The Artist
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Hello,
Well the ranking metric is indeed biased towards performance rather than risk from what I have noticed. You just need to look at the top 100 to realise that. Look at Dr. 27 for instance, at a very respectable #66 place, yet his strategy is based on getting 27 pips out of every AUD/USD trade, regardless of how much time and drawdown it takes to get there. This is not trading obviously, this is random buying and selling tailored to fit Zulutrade's ranking algorithm, and you can pick at least 85 providers out of 100 like that.
Zulutrade has no incentive to modify this situation since their business model relies on traffic, and most people are not knowledgeable enough in financial trading to worry about and understand risk. It would not take a professional trader any more than 2 seconds to realize what Essam Elmolla is trying to do and cringe, yet he has close to $1.5m following.
Yet you can't blame the providers, they're just playing by the rules of the game and get rewarded for giving followers what they want. I'm not going to a Michelin-rated restaurant every time I'm hungry, McDonald's or the kebab shop at the corner is often just fine. So why should I expect people who want to make quick money easily to spend hours to pick a trader and try to understand risk ratios?
Yet there are some quality providers on Zulutrade, some cooks who refuse to prepare **** food just because more people will come, and some people are looking for them. The second problem I have noticed is that Zulutrade does not make it easy to find them. You mentioned that one can use the advanced search but what is the point when the data is flawed?
The ROI calculation is as preposterous as it is mysterious.
The Maximum Drawdown number is also completely wrong and misleading.
Why would you have Win% as a search parameter??
Some parameter such as Avg Duration vs. Avg Winner would be a simple start: IT CANNOT TAKE 20 HOURS TO MAKE 5 PIPS ON MAJOR PAIRS
About 95% of all providers would get wiped out by such a simple piece of data.
But like I said it's not really in Zulutrade's interest to sort of clean up their database, so you have to accept those rules.
As time passes I hope that I can be, along with a few others, one of the "good" exceptions. It's not perfect but I'm still fairly supportive of the entire concept.
Well the ranking metric is indeed biased towards performance rather than risk from what I have noticed. You just need to look at the top 100 to realise that. Look at Dr. 27 for instance, at a very respectable #66 place, yet his strategy is based on getting 27 pips out of every AUD/USD trade, regardless of how much time and drawdown it takes to get there. This is not trading obviously, this is random buying and selling tailored to fit Zulutrade's ranking algorithm, and you can pick at least 85 providers out of 100 like that.
Zulutrade has no incentive to modify this situation since their business model relies on traffic, and most people are not knowledgeable enough in financial trading to worry about and understand risk. It would not take a professional trader any more than 2 seconds to realize what Essam Elmolla is trying to do and cringe, yet he has close to $1.5m following.
Yet you can't blame the providers, they're just playing by the rules of the game and get rewarded for giving followers what they want. I'm not going to a Michelin-rated restaurant every time I'm hungry, McDonald's or the kebab shop at the corner is often just fine. So why should I expect people who want to make quick money easily to spend hours to pick a trader and try to understand risk ratios?
Yet there are some quality providers on Zulutrade, some cooks who refuse to prepare **** food just because more people will come, and some people are looking for them. The second problem I have noticed is that Zulutrade does not make it easy to find them. You mentioned that one can use the advanced search but what is the point when the data is flawed?
The ROI calculation is as preposterous as it is mysterious.
The Maximum Drawdown number is also completely wrong and misleading.
Why would you have Win% as a search parameter??
Some parameter such as Avg Duration vs. Avg Winner would be a simple start: IT CANNOT TAKE 20 HOURS TO MAKE 5 PIPS ON MAJOR PAIRS
About 95% of all providers would get wiped out by such a simple piece of data. But like I said it's not really in Zulutrade's interest to sort of clean up their database, so you have to accept those rules.
As time passes I hope that I can be, along with a few others, one of the "good" exceptions. It's not perfect but I'm still fairly supportive of the entire concept.
Some parameter such as Avg Duration vs. Avg Winner would be a simple start: IT CANNOT TAKE 20 HOURS TO MAKE 5 PIPS ON MAJOR PAIRS
which are those traders that are doing this?
can you give us some names?that's not actually true...........threre are thousands of strateiges and traders - some open many trades, others not so much but the whole point is for them to be profitable and closed, otherwise there will be no commission for the trader. So, there are some regulations and protections for the followers as well.
@The Artist. Could you explain a little bit more the Avg Duration vs. Avg Winner parameter? You can specify both in the advanced search as far as i know , there is an Average Trade Time (h) where you could input the hours , and the Average Pips bar where you select the number of pips.
Are you somewhat associate with zulutrade - I mean follower/trader?
The Artist
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Yes of course, actually I was just trying to refer to a more intuitive way to eliminate strategies with high win ratios due to lack of proper downside protection.
That's the most common way for followers to get burnt, along with martingale-type strategies, but I have not seen many martingalers on Zulutrade so that's fine.
As you said, you can toy with average pips and average trade time inputs but that is not going to take you very far if you want to avoid traders who do not have stop losses and carry their positions for days until they reverse (a mostly unprofessional and unpractical way to trade). That's because those statistics apply to both winners and losers.
However, let's say you want to eliminate any dangerous provider who let his trades run until they are green. Those guys usually will have a >80% win rate, and each good trade will be closed after anywhere between +5 and +100 pips, while most bad trades will be kept until point of no return, -300 to -500 pips, or right after they have become positive after a large drawdown, 0 to +20 pips. Obviously I generalise but you will notice that the pattern is usually that.
What you would want first of all is a statistics that gives you an Average Trade Drawdown, because if the guy is not good, he can hide behind great ROI and high Win % but the Average Trade Drawdown will be very high, probably around -100 or -150pips in our example, which is higher that what he makes on his average winner. So you are just making money because you rely on zero margin and unlimited funds.
Or, what I had suggested was looking at a statistics which combines Average Winner and Average Duration for those winners. In our example, the guy would have a decent average winner, maybe +20pips, but if the duration is something like 45 hours, that means he usually waits much too long for such a small return compared to average daily range, i.e. he's waiting for losers to turn around.
None of these, and others which would help, are available on Zulutrade, so you have to go one by one and look at the trade history to filter, although in many cases a quick glance at the Performance/Drawdown curves is enough.
I hope that made sense. Again, I'm not criticizing any such providers, they may all be exceptional traders who just want to take advantage of the loopholes in Zulutrade. But I assume not all followers are happy to make 10 pips 30 times in a row only to have 1 running -400 pips trade open the whole time to wipe them out in the end.
Not all providers are FCC in disguise and it would be nice to identify them more easily.
Nice points Artist , now i understood what you meant with the Average Duration vs Average Winners , what would you think will be the ideal ratio in that , something that is under 5h and averaging 15-20 pips? .Also the Average Trade Drawdown is a very helpfull thing. I would also want that.
The Artist
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Glad I can help.
hellrise, an ideal ratio depends on the currency pair. The most relevant data would be the average daily range, but also knowing recent price behaviour does help. I only trade major, liquid pairs, so for instance I know that the average daily range for EUR/USD these days is about 80pips, and intraday volatility is fairly contained. So I would not find it surprising if it generally took a trader 10 to 20 hours to make 40 pips. USD/JPY has totally different dynamics, so do CHF based pairs, and even EUR/USD just 18 months ago. But more than 15 hours to make 10% of daily range starts to look dodgy.
I'm completely off trading until January 2nd, recharging batteries in order to start fresh and ready since 2013 is make or break for me I wish you all the best.
hellrise, an ideal ratio depends on the currency pair. The most relevant data would be the average daily range, but also knowing recent price behaviour does help. I only trade major, liquid pairs, so for instance I know that the average daily range for EUR/USD these days is about 80pips, and intraday volatility is fairly contained. So I would not find it surprising if it generally took a trader 10 to 20 hours to make 40 pips. USD/JPY has totally different dynamics, so do CHF based pairs, and even EUR/USD just 18 months ago. But more than 15 hours to make 10% of daily range starts to look dodgy.
I'm completely off trading until January 2nd, recharging batteries in order to start fresh and ready since 2013 is make or break for me
I wish you all the best. 
tar
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The vast majority of Zulutrade signal providers trade the same strategy ( sell over bought/buy oversold ) if it made the smallest profit then they take it ,and if it went against them then they add to their losing positions ( averaging down ) hoping for a reversal , either they will close all positions with any slightest profit possible or they will wipe out big portion of their accounts in just one trade/s , ofcourse during low volatility and ranging markets this strategy may pay off until .... !!! FOTW , FCC ... etc it is a repeated pattern , i am surprised that most traders/followers don't see this and keep joining the top 10 providers with their live accounts money , millions have been made by signal providers to their own pockets , and millions have been lost from followers accounts hmmm happy punting .......
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tar
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On a side note collective2 is going to launch an international version of their website where non-us traders may follow strategies without paying monthly subscriptions just the auto trading fees per trade much like Zulutrade .........
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tar
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tar
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There is something in my mind here , if Zulu and aaafx ( a broker used widely by zulutrade followers ) are the same , then it is in Zulu's interest to have such strategies ( averaging down/martingale ) hosted in their website , in another words zulutrade followers losses are aaafx gains and zulu's as well .... i remember reading last year in zulu's forums signal providers complaining about their commissions being not paid and delayed , zulu's answer was we are waiting to get paid as well from the brokers and sometimes zulu blamed the banking system ... etc etc anyway i do remember after that there was a big move in the euro ( few hundred pips ) in just a few days and many averaging down providers got stuck in big drawdowns , immediately zulu started sending the delayed commissions payments .
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NVP
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let me know if we ever get a provider out there prepared to pay serious traders to play ................Zulutrader pays traders to overtrade so its a fruitless excercise presently for people who are trying to deliver low risk consistent profitability for investors
shame but a smart and understandable business model for the owners ...Wish I had launched it
N
shame but a smart and understandable business model for the owners ...Wish I had launched it
N
NVP
Guest Author
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There is something in my mind here , if Zulu and aaafx ( a broker used widely by zulutrade followers ) are the same , then it is in Zulu's interest to have such strategies ( averaging down/martingale ) hosted in their website , in another words zulutrade followers losses are aaafx gains and zulu's as well .... i remember reading last year in zulu's forums signal providers complaining about their commissions being not paid and delayed , zulu's answer was we are waiting to get paid as well from the brokers and sometimes zulu blamed the banking system ... etc etc anyway i do remember after that there was a big move in the euro ( few hundred pips ) in just a few days and many averaging down providers got stuck in big drawdowns , immediately zulu started sending the delayed commissions payments
cashflow cashflow cashflow........again wish I had launched it ....
