[tjnoon]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[SIUYA]

what the f is UTA..... sounds like a one of those fail safe system that costs money both in expenses and then when it does not really work.
6 weeks of back testing - very robust!

[foxstamp]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good luck in your trading.

[sneo]

so what is the purpose of this thread?

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

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

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

[MadMarketScientist]

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

[sneo]

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

[tjnoon]

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

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

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

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

Starting with a $10,000 account balance:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[SIUYA]

apologies from me too - however do you have a link?
Unfortunately I saw a few varying links and some sniff of spam, as it will not let me enter, and freezes the screen unless I enter an email address.
If that is the case then I am out.
thanks.