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.
Tradesight Pip Results for March 2011
Number of trades: 37
Number of losers: 18
Winning percentage: 51.3%
Worst losing streak: 3 in a row (twice)
Net pips: +190
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 2011
Number of trades: 26
Number of losers: 8
Winning percentage: 53.8%
Worst losing streak: 2 in a row (twice)
Net pips: +140
This was a pretty straight-forward, clean month, although certainly nothing exceptional as the ranges have dropped sharply. We never had more than 2 losses in a row, which is pretty minor. We had less trades trigger than usual because we had a couple of global bank Holidays and other days where no trades triggered. We won slightly more than half of the trades, but we had plenty of clean winners that triggered and got adjusted in the money. One thing of note…we didn’t have any major trades that turned into several-hundred pip winners as we usually do at some point in the month. The biggest two winners, after you account for partials and final closes, were closed within two days and added up to 70 pips. Having said that, the net results of the month were only 140 pips total, so missing two trades like that would have had quite an impact on your net numbers. We really need to see better ranges.
Speaking of which, back at the beginning of April, the six-month trailing average on the EURUSD for range was 150 pips per day. It closed out April down at 143 pips. A 7-pip drop to the six-month average in one month is the biggest that we have seen, and it means quite a bit about how bad ranges were. The GBPUSD went from 146 to 140 in the month. That’s also quite a drop. AUDUSD dropped 6 pips on average as well. The cross pairs picked up a bit, with the GBPJPY going from 143 to 151. Unfortunately, not everyone likes to trade the cross pairs due to liquidity and spread issues, but it seems that even though the US Dollar broke to new 1-year lows this month, it didn’t create a lot of excitement in those pairs.
The US Dollar remains at a critical point here and a move either way will likely start to see the ranges improve. We shall see. On to April…