testing - very robust!

[foxstamp 10]

The Ultimate Trade Analyzer (UTA) is a spreadsheet used in MS Excel to analyze the data you input about the trades you studying. It is NOT a trading system. It helps you analyze your trading system.

 

I also successfully trade the BP futures along with TJ in his trade room using the HVMM 2010 which IS a trading system. We use the UTA to fine tune our trading plan.

 

The UTA is a fabulous tool that every trader should consider using who is serious about finding a winning system, and then fine tuning it to get the most favorable results from it. The ease of use and the large amount of useful statistics that result make it indispensable to me. I have learned so much about my trading strategies simply by recording the entry and exit prices plus the time of entry. There are filters you can use to sort out different factors such as what type of setup signal caused the trade and what criteria was used to exit the trade.

 

My favorite tool is the time-of-day tool. Trades are sorted based on 6 time periods of whatever start and stop times you enter. I used the UTA to determine that my crude oil system is quite successful in 5 of the 6 time periods. There is one 30 minute period that jumps out of the data that clearly does not measure up to the others. That period is the first 30 minutes that the stock market is open. So I don't take any entry setups during that time period. That alone has saved me thousands of dollars.

 

I also used the day-of-week feature to similarly see that 4 of the 5 days are very profitable. Wednesday's stood out as a breakeven day, actually losing after commissions (which you can add slippage and fees to your calculations to make results more accurate). This made logical sense to me. Wednesday is the day that the weekly crude oil inventory report is released mid-session. So, I stopped trading this system on Wednesday's and saved myself a lot of time and money.

 

I could go on, but hopefully you get the point of how useful the UTA is in actual application.

 

I am very pleased that I not only own the UTA and have its power available to me, but also that I am able to work with a professional trader like TJ Noonan on a daily basis. He is very thorough, disciplined and an excellent teacher.

 

Good luck in your trading.

[sneo 10]

so what is the purpose of this thread?

 

+505 pips on 83 trades of which 60 are winners, your average gain per trade is 6+ pips; +819pips on 191 trades of which 132 are winners, your average gain per trade is less than 5pips.

 

Based on your histogram, 40+ % of the time you made 10pips or more, 14% of the time you make between 1 to 9 pips and 10% of the time you scratch. Your largest loss is bigger than your largest gain.

 

I fail to see how robust and reliable your trade plan is. For a high frequency trading plan, the win ratio of about 70% that makes 6pips on average per trade does not seem to make me want to adopt this trading plan. You might want to explain further.

[MadMarketScientist 11]

sneo - the purpose of theis thread is for owners of the UTA to discuss their trade plans, what they are learning, get help, etc... it's a sponsored thread as you can tell by the section this is in by the publisher of the UTA so it's a "home base" for their customers to go and chat about it - of course the general public is free to see it as well if there's anything of interest. Thanks.

[sneo 10]

sorry, my bad. did not notice it's a Sponsored thread.:crap:

[tjnoon 10]

Well, thank you for all your thought provoking dialogue. It's great to see this forum already beginning to take hold. Sneo, I welcome a good healthy dose of skepticism, debate and discourse. Please keep it coming if you feel so inclined. Through conversations like this we can all learn something and improve as traders. As Foxstamp said, the UTA is a tool for analyzing trade systems, backtest, forward test and real trade results. You can use any system and analyze it with this tool. Quite frankly, I do not think there is a tool out there like this.

 

Regarding your observations of the BP and EC trade results I posted, again, I want to reiterate that it is just a starting point to begin conversation. The tradeplan we are employing is a very tight plan. We spend very little time trading it, often finishing quickly in the morning. I'm not saying it is the best plan in the world. Surely it is not. But we are building our accounts steadily and accomplishing our agenda which is " Get in, get out, get done." We take a few trades, take what the market will give us, and we're done. We now can go do whatever else we need to do, outside of trading. The UTA has given us the ability to see inside our trades. Perhaps by looking closer, it might not appeal to you. That's fine. Saves you time and you can begin to turn your attention to other opportunities that are more attractive to you.

 

As you observed, 5 points per trade (these are futures contracts so we think in terms of ticks/points vs pips) was the average gain and a positive expectancy. It may not seem like much but it depends on how you look at it, how you manage it, and what your personal goals are as far as how your trading fits into your broader life agenda.

 

I ran a simple money mgt study (per the UTA Equity and Fixed Fractional Money Mgt Tool) and here is what it teaches us based on three simple examples:

 

Starting with a $10,000 account balance:

 

1. If we risked 2% of our accnt size on each trade against the average loss based on the 193 trades taken, we would have traded up to a 3 contract position by now and would have a balance of $17,095 in our account, after trade costs. So, Feb 1 thru May 12.. not bad part time income, and sticking with it, one could see how it would steadily keep growning as we scale up, with minimal market exposure and time investment.

 

If you see the equity curve I posted earlier (based on just a single contract position), notice that the system struggled a bit at first and took a while to get its footing. Then it really took off. After a nice climb, the curve began moving sideways, struggling a bit in April but never dropping very far below its equity high. It has since put together a nice win streak and is breaking out again to new equity highs. Our rolling stats are beginning to show signs of stability as the win percentage continues to remain steady.

 

2. If we increased our risk tolerance to a 3% factor, risking 3% of our accnt balance on any given trade, based on the avg loss per the 193 trades (which by the way was $93.11), we would have traded up to a 7 contract position and an accnt value of $23,022, net of expenses! Meanwhile, we have minimized our risk exposure, and accomplished our goals with a few trades each day. By increasing our risk per trade by just 1% of our accnt value per trade, we've practically doubled our net profit during the same amount of time.

 

I think with a 69% win rate, risking 3% to begin with on a $10,000 starting account is not that unreasonable. And yet, with a mere 5 point avg per trade, we've been able to accomplish something that most traders wish they could achieve on a consistent basis. Continuing down this course, it would be easy to see how one could trade up to a 20 position trade and make a very nice return for their minimal effort in front of their computer screens each morning.

 

3. For more aggressive trades, lets look at what would happen if we risked 5% per trade. Afterall, we are winnning nearly 70%, right? Chris "Jesus" Fergusen showed us how he turned $1 into $20,000 by risking a disciplined 5% of his bankroll on each poker tournament he entered. He stated with $1 and entered a .05 tournament. He literally entered a tournament that had a nickel buy-in! He assumed that he was good enough to make a money position at least 50% of the time. Not necessarily 1st place, but a paid position. With this system, we are not making full targets all the time and are managing our trades, sometimes taking partial profits instead of letting a trade turn into a loss. We are winning quite a bit more than 50% however. If he could turn $1 into $20,000, then based on the numbers this system is producing, we should be able to do quite a bit better and perhaps it is a good argument for us to risk 5% of our account on the mere 5 point avg per trade.

 

If we risked 5% based on the same 193 trades and the same avg losing trade of $93.11, we would have traded up to a 22 contract position over the 193 trades and our account would have grown to $41,038. That's not the whole story though. At its peak, we would have put on a 27 contract trade and hit an equity high of $53,295 net. That would have been the 119th trade. It went into its drawdown and traded back down to a 14 position trade. April was tough. It has since been back on the upswing and would be currently trading (tomorrow, in fact) with a 22 contract position. If it keeps plugging along at this win rate, we'd reach a point where we couldn't trade any larger and we'd cap out our position size and enjoy 5 net points per trade from now until who knows.

 

I'm not claiming this BP tradeplan is the best thing since sliced bread, it merely presents the results that it presents. From this, perhaps we could find ways to improve our plan but even if we just stuck with this, we could see how over time, it would grow our accounts. The tortoise winds up beating the hare, afterall.

 

The UTA puts this kind of knowledge at our fingertips. Sometimes you can't judge a book by its cover and drilling down a bit deeper reveals things that can be surprising. -- TJ

[SIUYA 11]

apologies from me too - however do you have a link?

Unfortunately I saw a few varying links and some sniff of spam, as it will not let me enter, and freezes the screen unless I enter an email address.

If that is the case then I am out.

thanks.

[tjnoon 10]

I'm sorry Siuya, but I'm afraid I don't know what you mean by links that freeze your screen and needing to put in your email address etc. Again, this is just meant as a forum for those who want to share their UTA results or anyone else who wants to learn about this tool. I'm fairly new to Traders Lab and am not sure what you are referring to with your post.

[tjnoon 10]

Here's a quick recap on the BP trades we took, per the tradeplan described.

 

It was nearly a perfect week. Yesterday it took us three trades to hit our two winners, or it would have been a perfect 2 wins and done the past 5 sessions. We wound up taking 11 trades for the week, winning 10 out of 11. New equity highs were hit again today. For the week, we netted +101 points on 11 trades.

 

UTA stats improved a bit. Our win rate ticked up of course, to 69.7%. Our profit factor ticked up to 1.96. So for every dollar we put at risk, we stand to make 1.96 back.

 

I haven't had time to update the EC which did struggle this week. Today was excellent however and a big trailing move really helped us. I'll be out for the weekend. Hope everyone enjoy's themselves. Looking forward to Monday's session. -- TJ

[tjnoon 10]

Our British Pound Futures Wins 12 out of our last 14 trades! The EC paused today and took a step back, unable to post a winner. But it was bound to take a step back after the run it's been on lately. The BP however, continued its winning ways with a strong 2 out of 3 during a very sleepy market.

 

I've received a bunch of questions regarding the reentry set ups I am using. Here is a video that recaps the past few BP sessions and also walks through the various considerations we make regarding the reentry style set ups. Also, a good look at how we use the UTA to gain further insight into our trading. Check out how a 3% risk profile, beginning with a $15,000 starting account, more than doubled after expenses, in about 4 months, with very minimal trading; anywhere from 30 minutes to 2.5 hours at the most, each morning (US session).

 

Play Video

 

Finally, I notice a lot of people reading our UTA posts. Feel free to join in. Ask questions, post comments. We're here to help. While this forum is designed to help people learn the UTA trade tool, we talk a lot about the trades we are taking and how we use the UTA to continually be self critical and to help us indentify where we need to focus, to improve our results.

[tjnoon 10]

When we began this thread, the BP (not to be confused with the company that is wrecking the Gulf of Mexico) had made about 500 net points or so. Since then, about a month ago, the HVMM strategy we use and track with the UTA, has continued to post steady winners. As of the end of today, we are getting close to doubling the earlier point total, with +967 points and a 68.31% win rate. Also, we have a session win rate of 78.82 % and a weekly win rate of 83.33%.

 

As I stated earlier, the first 6 weeks of these stats were from backtest results. Since then, beginning the 3rd week in March, the trades have been real trades, called live in our trade room (Live Traderoom Blog). In fact, we gained +197 points in May. This week we haven't lost a BP trade and have made new equity highs again. I have attached the current equity curve below. Also, you will find another diagram that shows a single contract equity curve as well as an equity curve with a fixed fractional money mgt strategy applied, based on the risk parameters listed below:

 

• 3% risk based on the avg losing trade over the past 243 trades ($101.46).
  
• A starting trade account of $15,000
  
• $5.50 commission and $5 per trade slippage, which might be low but I'm assuming that we're using stop limit orders to enter our trade and I haven't experienced many missed trades; one maybe two in over 200 trades take.
  
• The chart with the two curves is net of expenses
  

 

Fixed Fractional Money Management is only one technique of course, and arguably there are better approaches. But this simple example illustrates how powerful a well thought out money management plan is and how it can dramatically effect your bottom line. Moreover it is only one of the many powerful UTA tools that can help a trader make better overall trade decisions.

 

When you look at the graph, keep in mind that the green line is the managed equity curve and is read on the right axis. The single contract is blue and read on the left axis. You could see how much more volatile the managed equity curve was, but also, how much more profitable it was. The histogram below the curves shows the number of contracts being traded, as the UTA calculated the positon size, trade after trade. It had traded up to 11 contracts but has since backed off a bit and currently is at a 9 contract position size. It will be interesting to see how this looks a bit down the road. Stay tuned.

[AmCan1 10]

This forum seems very interesting to me. I'm a newbie to TL and have been exploring around. This thread caught my attention because I tend to be a very structured trader. I believe I have a good feel and instinct but I try to discount it as much as possible. My way of trading is to rely on my rules and my trade system. It seems this tool of yours, the UTA, could be very useful. Is there a way to account for some discretionary decisions though. As much as I try to stay the course and trade my system with discipline, there are still times that a little human intervention makes all the difference. Making adjustments around obvious support and resistance levels, for one. I would like a tool that allows me to track the statistical results of my discretionary decisions.

[tjnoon 10]

Not sure if anyone is really interested in the BP futures but it sure has been working out great for me and my trading. This week, trading it a bit more cautiously with lower expectations (regarding my own trade goals) due to contract rollover, I took 7 trades and won all 7. Granted, 2 of them were only 1 tick gainers and qualify really as break even trades, but that's how my trade mgt works. On the other hand, those 1 tick gains are indeed winners because they saved me two losing trades. In the end, trading just one position, the BP was able to pick up +79 points with no losses this week.

 

My UTA spreadsheet continues to show me that my strategy and approach just keep on, keeping on. The win rate is holding at a steady 68.7% and has actually ticked up a bit. In fact, over the past 26 trades, there have only been 6 losses. There were five 1 tick gainers so I'll count those as break even trades even though they saved me from losing trades. That means 15 winners, for a total point gain over those 26 trades of +220 points.

 

Today's winner was another new equity high, ticking up my win rate as I mentioned, my profit factor, currently at 1.81, and an uptick in other significant stats as well. I'm looking forward to Monday's session.

[AmCan1 10]

I just asked you about the EC but thought I'd see how the BP has held up too. Would be interesting to see. Your system seems to be pretty steady so far.

[tjnoon 10]

AmCan1, yes it is. I've got about 265 trades now and the win rate has held up great, 67.55%. I've attached a pic of the current equity curve. It just came off a big winning streak and has just won 4 of the last 5 trades. Currently, we're a hair below are profit high water mark and shoud be breaking out to new highs any day. Maybe tomorrow.

[czo 10]

tj, is your BP trade plan posted anywhere - for the HVMM2? has anyone figured out/tested a plan for the BP using the SST? seems to reason that since it trends well enough to make consistent profits w/ HVMM2, it should be able to do well w/ SST - IF there is a good plan behind it. ??

[Tiobingo 10]

I think I heard that Mark was trading the BP with SST. But you must have read my mind czo! I was justing thinking about the BP futures today. I heard TJ mention that the GBPUSD 233 tick was one of the winniest charts when he was developing SST way back when, but he never mentioned anything about the BP. Have you done any preliminary testing on it?

[czo 10]

no, not yet. i heard tj say last wk that he was considerin cking the BP for an SST plan but hadnt .... yet. i wondered if anyone else had. i DO plan to try and fill a hundred days or so w/ POQ trades from 9am ET till 11am ET. wayyyyyy bk when i useta trade cme curr futures i determined that they sorta got messy after 11am ET.

that said, if BP makes consistent $$$$ w/ HVMM2, i see no reason to move to SST; unless someone has the UTA data to show SST's BP is 'better' than HVMM2's BP. only hard work [w/ UTA] can answer this question.

[tjnoon 10]

I hear ya! BP is on my list of to-do's.. I agree that it should perform great with SST. Mark is an excellent trader and if that's a market he has honed in on, I'm sure there's a good reason for it.

[czo 10]

tj, any chance u might ask mark to share his BP plan and performance overview results? do u know if he reads these pages?

[tjnoon 10]

Czo, amazing how time flies. I left for Europe shortly after your post and kind of lost touch with this forum or I would have responded to you sooner. Sorry for the delay. I don't believe Mark is trading the BP these days. I haven't really looked at it either only because I've been trying to balance the needs of many different traders and had to turn my attention to some stock, etf and option tradeplans as well as come up with some MT4 friendly forex plans. The BP has always been on my list of futures markets that grabbed my interest but I still haven't really put a tp together for it yet. Have you? Kind of curious if you have done any work on it since your last post. We do have a good EC (Euro) tradeplan and a few members in the live traderoom are also trading their own EC tradeplans with excellent results. I believe they're using 7 tick range bars. Anyway, if you're still on this forum and have any interesting BP information, I'd be interested to hear about it. Thanks..