Currensee

[MarcieAtCurrensee]

In regards to Mike Baghdady, he was a panelist on a webinar. The webinar was not regarding the Trade Leader program and we weren't highlighting him as a possible Trade Leader of any sort. We do not vet partners or vendors the same way that we vet our Trade Leaders. For Trade Leaders, we do check all live trading results for the strategy being considered, we verify strategies, we check against terrorist watch lists and perform credit-checks. I don't want anyone to confuse the two issues.

Yes, Alphadude, the graphs do show total equity in the account from 5PM eastern time to 5PM eastern time - including both open and closed P/L. For reference you can look at Chen Investment's account between 17 April and 30 April. On 17, 18 & 25 April trades were opened that were closed on 30 April at a loss. You can watch the equity curve go down even though she also closed winning trades during that time. There are increases in equity well, but there is a downward trend during the time depicting the decrease in equity in the account. I hope this helps.

Alphadude, if you feel comfortable emailing or PM'ing me your Currensee account email address I'd appreciate it, that way I can look up your history to see what went wrong. I promise to not pummel anyone about the head, but I need to see where things didn't go a well as they should have in your communications with us if I'm going to drive positive change.

Cheers,
mls

 

[Liquid validity]

So, for instance, Joiny Jiang's has 3 years, 1 month; Adantia's account has 2 years 4 months, Janus Trading has 2 years 1 month, etc., In order to understand the trader we'll often look at older accounts in order to get a full view of drawdown, risk, etc.,

Some of the points that Liquid Validity is requesting will be included, however, not one to over-promise and under-deliver, many of these pieces of data will not. We do feel confident that the information available, with a few exceptions, is enough information to make an informed decision. Profile graphs and tables are fully interactive, so followers can choose to drill down to identify information regarding drawdowns over time, time to recover, etc., Trades per day, targets, etc., are typically part of each Trade Leader's bio, but we'll be making some of this information more table-based and easier to find in the future.

Checked through all 3, Adantia caught my attention more than the others (in a good way...)
Currensee Trade Leader Profile - ROCED.A
Hot New CTAs: Short-term traders on a roll
http://media.futuresmag.com/futures...Documents/ADANTIA (FX VERY AGGR.)-DETAILS.pdf
Adantia LLC
Adantia LLC’s 4 forex trading programs in 'outstanding’ performance YTD to launch hedge fund - Opalesque

I have to be honest, they look OK even to someone as cynical as me
Did some minor digging on directors too, didn't find anything negative.

In fact I found a few positives.
I did find out that Robert Clancy, President of Adantia is also a partner in:
Vertical Management Systems Mutual Fund Desk - VMSPortal
With a software design role amongst others.
Certianly a cut above a typical zulu provider unless I'm mistaken

 

[Lord Flasheart]

Checked through all 3, Adantia caught my attention more than the others (in a good way...)
Currensee Trade Leader Profile - ROCED.A
Hot New CTAs: Short-term traders on a roll
http://media.futuresmag.com/futures...Documents/ADANTIA (FX VERY AGGR.)-DETAILS.pdf
Adantia LLC
Adantia LLC’s 4 forex trading programs in 'outstanding’ performance YTD to launch hedge fund - Opalesque

I have to be honest, they look OK even to someone as cynical as me
Did some minor digging on directors too, didn't find anything negative.

In fact I found a few positives.
I did find out that Robert Clancy, President of Adantia is also a partner in:
Vertical Management Systems Mutual Fund Desk - VMSPortal
With a software design role amongst others.
Certianly a cut above a typical zulu provider unless I'm mistaken

clearly the guys you have pointed out are much more up market than the majority on zulu,but zulu caters for the lower end of the market if thats the way to put it. It also gives everyone an equal chance,but yes if I were to risk a large amount then I would be more assured by the above,but if I only had a few 000 then Id be looking at a basket of zulus traders

 

[Liquid validity]

clearly the guys you have pointed out are much more up market than the majority on zulu,but zulu caters for the lower end of the market if thats the way to put it. It also gives everyone an equal chance,but yes if I were to risk a large amount then I would be more assured by the above,but if I only had a few 000 then Id be looking at a basket of zulus traders

For me, trust and credibility are worth more.
I can see what you are driving at with a basket of zulus though.
Min cap is $10k, so thats £6k now or £4k by end of summer
Not too bad really, any lower and it wouldn't be worth bothering anyway.

 

[hellrise]

My major disadvantages about using currensee would be the monthly rent you have to pay in order to follow the signals of a provider + you can't get a demo account in order to test their performance. And also i've heard elsewhere that the stats of the providers on the frontpage are not exactly the real ones. I dont know if is true or not as i myself have used currensee.

 

[alphadude]

In regards to Mike Baghdady, he was a panelist on a webinar. The webinar was not regarding the Trade Leader program and we weren't highlighting him as a possible Trade Leader of any sort. We do not vet partners or vendors the same way that we vet our Trade Leaders. For Trade Leaders, we do check all live trading results for the strategy being considered, we verify strategies, we check against terrorist watch lists and perform credit-checks. I don't want anyone to confuse the two issues.

Yes, Alphadude, the graphs do show total equity in the account from 5PM eastern time to 5PM eastern time - including both open and closed P/L. For reference you can look at Chen Investment's account between 17 April and 30 April. On 17, 18 & 25 April trades were opened that were closed on 30 April at a loss. You can watch the equity curve go down even though she also closed winning trades during that time. There are increases in equity well, but there is a downward trend during the time depicting the decrease in equity in the account. I hope this helps.

Alphadude, if you feel comfortable emailing or PM'ing me your Currensee account email address I'd appreciate it, that way I can look up your history to see what went wrong. I promise to not pummel anyone about the head, but I need to see where things didn't go a well as they should have in your communications with us if I'm going to drive positive change.

Cheers,
mls

Hi Marcie,

Let's analyze the equity curve and statistics for trade leader 'Chen Investment' 'CHCMP.S'

I have downloaded all trades and re-constructed the equity curve; using a conservative leverage of 2x for each position (the position size is not available in the downloaded trade list).

The first chart; is the equity curve as displayed by Currensee. The max drawdown is indicated as 17%.

However; on my analysis; the equity curve is slightly different; with a large drop in Jan/Feb 2012. Max drawdown is 30% assuming leverage of 2x.

Can you please assess the statistics.

PS: Since I didn't the full data (i.e. current open trades are missing, and position size is missing too); i can redraw the statistics if you send me the full trade list (open and closed) with position size; and capital used.


legend on my chart:
- black line: close equity curve
- green line: total equity curve
- yellow line: underwater max drawdown

 

[MarcieAtCurrensee]

Alphadude.. I appreciate the efforts of your analysis, but you can't draw an equity curve without trade size given this particular trader's trading style. That said, her typical leverage is 6:1, but max leverage is 26:1, so that also varies widely and is all over the pitch. For privacy purposes I can not provide you with capital used. I will talk to some people here to see if providing trade size is an issue. We may be able to provide relative trade size or trade size of a 5K account - something along those lines. Give me a few days to pull together some information for you, but without trade size you definitely can't figure the equity curve.

Cheers,
mls

 

[tar]

Alphadude.. I appreciate the efforts of your analysis, but you can't draw an equity curve without trade size given this particular trader's trading style. That said, her typical leverage is 6:1, but max leverage is 26:1, so that also varies widely and is all over the pitch. For privacy purposes I can not provide you with capital used. I will talk to some people here to see if providing trade size is an issue. We may be able to provide relative trade size or trade size of a 5K account - something along those lines. Give me a few days to pull together some information for you, but without trade size you definitely can't figure the equity curve.

Cheers,
mls

Hi Marcie
"What types of traders qualify to be a Trade Leader?
CTAs, money managers and fund managers with a history of positive performance and strong risk management are welcome to become candidates the Trade Leaders program. "

Is it legal for "non-CTA" trade leaders to have discretion over clients funds and to get paid by performance ( 15% ) ? I thought it is a requirement by the NFA and CFTC .

BTW the "DD process" pdf file isn't working .
Thanks

 

[alphadude]

Alphadude.. I appreciate the efforts of your analysis, but you can't draw an equity curve without trade size given this particular trader's trading style. That said, her typical leverage is 6:1, but max leverage is 26:1, so that also varies widely and is all over the pitch. For privacy purposes I can not provide you with capital used. I will talk to some people here to see if providing trade size is an issue. We may be able to provide relative trade size or trade size of a 5K account - something along those lines. Give me a few days to pull together some information for you, but without trade size you definitely can't figure the equity curve.

Cheers,
mls

Looking forward for it.

my issue as a follower; was that when I followed a TL for 2 full months; the equity curve and monthly returns displayed for the TL for those months; did not reflect the actual trades that I have witnessed. i.e. I saw a negative return of 10% (including open trades); but on the website; a positive return was shown.

btw; not all TLs has this issue. for example; the curve for LW Trading did indeed reflect the trade list. This TL usually does not leave positions open for more than a day. So it seems the problem is with the TL who has open positions for weeks/months.

What I believe is missing from the currensee stats; is the list of open trades. That will complete the picture for me as a follower.

Is it possible to add that to the trade list? perhaps with a delay of couple of hours or a day; so followers don't abuse the system. ZuluTrade already does this. They show closed trades; and open trades with a delay of 120 minutes.

An alternative solution is to offer a What-If capability (it is called backtesting in ZuluTrade); where clients can test their account size and allocation across one or multiple TLs in the past few months.

 

[alphadude]

hi Marcie; off topic; what is the maximum leverage used by TL?

do you impose the same max leverage to all trade leaders; or a case by case?

regards.

 

[the hare]

I guess the problem that the currencee trade leader program will always face is that they'll be judged by their worst performance.

IIRC one of the leaders who was being very actively promoted (and irresponsibly promoted in my opinion) literally lost 80% of an account within hours. It was the usual case of not closing losers, and the market not coming back. This problem was of course compounded by currensee not providing adequate reporting of open losses to allow clients to adequately assess risk.

I have to say, there's a very good thread on FF that's been addressing precisely these sorts of issues for the last few years. The threads a bit of a PR disaster, and I'm amazed that curensee allowed one of their founders to behave in the way he did over there, but nevertheless, there's some very good points raised, and a few gems available for anyone interested in managing risk.

Curencee would no doubt argue that the spectacular failure of a trade leader isnt really a problem if their clients are adequately diversified, and to an extent there's some merit in that argument, but that particular situation did provide a very good example of precisely the problems and risks that had been highlighted, and that this particular company decided to ignore.

On a more cynical note, the fact that people would be irrational enough to invest in something like always renews my faith that market opportunities will always exist. The companies association with Mike Baghdady says it all really.

Thats all I have to say on the subject really, just another company exploiting the stupidity of others.

 

[alphadude]

I guess the problem that the currencee trade leader program will always face is that they'll be judged by their worst performance.

IIRC one of the leaders who was being very actively promoted (and irresponsibly promoted in my opinion) literally lost 80% of an account within hours. It was the usual case of not closing losers, and the market not coming back. This problem was of course compounded by currensee not providing adequate reporting of open losses to allow clients to adequately assess risk.

I have to say, there's a very good thread on FF that's been addressing precisely these sorts of issues for the last few years. The threads a bit of a PR disaster, and I'm amazed that curensee allowed one of their founders to behave in the way he did over there, but nevertheless, there's some very good points raised, and a few gems available for anyone interested in managing risk.

Curencee would no doubt argue that the spectacular failure of a trade leader isnt really a problem if their clients are adequately diversified, and to an extent there's some merit in that argument, but that particular situation did provide a very good example of precisely the problems and risks that had been highlighted, and that this particular company decided to ignore.

On a more cynical note, the fact that people would be irrational enough to invest in something like always renews my faith that market opportunities will always exist. The companies association with Mike Baghdady says it all really.

Thats all I have to say on the subject really, just another company exploiting the stupidity of others.

you are right. similar question was asked in FF. here is the post:

Currensee Discussion - Page 11 @ Forex Factory

no satisfying answer was given there; so hopefully Marcie can address it here.

 

[Liquid validity]

I guess the problem that the currencee trade leader program will always face is that they'll be judged by their worst performance.

IIRC one of the leaders who was being very actively promoted (and irresponsibly promoted in my opinion) literally lost 80% of an account within hours. It was the usual case of not closing losers, and the market not coming back. This problem was of course compounded by currensee not providing adequate reporting of open losses to allow clients to adequately assess risk.

I have to say, there's a very good thread on FF that's been addressing precisely these sorts of issues for the last few years. The threads a bit of a PR disaster, and I'm amazed that curensee allowed one of their founders to behave in the way he did over there, but nevertheless, there's some very good points raised, and a few gems available for anyone interested in managing risk.

Curencee would no doubt argue that the spectacular failure of a trade leader isnt really a problem if their clients are adequately diversified, and to an extent there's some merit in that argument, but that particular situation did provide a very good example of precisely the problems and risks that had been highlighted, and that this particular company decided to ignore.

On a more cynical note, the fact that people would be irrational enough to invest in something like always renews my faith that market opportunities will always exist. The companies association with Mike Baghdady says it all really.

Thats all I have to say on the subject really, just another company exploiting the stupidity of others.

I don't think Currensee are as bad as some of the others.
Not saying there aren't exploitable loopholes, there will be no matter what.
Thats the biggest problem with any of these sites.
They do have some providers that seem OK:
http://www.trade2win.com/boards/general-trading-chat/150050-currensee-6.html#post1855154

On the whole though, ultimately, I agree with what you say.
You are better off taking responsibility for your own money as opposed to
entrusting it to anyone else.

 

[Rhody Trader]

Is it legal for "non-CTA" trade leaders to have discretion over clients funds and to get paid by performance ( 15% ) ? I thought it is a requirement by the NFA and CFTC .

Trade Leaders operating through Currensee don't have discretion over client funds. They only trade their own accounts and have those trades replicated via the Currensee platform. Currensee is registered, though.

 

[tar]

Trade Leaders operating through Currensee don't have discretion over client funds. They only trade their own accounts and have those trades replicated via the Currensee platform. Currensee is registered, though.

Does it make any difference ? If you get paid a management fee and a performance fee then you are not a signal provider , you are more like a fund manager , and AFAIK it is required to be registered with the NFA or at least get an exemption ( i mean fund managers themselves ) . Maybe Marcie will clear everything up .

"A CTA is an individual or organization which, for compensation or profit, advises others as to the value of or the advisability of buying or selling futures contracts, options on futures, or retail off-exchange forex contracts.

Providing advice includes exercising trading authority over a customer's account as well as giving advice based upon knowledge of or tailored to customer's particular commodity interest account, particular commodity interest trading activity, or other similar types of information.

Registration is required unless:

You have provided advice to 15 or fewer persons during the past 12 months and do not generally hold yourself out to the public as a CTA or
You are in one of a number of businesses or professions listed in the Commodity Exchange Act or are registered in another capacity and your advice is solely incidental to your principal business or profession or
You are providing advice that is not based upon knowledge of or tailored to customer's particular commodity interest account, particular commodity interest trading activity, or other similar types of information, such as, for example
You make recommendations, such as advice to buy or sell specific futures contracts should a particular price level be reached, through newsletters, books and periodicals. The advice includes specific recommendations and the recipients of publications all receive the same advice or
You provide specific advice through e-mails, facsimiles, an Internet web site, telephone calls or face-to-face meetings with customers consisting of instructions to buy or sell a futures contract based on a computerized trading system, which also is available for purchase and use on a personal computer, and the customers all receive the same advice or
You conduct seminars at which you teach attendees how to trade commodity futures contracts aided by a software program that you sell and you invite seminar attendees to participate in a question-and-answer session at which you provide commodity trading advice without asking or receiving information about the personal characteristics of the attendees.
All registered CTAs who manage or exercise discretion over customer accounts must be Members of NFA in order to conduct futures business with the public."

 

[Rhody Trader]

"A CTA is an individual or organization which, for compensation or profit, advises others as to the value of or the advisability of buying or selling futures contracts, options on futures, or retail off-exchange forex contracts.

Providing advice includes exercising trading authority over a customer's account as well as giving advice based upon knowledge of or tailored to customer's particular commodity interest account, particular commodity interest trading activity, or other similar types of information.

The TLs do not advise, nor do they have trading authority. Currensee is the one who is "exercising trading authority over a customer's account".

 

[tar]

The TLs do not advise, nor do they have trading authority. Currensee is the one who is "exercising trading authority over a customer's account".

I am not sure about that mate , as every trade leader has his own system and statistics , maybe we should ask the NFA then .

 

[Liquid validity]

I am not sure about that mate , as every trade leader has his own system and statistics , maybe we should ask the NFA then .

I'd guess its a fineprint loophole, perfectly legit.
The TL's forward signals to CS, who then use them as proxy signals.
Thats why there is no direct contact or payment to TL's.
I could be wrong but thats my best guess, be a bit of a clanger for CS otherwise.

BTW - Rhody Trader, do you mind me asking what your involvement is here.
I'm getting the impression you may be connected to currensee is some way, TL or something?
Just curious thats all

 

[MarcieAtCurrensee]

Hi Tar.. I don't really want to speak to the Trade Leader selection process as that's not my area of expertise.

As has been said by another poster, or perhaps two, Trade Leaders do not have discretion over client funds. We are regulated by the NFA and FSA (and passported in the the EU) and both agencies are aware of our activities. That said, about a quarter of our Trade Leaders do happen to be CTA's. We're not so much looking for stand-alone traders down in the basement staying up 22 hours a day, we're looking for people who have experience managing money, managing risk, responsibly using leverage, etc., I did check out the due diligence pdf and got it to work, here's the link, I hope this helps.
http://www.currensee.com/files/docs/CurrenseeTradeLeaderSelection.pdf

Alphadude, I can't and won't speak to your account given that I can't see it, I can't verify it, I can't see what went wrong. You may have missed some key trades, you may have had higher than average slippage, the Trade Leaders may have been taking smaller than expected gains. For instance, if we have a Trade Leader who typically takes 15-20 pip gains and the slippage for followers is 1.5 pips on the way in and the way out, followers will still see 65-80% correlation. If that same Trade Leaders suddenly starts booking gain of only 3 pips they'll still see a gain, but the follower will not. The other thing that will affect a Trade Leader's graph being positive while a follower's is negative is a Trade Leader closing long-open trades. We see this fairly often - you won't see the gains if you weren't in the trades to start with. I'm sure you understand this. Again, send me your information and I can speak to your experience, without it I'm simply speculating.

In the new version of the website that I eluded to earlier we will be showing open trades. We agree that this is something we can do to increase transparency and are working to do this.

We have developed a "what-if" capability and we're working with the NFA to ensure it is a tool they are comfortable with us publishing. I don't have much insight into what to expect when that will be available at this point.

We do not impose maximum leverage limits on Trade Leaders per se, however, in looking at historical data of Trade Leaders we do pay close attention to historical leverage used. I think the Trade Leader who uses the most leverage is probably TK Trading whose typical leverage is 2:1, however his max leverage used is 50:1. TCM/BAK Trading typically uses 13:1 but has a max leverage used of 43:1. I hope this helps.

The Hare, you are correct. Very early on we did have a top Trade Leader lose a good deal of his account very quickly. This was an unfortunate event, however, it taught us to learn what to look for. If memory serves that particular Trade Leader was Martingaling - basically doubling down hoping that things would turn around. They did not. The good news is that this helped us to identify what to look for in the way of trading strategies so that we would never allow a Trade Leader to be part of the program who showed any evidence of using this type of tactic to rectify a loss. That event also drove another important change on our site. Clients used to get stopped out automatically with a 30% loss by Trade Leader. We changed that to be fully customizable by each client for each Trade Leader. Some followers decide to leave this at 30%, but many change this to reflect their personal risk appetite. It's my opinion that this was an important step toward clients having the experience that meets their needs, however, we've also seen clients "lock in" losses that the Trade Leader recovers from because the investor sets this limit too conservatively. None of us know what will happen, so we have to set our limits where we're comfortable.

I don't really want to speak to the other thread on the other forum. What I will say is that I have great respect for Asaf as a colleague and person and I think to play Monday morning quarterback isn't really fair. I did read through pages 11 & 12 of the thread and I believe the questions were answered. Help me understand what you'd like me to clarify, I'm happy to help.

If I missed anything I apologize in advance, I'd love to have more time to spend here but I'm sure you all understand that herding cats is time consuming.

Cheers,
mls

 

[alphadude]

Marcie,

unfortunately i still dont beleive the equity curve represent a floating DD. the only way to find out is to see the full list of trades.

If you can send me the list for the above TL that will be great.

Think about it; the trade list that is currently available in Currensee is provided for a reason; for clients to assess that TL. anyone who download that excel and draw the curve; will notice the difference. help me here. the above TL is one example that I want to understand why I see a different curve; and different floating DD.