The most frustrating part is that there were some very nice strong trends down in many commodities and currencies in September and FTD missed them all. How many times did we try shorting false breakdowns in Copper and Crude all year and then when the BIG moves down finally came we weren't in them. Seems like every move this system makes is the wrong way lately. Booked 8 losing trades in a row and 11 of the last 12 are losers, not to mention the open positions that are all in the red. I have come to the conclusion that there a many better systems here that come without such an exorbitant monthly price tag.

The parameters for exit and entry seem to be to sensitive for the current market and resulting in over-trading and getting chopped to death during a trendless period buying false breakouts and selling false breakdowns. System need low volatility steady and strong trending market like the QE2 commodity boom in order to do well. It can make money very fast but can also lose it at frightening speed as we have unfortunately experienced now. System may do OK in the long run but at the cost of too much stress and too many roller coaster rides in the equity curve. Frankly I had too give up on this system because I'm afraid it was going to give me an ulcer. For those that have the stomach to stick with it best of luck.

The parameters for exit and entry seem to be to sensitive for the current market and resulting in over-trading and getting chopped to death during a trendless period buying false breakouts and selling false breakdowns. System need low volatility steady and strong trending market like the QE2 commodity boom in order to do well. It can make money very fast but can also lose it at frightening speed as we have unfortunately experienced now. System may do OK in the long run but at the cost of too much stress and too many roller coaster rides in the equity curve. Frankly I had too give up on this system because I'm afraid it was going to give me an ulcer. For those that have the stomach to stick with it best of luck.

Bill,

Sorry to lose you but I can certainly understand not having the stomach for this type of churn. If you can't handle a system it really is best not to trade it, no matter how profitable it could be in the short or long run. Not just my system .... any system. My personal aversion is dip buying systems ... even though I've used them and made money it just was not for me being underwater 99% of the time and only making money on gap ups as you exit the trade. I'm sure I've cost myself a ton of money over the years by avoiding them, but it's worth it to avoid the stress.

In general we are getting chopped and while it is very very frustrating (especially when every position seems to reverse as soon as we enter it) we are not in as large a drawdown as this past spring. That doesn't mean we won't see that large a drawdown (or larger) in the near future, the largest drawdown is always in the future.

Regards,
Dave

You bring up a very good point. It is much easier to deal with the big drawdowns if it is giving back some of gains AND if the drawdowns are erased quickly. Neither of which is happening with FTD over the last 6 months. I think the lucky subs who found this system back in the heady QE2 days of 4th quarter 2010 are not feeling too much pain yet, but those unfortunate subs like myself who joined in the Spring of this year really got put through the ringer. I basically gave back every dime of profit that I made over the last 6 months and after you take out the subscription fees I am pretty sure I finished underwater after enduring 6 months of roller coaster equity curve oscillations and churning tons of broker commissions.

I think there are 2 major challenges this system faces.

One is the hyper-correlation between risk assets that has become the hallmark of this market. The principle with trading the diverse basket that FTD trades is that it "should" theoretically reduce overall risk IF the diverse assets were not highly correlated. But alas they are, so in essence FTD becomes a massively leveraged bet on "risk on" vs. "risk off" market timing. That is why it has such stomach churning wild swings in it's equity curve. And why I decided I could no longer take on that kind of risk.

The second problem is the large slippage seen in many of the contract traded. If you factor in that slippage that ALWAYS works against you when using stop orders for entry and exit, and you are trading several less liquid contract you can safely assume that the system will under-perform the back-test results. That coupled with a generally choppy market would explain the slow and drudging upward moves in the equity curve the prior few months versus the now violent plunge.

At some point the market will again see a very strong sustained consistent trend in risk assets be it down or up, and this system should do well during that period as long as volatility is low. But the results will not so as well as the backtest data over the long run due to slippage. One the other hand if this choppy market were to continue for several more months it could be a very rough ride to endure.

I am seeing some interesting criticism here but I do not see any useful suggestions. Does anyone think the system should be re-designed every time a rough patch shows up? Granted the whip saw market has hung on for a very unusual length of time. These current markets are extremely difficult to trade and there may be scalping systems that would perform better for the time being but these are choices we all have to make individually. Maybe the early subscribers to the system were not merely "lucky". They may have chosen this system based on the favorable market conditions at that time.
Good luck to all,
Rob

Anh,

Yes just turned off auto-trading and let it close out everything. I felt like after giving the system 9 months to do something positive enough was enough. Like you I have never had any luck with the "promising' systems here at C2. They either failed right away or in this case started out very promising and then fell flat. I suppose it makes sense if you think about it. Any system is just based on some model of the market and all models eventually fail. It has to be that way because otherwise some smart developer would end up owning the world. So, in essence it is just the art of finding the hot systems and then getting out before they stop working. I am sure some subs here have figured out how to do that but I have not. So I am pretty much done wasting my money on sub fees here.

Anh,

Sorry to hear about your additional losses. I was afraid that the losing streak would continue which is why I pulled the plug when I did. For the subs who were in from the start and have the cushion to absorb this kind of performance and/or those who have iron stomachs, maybe the Fed will announce QE3 next week and FTD will repeat it's QE2 performance. It looking at C2 history it seems like an environment of QE induced commodity melt-up is the only environment where this system shines.