2013 Retrospective (and results)... Yes, I am still trading Forex Profit Monster :-)

As I sit behind my computer at 6 AM on Christmas morning having just put a turkey in the oven for Christmas dinner, the rest of my family is still sleeping and I actually have a few spare minutes to jot out a post on the FPM blog. My apologies to everyone who reads this blog for not updating it regularly during 2013... especially those who have contacted me personally through email over the past several months.

Although I think everyone who emailed me received a personal reply, I probably indicated that I would soon be posting results again... and since the first emails starting coming in back in April or May I obviously didn't begin posting again anytime soon. As I don't want this blog to become like so many other trading related blogs littering the internet where one day the posts just stop and everyone is left wondering why (my guess is usually because the person found out how tough trading really is and gives up), I'd like to explain exactly why I've been MIA for the past 11 months.

The reason for my inability to continue posting the results as I did in the past are two fold. First, if you read some of the posts immediately before this one you know that I began a mentorship with a very well known and respected commodities trader in 2012 (as mentioned before I don't use his identity here out of respect for him and his privacy). I have followed this trader for a long time and am a fan of not only his teachings but the philosophy of the person who mentored him (Ed Seykota). The year 2012 was a critical year for me; it was the first time I accepted guidance from anyone but myself regarding my trading education, and what I learned was invaluable! Mainly during the mentoring I've reaffirmed that I'm definitely on the right path and that the methods and systems that I've developed on my own (Forex Profit Monster in particular) are where my focus needs to be as far as my trading is concerned. I've also learned that the psychological/emotional work I've done on my own is "spot on" and that I just need to maintain that forward progress.  Not only did I "come to peace" with my own development over the past decade as a trader through this mentorship, the insights, feedback and knowledge gained during my mentoring afforded me more professional opportunities in regards to trading that were time consuming... and unfortunately this blog paid the price.

The second reason I've been unable to keep up with posting here was probably the most exciting event for me over the past year... I was able to start my own fund.

Starting in January 2013 I began managing a small fund that included mostly my personal money... but also some money from friends and family. This fund that I've begun is a mix of systems across different markets (not just Forex), but one of the backbones of the fund is basically Forex Profit Monster being traded across 8 currency pairs as it has been for the past 7 years with one slight change. To provide a better balance and correlation between currency pairs, I've replaced the GBP/JPY with the GBP/CHF. (While this change made sense from a portfolio standpoint, it probably cost me some money this year LOL).

Anyway, the reason I bring all of this up (besides explaining why I've been absent from posting) is that I plan to continue posting the results for FPM from the results of my fund. There will be some slight changes... instead of tracking pip by pip results for each currency pair which would require me to track my results differently than I do now (and would likely cause me to fall behind reporting results again), I will be posting the quarterly results BY PERCENTAGE OF EQUITY GAINED. This number will reflect ONLY the results of Forex Profit Monster as it was traded on the 8 currency pairs and NOT the results of the fund overall. I will wait until trading concludes for the year at the end of the week to post the 2013 results, but as it stands right now FPM has delivered a +33.43% return for 2013 with a maximal drawdown of 17.84%. (FPM was at an equity high for the year of 39.4% just a couple of weeks ago before the year end volatility caused by traders/hedge funds closing out for 2013 and repositioning for 2014 kicked in.)

Obviously I think that no matter what happens over the next few days I can be assured of another great year of performance from this system... and I will post final results with more details within the next week or two.

For more information regarding purchasing Forex Profit Monster (or my day trading system Forex Day Monster), please visit the website at www.forexprofitmonster.com or my eBay page at http://myworld.ebay.com/jimsgr8stuff4less where I list one or two items per week at a discount.

Happy Holidays and all the best to you and your family for 2014 and beyond... and of course, best of luck to you in your trading!

Jim
www.forexprofitmonster.com

December 2012 Results & 2012 Year End Results for Forex Profit Monster

It's the start of a new year, that means it's time for my end of the year results post for Forex Profit Monster.  As you can see from the equity graph above it was another profitable year!  But before I break down the results for the year, I need to post the results for the month of December.  And before I do that, I'd like to take some time to reflect back on my trading in 2012.

This past year was the 6th year in a row that I've seen a profitable year trading with Forex Profit Monster.  The system that I designed and coded back in 2006-2007 has performed very well heading into its 7th year by showing me about 65,000 pips of profit overall. It's been grinding out nice profits during most months/years and also capitalized on the chaos that was 2008, netting me about a 300% profit for that year while most people were losing.  While I've enjoyed the success I've had with Forex Profit Monster, I've also continued to grow as a trader.  If you've followed this blog at all (or at least read some of the early posts) you've seen some of that growth... from the time frames I've traded to my metamorphosis to being a trend follower exclusively (I only trend follow now, I don't trade ranges or other mean reversion strategies anymore).

In the past few years I've watched my account grow in value to the point where it's almost time for me to take trading to the next level... by diversifying and trading more than just the Forex market.  The next logical step for me as a trend follower is to move into the Futures markets... trading commodities and other futures contracts.  To prepare for this I entered into a mentoring program in 2012 with one of the top commodity traders in the United States.  I won't mention his name as I haven't cleared doing so with him, but if you've been trading for any amount of time you would probably recognize him from his market related media appearances and his book written in 2011.  I've learned a lot from this trader, and continue to do so.  In fact, things have gone so well I will be working as an assistant to him in 2013 which will allow me to learn even more about trading futures as well as the trading business in general.  I have a lot to be grateful and thankful for as I look back at 2012, and am even more excited about 2013 and beyond!

On to results... here's what happened with my trading with Forex Profit Monster in December...

December was a great follow-up to November as I saw not only some nice winning trades during the month, but also some gains from trades that opened in November that closed out during December.  Once again the trends were nice and smooth on many pairs which kept the number of trades down and the profits up.  It was a rare month in that I had a 68% win rate... you don't see many months like that in a trend following system where the average win rate is usually more in the 30-35% range.  However the average risk/reward ratio was also lower... 1.74 to 1 instead of the 3 to 1  or 4 to 1 ratio where it usually is during winning months.  I had a profit of 657 pips in December, and here's how the rest of the monthly results played out:

19 trades total
13 wins:  892 pips
 6 losses: 235 pips

Total: +657 pips

68% win rate
Avg win:  68 pips
Avg loss:  39 pips
Avg risk/reward ratio:  1.74 to 1

Here are the results by currency pair:

EUR/USD  2W, 0L  +352
GBP/USD  3W, 1L  +166
USD/CHF  2W, 1L  +158
USD/CAD  2W, 1L   +38
AUD/USD  1W, 1L   +19
GBP/JPY    1W, 0L   +15
EUR/JPY    1W, 1L  (-41)
USD/JPY   1W, 1L  (-50)

Since it's the end of the year, that means it's the end of the 4th Quarter.  With October's 220 pip loss and the gain of 657 pips in both November and December, I showed a profit of 1,094 pips in the 4th quarter.  Here's the updated equity graph:

And here are the final results for 2012:


January: +891
February: +206
March: +1,667
April: (-293)
May:  +1,640
June:  +2,209
July:  (-343)
August: (-699)
September +1,103
October (-220)
November +657
December +657

That's a total of 7,475 pips, or an average of 622 pips per month.

There were 8 winning months in 2012 with 9,030 pips gained, and 4 losing months with 1,555 pips lost.  That gives me a monthly win rate of 66.6%, an average win of 1,128 pips, and an average loss of 388 pips, which calculates to an average risk/reward ratio of  2.9 to 1.

For more information regarding purchasing Forex Profit Monster (or my day trading system Forex Day Monster), please visit the website at www.forexprofitmonster.com or my eBay page at http://myworld.ebay.com/jimsgr8stuff4less where I list one or two items per week at a discount.

Best of luck in your trading...

Jim
www.forexprofitmonster.com

Forex Profit Monster Results - November 2012

November was one of those nice months where almost every pair ended up a winner, the trends were long enough that there weren't a lot of trades, and there were some trades that carried into December with nice open equity.  It's always nice to end a month with a good profit and head into the next month with a head start on more profits!

Looking back after the fact it was the Yen that carried the month.  With the changing leadership in Japan and the announcement about the government not being so concerned about keeping the Yen weak (which removes the threat of government intervention, at least for now) we've seen some nice moves to the upside as the Dollar gains strength, along with the other major currencies.  This is ironic as you'd think you would have seen the opposite happen since the Bank of Japan has spent more than the past two years trying to keep the Yen from getting any stronger by intervening in the market.  The government says it doesn't care about making the Yen weak and the Yen becomes weaker...  this is why you can't trade your opinion on fundamentals successfully, you have to have a trading plan and follow it systematically.  If you were trading a fundamental opinion you probably would have been expecting the Yen to gain more strength and would have missed the several hundred pips of profit available to you from the Yen pair moves in November.

Here are the November results on the 8 pair I trade on the 4 Hour chart:

27 trades total

11 wins:  1,293 pips

16 losses:  636 pips

Total: +657 pips

40.7% win rate

Avg win:  117

Avg loss:   39

Avg risk reward ratio:  3.0 to 1

Results by currency pair:

EUR/JPY  2W, 1L  +292

GBP/JPY  2W, 1L  +274

USD/JPY 1W, 2L  +132

USD/CAD 1W, 2L  +81

EUR/USD  1W, 2L  +64

GBP/USD  1W, 1L  +49

USD/CHF 1W, 2L  (-67)

AUD/USD 2W, 5L (-168)

The results for 2012 so far:

January: +891

February: +206

March: +1,667

April: (-293)

May:  +1,640

June:  +2,209

July:  (-343)

August: (-699)

September +1,103

October (-220)

November +657

That's a total of 6,818 pips, or an average of 619 pips per month.

For more information regarding purchasing Forex Profit Monster (or my day trading system Forex Day Monster), please visit the website at www.forexprofitmonster.com or my eBay page at http://myworld.ebay.com/jimsgr8stuff4less where I list one or two items per week at a discount.

Best of luck in your trading...

Jim

www.forexprofitmonster.com

Forex Profit Monster Results - October 2012

My apologies to those of you who follow this blog and to those who check in on results before purchasing for taking so long to post these results.  I became extremely busy in 2012, taking on some new things that I'll write about in a separate post... (it has a lot to do with furthering my abilities as a trader and trading system designer).  I've considered reducing these posts to Quarterly results only to save me some time, but know that there are a lot of people who want to see the month by month data.

On to the October 2012 results for the 8 pair I trade on the 4 Hour chart...

39 trades
14 wins:    845 pips
25 losses: 1065 pips

Total:  (-220)

35.8% win rate
Avg win:  60
Avg loss:  42
Avg risk/reward ratio:  1.42 to 1

Results by currency pair:

EUR/JPY  3W, 2L  +103
GBP/JPY  1W, 3L  +102
USD/JPY  2W, 2L   +77
EUR/USD 4W, 1L   +60
USD/CHF 1W, 2L  (-47)
AUD/USD 2W, 3L  (-66)
USD/CAD 1W, 4L  (-116)
GBP/USD 0W, 7L   (-333)


The results for 2012 so far:

January: +891
February: +206
March: +1,667
April: (-293)
May:  +1,640
June:  +2,209
July:  (-343)
August: (-699)
September +1,103
October (-220)

That's a total of 6,161 pips, or an average of 616 pips per month.


For more information regarding purchasing Forex Profit Monster (or my day trading system Forex Day Monster), please visit the website at www.forexprofitmonster.com or my eBay page at http://myworld.ebay.com/jimsgr8stuff4less where I list one or two items per week at a discount.

Best of luck in your trading...

Jim
www.forexprofitmonster.com