Before we get to August’s numbers, here is a short reminder of the results from July. The full report from July 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 July 2011
Number of trades: 41
Number of losers: 18
Winning percentage: 56.1%
Worst losing streak: 4 in a row (July 30-31)
Net pips: +410
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 August 2011
Number of trades: 40
Number of losers: 23
Winning percentage: 42.5%
Worst losing streak: 3 in a row (twice, no big deal)
Net pips: +145
August is almost always the lightest month of the year, so I usually drop to half size for it. This year, with everything going on at the banking level, I didn’t drop to half size until part-way through the month, and then things got light. Let’s face it…August is almost always an unimpressive month and this was no exception. Still turned out green, and it shows you the strength of our trading system that you can win LESS than 50% of the trades and still at least be green. It did come down to three or four trades, but no big deal.
Even though most of the days weren’t that exciting, the six-month average ranges (ADR) did INCREASE from August, with EURUSD and GBPUSD gaining 5 pips on their ADRs in the month, which is pretty significant. Check out the analysis of the US Dollar Index from two weekends ago here, and that makes sense, as we had been stuck in a narrow range for a few months, but at the same time, we didn’t net out going anywhere in August.
On to September and putting summer behind us…