Before we get to April’s numbers, here is a short reminder of the results from March. The full report from March can be found here and you can get the last several months in a row vertically by clicking here and scrolling down.
Tradesight Pip Results for March 2012
Number of trades: 30
Number of losers: 13
Winning percentage: 56.7%
Worst losing streak: 3 in a row (start of the month)
Net pips: +70
Reminder: Here are the rules.
1) Calls made in the calendar month count. In other words, a call made on August 31 that triggered the morning of September 1 is not part of September. Calls made on Thursday, September 30 that triggered between then and the morning of October 1 ARE part of September.
2) Trades that triggered before 8 pm EST / 5 pm PST (i.e. pre Asia) and NEVER gave you a chance to re-enter are NOT counted. Everything else is counted equally.
3) All trades are broken into two pieces, with the assumption that one half is sold at the first target and one half is sold at the final exit. These are then averaged. So if we made 40 pips on one half and 60 on the second, that’s a 50-pip winner. If we made 40 pips on one half, never adjusted our stop, and the second half stopped for the 25 pip loser, then that’s a 7 pip winner (15 divided by 2 is 7.5, and I rounded down).
4) Pure losers (trades that just stop out) are considered 25 pip losers. In some cases, this can be a few more or a few less, but it should average right in there, so instead of making it complicated, I count them as 25 pips.
5) Trade re-entries are valid if a trade stops except between 3 am EST and 9 am EST (when I’m sleeping). So in other words, even if you are awake in those hours and you could have re-entered, I’m only counting things that I would have done. This is important because otherwise the implication is that you need to be awake 24/6. Triggers that occur right on the Big Three news announcements each month don’t count as you shouldn’t have orders in that close at that time.
You can go through the reports and compare the breakdown that I give as each trade is reviewed.
Tradesight Pip Results for April 2012
Number of trades: 30
Number of losers: 16
Winning percentage: 46.7%
Worst losing streak: 6 in a row (around the 8th)
Net pips: +125
I feel lucky to have squeaked out a winning month here as ranges continue to drop and we’re seeing no movement anywhere. As I pointed out in the Sunday Forex recap, the US Dollar Index has now been stuck in a small total range for about five months, and was even around the same level if you reached back seven months. This is the type of environment where we would usually have our one or two losing months of the year, but thanks mostly to a decent third week of the month, we came out ahead. But this sure isn’t how we like to see it.
In last month’s report, I commented that the EURUSD 6-month average daily range had dropped from 144 to 131 pips in a month, a 13-pip drop, which is quite a bit. Well, 30 days later, the EURUSD ADR is now down to 125 pips, down another 16, and down a whopping 29 pips of AVERAGE daily range in 2 months. Can’t remember the last time that I saw that.
As I discussed a couple of weeks ago in a piece that I wrote here about average daily ranges, we have seen environments like this in the past. It isn’t the end of the forex world. It just needs some global events to shake things up and get things moving. In the meantime, we’ll stick with our strict system and wait it out for the better gains later.
