Before we get to December’s numbers, here is a short reminder of the results from November. The full report can be found here.
Number of trades: 30
Number of losers: 9
Winning percentage: 70.0%
Worst losing streak: 3 in a row (Nov 8-9)
Net pips: +512
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 December 2010
Number of trades: 34
Number of losers: 18
Winning percentage: 47.0%
Worst losing streak: 4 in a row (Dec 26-28)
Net pips: +315
An unusual month that proves that our strategy works. This was the first month in a while where we lost more trades than we won. However, three big winners that went almost 300, 200, and 150 pips to their final exits helped boost the results. Although our measurements don’t account for this, I was trading half size for much of the month due to the Holidays. Keep in mind that the total pip gain of 315 is accounted for in three trades, so if you didn’t let your winners play out, you didn’t do so great in December, which is why we teach that so hard as part of our strategy. You can actually win less than 50% of your trades and still do fine if you let that happen. The worst losing streak was only four stop outs in a row in the last week of the year, which isn’t really shocking given the Holiday environment. Things should get back to normal in January.
One final note. Average Daily Ranges from November to December stayed almost exactly the same, with the EURUSD at 152 pips still and the GBPUSD at 152, down from just 155.