FuturesExaminer.com Newsletter for 2006-Jan
Our Mission:
to promote understanding of Futures
Trading Systems by providing (1) Unbiased descriptive material,
(2) Results net of all costs, and (3) INTERACTIVE tools to compare
systems and to design portfolios.
And it's free!
Results for 2005-Dec are now available on
Futures Examiner.
December summary: During December the S&P 500 index (miniSP) fell
about 0.4%, and again, fewer of the systems that we track made profits
than in the previous month. In the one-month Top Gainers table (actual
results, including commissions and cost of system), the average
one-month profit was 5% of conservative account size, with only 6
components producing profit this month.
BWT.Apex took the top
spot, followed by
Axiom Index and
Tzar.
AdaptiveSP
and
SeasonalST (with two spots) rounded out the table.
Last month we interviewed Mr. Index Trader, a trading system
developer whose systems have frequently appeared in the Top Gainers
tables on Futures Examiner. His systems include Frequent Trader,
Flash, and the newly released Turbo Trader. In this interview he
shares some of his insights about trading systems, and some of his
future plans. Please
visit our website
to read the interview.
Chart of the month:
In the
spirit of the new year, we present a chart that shows
the
equity curves for the calendar year 2005 for some
one-year Top Gainers. (We have excluded systems with no data for
December, and plotted only the top 5 entries for ease of viewing.)
These curves are based on
actual results
(i.e. trades that were actually executed, but
not allowing for
financial risk, or trader's emotional behavior).
We present this chart as an example of how informative it can be to
compare the numbers in the Top Gainers table with the shapes of the
corresponding equity curves. We find that looking at a chart
gives us a better feel for how a system performed, because it is easy
to see the ups and downs for each month, and the overall
consistency. This information is not evident from looking at
only the 12-month profit-or-loss numbers. Also, seeing several equity
curves on the same chart provides a useful comparison of one system
with another. (If you cannot see the chart, please paste the
following link into your browser:
www.futuresexaminer.com/newsletters/n200601a.png .)
Note that these are some of the best-performing systems that we
track, but
many systems have suffered significant losses.
Commodity trading involves substantial risk of LOSS.
Do not trade
with funds that you cannot afford to LOSE! PAST PERFORMANCE IS
NOT NECESSARILY INDICATIVE OF FUTURE RESULTS.
Helpful Hints: This column is intended to familiarize users with
some of the features of Futures Examiner. This month we provide an
introduction to the
newly streamlined Results page. When you
click "Results" on the Home page, the results control panel
is displayed as follows:
Quick Results: just click "Summary" to see results for the selected basket.
You can change the Sort Order first, or select a different basket.
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How to look at results: |
| Show: |
Choose which group of components (basket) to display.
*All Current Actuals & Hypotheticals contains all the current
results that we track, while *All Current Actuals
contains only the Actuals. |
| Display:
|
Click the Summary button to generate a Summary
display for the selected basket, using the selected sort order. Click
Monthly or Statistics to see different data items for the
selected basket. |
We hope that you found this newsletter interesting and
informative. If you liked it, please forward it to a friend!
And please send us your
comments,
along with suggestions for any other topics that you would
like us to address!
Member of NFA
