Profit, you said profit?

Well, that smells like some profits here...
Yes, some good news this week : Pegasus is making money, LJW #4 is making money (though frankly it will take me some time to forget the huge recent DD, almost 50%)... My EAs are also making good money, but that's because of my hard work on them ;-)
On the MA front, let's start with the good ones : Dev is still amazing, he trades slowly but surely and he made almost 6% in Feb. That's good, considering where the others are.
Galleon is making a truly awesome comeback, they made back more than half of what they lost in a few days. Not bad guys, just you'll have to find ways to avoid such DD in the future. On the other side, IPAM Select is still losing money very regularly, almost like a clock. Don't know what they do there, but it would be time to react guys, I've almost lost half of my investment now!!
Finally, Sentiment... Well, don't know about that one. Still good money management, still serious broker, but they seem to not be able to go out of the hole they are in now... Wait and see!

P.S. : for the EA fans, send me a mail and I'm sure I can share some good stuff with you!

A quick update

Already 3 weeks since the last update... What happened in the meantime?
Well, can't really say things got better!
* Galleon : I start to believe it's a scam! Can't know how those guys made money so far, because right now all they seem to do is constantly lose some every day. $ is up? Galleon is down! Markets are down? Galleon is down! Markets recover? Galleon is down? Amazing!
* IPAM Select : well, exactly the same as above indeed... Never made any profit on this one. And powerforex now have another system on FXCM that never existed before, but this one is beneficial. That smells like scam also, if you ask me!
* Sentiment agressive : well, that one is keeping its head up, but no miracles there neither... I'm down 15% since I opened it, not really bright!
* Devrim : NICE! Only a few weeks with it, but I see profit there... It's a breath a fresh air compared to the ones above!
* LJW #4 : well he got out of a big drawdown, and is now a bit positive, but not sure it's because of his skills... Anyway, good to see some green there too!
* Pegasus : bit depressed at the moment, but still in positive
* Nocturnal : so far not impressed, a bit negative at the moment, nothing dramatic though!
* EA portfolio : I started live a few weeks ago, so far around 0 but promising!

And what's the outcome of all the above, after 3 month of forex experience? For the MAs, clearly, pick up your choices carefully, consolidate only on the best and this only after a few months of experience, and cut your losses (pull the plug out) quickly!

In the pipe too...

Another MA in the pipe as well : 007 from bestfxtraders.com. Very little info known, but the trader seems pretty good, and his record speaks from himself as well. He claims to have an 5 to 7% per month performance with the leverage level he uses, and a 7% drawdown peak to valley. Well, that's good!
Let's see how it evolves...

Recovering?

Waow! What a tough week it was... Bit of a crazy week really.
Well, the good news is that my MAs are slowly recovering. Sentiment is back in positive for me after a long down, and Galleon and IPAM are still way low but heading north again. Let's hope the recovery will be quick and we won't see such huge drawdowns anytime soon. One thing for sure : I won't put a penny anymore on Galleon and IPAM until they make me at least a +30% from my initial investment...
Zurich-1 : well, good I didn't make the step then... Seems to be down very low.
I opened a DEV account with Sha - long process, PFG is really slow and messy, but Sha and the team helped a lot. DEV seems steady so far.
LJW-4 still with huge opened drawdown, but not taking the pain of closing the position. Suppose that's his style... Not too good for me neither!
Pegasus trades like a God, went through the week practically untouched, what a trader!
Bogie EA bad those days, but I don't give up... and I'm searching for other EAs : Touch the Sky - see Electric Savant's blog, bought it on Ebay for peanuts, but not astonished by results so far. Pipforia : gotta check those guys, good results on website, but you know... And 80$/month is a steep price for an EA!
Also searching for new MAs : Will enter Nocturna Large fund A as soon as paperwork is done, and checking a few others. I have 2 serious candidates but with 25k or 30k minimum. That doesn't work for me : I can put 30k over time if performances are good, I won't pay 30k for an experience that may turn bad very fast! One of the candidate is the SkyTeam, or SkyFX Team, that had stunning results in ATC 2007... Too bad their min is 25k. Anybody knows them?

Bleeding continues...

Galleon starts to really worry me : I'm now down 13% from initial investment - bad, isn't it?
On the other side, Sentiment agressive and IPAM Select are back up - almost back to 0% for IPAM, a bit positive for Sentiment. At Oanda, High risk realized its P&L so we're up more than 10% there (but minimal amount), but LJW #4 is still down a bit...

I've also started an experiment with an EA (Expert Advisor) - for those who don't know this, this is a kind of robot that trades for you on a software called Metatrader. When certain conditions are met, the robot enters and exits the trades. Basically very similar to what a lot of MA managers do, just here you can control everything.
Well, I found out that experimenting the work of the 2nd place winner from the Automatic Trading Championship 2007 couldn't be such a bad thing... So I rented the EA from Wackena (available to rent for 50$ / month), I started it yesterday with a small account at Alpari. So far nothing great there neither... I'll keep you posted!

A pretty bad start!

Hello there!
Happy New Year to you all, I wish you a nice 2008, may you all become youg pensioners! Hey well, careful what you wish for.
Might take some time anyway, since all my MAs are having a VERY bad year start... Let's see what we have :
* Sentiment (account opened on 23rd of Nov 07) : I'm back to 0% win, after having seen an equity increase of almost 10%. Bad...
* Galleon (account opened on 1st of Dec 07) : also back to 0% win... Too bad, I was up 20% at some time!
* IPAM Select (account opened on 10th of Dec 07) : down down down, I'm down more than 10% now.
* LJW 4 (account opened on 20th of Dec 07) : Down a bit, 5% or so...
* Pegasus high risk (account opened on 18th of Dec 07) : the only one working very well nowadays, too bad I only have a few pennies there... Because it's up more than 15% at the moment, although it's unrealized P/L.

Voilà, the stat of today hurted my MAs badly - as well as my stocks, by the way. Bad bad day!

What do I have so far?

So I started searching. Google, forums, blogs, same way you'd search ofr your next car, TV or house. Except the market is smaller, of course! And I strongly encourage you to do the same, before anything else.
And you won't find the silver bullet. Rather a good collection of normal ones. I encourage you to do so, in order to mitigate the risks and smoothen your equity curve. This is clearly your best chance to make regular money and avoid going bankrupt because 1 trader failed you! I'd advise at least 3 funds, but 5 might be better if you have good candidates and your risk capital allows - which doesn't mean that you should subcribe to underdogs just because you need to diversify.

And here is what I have so far :
* FXCM Sentiment Agressive. Probably one of the best fund out there, mini of 5000$ now, run by one of the biggest Forex broker. Very impressive returns, good money management, drawdowns seem quite controlled.
* GalleonFX. Well, this one has got a much bumpier history, but I like their persistence and honesty. Mid to long time returns are OK
* IPAM Select. Despite a not too good reputation, their funds seem to perform quite well. IPAM Select has had really good months recently, and I cannot complain so far...
* LJW Fund4. Only very small amount there, risky trading but amazing returns so far. To be monitored closely.
* Pegasus High risk. Very few information available on this one, so it's hard to comment. I only have 250$ there, it's really just to try as well.

What is in the pipe :
* DEV account from Sha, also known as Devrim in other places. Regular performance seemingly, results are not highly impressive but good, and money well managed as it seems. Will probably be the next one I open...
* Team Aphid Bird : a really good team delivering solid, but not amazing, returns with limited drawdowns. They offer managed account from 25 000$, which is too high.
* Tecnofinanzas, good signal provider. I might take those 2 into a FXCM system select account.
* Zurich-1 from http://www.managed-forex-accounts.info/. Seems good, but I couldn't get any info / feedback on it from anywhere else.

And searching...

Soon here : performance update on the systems above!