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Former investment bank FX trader: Risk management part II
Firstly, thanks for the overwhelming comments and feedback. Genuinely really appreciated. I am pleased 500+ of you find it useful. If you didn't read the first post you can do so here: risk management part I. You'll need to do so in order to make sense of the topic. As ever please comment/reply below with questions or feedback and I'll do my best to get back to you. Part II
Letting stops breathe
When to change a stop
Entering and exiting winning positions
Risk:reward ratios
Risk-adjusted returns
Letting stops breathe
We talked earlier about giving a position enough room to breathe so it is not stopped out in day-to-day noise. Let’s consider the chart below and imagine you had a trailing stop. It would be super painful to miss out on the wider move just because you left a stop that was too tight. Imagine being long and stopped out on a meaningless retracement ... ouch! One simple technique is simply to look at your chosen chart - let’s say daily bars. And then look at previous trends and use the measuring tool. Those generally look something like this and then you just click and drag to measure. For example if we wanted to bet on a downtrend on the chart above we might look at the biggest retracement on the previous uptrend. That max drawdown was about 100 pips or just under 1%. So you’d want your stop to be able to withstand at least that. If market conditions have changed - for example if CVIX has risen - and daily ranges are now higher you should incorporate that. If you know a big event is coming up you might think about that, too. The human brain is a remarkable tool and the power of the eye-ball method is not to be dismissed. This is how most discretionary traders do it. There are also more analytical approaches. Some look at the Average True Range (ATR). This attempts to capture the volatility of a pair, typically averaged over a number of sessions. It looks at three separate measures and takes the largest reading. Think of this as a moving average of how much a pair moves. For example, below shows the daily move in EURUSD was around 60 pips before spiking to 140 pips in March. Conditions were clearly far more volatile in March. Accordingly, you would need to leave your stop further away in March and take a correspondingly smaller position size. ATR is available on pretty much all charting systems Professional traders tend to use standard deviation as a measure of volatility instead of ATR. There are advantages and disadvantages to both. Averages are useful but can be misleading when regimes switch (see above chart). Once you have chosen a measure of volatility, stop distance can then be back-tested and optimised. For example does 2x ATR work best or 5x ATR for a given style and time horizon? Discretionary traders may still eye-ball the ATR or standard deviation to get a feeling for how it has changed over time and what ‘normal’ feels like for a chosen study period - daily, weekly, monthly etc.
Reasons to change a stop
As a general rule you should be disciplined and not change your stops. Remember - losers average losers. This is really hard at first and we’re going to look at that in more detail later. There are some good reasons to modify stops but they are rare. One reason is if another risk management process demands you stop trading and close positions. We’ll look at this later. In that case just close out your positions at market and take the loss/gains as they are. Another is event risk. If you have some big upcoming data like Non Farm Payrolls that you know can move the market +/- 150 pips and you have no edge going into the release then many traders will take off or scale down their positions. They’ll go back into the positions when the data is out and the market has quietened down after fifteen minutes or so. This is a matter of some debate - many traders consider it a coin toss and argue you win some and lose some and it all averages out. Trailing stops can also be used to ‘lock in’ profits. We looked at those before. As the trade moves in your favour (say up if you are long) the stop loss ratchets with it. This means you may well end up ‘stopping out’ at a profit - as per the below example. The mighty trailing stop loss order It is perfectly reasonable to have your stop loss move in the direction of PNL. This is not exposing you to more risk than you originally were comfortable with. It is taking less and less risk as the trade moves in your favour. Trend-followers in particular love trailing stops. One final question traders ask is what they should do if they get stopped out but still like the trade. Should they try the same trade again a day later for the same reasons? Nope. Look for a different trade rather than getting emotionally wed to the original idea. Let’s say a particular stock looked cheap based on valuation metrics yesterday, you bought, it went down and you got stopped out. Well, it is going to look even better on those same metrics today. Maybe the market just doesn’t respect value at the moment and is driven by momentum. Wait it out. Otherwise, why even have a stop in the first place?
Entering and exiting winning positions
Take profits are the opposite of stop losses. They are also resting orders, left with the broker, to automatically close your position if it reaches a certain price. Imagine I’m long EURUSD at 1.1250. If it hits a previous high of 1.1400 (150 pips higher) I will leave a sell order to take profit and close the position. The rookie mistake on take profits is to take profit too early. One should start from the assumption that you will win on no more than half of your trades. Therefore you will need to ensure that you win more on the ones that work than you lose on those that don’t. Sad to say but incredibly common: retail traders often take profits way too early This is going to be the exact opposite of what your emotions want you to do. We are going to look at that in the Psychology of Trading chapter. Remember: let winners run. Just like stops you need to know in advance the level where you will close out at a profit. Then let the trade happen. Don’t override yourself and let emotions force you to take a small profit. A classic mistake to avoid. The trader puts on a trade and it almost stops out before rebounding. As soon as it is slightly in the money they spook and cut out, instead of letting it run to their original take profit. Do not do this.
Entering positions with limit orders
That covers exiting a position but how about getting into one? Take profits can also be left speculatively to enter a position. Sometimes referred to as “bids” (buy orders) or “offers” (sell orders). Imagine the price is 1.1250 and the recent low is 1.1205. You might wish to leave a bid around 1.2010 to enter a long position, if the market reaches that price. This way you don’t need to sit at the computer and wait. Again, typically traders will use tech analysis to identify attractive levels. Again - other traders will cluster with your orders. Just like the stop loss we need to bake that in. So this time if we know everyone is going to buy around the recent low of 1.1205 we might leave the take profit bit a little bit above there at 1.1210 to ensure it gets done. Sure it costs 5 more pips but how mad would you be if the low was 1.1207 and then it rallied a hundred points and you didn’t have the trade on?! There are two more methods that traders often use for entering a position. Scaling in is one such technique. Let’s imagine that you think we are in a long-term bulltrend for AUDUSD but experiencing a brief retracement. You want to take a total position of 500,000 AUD and don’t have a strong view on the current price action. You might therefore leave a series of five bids of 100,000. As the price moves lower each one gets hit. The nice thing about scaling in is it reduces pressure on you to pick the perfect level. Of course the risk is that not all your orders get hit before the price moves higher and you have to trade at-market. Pyramiding is the second technique. Pyramiding is for take profits what a trailing stop loss is to regular stops. It is especially common for momentum traders. Pyramiding into a position means buying more as it goes in your favour Again let’s imagine we’re bullish AUDUSD and want to take a position of 500,000 AUD. Here we add 100,000 when our first signal is reached. Then we add subsequent clips of 100,000 when the trade moves in our favour. We are waiting for confirmation that the move is correct. Obviously this is quite nice as we humans love trading when it goes in our direction. However, the drawback is obvious: we haven’t had the full amount of risk on from the start of the trend. You can see the attractions and drawbacks of both approaches. It is best to experiment and choose techniques that work for your own personal psychology as these will be the easiest for you to stick with and build a disciplined process around.
Risk:reward and win ratios
Be extremely skeptical of people who claim to win on 80% of trades. Most traders will win on roughly 50% of trades and lose on 50% of trades. This is why risk management is so important! Once you start keeping a trading journal you’ll be able to see how the win/loss ratio looks for you. Until then, assume you’re typical and that every other trade will lose money. If that is the case then you need to be sure you make more on the wins than you lose on the losses. You can see the effect of this below. A combination of win % and risk:reward ratio determine if you are profitable A typical rule of thumb is that a ratio of 1:3 works well for most traders. That is, if you are prepared to risk 100 pips on your stop you should be setting a take profit at a level that would return you 300 pips. One needn’t be religious about these numbers - 11 pips and 28 pips would be perfectly fine - but they are a guideline. Again - you should still use technical analysis to find meaningful chart levels for both the stop and take profit. Don’t just blindly take your stop distance and do 3x the pips on the other side as your take profit. Use the ratio to set approximate targets and then look for a relevant resistance or support level in that kind of region.
Risk-adjusted returns
Not all returns are equal. Suppose you are examining the track record of two traders. Now, both have produced a return of 14% over the year. Not bad! The first trader, however, made hundreds of small bets throughout the year and his cumulative PNL looked like the left image below. The second trader made just one bet — he sold CADJPY at the start of the year — and his PNL looked like the right image below with lots of large drawdowns and volatility. Would you rather have the first trading record or the second? If you were investing money and betting on who would do well next year which would you choose? Of course all sensible people would choose the first trader. Yet if you look only at returns one cannot distinguish between the two. Both are up 14% at that point in time. This is where the Sharpe ratio helps . A high Sharpe ratio indicates that a portfolio has better risk-adjusted performance. One cannot sensibly compare returns without considering the risk taken to earn that return. If I can earn 80% of the return of another investor at only 50% of the risk then a rational investor should simply leverage me at 2x and enjoy 160% of the return at the same level of risk. This is very important in the context of Execution Advisor algorithms (EAs) that are popular in the retail community. You must evaluate historic performance by its risk-adjusted return — not just the nominal return. Incidentally look at the Sharpe ratio of ones that have been live for a year or more ... Otherwise an EA developer could produce two EAs: the first simply buys at 1000:1 leverage on January 1st ; and the second sells in the same manner. At the end of the year, one of them will be discarded and the other will look incredible. Its risk-adjusted return, however, would be abysmal and the odds of repeated success are similarly poor.
Sharpe ratio
The Sharpe ratio works like this:
It takes the average returns of your strategy;
It deducts from these the risk-free rate of return i.e. the rate anyone could have got by investing in US government bonds with very little risk;
It then divides this total return by its own volatility - the more smooth the return the higher and better the Sharpe, the more volatile the lower and worse the Sharpe.
For example, say the return last year was 15% with a volatility of 10% and US bonds are trading at 2%. That gives (15-2)/10 or a Sharpe ratio of 1.3. As a rule of thumb a Sharpe ratio of above 0.5 would be considered decent for a discretionary retail trader. Above 1 is excellent. You don’t really need to know how to calculate Sharpe ratios. Good trading software will do this for you. It will either be available in the system by default or you can add a plug-in.
VAR
VAR is another useful measure to help with drawdowns. It stands for Value at Risk. Normally people will use 99% VAR (conservative) or 95% VAR (aggressive). Let’s say you’re long EURUSD and using 95% VAR. The system will look at the historic movement of EURUSD. It might spit out a number of -1.2%. A 5% VAR of -1.2% tells you you should expect to lose 1.2% on 5% of days, whilst 95% of days should be better than that This means it is expected that on 5 days out of 100 (hence the 95%) the portfolio will lose 1.2% or more. This can help you manage your capital by taking appropriately sized positions. Typically you would look at VAR across your portfolio of trades rather than trade by trade. Sharpe ratios and VAR don’t give you the whole picture, though. Legendary fund manager, Howard Marks of Oaktree, notes that, while tools like VAR and Sharpe ratios are helpful and absolutely necessary, the best investors will also overlay their own judgment. Investors can calculate risk metrics like VaR and Sharpe ratios (we use them at Oaktree; they’re the best tools we have), but they shouldn’t put too much faith in them. The bottom line for me is that risk management should be the responsibility of every participant in the investment process, applying experience, judgment and knowledge of the underlying investments.Howard Marks of Oaktree Capital What he’s saying is don’t misplace your common sense. Do use these tools as they are helpful. However, you cannot fully rely on them. Both assume a normal distribution of returns. Whereas in real life you get “black swans” - events that should supposedly happen only once every thousand years but which actually seem to happen fairly often. These outlier events are often referred to as “tail risk”. Don’t make the mistake of saying “well, the model said…” - overlay what the model is telling you with your own common sense and good judgment.
Coming up in part III
Available here Squeezes and other risks Market positioning Bet correlation Crap trades, timeouts and monthly limits *** Disclaimer:This content is not investment advice and you should not place any reliance on it. The views expressed are the author's own and should not be attributed to any other person, including their employer.
Former investment bank FX trader: news trading and second order thinking
Thanks to everyone who responded to the previous pieces on risk management. We ended up with nearly 2,000 upvotes and I'm delighted so many of you found it useful. This time we're going to focus on a new area: reacting to and trading around news and fundamental developments. A lot of people get this totally wrong and the main reason is that they trade the news at face value, without considering what the market had already priced in. If you've ever seen what you consider to be "good" or "better than forecast" news come out and yet been confused as the pair did nothing or moved in the opposite direction to expected, read on... We are going to do this in two parts. Part I
Introduction
Why use an economic calendar
How to read the calendar
Knowing what's priced in
Surveys
Rates decisions
First order thinking vs second order thinking
Introduction
Knowing how to use and benefit from the economic calendar is key for all traders - not just news traders. In this chapter we are going to take a practical look at how to use the economic calendar. We are also going to look at how to interpret news using second order thinking. The key concept is learning what has already been ‘priced in’ by the market so we can estimate how the market price might react to the new information.
Why use an economic calendar
The economic calendar contains all the scheduled economic releases for that day and week. Even if you purely trade based on technical analysis, you still must know what is in store. https://preview.redd.it/20xdiq6gq4k51.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=6cd47186db1039be7df4d7ad6782de36da48f1db Why? Three main reasons. Firstly, releases can help provide direction. They create trends. For example if GBPUSD has been fluctuating aimlessly within a range and suddenly the Bank of England starts raising rates you better believe the British Pound will start to move. Big news events often start long-term trends which you can trade around. Secondly, a lot of the volatility occurs around these events. This is because these events give the market new information. Prior to a big scheduled release like the US Non Farm Payrolls you might find no one wants to take a big position. After it is released the market may move violently and potentially not just in a single direction - often prices may overshoot and come back down. Even without a trend this volatility provides lots of trading opportunities for the day trader. https://preview.redd.it/u17iwbhiq4k51.png?width=1200&format=png&auto=webp&s=98ea8ed154c9468cb62037668c38e7387f2435af Finally, these releases can change trends. Going into a huge release because of a technical indicator makes little sense. Everything could reverse and stop you out in a moment. You need to be aware of which events are likely to influence the positions you have on so you can decide whether to keep the positions or flatten exposure before the binary event for which you have no edge. Most traders will therefore ‘scan’ the calendar for the week ahead, noting what the big events are and when they will occur. Then you can focus on each day at a time.
Reading the economic calendar
Most calendars show events cut by trading day. Helpfully they adjust the time of each release to your own timezone. For example we can see that the Bank of Japan Interest Rate decision is happening at 4am local time for this particular London-based trader. https://preview.redd.it/lmx0q9qoq4k51.jpg?width=1200&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c6e9e1533b1ba236e51296de8db3be55dfa78ba1 Note that some events do not happen at a specific time. Think of a Central Banker’s speech for example - this can go on for an hour. It is not like an economic statistic that gets released at a precise time. Clicking the finger emoji will open up additional information on each event.
Event importance
How do you define importance? Well, some events are always unimportant. With the greatest of respect to Italian farmers, nobody cares about mundane releases like Italian farm productivity figures. Other events always seem to be important. That means, markets consistently react to them and prices move. Interest rate decisions are an example of consistently high importance events. So the Medium and High can be thought of as guides to how much each event typically affects markets. They are not perfect guides, however, as different events are more or less important depending on the circumstances. For example, imagine the UK economy was undergoing a consumer-led recovery. The Central Bank has said it would raise interest rates (making GBPUSD move higher) if they feel the consumer is confident. Consumer confidence data would suddenly become an extremely important event. At other times, when the Central Bank has not said it is focused on the consumer, this release might be near irrelevant.
Knowing what's priced in
Next to each piece of economic data you can normally see three figures. Actual, Forecast, and Previous.
Actual refers to the number as it is released.
Forecast refers to the consensus estimate from analysts.
Previous is what it was last time.
We are going to look at this in a bit more detail later but what you care about is when numbers are better or worse than expected. Whether a number is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ really does not matter much. Yes, really. Once you understand that markets move based on the news vs expectations, you will be less confused by price action around events This is a common misunderstanding. Say everyone is expecting ‘great’ economic data and it comes out as ‘good’. Does the price go up? You might think it should. After all, the economic data was good. However, everyone expected it to be great and it was just … good. The great release was ‘priced in’ by the market already. Most likely the price will be disappointed and go down. By priced in we simply mean that the market expected it and already bought or sold. The information was already in the price before the announcement. Incidentally the official forecasts can be pretty stale and might not accurately capture what active traders in the market expect. See the following example.
An example of pricing in
For example, let’s say the market is focused on the number of Tesla deliveries. Analysts think it’ll be 100,000 this quarter. But Elon Musk tweets something that hints he’s really, really, really looking forward to the analyst call. Tesla’s price ticks higher after the tweet as traders put on positions, reflecting the sentiment that Tesla is likely to massively beat the 100,000. (This example is not a real one - it just serves to illustrate the concept.) Tesla deliveries are up hugely vs last quarter ... but they are disappointing vs market expectations ... what do you think will happen to the stock? On the day it turns out Tesla hit 101,000. A better than the officially forecasted result - sure - but only marginally. Way below what readers of Musk's twitter account might have thought. Disappointed traders may sell their longs and close out the positions. The stock might go down on ‘good’ results because the market had priced in something even better. (This example is not a real one - it just serves to illustrate the concept.)
We know that interest rates heavily affect currency prices. For major interest rate decisions there’s a great tool on the CME’s website that you can use. See the link for a demo This gives you a % probability of each interest rate level, implied by traded prices in the bond futures market. For example, in the case above the market thinks there’s a 20% chance the Fed will cut rates to 75-100bp. Obviously this is far more accurate than analyst estimates because it uses actual bond prices where market participants are directly taking risk and placing bets. It basically looks at what interest rate traders are willing to lend at just before/after the date of the central bank meeting to imply the odds that the market ascribes to a change on that date. Always try to estimate what the market has priced in. That way you have some context for whether the release really was better or worse than expected.
Second order thinking
You have to know what the market expects to try and guess how it’ll react. This is referred to by Howard Marks of Oaktree as second-level thinking. His explanation is so clear I am going to quote extensively. It really is hard to improve on this clarity of thought: First-level thinking is simplistic and superficial, and just about everyone can do it (a bad sign for anything involving an attempt at superiority). All the first-level thinker needs is an opinion about the future, as in “The outlook for the company is favorable, meaning the stock will go up.” Second-level thinking is deep, complex and convoluted. Howard Marks He explains first-level thinking: The first-level thinker simply looks for the highest quality company, the best product, the fastest earnings growth or the lowest p/e ratio. He’s ignorant of the very existence of a second level at which to think, and of the need to pursue it. Howard Marks The above describes the guy who sees a 101,000 result and buys Tesla stock because - hey, this beat expectations. Marks goes on to describe second-level thinking: The second-level thinker goes through a much more complex process when thinking about buying an asset. Is it good? Do others think it’s as good as I think it is? Is it really as good as I think it is? Is it as good as others think it is? Is it as good as others think others think it is? How will it change? How do others think it will change? How is it priced given: its current condition; how do I think its conditions will change; how others think it will change; and how others think others think it will change? And that’s just the beginning. No, this isn’t easy. Howard Marks In this version of events you are always thinking about the market’s response to Tesla results. What do you think they’ll announce? What has the market priced in? Is Musk reliable? Are the people who bought because of his tweet likely to hold on if he disappoints or exit immediately? If it goes up at which price will they take profit? How big a number is now considered ‘wow’ by the market? As Marks says: not easy. However, you need to start getting into the habit of thinking like this if you want to beat the market. You can make gameplans in advance for various scenarios. Here are some examples from Marks to illustrate the difference between first order and second order thinking. Some further examples Trying to react fast to headlines is impossible in today’s market of ultra fast computers. You will never win on speed. Therefore you have to out-think the average participant.
Coming up in part II
Now that we have a basic understanding of concepts such as expectations and what the market has priced in, we can look at some interesting trading techniques and tools. Part II
Preparing for quantitative and qualitative releases
Data surprise index
Using recent events to predict future reactions
Buy the rumour, sell the fact
The trimming position effect
Reversals
Some key FX releases
Hope you enjoyed this note. As always, please reply with any questions/feedback - it is fun to hear from you. *** Disclaimer:This content is not investment advice and you should not place any reliance on it. The views expressed are the author's own and should not be attributed to any other person, including their employer.
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Advanced Microsoft Excel, Decision Trees, Random Forests, AdaBoost & XGBoost in Python, CNN for Computer Vision with Keras, Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2020, Complete Linear Regression Analysis in Python & more
Real quick before I get into my next steps of my FX Journey, id like to say thank you to all the people who commented on my last post! All of the tips I got were really eye-opening and introduced me to different parts of FX trading that I didn't even know existed. So thank you so much, and I hope to get more interesting feedback from you guys in the future! Also Im going to probably change my writing frequency from daily to biweekly. I think writing about every little trade is not going to be as beneficial to me as writing about my overall progress at certain points throughout the week. I started this trading day out by learning up on order flow. A whole bunch of you guys suggested really interesting youtubers to watch, and I started with Mr. pip's series on order flow. After I finished up watching a few of his videos, I started to tweak my trading plan so that I could get in some chart time. I changed currency pair from EUUSD to the AUD/USD, the time frame from the 4 hour to the 1 hour, and my indicators from RSI, Stochastic, 2 SMAs and ADX to ATR, RSI, and Ichimoku Kinko Hyo. I also added a little fundamental analysis in my trading plan because I think that I am being far too reliant on my indicators. I planned to check the economic calendar and determine the general trend of the currency pairs that are strongly correlated to the AUD/USD before I began my chart analysis. In addition to all of my analysis, I tried to practice using the techniques I learned in Mr. Pip's videos and analyze the order flow of the chart. Even if my analysis of order flow is wrong, as long as I am getting practice I am learning. Eventhough I planned to use today to back-test indicators and find a solid new plan, I did not have enough time. I ended up getting on my demo account really late in the day, and started to force myself to enter a trade. Destructive habits like this could lead into some massive issues when I eventually get into live trading. To combat this harmful attitude specifically, I will restrict myself to trading on certain parts of the day (for example session overlaps, news releases, and earlier in the day). Despite this mistake I still continued with my trading strategy. I calculated all the currency correlations for AUS/USD using the past weeks economic data, and set my indicators in place. After checking the overall trend of the most strongly correlated pairs (Positive: EUUSD, GPB/USD, Negative: USD/CAD, USD/JPY) I started to analyze the order flow. All the correlated currencies, except for EUUSD, indicated that the AUD/USD would fall, while my order flow analysis indicated the opposite. Seeing as though I am extremely new to order flow, I dismissed this analysis, and ended up forcing a trade on the AUD/USD going short when my indicators seemed to line up correctly. I learned from last time that I should not alter or close my trade purely based on emotion, and to just wait till the market hits my stop loss or take profit. I included a trailing stop loss of 60 pips this time, but I have no evidence to base that number range on. The trade is currently open and I am down about 30 pips. Although I am not labeling this trade as a loser yet, I can definitely see a lot of holes in my trading strategy. The most obvious mistake in my eyes right now is my use of indicators. Currently all my trades are purely based on what my indicators say, and since I do not have any back-tested data to support the credibility of my indicators, it feels a lot like strategic gambling. Another issue is that I feel far too reliant on indicators alone. I think that if I can find ways to include various types of analysis efficiently and evenly in my trading plan I will become a much more skillful and well-rounded trader. In order to combat these two issues I will begin forming various types of trading strategies this weekend and back-test them all extensively. I also plan on researching more on price action, order flow, and Naked Forex. Once again any and all feedback is welcome. I am just beginning Forex, but it had been a huge passion of mine and I don't plan on stopping anytime soon.
Disclaimer: None of this is financial advice. I have no idea what I'm doing. Please do your own research or you will certainly lose money. I'm not a statistician, data scientist, well-seasoned trader, or anything else that would qualify me to make statements such as the below with any weight behind them. Take them for the incoherent ramblings that they are. TL;DR at the bottom for those not interested in the details. This is a bit of a novel, sorry about that. It was mostly for getting my own thoughts organized, but if even one person reads the whole thing I will feel incredibly accomplished.
Background
For those of you not familiar, please see the various threads on this trading system here. I can't take credit for this system, all glory goes to ParallaxFX! I wanted to see how effective this system was at H1 for a couple of reasons: 1) My current broker is TD Ameritrade - their Forex minimum is a mini lot, and I don't feel comfortable enough yet with the risk to trade mini lots on the higher timeframes(i.e. wider pip swings) that ParallaxFX's system uses, so I wanted to see if I could scale it down. 2) I'm fairly impatient, so I don't like to wait days and days with my capital tied up just to see if a trade is going to win or lose. This does mean it requires more active attention since you are checking for setups once an hour instead of once a day or every 4-6 hours, but the upside is that you trade more often this way so you end up winning or losing faster and moving onto the next trade. Spread does eat more of the trade this way, but I'll cover this in my data below - it ends up not being a problem. I looked at data from 6/11 to 7/3 on all pairs with a reasonable spread(pairs listed at bottom above the TL;DR). So this represents about 3-4 weeks' worth of trading. I used mark(mid) price charts. Spreadsheet link is below for anyone that's interested.
System Details
I'm pretty much using ParallaxFX's system textbook, but since there are a few options in his writeups, I'll include all the discretionary points here:
I'm using the stop entry version - so I wait for the price to trade beyond the confirmation candle(in the direction of my trade) before entering. I don't have any data to support this decision, but I've always preferred this method over retracement-limit entries. Maybe I just like the feeling of a higher winrate even though there can be greater R:R using a limit entry. Variety is the spice of life.
I put my stop loss right at the opposite edge of the confirmation candle. NOT at the edge of the 2-candle pattern that makes up the system. I'll get into this more below - not enough trades are saved to justify the wider stops. (Wider stop means less $ per pip won, assuming you still only risk 1%).
All my profit/loss statistics are based on a 1% risk per trade. Because 1 is real easy to multiply.
There are definitely some questionable trades in here, but I tried to make it as mechanical as possible for evaluation purposes. They do fit the definitions of the system, which is why I included them. You could probably improve the winrate by being more discretionary about your trades by looking at support/resistance or other techniques.
I didn't use MBB much for either entering trades, or as support/resistance indicators. Again, trying to be pretty mechanical here just for data collection purposes. Plus, we all make bad trading decisions now and then, so let's call it even.
As stated in the title, this is for H1 only. These results may very well not play out for other time frames - who knows, it may not even work on H1 starting this Monday. Forex is an unpredictable place.
I collected data to show efficacy of taking profit at three different levels: -61.8%, -100% and -161.8% fib levels described in the system using the passive trade management method(set it and forget it). I'll have more below about moving up stops and taking off portions of a position.
And now for the fun. Results!
Total Trades: 241
Raw Winrates:
TP at -61.8%: 177 out of 241: 73.44%
TP at -100%: 156 out of 241: 64.73%
TP at -161.8%: 121 out of 241: 50.20%
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account):
TP at -61.8%: 5.22%
TP at -100%: 23.55%
TP at -161.8%: 29.14%
As you can see, a higher target ended up with higher profit despite a much lower winrate. This is partially just how things work out with profit targets in general, but there's an additional point to consider in our case: the spread. Since we are trading on a lower timeframe, there is less overall price movement and thus the spread takes up a much larger percentage of the trade than it would if you were trading H4, Daily or Weekly charts. You can see exactly how much it accounts for each trade in my spreadsheet if you're interested. TDA does not have the best spreads, so you could probably improve these results with another broker. EDIT: I grabbed typical spreads from other brokers, and turns out while TDA is pretty competitive on majors, their minors/crosses are awful! IG beats them by 20-40% and Oanda beats them 30-60%! Using IG spreads for calculations increased profits considerably (another 5% on top) and Oanda spreads increased profits massively (another 15%!). Definitely going to be considering another broker than TDA for this strategy. Plus that'll allow me to trade micro-lots, so I can be more granular(and thus accurate) with my position sizing and compounding.
A Note on Spread
As you can see in the data, there were scenarios where the spread was 80% of the overall size of the trade(the size of the confirmation candle that you draw your fibonacci retracements over), which would obviously cut heavily into your profits. Removing any trades where the spread is more than 50% of the trade width improved profits slightly without removing many trades, but this is almost certainly just coincidence on a small sample size. Going below 40% and even down to 30% starts to cut out a lot of trades for the less-common pairs, but doesn't actually change overall profits at all(~1% either way). However, digging all the way down to 25% starts to really make some movement. Profit at the -161.8% TP level jumps up to 37.94% if you filter out anything with a spread that is more than 25% of the trade width! And this even keeps the sample size fairly large at 187 total trades. You can get your profits all the way up to 48.43% at the -161.8% TP level if you filter all the way down to only trades where spread is less than 15% of the trade width, however your sample size gets much smaller at that point(108 trades) so I'm not sure I would trust that as being accurate in the long term. Overall based on this data, I'm going to only take trades where the spread is less than 25% of the trade width. This may bias my trades more towards the majors, which would mean a lot more correlated trades as well(more on correlation below), but I think it is a reasonable precaution regardless.
Time of Day
Time of day had an interesting effect on trades. In a totally predictable fashion, a vast majority of setups occurred during the London and New York sessions: 5am-12pm Eastern. However, there was one outlier where there were many setups on the 11PM bar - and the winrate was about the same as the big hours in the London session. No idea why this hour in particular - anyone have any insight? That's smack in the middle of the Tokyo/Sydney overlap, not at the open or close of either. On many of the hour slices I have a feeling I'm just dealing with small number statistics here since I didn't have a lot of data when breaking it down by individual hours. But here it is anyway - for all TP levels, these three things showed up(all in Eastern time):
7pm-4am: Fewer setups, but winrate high.
5am-6am: Lots of setups, but but winrate low.
12pm-3pm Medium number of setups, but winrate low.
I don't have any reason to think these timeframes would maintain this behavior over the long term. They're almost certainly meaningless. EDIT: When you de-dup highly correlated trades, the number of trades in these timeframes really drops, so from this data there is no reason to think these timeframes would be any different than any others in terms of winrate. That being said, these time frames work out for me pretty well because I typically sleep 12am-7am Eastern time. So I automatically avoid the 5am-6am timeframe, and I'm awake for the majority of this system's setups.
Moving stops up to breakeven
This section goes against everything I know and have ever heard about trade management. Please someone find something wrong with my data. I'd love for someone to check my formulas, but I realize that's a pretty insane time commitment to ask of a bunch of strangers. Anyways. What I found was that for these trades moving stops up...basically at all...actually reduced the overall profitability. One of the data points I collected while charting was where the price retraced back to after hitting a certain milestone. i.e. once the price hit the -61.8% profit level, how far back did it retrace before hitting the -100% profit level(if at all)? And same goes for the -100% profit level - how far back did it retrace before hitting the -161.8% profit level(if at all)? Well, some complex excel formulas later and here's what the results appear to be. Emphasis on appears because I honestly don't believe it. I must have done something wrong here, but I've gone over it a hundred times and I can't find anything out of place.
Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%
Winrate: 46.4%
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 5.36%
Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%
Winrate: 65.97%
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): -1.01% (yes, a net loss)
Now, you might think exactly what I did when looking at these numbers: oof, the spread killed us there right? Because even when you move your SL to 0%, you still end up paying the spread, so it's not truly "breakeven". And because we are trading on a lower timeframe, the spread can be pretty hefty right? Well even when I manually modified the data so that the spread wasn't subtracted(i.e. "Breakeven" was truly +/- 0), things don't look a whole lot better, and still way worse than the passive trade management method of leaving your stops in place and letting it run. And that isn't even a realistic scenario because to adjust out the spread you'd have to move your stoploss inside the candle edge by at least the spread amount, meaning it would almost certainly be triggered more often than in the data I collected(which was purely based on the fib levels and mark price). Regardless, here are the numbers for that scenario:
Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%
Winrate(breakeven doesn't count as a win): 46.4%
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 17.97%
Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%
Winrate(breakeven doesn't count as a win): 65.97%
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 11.60%
From a literal standpoint, what I see behind this behavior is that 44 of the 69 breakeven trades(65%!) ended up being profitable to -100% after retracing deeply(but not to the original SL level), which greatly helped offset the purely losing trades better than the partial profit taken at -61.8%. And 36 went all the way back to -161.8% after a deep retracement without hitting the original SL. Anyone have any insight into this? Is this a problem with just not enough data? It seems like enough trades that a pattern should emerge, but again I'm no expert. I also briefly looked at moving stops to other lower levels (78.6%, 61.8%, 50%, 38.2%, 23.6%), but that didn't improve things any. No hard data to share as I only took a quick look - and I still might have done something wrong overall. The data is there to infer other strategies if anyone would like to dig in deep(more explanation on the spreadsheet below). I didn't do other combinations because the formulas got pretty complicated and I had already answered all the questions I was looking to answer.
2-Candle vs Confirmation Candle Stops
Another interesting point is that the original system has the SL level(for stop entries) just at the outer edge of the 2-candle pattern that makes up the system. Out of pure laziness, I set up my stops just based on the confirmation candle. And as it turns out, that is much a much better way to go about it. Of the 60 purely losing trades, only 9 of them(15%) would go on to be winners with stops on the 2-candle formation. Certainly not enough to justify the extra loss and/or reduced profits you are exposing yourself to in every single other trade by setting a wider SL. Oddly, in every single scenario where the wider stop did save the trade, it ended up going all the way to the -161.8% profit level. Still, not nearly worth it.
Correlated Trades
As I've said many times now, I'm really not qualified to be doing an analysis like this. This section in particular. Looking at shared currency among the pairs traded, 74 of the trades are correlated. Quite a large group, but it makes sense considering the sort of moves we're looking for with this system. This means you are opening yourself up to more risk if you were to trade on every signal since you are technically trading with the same underlying sentiment on each different pair. For example, GBP/USD and AUD/USD moving together almost certainly means it's due to USD moving both pairs, rather than GBP and AUD both moving the same size and direction coincidentally at the same time. So if you were to trade both signals, you would very likely win or lose both trades - meaning you are actually risking double what you'd normally risk(unless you halve both positions which can be a good option, and is discussed in ParallaxFX's posts and in various other places that go over pair correlation. I won't go into detail about those strategies here). Interestingly though, 17 of those apparently correlated trades ended up with different wins/losses. Also, looking only at trades that were correlated, winrate is 83%/70%/55% (for the three TP levels). Does this give some indication that the same signal on multiple pairs means the signal is stronger? That there's some strong underlying sentiment driving it? Or is it just a matter of too small a sample size? The winrate isn't really much higher than the overall winrates, so that makes me doubt it is statistically significant. One more funny tidbit: EUCAD netted the lowest overall winrate: 30% to even the -61.8% TP level on 10 trades. Seems like that is just a coincidence and not enough data, but dang that's a sucky losing streak. EDIT: WOW I spent some time removing correlated trades manually and it changed the results quite a bit. Some thoughts on this below the results. These numbers also include the other "What I will trade" filters. I added a new worksheet to my data to show what I ended up picking.
Total Trades: 75
Raw Winrates:
TP at -61.8%: 84.00%
TP at -100%: 73.33%
TP at -161.8%: 60.00%
Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%: 53.33%
Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%: 53.33% (yes, oddly the exact same winrate. but different trades/profits)
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account):
TP at -61.8%: 18.13%
TP at -100%: 26.20%
TP at -161.8%: 34.01%
Moving SL up to 0% when the price hits -61.8%, TP at -100%: 19.20%
Taking half position off at -61.8%, moving SL up to 0%, TP remaining half at -100%: 17.29%
To do this, I removed correlated trades - typically by choosing those whose spread had a lower % of the trade width since that's objective and something I can see ahead of time. Obviously I'd like to only keep the winning trades, but I won't know that during the trade. This did reduce the overall sample size down to a level that I wouldn't otherwise consider to be big enough, but since the results are generally consistent with the overall dataset, I'm not going to worry about it too much. I may also use more discretionary methods(support/resistance, quality of indecision/confirmation candles, news/sentiment for the pairs involved, etc) to filter out correlated trades in the future. But as I've said before I'm going for a pretty mechanical system. This brought the 3 TP levels and even the breakeven strategies much closer together in overall profit. It muted the profit from the high R:R strategies and boosted the profit from the low R:R strategies. This tells me pair correlation was skewing my data quite a bit, so I'm glad I dug in a little deeper. Fortunately my original conclusion to use the -161.8 TP level with static stops is still the winner by a good bit, so it doesn't end up changing my actions. There were a few times where MANY (6-8) correlated pairs all came up at the same time, so it'd be a crapshoot to an extent. And the data showed this - often then won/lost together, but sometimes they did not. As an arbitrary rule, the more correlations, the more trades I did end up taking(and thus risking). For example if there were 3-5 correlations, I might take the 2 "best" trades given my criteria above. 5+ setups and I might take the best 3 trades, even if the pairs are somewhat correlated. I have no true data to back this up, but to illustrate using one example: if AUD/JPY, AUD/USD, CAD/JPY, USD/CAD all set up at the same time (as they did, along with a few other pairs on 6/19/20 9:00 AM), can you really say that those are all the same underlying movement? There are correlations between the different correlations, and trying to filter for that seems rough. Although maybe this is a known thing, I'm still pretty green to Forex - someone please enlighten me if so! I might have to look into this more statistically, but it would be pretty complex to analyze quantitatively, so for now I'm going with my gut and just taking a few of the "best" trades out of the handful. Overall, I'm really glad I went further on this. The boosting of the B/E strategies makes me trust my calculations on those more since they aren't so far from the passive management like they were with the raw data, and that really had me wondering what I did wrong.
What I will trade
Putting all this together, I am going to attempt to trade the following(demo for a bit to make sure I have the hang of it, then for keeps):
"System Details" I described above.
TP at -161.8%
Static SL at opposite side of confirmation candle - I won't move stops up to breakeven.
Trade only 7am-11am and 4pm-11pm signals.
Nothing where spread is more than 25% of trade width.
Looking at the data for these rules, test results are:
Winrate: 58.19%
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 47.43%
I'll be sure to let everyone know how it goes!
Other Technical Details
ATR is only slightly elevated in this date range from historical levels, so this should fairly closely represent reality even after the COVID volatility leaves the scalpers sad and alone.
The sample size is much too small for anything really meaningful when you slice by hour or pair. I wasn't particularly looking to test a specific pair here - just the system overall as if you were going to trade it on all pairs with a reasonable spread.
Raw Data
Here's the spreadsheet for anyone that'd like it. (EDIT: Updated some of the setups from the last few days that have fully played out now. I also noticed a few typos, but nothing major that would change the overall outcomes. Regardless, I am currently reviewing every trade to ensure they are accurate.UPDATE: Finally all done. Very few corrections, no change to results.) I have some explanatory notes below to help everyone else understand the spiraled labyrinth of a mind that put the spreadsheet together.
I'm on the East Coast in the US, so the timestamps are Eastern time.
Time stamp is from the confirmation candle, not the indecision candle. So 7am would mean the indecision candle was 6:00-6:59 and the confirmation candle is 7:00-7:59 and you'd put in your order at 8:00.
I found a couple AM/PM typos as I was reviewing the data, so let me know if a trade doesn't make sense and I'll correct it.
Insanely detailed spreadsheet notes
For you real nerds out there. Here's an explanation of what each column means:
Pair - duh
Date/Time - Eastern time, confirmation candle as stated above
Win to -61.8%? - whether the trade made it to the -61.8% TP level before it hit the original SL.
Win to -100%? - whether the trade made it to the -100% TP level before it hit the original SL.
Win to -161.8%? - whether the trade made it to the -161.8% TP level before it hit the original SL.
Retracement level between -61.8% and -100% - how deep the price retraced after hitting -61.8%, but before hitting -100%. Be careful to look for the negative signs, it's easy to mix them up. Using the fib% levels defined in ParallaxFX's original thread. A plain hyphen "-" means it did not retrace, but rather went straight through -61.8% to -100%. Positive 100 means it hit the original SL.
Retracement level between -100% and -161.8% - how deep the price retraced after hitting -100%, but before hitting -161.8%. Be careful to look for the negative signs, it's easy to mix them up. Using the fib% levels defined in ParallaxFX's original thread. A plain hyphen "-" means it did not retrace, but rather went straight through -100% to -161.8%. Positive 100 means it hit the original SL.
Trade Width(Pips) - the size of the confirmation candle, and thus the "width" of your trade on which to determine position size, draw fib levels, etc.
Loser saved by 2 candle stop? - for all losing trades, whether or not the 2-candle stop loss would have saved the trade and how far it ended up getting if so. "No" means it didn't save it, N/A means it wasn't a losing trade so it's not relevant.
Spread(ThinkorSwim) - these are typical spreads for these pairs on ToS.
Spread % of Width - How big is the spread compared to the trade width? Not used in any calculations, but interesting nonetheless.
True Risk(Trade Width + Spread) - I set my SL at the opposite side of the confirmation candle knowing that I'm actually exposing myself to slightly more risk because of the spread(stop order = market order when submitted, so you pay the spread). So this tells you how many pips you are actually risking despite the Trade Width. I prefer this over setting the stop inside from the edge of the candle because some pairs have a wide spread that would mess with the system overall. But also many, many of these trades retraced very nearly to the edge of the confirmation candle, before ending up nicely profitable. If you keep your risk per trade at 1%, you're talking a true risk of, at most, 1.25% (in worst-case scenarios with the spread being 25% of the trade width as I am going with above).
Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -61.8% - not going to go into huge detail, see the spreadsheet for calculations if you want. But, in a nutshell, if the trade was a win to 61.8%, it returns a positive # based on 61.8% of the trade width, minus the spread. Otherwise, it returns the True Risk as a negative. Both normalized to the 1% risk you started with.
Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -100% - same as the last, but 100% of Trade Width.
Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -161.8% - same as the last, but 161.8% of Trade Width.
Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread TP -100%, and move SL to breakeven at 61.8% - uses the retracement level columns to calculate profit/loss the same as the last few columns, but assuming you moved SL to 0% fib level after price hit -61.8%. Then full TP at 100%.
Win or Loss in %(1% risk) including spread take off half of position at -61.8%, move SL to breakeven, TP 100% - uses the retracement level columns to calculate profit/loss the same as the last few columns, but assuming you took of half the position and moved SL to 0% fib level after price hit -61.8%. Then TP the remaining half at 100%.
Overall Growth(-161.8% TP, 1% Risk) - pretty straightforward. Assuming you risked 1% on each trade, what the overall growth level would be chronologically(spreadsheet is sorted by date).
Pairs
AUD/CAD
AUD/CHF
AUD/JPY
AUD/NZD
AUD/USD
CAD/CHF
CAD/JPY
CHF/JPY
EUAUD
EUCAD
EUCHF
EUGBP
EUJPY
EUNZD
EUUSD
GBP/AUD
GBP/CAD
GBP/CHF
GBP/JPY
GBP/NZD
GBP/USD
NZD/CAD
NZD/CHF
NZD/JPY
NZD/USD
USD/CAD
USD/CHF
USD/JPY
TL;DR
Based on the reasonable rules I discovered in this backtest:
Date range: 6/11-7/3
Winrate: 58.19%
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 47.43%
Demo Trading Results
Since this post, I started demo trading this system assuming a 5k capital base and risking ~1% per trade. I've added the details to my spreadsheet for anyone interested. The results are pretty similar to the backtest when you consider real-life conditions/timing are a bit different. I missed some trades due to life(work, out of the house, etc), so that brought my total # of trades and thus overall profit down, but the winrate is nearly identical. I also closed a few trades early due to various reasons(not liking the price action, seeing support/resistance emerge, etc). A quick note is that TD's paper trade system fills at the mid price for both stop and limit orders, so I had to subtract the spread from the raw trade values to get the true profit/loss amount for each trade. I'm heading out of town next week, then after that it'll be time to take this sucker live!
86 Trades
Date range: 7/9-7/30
Winrate: 52.32%
Adjusted Proft % (takes spread into account): 20.73%
Starting Balance: $5,000
Ending Balance: $6,036.51
Live Trading Results
I started live-trading this system on 8/10, and almost immediately had a string of losses much longer than either my backtest or demo period. Murphy's law huh? Anyways, that has me spooked so I'm doing a longer backtest before I start risking more real money. It's going to take me a little while due to the volume of trades, but I'll likely make a new post once I feel comfortable with that and start live trading again.
Summarizing some free trading idea resources I've been using
I've been following many free resources on youtube and twitter to generate trading ideas. Some of them are suspicious; some are more like boasting their wining trades but never post any losing trades. I see many people ask about trading ideas/resources, so I want to briefly share some resources I find useful. Twitter resources:
@ TicTocTick
Instrument: Mostly SPX/SPY/ES
Technique: orderflow
Highlights: TicTocTick is amazingly good at levels, spotting sellers and buyers levels. Everyday he posts his plan for the next day of the following format: If open above X, long/short bias, target Y. If open below X, short/long bias, target Z. Intraday he sometimes send "warnings" of potential big sellers / buyers at certain level. His price target and long/short bias is often right in my experience. His levels are useful for day trades IMHO.
Notes: (1) even with his plan, one needs an actionable plan. (2) He sometimes delete his tweets. His day-by-day and intraday tweets are more actionable than his longer term view. (3) he sometimes tweets political and controversial non-stock related things.
Trade transparency: 0/5 (doesn't post any trades)
Live update in-time: 5/5 (updates very frequently)
Actionable trading plan: 1/5 (good at levels and price targets. need your own plan)
Live interaction: 0/5 (no interaction)
Educational: 2/5 (can learn the technique from other resources. TicTock doesn't teach you directly)
@ tradingwarz
Instrument: Mainly SPY/SPX/ES
Technique: candlestick patterns, Fib levels, support and resistance levels etc
Style: only day trading
Highlights: he diligently post daily plan and many educational resources, sometimes intraday updates. Had many good trades.
Notes: I haven't followed him long but so far so good. He also recently has educational youtube videos.
Trade transparency: X/5 (hard to measure)
Live update in-time: 2.5/5 (updates frequently)
Actionable trading plan: 3.5/5
Live interaction: X/5
Educational: 5/5 (youtube videos)
@ traderstewie
Instrument: Stocks
Technique: candlestick patterns, support and resistance levels, trendlines, channels etc
Style: swing trade, 5min chart to find entry
Highlights: decent probability for picking explosive stocks. I have learned a lot about different trading set-ups from the free blog post: http://theimpatienttrader.blogspot.com/
Trade transparency: 1/5 (posting winning trades afterwards. Sometimes discuss stocks on watch)
Instrument: SPX/SPY, Forex, Cryptocurrency,, Gold and Silver.
Style: holding for a few hours for SPX/SPY, swing trade for all
Timeframe: 8H for analysis. Lower time frame for entry.
Trading frequency: 1-2 trades per week.
Highlights: For SPX, he rode the big drop down in March; rode the rally up, and rode some pullbacks down in April. Got chopped in May. Now he's positinoning long. He also did well in Gold and Silverthis month. He only uses candle sticks, support and resistance lines, trendlines, and sometimes true trend indicator. He doesn't use volume though.
Youtube style: 2 videos every trading day: (1) live at 9am ET for 1-2 hours and talk about his plan and market analysis. Sometimes he trades during the live session (enter / exit). (2) after market closes he summarizes the day, and talks about plans for the next day. (3) Every weekend he gives out his technical analysis for the next week.
What I like: His levels on the chart are very good. He is also very transparent about his trades no matter whether it's winning or losing. He also explains the general economic environment.
Trade transparency: 4/5 (not knowing trading size; but knowing entry/exit)
Real-time update: 2.5/5 (two times a day)
Actionable trading plan: 5/5
Live interaction: 3.5/5 (some interaction on youtube live; Jordan responses to youtube comments)
Timeframe: all time frames. Mostly 5min, 1H, 1D, 1W, 1M.
Trading frequency: very frequent. multiple trades per day.
Highlights: Justin is very good at seeing through market maker manipulation and highly manipulated stocks. He often explained his plan and his outlook (especially in OPEX days) in his YouTube channel. The stocks on their weekly watchlist tend to do very well. He does live Q&A on youtube as well everyday where one can ask him to look at a chart.
Youtube style: Three videos by his team every trading day: (1) live at 9:30am ET; does 1-2 live scalping trades. Explains what he thinks of the market. (might discontinue) (2) at noon: summarizes what happened and what he sees is happening later in the day. Some of his trading plans. (3) 4:15pm ET: summarizes today and looking forward to the rest of the week. Videos (1) and (2) include live Q&A. I've asked many questions on youtube. Every weekend has two videos talking about plans for the next week.
What I like: The Q&A and Justin's outlook of the market, his team's stock pick.
Other notes:
The scalping trades in the morning is not very suitable for small accounts since they will trade for example 100 shares of BA (~160) to scalp a few dollars per share.
Even though the stocks on their weekly watchlist does well very, one still need to come up with an actionable plan. Very often say they recommend stock A on Sunday, and on Monday it already gaps up big. They sometimes do YOLO options -- big risk big rewards-- options can go to 0.
Besides the free content, everyone can get a free one-week trial for their paid membership, or a 2-week free trial by winning a lottery game on their youtube ( what I did) or knowing someone in their group and get a referral. What I like about the group: (i) very frequently updates each day on SPY and stocks on the watchlist. (ii) all their positions, Profit / Loss are very transparent. I learned a lot about how to manage trades by observing their live trades. (iii) There are many very experienced traders in the group posting their trading ideas, plans, entry/exit, and there are many live discussions. (iv) There's a "helpdesk" in the group where members' questions will be answered in minutes. I often ask about my trading plan, entries/ targets.
Trade transparency: 0/5 (free content: not knowing entry/exit nor position size);5+/5 (membership\*)*
Live update in-time: 3.5/5 (free content: three times a day);5+/5 (membership\*)*
Highlights: I follow their free Shadow trader swing newsletter, where every few days they post some trading ideas and analysis with actionable plan. Their twitter account will also real-time update their entry/exit and trade management.
What I like: I enjoyed learning what they look at to find a good set-up and how to manage a trade. They also have a spreadsheet tracking all their positions and profit/loss. All the winning/losing trades are transparent.
Notes: Because of the current market volatility, during certain weeks the swing trading performance is quite shaky. Profits (per 100K account with no more than 30K invested each time): 2020YTD: +9K, 2019: +6K; 2018: +30K; 2017: +3K; 2016: +2.5K; 2015: -1.8K.
Trade transparency: 5/5
Live update in-time: 5/5 (updates frequently)
Actionable trading plan: 5/5
Live interaction: 0/5 (newsletter and twitter alerts only)
Educational: 4.5/5 (the newsletter explains set-ups, what sectors they are looking at)
I've spent much time looking for free contents, and I like the ones above. Also looking forward to hearing about other good/bad resources. I might also update this post if there are enough interests. NFA
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CFDs may be associated with currencies as well as shares, stocks, commodities and crypto currencies. As with the Forex market, leverage may be used to invest beyond your earnings and hypothetically get better payouts for decrease investments.
I have just read 'Forex Price Action Scalping' by Bob Volmon. I found it interesting and want to further read on this type of technique. Any recommendations on this topic would be appreciated. Thanks
Dans la logique de mon post sur la vulgarisation du marché monétaire, voici une vulgarisation de la finance dans sa globalité. Avant de me lancer dans le vif du sujet, je tiens à clarifier des notions importantes qui pourraient porter à confusion et que je sais que je verrai dans les commentaires. Je vais aussi vous donner un peu mon opinion personnelle pour éviter tout malentendu dans la discussion, sautez cette partie si ça ne vous intéresse pas. Si la modération trouve que c'est trop hors-sujet, libre à elle de supprimer le post. J’ai entendu vos critiques dans les commentaires, j’avoue que j’ai vraiment trop simplifié certains passages, j’avais peur que le post soit trop long et trop technique, parfois au prix de la précision et de la rigueur, mea culpa. Cette fois-ci j’ai fait le choix de faire une synthèse des différents marchés financiers, qui régissent l’allocation des ressources financières dans notre société. Nombre d’entre vous ont dû entendre parler de certains d’entre eux, peut-être que vous participez à certains. Toutefois, comme dans mon autre post, je tiens à faire une précision importante. Les informations que je vous donne ici sont grandement insuffisantes pour que vous vous lanciez sur ces marchés, sans que cela s’apparente à une soirée au Monte Carlo pour votre portefeuille. Je ne vous incite aucunement à le faire, mon but étant uniquement d’éclairer ce qui se passe sur les marchés financiers, je n’ai aucune participation à quoi que ce soit, je ne suis pas rémunéré et je ne cherche pas à vendre ou à promouvoir quoi que ce soit. Je ne serai pas 100% exhaustif mais je ferai de mon mieux pour éclairer des sujets que vous pouvez parfois rencontrer dans la presse. Encore une fois, les questions et les remarques sont la bienvenue. Un marché financier est une notion très abstraite somme toute, il s’agît de l’ensemble des acteurs, des informations et des outils qui font que l’offre (d’actifs) et la demande (le capital) se rencontrent. Ce n’est pas à confondre avec une bourse, qui est un lieu physique (et maintenant virtuel) où se rencontrent l’offre et la demande, ou une place financière, qui est une ville qui regroupe un grand nombre de marchés financiers et d’acteurs majeurs. Quand votre tonton vous prête 10k EUR pour que vous lanciez votre site d’e-commerce, ou que vous déposez de l’argent à la banque, vous participez à un marché financier. Au fil de l’histoire, différents outils financiers ont fait leur apparition, parfois graduellement, parfois brusquement sous l’impulsion de génies/fous (souvent des mathématiciens) et ont conféré des propriétés particulières aux marchés financiers. Il s’agît entre autres de la capacité à : - Investitransférer le capital et les liquidités inutilisés - Transférer le risque entre participants - Echanger à l’international - Eviter qu’il y ait trop de disparités entre les prix dans le marché, et qu’ils suivent (plus ou moins bien) la valeur intrinsèque. Un marché efficace est par définition un marché qui reflète bien la valeur intrinsèque d'un investissement compte-tenu des informations disponibles. Des inefficacités peuvent surgir de coûts de transaction et/ou de frais d'agence élevés, de la faible liquidité des actifs ou encore à cause de barrières de toutes sortes. A mon humble avis, dans une économie de marché, il est dans l’intérêt public à ce que certains marchés soient efficaces pour que les inégalités économiques ne soient pas amplifiées et que toutes les classes sociales puissent y avoir accès, tant que cela ne se nuit pas indirectement à la société. Parlons maintenant de prix et de valeur intrinsèque. La valeur intrinsèque d’un actif ou d’un instrument financier est la valeur financière (et parfois non-financière) future qu’il procurera, compte tenu de l’incertitude qu’il y a autour de la capacité de l’actif à réaliser cette valeur à l’avenir. La valeur intrinsèque est subjective car elle dépend de l’acheteur, principalement de son aversion et de sa capacité à encaisser le risque, mais pas que, comme nous allons le voir. Le prix reflète entre autres l’offre et la demande de l’actif, plus précisément les informations qu’ont les acheteurs, leurs biais et les barrières à la transaction, c’est pour cela qu’il peut dévier, parfois fortement, de la valeur intrinsèque. La valeur intrinsèque est fondamentalement impossible à connaître, mais cela ne veut pas dire qu’il n’y a pas de modèles mathématiques ou qualitatifs pour tenter de l’estimer. Ce qu’on appelle un acteur rationnel c’est un participant qui va, compte tenu de son capital, de ses besoins de liquidité, de son horizon d’investissement et de son aversion au risque (qui est une caractéristique rationnelle) acheter les actifs dont le prix est en-dessous de la valeur intrinsèque qu’il leur assigne et vendre ceux dont le prix est au-dessus de cette valeur. Je ne crois pas qu’il y ait une façon non biaisée de présenter la finance alors je vais vous donner mon biais. Je crois personnellement en la finance comportementale et ce que je vais dire dans ce paragraphe est très controversé et mériterait toute une vie de recherche pour justifier (on peut en reparler dans les commentaires). Il faut savoir qu’il y a des paramètres anthropologiques (psychologiques, sociologiques, culturels, religieux et géographiques) qui viennent affecter les marchés, notamment leur efficacité, et les financiers et les régulateurs peuvent aborder le problème de plusieurs façons. Parfois on va trouver des intermédiaires qui vont faire fi de ces barrières, parfois on va tenter d’anonymiser les participants, parfois on va trouver un moyen de diffuser l’information à tous les participants, parfois on va réguler pour empêcher certains comportements nuisibles ou illégaux, ou bien on va créer des outils ou des stratagèmes pour contourner les barrières sans les effacer. La désintermédiation, la dérèglementation et le décloisonnement, ainsi que la volonté d’atteindre la concurrence pure et parfaite, ne sont pas toujours les meilleurs moyens d’avoir des marchés efficaces. Il faudrait que toutes les barrières socioculturelles, tous les biais psychologiques des participants des marchés disparaissent pour que cela puisse se faire, ce qui n’est évidemment ni souhaitable ni possible. Le début est un peu technique mais est crucial pour que vous compreniez la suite. Premièrement, je vais vous parler de la notion de marché primaire et de marché secondaire, qui détermine où est transféré le capital et le risque. Deuxièmement, je vais vous parler de l’organisation et de la régulation des marchés. Troisièmement, je vais vous parler de la classification des marchés en fonction des instruments financiers qui s’y échangent et dernièrement je vais vous parler de la classification des marchés en fonction des actifs qui s’y échangent. A – Les marchés primaires, secondaires, tertiaires et quaternaires. Le marché primaire est le marché qui fait rencontrer ceux qui vont fournir des actions ou des obligations de leur propre entreprise, des matières premières ou autres actifs, en échange de capital. Quand une entreprise ou un Etat lèvent des fonds ils participent sur ce marché, quand une société d’exploitation de pétrole brut vend ses barils elle y participe aussi. Quand vous prêtez de l’argent à votre pote, ou que vous achetez une maison neuve à un promoteur immobilier vous participez au marché primaire. En général, il s’agît d’un marché désorganisé où des particuliers et des entreprises se rencontrent par leurs propres moyens (bouche à oreille, publicité) et qui est très peu régulé, qu’on appelle gré-à-gré, que j’expliciterai bientôt. Ce marché est relativement risqué et peu transparent, en général votre seul recours juridique est le civil et si votre contrepartie fait faillite vous n’avez aucune garantie de pouvoir récupérer votre dû. Il demande de faire confiance à votre contrepartie, d’être compétent et parfois spécialisé dans ce domaine ainsi que d’être particulièrement critique des informations que l’on vous donne. Quand il est organisé, il s’agît le plus souvent d’une vente aux enchères entre participants agréés. Le marché secondaire est le marché où les actifs sont revendus entre investisseurs, ici le capital et le risque sont transférés d’un investisseur à un autre. Ce marché a plusieurs fonctions, il permet entre autres aux investisseurs de sortir du marché quand ils en ont envie, de standardiser et regrouper les actifs, d’actualiser le prix des actifs en fonction des événements et de permettre à un plus grand nombre d’investisseurs de détenir certains actifs qui leur serait parfois impossible d’obtenir faute de contacts ou de moyens. Si une action ou une obligation est échangée sur le marché secondaire, cela veut dire que l’entreprise sous-jacente a donné son accord à ce qu’elle renonce à choisir qui détient ses parts ou sa dette (à quelques exceptions près), elle n’est pas affectée directement par la transaction. Le marché secondaire est le plus souvent organisé et régulé, moyennant commission. Il est le plus souvent organisé dans un type d’enchère très particulier qu’on appelle bourse, ou bien d’un marché organisé par un courtier. Je parle brièvement du marché tertiaire et du marché quaternaire car vous pourrez peut-être en entendre parler, le marché tertiaire est le marché où les courtiers interagissent avec les grosses institutions (souvent des banques) et le marché quaternaire est le marché entre grosses institutions uniquement. Ce sont des marchés gré-à-gré. B – L’organisation et la régulation des marchés Le marché le plus basique est le marché gré-à-gré ou over the counter (OTC) en anglais. Comme je l’ai dit plus haut, ce marché n’est pas organisé, il est sans intermédiaires. Pour y participer il faut trouver des contreparties par ses propres moyens, chercher les informations par soi-même et surtout faire confiance à la personne en face, chose qui n’est pas toujours facile. C’est surtout sur ce marché que se manifestent les barrières anthropologiques et les biais psychologiques car il y a peu de moyens de réguler ce qui s’y passe ou d’être sûr des informations que l’on a. Bien évidemment il existe des lois et des garde-fous juridiques ou médiatiques, mais vous êtes libres de rédiger n’importe quel contrat légal sur ce marché. C’est d’ailleurs ici que vous verrez les instruments financiers les plus complexes comme les options exotiques ou les swaps. Sur le marché gré-à-gré on dit que la liquidité est faible, comme vous avez souvent affaire à des actifs uniques (startups, œuvres d’art, options exotiques) que très peu de personnes convoitent, ce qui fait qu’il est coûteux et long de trouver des acheteurs, et ce qui pousse les prix à la hausse. Je ne vais pas m’attarder dessus car il y a énormément à dire dessus, mais la vente aux enchères est une forme d’organisation des marchés. Vous y trouverez par exemple les obligations souveraines, les œuvres d’art ou bien, lors d’une introduction en bourse d’une entreprise, des actions sont attribuées aux premiers actionnaires via une enchère, ce qui permet de déterminer le prix initial de l’action en bourse. Si cela vous intéresse, regardez les différents types de vente aux enchères comme l’enchère anglaise ou l’enchère néerlandaise. Ici vous avez quelques intermédiaires qui rentrent en jeux comme le commissaire-priseur ou la banque d’investissement pour l’introduction en bourse, qui vont prendre leur commission en échange de la publicité qu’ils fournissent à votre actif et de la facilitation de la transaction – autrement dit de la liquidité. Il est à noter qu’un commissaire-priseur qui tient à sa réputation va exiger certaines contraintes et garanties sur l’actif, ce qui donne un début de régulation au marché financier. Dans le cas d’une introduction en bourse (Initial Public Offering ou IPO), les exigences sont draconiennes, les comptes financiers, les cadres dirigeants de l’entreprise et les actionnaires actuels sont scrutés à la fois par l’Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF) en France, et les analystes financiers. La bourse est une forme d’enchère très spécifique. Elle rassemble des traders qui travaillent pour des courtiers ou des sociétés de gestion d’actifs et fonctionne avec une enchère dite continue/dirigée par ordres et est chapeautée par l’AMF en France. Les traders donnent des ordres de vente et d’achat – soit ils donnent un prix et achètent ou vendent tout ce qui est à un prix meilleur ou égal, soit ils spécifient une quantité et achètent ou vendent peu importe le prix, il existe aussi des ordres plus complexes où l’on spécifie un prix, une quantité et une date limite, entre autres. La bourse génère des profits en prenant une commission sur chaque ordre et à chaque fois qu’une nouvelle entreprise rentre sur le marché s’il s’agît d’une bouse d’actions. Ici il n’y a pas un prix unique pour un actif, il y a le prix de la demande (ask) et le prix de l’offre (bid) – il faut proposer un prix égal ou supérieur à l’ask pour pouvoir acheter l’actif et un prix inférieur ou égal au bid pour pouvoir le vendre. Un des effets de cette structure de marché (qui peut paraître contre-intuitif pour ceux habitués au marché gré-à-gré) est que plus on veut acheter une grande quantité de l’actif, plus il va falloir proposer un prix élevé, et inversement plus l’on veut en vendre, plus il va falloir baisser son prix. La bourse crée un peu plus de symétrie entre les acheteurs et les vendeurs, ce qui n’existe pas dans le marché gré-à-gré où l’avantage est déterminé largement par le contrôle qu’ont les acheteurs et les vendeurs sur le marché et l’information en circulation. Le rapport de force ne disparaît pas entièrement mais est artificiellement atténué. Cela fait aussi que si beaucoup d’acheteurs et vendeurs sont intéressés par un actif et que beaucoup d’ordres circulent, statistiquement la différence entre le bid et l’ask sera plus faible, c’est pour cela qu’on mesure traditionnellement la liquidité d’un actif en bourse par la différence entre le bid et l’ask, qu’on appelle le « bid-ask spread », par la moyenne du bid et de l’ask. En exigeant une forte transparence, en attirant des analystes financiers, les autorités des marchés et les médias, la bourse est un peu moins risquée que le marché gré-à-gré, permet d’avoir une meilleure idée de la valeur intrinsèque et surtout une bien meilleure liquidité, bien sûr à un prix. Bien sûr, le risque propre aux rendements futurs de l’investissement n’est pas vraiment affecté et jouer en bourse reste relativement risqué, voir même à espérance négative dans le cas du marché des changes. Sans rentrer sans les détails, la bourse permet parfois d’effectuer la vente à découvert (short-selling), c’est quand vous empruntez un actif à quelqu’un qui le détient, moyennant commission, pour le vendre immédiatement, le racheter plus tard (en espérant que les prix ont fortement baissé) et le rendre à son propriétaire après – cette pratique permet dans de nombreux cas d’ajuster des prix trop élevés lorsque pour x ou y raison les détenteurs ne les vendent pas alors que le prix est surélevé. Traditionnellement une bourse se tient dans un lieu physique mais maintenant c’est largement effectué virtuellement. La dernière structure de marché majeure est le marché organisé par un courtier – souvent une banque d’investissement. Ici le courtier achète une grosse quantité d’actifs sur la bourse en tant que broker et la revend au détail à ses clients en tant que dealer, ses traders sont là pour répondre à la demande des clients au meilleur prix possible et à liquider le surplus. Le courtier peut prendre une commission sur les ordres, fixer son propre bid-ask en fonction de ses stocks disponibles et empocher la différence. Dans certains cas il peut prêter de l’argent à ses clients pour qu’ils achètent ses produits et encaisser les intérêts du prêt ou encore proposer les services d’analystes financiers qui vont faire des recommandations aux clients (a.k.a full service). Ces marchés restent contrôlés par l’AMF en France vu le contrôle qu’a le courtier sur son marché, le but étant que ses prix suivent ceux de la bourse. Le courtier gère son propre risque et met des limites (comme le margin call) pour éviter que ses clients ne fassent faillite – il est perdant si cela se produit, surtout s’il a prêté de l’argent à son client, il a surtout intérêt à ce que son client continue d’effectuer des ordres car c’est comme cela qu’il se rémunère, parfois au détriment du client. C – marché au comptant, marché à terme et marché dérivé Le marché au comptant, en anglais « spot » est le marché où les échanges ont lieu en temps direct – si accord il y a, l’actif et le capital sont échangés au moment de la transaction. Sans aucun autre instrument il n’offre pas beaucoup de flexibilité, il ne permet pas de manipuler facilement le risque auquel on s’expose, car en achetant un actif on prend à 100% le risque du sous-jacent et on est totalement soumis aux aléas des prix. Le marché à terme est un peu différent. Ici on s’engage dans des contrats spécifiques où l’on se met d’accord sur un prix et où l’échange de capital et d’actif s’effectue à une date postérieure, peu importe le prix du marché à ce moment. Le terme utilisé pour dire qu’on rentre dans un contrat à terme est prendre une position. Ici on a un transfert d’une partie du risque de l’acheteur de l’actif (on dit qu’il est en position longue) au vendeur (on dit qu’il est en position courte). En effet, celui en position longue préfère fixer le prix futur et ne pas prendre le risque que les prix baissent et celui en position courte prend le risque d’acheter quelque chose qui en vaudra moins à la date de l’échange. Cela permet à certains investisseurs de couvrir, par exemple, leur risque de change s’ils savent qu’à une certaine date ils voudront échanger une certaine somme de monnaie contre une autre et à d’autres qui ont une plus grande capacité à encaisser le risque de spéculer. Ces contrats ont d’autant plus de valeur que le sous-jacent est volatile. Vu qu’on a vu le marché gré-à-gré et la bourse, je vais parler des différences entre les deux sur le marché à terme. Sur le marché à terme gré-à-gré, les contrats à terme sont appelés « forwards », vous pouvez les personnaliser comme vous voulez, avec vos prix, vos quantités, vous négociez ça. Cependant, si votre contrepartie fait faillite avant l’exécution du contrat, vous n’avez aucun moyen d’effectuer la transaction et vous n’avez aucun moyen de sortir de ce contrat si vous-mêmes vous avez des difficultés à remplir vos obligations. Si vous êtes un agriculteur qui vend sa récolte de l’année prochaine avec ce type de contrat, vous avez intérêt à faire en sorte que vous produisez assez pour l’exécuter ou que vous pouvez acheter ce qui vous manque si vous n’y parvenez pas le jour de la livraison. Sur le marché à terme en bourse c’est un peu différent, ici les prix, les quantités, les obligations contractuelles et modalités de livraison sont fixés à l’avance par l’offre et la demande et ne sont pas négociables, avec ce qu’on appelle les contrats « futures ». L’avantage des futures est que si vous pensez qu’il y a un risque que vous ne puissiez apporter votre partie du contrat (le capital ou l’actif), vous pouvez vous dégager de votre obligation contractuelle en cédant votre position à quelqu’un en capacité de le faire – si vous avez de la chance, plus de participants pourront exécuter votre position maintenant, ce qui normalement devrait rendre votre position attirante et on vous achètera votre contrat. Si au contraire, nombre comme vous ne peuvent exécuter ce contrat (mauvaises récoltes à cause de la météo par exemple), vous aurez du mal à le céder et vous serez peut-être obligé de payer quelqu’un pour qu’il l’exécute à votre place. Par ailleurs, les participants sont obligés d’avoir un apport en capital pour rentrer dans un future et si par hasard votre contrepartie fait faillite, la chambre de compensation (ou clearing house) vous remboursera, ce qui élimine le risque de contrepartie. Autre particularité du contrat à terme, vous pouvez conserver la rente de votre actif tant que la date d’exécution n’est pas venue, mais vous devez toujours payer les frais de stockage, livraison ou autres, ce qui est bien sûr pris en compte dans le prix. Le marché des dérivés est vraiment là où le risque est transféré et manipulé. Ici on échange ce qu’on appelle des options/warrants, des contrats d’échange (swaps), des pensions livrées (repurchase agreements ou « repo »), les couvertures de défaillance (credit default swaps, CDS) entre autres. N’ayez crainte on va attaquer chacun de ces termes. D’abord, sur le marché des dérivés en bourse on a les options dite « vanilla ». Une option, contrairement à un contrat à terme, donne le droit et non l’obligation, d’acheter ou de vendre un actif à un moment donné à un prix donné et on effectue une transaction financière pour rentrer dans ce contrat, proportionnelle au risque que transféré d’une partie à l’autre. Le droit d’acheter l’actif est appelé « call » et le droit de le vendre est appelé « put », le prix convenu est appelé « strike price ». Si le jour venu votre strike price est plus intéressante que le prix de l’actif à ce moment-là, on dit que votre option est « in the money » (ITM), si votre option est moins intéressante on dit qu’elle est « out of the money » (OTM) et si elle est aussi intéressante que le prix actuel, on dit qu’elle est « at the money » (ATM). Si votre option vous donne seulement la possibilité d’exercer votre droit à une date donnée, on dit qu’elle est de style européen, si vous pouvez l’exercer à n’importe quel moment jusqu’à la date convenue on dit qu’elle est de style américain. Plus le prix de l’actif sous-jacent est volatile, et plus il est facile d’exercer l’option (par exemple si elle est de style américain), plus il y a de fortes chances que l’option soit in-the-money, plus la valeur de l’option augmente, car le détenteur transmet beaucoup de risque à sa contrepartie. Vous trouverez aussi en bourse de commerce des options sur la météo, pour vous protéger en cas de mauvaises récoltes par exemple. L’intérêt de ces options est qu’elles peuvent facilement créer de gros effets de levier étant donné qu’une option vaut typiquement 2-10% de l’actif sous-jacent, puis comme c’est échangé en bourse on peut s’en débarrasser rapidement si on ne peut pas les exercer faute de moyens ou d’actif. Pour les matheux intrigués je conseille en introduction le modèle de Black-Scholes. Sur le marché gré-à-gré on va retrouver tous les contrats divers et variés susmentionnés. Une warrant est une option non-échangeable émise par une banque en série limitée. Ensuite on a les options exotiques, qui sont tout un tas d’options avec des règles particulières. Pour vous donner des exemples on a des options pour échanger des actifs (pourquoi pas du blé contre une action Google ?), les options style asiatique qui vous donnent le droit d’acheter un actif à son prix moyen sur une période donnée (pour vous protéger de la volatilité) ou les options style parisiennes qu’on ne peut exercer que si le prix du sous-jacent est dans certains clous pendant une certaine période (pour vous protéger de la manipulation des cours). Le swap ou contrat d’échange est quand deux parties se mettent d’accord pour faire plusieurs contrats à terme à répétition, nous allons en voir des exemples plus tard. Je m'attarde un peu sur le repo car c'est très discuté dans les actualités récemment. J'y ai fait référence dans mon post sur la monnaie. Un repo est une transaction spot (actif contre capital) plus un contrat forward pour que l'actif soit racheté à une période future. C'est une façon pour une institution financière d'emprunter de l'argent à une autre (souvent pour une très courte période, parfois 24h), comme la banque centrale, sans que l'autre partie ne prenne quelconque risque, tant est que l'actif échangé soit fiable, comme un bon du trésor. La banque centrale injecte des liquidités temporairement, elles reviennent dans ses coffres le jour suivant. Ce n'est pas comme le Quantitative Easing où l'actif est définitivement acheté par la banque centrale et l'argent est injecté durablement dans le système. La banque centrale fait des repo pour imposer pratiquement par la force les taux qu'elle veut transmettre au reste de l'économie, surtout lorsque les banques commerciales ne se font plus confiance et font grimper leurs taux au-delà des limites définies par la banque centrale. Les couvertures de défaillance servent à rembourser les détenteurs d'obligations lorsque l'entreprise sous-jacente fait défaut (c'est un contrat d'assurance). Synthèse de l'organisation et de la classification des marchés D – Les marchés selon les types d’actifs Le marché monétaire (que j’ai couvert en détail dans mon post précédent) est le marché où les liquidités excédentaires sont prêtées pour une période courte aux entreprises, particuliers ou Etats qui en ont besoin, moyennant une rente nommée intérêt. je vous renvoie à mon post sur le sujet Le marché de la dette long-terme est là où se financent les participants qui veulent des fonds pour une période supérieure à deux ans, moyennant intérêts. On appelle le marché où s’échange entre investisseurs la dette long-terme le marché obligataire. On a des obligations de différents types en fonction des intérêts versés ou des options attachées à l'obligation. Une obligation a un principal et un coupon (l'intérêt versé périodiquement). Une obligation sans coupon est un zéro-coupon et au lieu de verser un intérêt, on prête initialement une somme au débiteur qui est inférieure au principal qu'il doit rendre à la fin du contrat. Le principal peut être remboursé progressivement comme pour une dette immobilière (amortissement) ou en totalité d'un coup à la fin du contrat (bullet bond). Le coupon peut être à taux fixe ou variable. Si c'est variable ce sera en général le LIBOR + une petite prime de risque/liquidité ou bien une grosse prime - le LIBOR. Comme on peut revendre des obligations sur le marché secondaire, leur prix va varier en fonction du risque que le débiteur fasse défaut et des taux. Si les taux en vigueur aujourd'hui sont meilleurs que celui de votre obligation, sa valeur relative décroît. C'est pour cela que les obligations d'Etat ont un risque de prix sur le marché secondaire et ne sont pas sans risque, le risque de défaut n'est pas le seul risque d'une obligation. Une des propriétés vertueuses des obligations est la convexité, en termes simples, une obligation peut plus facilement prendre de la valeur si les taux baissent, qu'elle ne peut en perdre si les taux augmentent. On trouvera sur le marché des dérivés des couvertures de défaillance (CDS), des repo et des swaps pour échanger des taux fixes contre des taux variables, ainsi que des mortgage-backed-securities (MBS) qui regroupent de nombreux crédits immobiliers d'une banque régionale ou des collateralized-debt-obligations (CDO) qui regroupent des crédits et d'autres instruments financiers pour produire un actif complexe avec un risque personnalisé (souvent très élevé). Ce sont les CDO, les MBS et les CDS qui ont causé la crise de 2008 comme les agences de notation n'ont pas fait leur rôle et ont sous-estimé le risque de ces produits. Le marché action est le marché où s’échangent les parts des entreprises. Une action représente la valeur résiduelle des profits (ou de la liquidation) d’une entreprise une fois que tous les créanciers (l’Etat compris) sont payés. Certaines actions ont des droits de votes, d’autres non. Elles versent une rente appelée dividendes, qui sont variables en fonction des résultats de l’entreprise ainsi que de ses besoins en capital. Une définition alternative d’une action est une dette à durée indéterminée/illimitée. En bourse on va calculer la valeur intrinsèque de l'action en faisant la somme des dividendes futurs qu'on espère plus le prix de cession espéré divisisés par un taux qui représente le risque de l'investissement et le retour minimum qu'on attend en échange. Alternativement on calcule la valeur liquidative des actifs de l'entreprise moins sa dette si on pense qu'elle va faire faillite. Plus un dividende est éloigné dans le temps, moins il comptera dans la valeur intrinsèque, puis si l'on estime que le risque est élevé, les dividendes lointains ne comptent quasiment pas. Si on pense que le marché est efficace, deux autres méthodes populaires existent, la première est appelée les multiples. En gros on regarde les entreprises comparables et on calcule ler prix divisés par leurs revenus par exemple, puis on multiplie les revenus de l'entreprise qu'on analyse par ces multiples pour avoir une idée de sa valorisation relative. Sinon, on regarde à quel point l'action varie en même temps que le restedu marché. Si l'action varie moins fortement que le marché, on lui donne une valeur plus grande, inversement si elle varie plus fortement on baisse sa valeur car on considère que c'est une action risquée. Hors bourse, il y a plusieurs méthodes. Si l'entreprise est toute nouvelle on va surtout valoriser la compétence des entrepreneurs pour estimer le risque, si l'entreprise gagne déjà de l'argent mais ne verse pas de dividendes on va regarder ses flux de trésorerie et son EBITDA. On classifie les actions en fonction des secteurs industriels, du prix par rapport aux revenus nets, flux de trésorerie et aux dividendes (Value et Growth) ainsi qu'en fonction de leur capitalisation boursière. On trouvera ici nos options, mais aussi des indices boursiers qui font la moyenne des rendements (en terme de prix et de dividendes) d'un groupe d'actions, soit à part égale pour chaque entreprise, soit pondérée par leur capitalisation boursière ou leurs prix par action individuelle. Ces indices sont suivis par des fonds indiciels, qui peuvent être soit des fonds mutuels (achetés en gré-à-gré) ou des ETF (achetés en bourse/courtiers). On trouvera ici nos options, nos warrants, des equity swaps (échange de dividendes par exemple) ou des total return swaps (pour les ETF synthétiques, voir mon post sur le sujet). On notera que le marché action et le marché obligataire forment le marché dit des capitaux. Le marché des changes (Foreign Exchange ou tout simplement ForEx en anglais) est le marché qui fait jonction entre les différentes économies et permet de convertir une monnaie en une autre – la monnaie ne verse pas de rente mais est sujette à l’inflation/déflation de l’économie qu’elle représente. L’offre et la demande d’une monnaie est déterminée par l’attractivité de l’économie – si beaucoup d’investisseurs étrangers veulent y investir, la demande pour la monnaie va croître et sa valeur relative va s’apprécier, ou bien si des ressortissants d'un pays veulent renvoyer des liquidités chez eux. Alternativement certaines monnaies sont fixées à d’autres monnaies ou, rarement aujourd’hui, fluctuent en fonction du prix de certaines matières premières et de la quantité d'icelles possédée par la banque centrale par rapport à la demande de la monnaie. Dans le cas des cryptomonnaies, en plus de la demande et l'offre de monnaie, on valorise aussi la qualité des services, la capacité de calcul allouée et coût pour effectuer les transactions. Ici on peut faire des swaps de monnaie, en gros simuler le coût d'un échange de monnaie sans s'échanger réellement la monnaie. Ca permet de couvrir le risque de change sans passer par le marché classique. Le marché alternatif est composé de plusieurs marchés comme le marché des matières premières (représenté par les bourses de commerce) où s’échangent métaux précieux, l'énergie, le pétrole et blé entre autres, le marché des fonds d’investissement à stratégies alternatives type private equity/venture capital/hedge fund avec des stratégies impossibles à réaliser pour des particuliers seuls, le marché de l’immobilier – où la rente est appelée loyer, le marché des œuvres d’art, du vin et j’en passe et des meilleurs. Sur les matières premières on va aussi trouver des indices de prix (commodity indexes), des futures sur l'or, des options sur la météo et des forwards sur des matières exotiques. L'immobilier est classé en plusieurs catégories comme le résidentiel, le commercial et les bureaux, les actifs peuvent être détenus en direct ou à travers des fonds privés ou cotés. En résumé Voilà une synthèse de la finance aujourd'hui. J'ai omis des sujets comme la FinTech car cela sort du propos, mais, tant est que la modération l'accepte, je vais publier une brève histoire de la finance qui comprendra cela. J'ai fait exprès d'aborder certains sujets sans trop les creuser, notamment les bulles financières, car je préfère répondre à des questions précises plutôt que de me lancer dans une explication qui va perdre tout le monde. Je n'ai pas eu le temps de faire tous les graphiques et schémas que je voulais mais si vous en voulez en particulier ce sera avec plaisir. Si vous voulez des sources pour des éléments particuliers hésitez pas, j'ai toute une bibliographie d'articles et de livres. Merci à ceux qui m'ont encouragé à écrire ce post.
I have just read 'Forex Price Action Scalping' by Bob Volmon. I found it interesting and want to further read on this type of technique. Any recommendations on this topic would be appreciated. Thanks
A Quick List of the Best Forex Signal Service Providers (Paid and Free)
https://preview.redd.it/8xclw78vdxt41.jpg?width=294&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=59181d876b45b3a7b5a7524454f4dae6baf65dfb Already opened an account and ready to try your luck and polish your skill in Forex trading platforms? In case you are a newbie you have to take support of the expert trader to gain as much experience as possible. Even this will help you to be successful in the long run. But have you ever thought about the ways to start trading? Probably, following trading style of any experienced trader will be really helpful and saves much energy and time as well. Moreover, you can come to learn several new as well as efficient trading strategies at the same time. Sounds great and pretty simple, right? But the troublesome is regarding the selection of the trustworthy Forex signal service provider. While you are in trouble this blog is perfect for you! It entails the leading and best Forex trading signal service providers from both paid and free category. So what are you waiting for! Just go through it once to narrow your choice and select the most coherent one to enjoy trading.
1. JKonFX
While you are hunting for a reliable as well as profitable online trading signals provider along with track record there is the team of JKonFX lead by Joel Kruger. This personality has a reputation in this type of trading with about 59.16% of journal performance for the year 2016. He has offered real-time fundamental and technical insights and that too in an utmost transparency to its 30000 subscribers. Being the lower frequency trader, sending trading alert is only a minor part of this Forex trading signal provider. If it is about comparing numerous options to choose from then you may look for other reliable ones.
Verified statistics: Not verified independently
Price: $30 monthly
Year founded: 2014
Suitable for beginners: Yes (including easy-to-follow video updates)
2. Forex Signals
Since its establishment in 2012, it is the top trading signals provider to provide 24-hour accessibility to the trading rooms and that too live. There you get the chance to observe the ways by which experienced trading coaches execute the trade and share the market action whenever it gets revealed in real time. Besides signal service, it also offers access to the track record of the profits where investment can be made through the managed account. It is only signal provider that owns verified statistics independently on myfxbook. The link is also given to their respective live account of the master. As it offers everything in such a transparent way, Forex trading by selecting this provider becomes much easier and profitable in the long run.
Verified statistics: Yes
Price: $97 every month
Year founded: 2012
Suitable for beginners: Yes
3. DDMarkets
Since May, 2014, DDMarkets (Digital Derivatives Markets) is offering the trading alert services in the form of a detailed document regarding the respective trading ideas in utmost explicit manners. Its procedure is quite simple all you have to do is to perform an extensive research for sharing the analytics while delivering the triggered trading signal. After its get issued, you will receive daily updates via email. It doesn’t bear floating of the open drawdown to put effort to make profit anyhow. This technique is only followed by the renowned providers for fudging the trading performances.
Verified statistics: Not verified independently.
Price: plans from $74.40 monthly
Year founded: 2014
Suitable for beginners: Yes (including easy-to-follow trade analysis)
4. 1000pip Builder
The leading trading signal provider is 1000pip Builder and is one of the few to offer independently verified and tracked results. It focuses on developing potential as well as consistent outcome with little to no drawdown. By following this strategy they are the only one to generate about 6000 pips in just 1 and half years. Every complicated analytics (key component of the Forex trading) are done by the leading trader Bob. Whenever you take a trade via this trading signal provider, an instant message filled with other crucial pieces of information will be sent via SMS or email. Generally, it includes taking of profit level, stop loss and entry price so that these can be followed by you in an appropriate way.
Verified statistics: Yes
Price: $97 monthly along with 30% discount
Year founded: 2016
Suitable for beginners: Yes
5. Traders Academy Club
Previously known as Vladimir Forex Signals, the Traders Academy Club is established in 2011. It offers standard signals which are sent to the traders via a specific Skype group or Email. But primarily it is an online Forex trading education centre. As there isn’t any verified statistics statistically, it exhibits every previous signal and trade through which comparison will be much easier with your original outcome. Live trading experience and hundreds of educational trading videos are offered via this signal.
Verified statistics: No
Price: $97 annually
Year founded: 2011
Suitable for beginners: Yes
6. Forex Mentor Pro
Play every day videos of the team of Forex Mentor Pro for listening into their insights of the market for upcoming weeks and days. Since its introduction in 2008, the team offers the accessibility to 3 trading systems by eradicating the necessity of the performance statistics. But step-by-step guide of the training videos will be posted so that you can attain the much-required speed.
Verified statistics: No statistics mentioned
Price: from $16.40/month annually or $47/monthly
Year founded: 2008
Suitable for beginners: Yes (including training videos and systems)
7. Honest Forex Signals
Since 2011, Honest Forex Signal commences offering a trade copier signal service. It has developed a specific page dedicated to the trading statistics that comes with links for displaying the last return on the myfxbook. But it never link myfxbook directly and hence it doesn’t look so independent. However, certain good reviews have acquired by it on the web and several traders comment that its services are quite helpful.
Verified statistics: No
Price: $177 per month
Year founded: 2011
Suitable for beginners: Yes
8. Daily Forex
Apart from offering free signals, both video and written instructions are provided by it which makes it unique from others. It will interact with you regarding the ideas under the traders which things are important to look for to enter this market. Other crucial pieces of information can be also gained on its site. This will be quite interesting if you still stuck to it on completion of trial period.
Verified statistics: No-free service offers market feedback
Price: Free
Year founded: 2006
Suitable for beginners: Moderate
9. Baby Pips
This signal provider considers every trader as newbie and so offers detailed information in the “About Us” section. Even the information is really helpful to train the novice Forex traders. Also market signals and analysis is provided by them which can be easily founded under “Pick of the Day” section. Its main motto is to teach the relevant reasons underneath every decision of trading so that you can become an expert one soon. Signals can be received via their posted blogs on the site via Facebook and Twitter.
Verified statistics: No-free service offers market feedback
Price: Free
Year founded: 2005
Suitable for beginners: Yes
10. Forex Peace Army
Though it is popular for the recorded reviews on the Forex yet it offers a few free trading signals as well. It has a set up of its forum style where an article is posted every day filled with detailed instructions on the way to act on every particular bit of news on the basis of the immediate effects. Even summary of the tradable news is posted on a weekly basis where you can come to know about what is coming up next week as well. Verified statistics: No-free service offers market feedback
Price: Free
Year founded: 2006
Suitable for beginners: Moderate
These are the best Forex trading signal service providers you can ever find. However, you are not insisted to choose any of them if you can find much better than these then, you are supposed to choose that one. But you should look for a reliable signal provider on the basis of the considerable aspects. Technical Trading Signals is also there which can be your perfect trading partner as well. Even it offers both automated and manual system of sending notification to the traders via Telegram, Email, SMS and WhatsApp regarding every step of trading. As it comprises of maximum risk it is not an ideal option for every investor. Every sort of leverage gets against your trading step. You may lose consecutively your investment as well. Financial advice is better to seek before starting trading.
DIGITAL GOLD STABLE COIN; A GOLD TOKEN BACKED BY GOLD METAL
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In simple terms, price action is a trading technique that allows a trader to read the market and make subjective trading decisions based on the recent and actual price movements, rather than ... Advanced Forex Price Action Techniques Video Course Content and Video Preview. 1 Thinking Like A Pro, 2 Market Structure and Tools, 3 Patterns, 4 Entry, Management & Profits, 5 Rangebound & Trending Markets, 6 Resources, 7 How I Approach My Trading Day, 8 Recap, 9 Bonus Sim Trades Price action is the movement of price over a specific measure of time. By analyzing price action, a trader can identify specific, recurring price patterns and “predict” where price is most likely to go. A price action Forex trading system uses these patterns and predictions to create rule-based trading systems that can be highly accurate! The best we can do is use the price action on our charts to determine the most likely outcome. As for GBPUSD, the pair has been range-bound since January. The techniques described in this lesson are to be used to ascertain the strength of a trending market; they won’t be of much help if a market is stuck in a range. Hey hey, what’s up my friend! I just produced a new video that contains 11 of my best price action trading strategies and techniques. Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll discover: ** A reversal trading strategy which allows you to buy low and sell high (consistently and profitably) ** The BWAB trading strategy to ride
Price Action Secrets: The Best Times To Trade Forex - YouTube
Get more information about IG US by visiting their website: https://www.ig.com/us/future-of-forex Get my trading strategies here: https://www.robbooker.com C... Learn #1 Price Action Strategy! ***FREE DEMO Click below - Want to learn how to use price action patterns to capture EXACT highs and lows? Interested in trad... So many traders ask me "What is the best time to trade?" and I always reply with the same answer. I struggled with this one immensely as I was starting out, ... I have talked about price action in the past quite a bit, but there is always something new to learn when it comes to understanding charts better. A trader w... This price action trading strategy will change the way you trade. Price action trading strategies rely on what the charts are actually telling you and do not...
