As you may realise I am not one of the great sceptics, but I may yet become one.
For what it's worth, here is my exchange with Concept after the first two disaster trades and before the last two:
To: Concept-FX Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2008 7:06 AM
Subject: Cable etc
Hi Neil,
Since 25 July say, Cable has been in free fall, but Concept-FX simply hasn't noticed. Thereby missing a fantastic trade! In fact in this same period it gave us full losses on two failed long trades on Cable instead. Furthermore we have recently been suffering losses on other pairs, the last two of which have been instantaneous, so it's not as if it were a swings and roundabouts situation. Would it be fair to say this exposes a serious flaw in the Concept algorithm? regards,Sandy
Hi Sandy,
With the benefit of hindsight then of course things seem perfectly obvious but in reality things are different. On both occasions there were sound technical reasons for entering the trades based on strong levels of historical support. 'Instantaneous' losses happen, particularly on a volatile and fast market like the FX. When you swing trade (Trading off critical levels of support), the market either bounces off these levels or penetrates them and so we get stopped out. - If I'm to take a loss, I would rather it be instantaneous, than a prolonged, 5 day trade! Neither are good but the former is the better of the two. In addition, I think you have to take into consideration our recent bout of bad luck. A number of losing trades crashed out by result of numerous news items affecting the market. The recent EUR/JPY trade was within touching distance of a decent profit target but only hours later shot down to the stop loss. A profit was taken but it could of been much better. And had we hit our profit target, some of the recent loses would of been counter balanced. Coming off the back of a very profitable period, a run of loses while disappointing is hardly a crisis. And at this stage it's rather short sighted to be questioning the algorithms. I think it's sensible to see how things go and if this run continues for a pro-longed period of time then perhaps your point may have some credence. Best regards, Jeran
My comment on this is:
Not a crisis for the Concept people, our money is in their bank nice and safe. Also the losses may be easily tolerable for those who were in at the start, and built up their accounts but, as this thread shows, it is a crisis for those whose bank has dropped by around 50% in 5 or 6 weeks.
Jeran may prefer his losses quick and dirty, but I like mine to be a little slower so that I can manage them!
I didn't think I was buying into a system which only did range trading and reversals, and you can see in the historical results, and in the fact that some trades open with a stop, that it is not intended to be limited to ranges and reversals. In the past it has actually followed some trends very successfully, albeit sometimes giving back a ridiculous amout of profit because of a poor exit strategy.
So the response from Jeran is not really adequate. I did say myself somewhere back on this thread that if the performance could dramatically improve over the past as it certainly did for the first part of 2008, that it could equally well reverse as dramatically and that if it did there would be some very unhappy traders (or words to that effect). So here we are, unhappy traders. As scanjet says, it does seem to depend on the market, not on Concept.
What we need is to be able to depend on Concept to handle the market, not use the market as an excuse. Let's face it the marketing earlier this year did not give the credit to the market but claimed it for Concept. Now that the boot is on the other foot it seems to be nothing to do with the Concept algorithm. Just bad luck or something. Luck is for gamblers.
As I said earlier Concept seems at present to be an obstacle to intelligent trading.
I hope I will be eating my words for the rest of the year, but I doubt it. And in any event my confidence in the system despite all my promises to myself has evaporated by say 99%, not just 50%.
The guys at Concept are not "bad people" or scammers, but they certainly don't have what it takes, especially given their price. BTW I was a Tradewin user, so I have been here before, more fool me. Never again.
