Ok, I'm Marco Nigro, I'm a business executive and I am a consultant in the Information Technology
field, I work for a multinational company.
I've been doing this job for 20 years, I like it, but I've always been fascinated by the
world of finance - by the way, the industry I work in is banking-.
The thing that fascinated me the most was the lack of need to be in front of a monitor
in order to do intraday trading.
In the sense that I've always seen traders as talented people, who had a particular talent,
and with the ability to understand, broadly, if that security went up, went down... but
who were also a bit isolated, you know?
Sitting there, looking at the graph, put it in order and then move the stop...
I don't know; doing what they were doing for me was a bit like for "experts", I never found
it interesting.
Automatic trading, on the other hand, attracted me exactly because, although it is necessary
to watch over it - it's not like you can just put something together that trades in your
account and then leave for a year and then come back and see what happened... you have
to be there and watch what happens, but you can also delegate much of your daily work
to your computer.
Overall, now while we're speaking, there are some of my systems that are there: if a series
of conditions trigger an order, a defense and whatnot is triggered.
Currently, I operate on crude oil, the United States oil and metals (gold, copper) and natural
gas, and then I also have a few systems on equity stock indexes, such as DAX and miniSP.
I also have something on forex which, thanks to Andrea's methods, I've started to analyze
and which is currently giving me great satisfactions.
So this is how my portfolio is structured: 30% on forex and 70% on futures, between commodities
and stock indexes.
Ok, so I started right away with IQFeed as data feed, which seemed to me the most reliable
one, albeit a bit more expensive than the others and then as a technological platform,
I activated Multicharts, which were, let's say, the key elements of Andrea's students.
Since I started on that track, maybe one day I'll change because I'll analyze other possibilities,
but for now I'm fine with these.
In the beginning, I used an Italian broker - I don't want to say his name because later
I left him - and then I went to Interactive Brokers.
In the beginning, I used to prefer the Italian broker for the advantages on the matter of
the capital gain but I actually noticed that, whether due to a question of time windows
that were not always active, whether because I noticed that the slippages were higher than
on those... - at the beginning I compared it with the interactive brokers: same system,
miniDAX, on the Italian broker and on Interactive I saw that the Italian broker took much more
important slippages and then I preferred to abandon the Italian broker and go with Interactive.
Now I have a fairly standard infrastructure for the group of the Unger Academy: Interactive
Brokers, Multicharts, iQFeed.
I attended them all!
In fact, I did the first one, Trading System Supremacy, about a year ago, less than a year,
and I studied it in the smallest details, I began to work after it and then, when I
was live with a few systems, I attended the others too.
So I attended Trading System Evaluation, the Position Sizing one and then the last one
about the portfolio.
I didn't really have any particular problems.
It was just the desire to make some savings in a bit more profitable manner compared to
just holding them in the bank, and even taking some risks, because when you work with this
type of instruments, the risks are not trivial.
They led me, most of all, to better understand some of the dynamics of this world, the world
of the Futures.
In the sense that, as instruments, I knew their characteristics but I had never traded
them and also the possibility of making them my own, in the sense that the most fruitful
thing, in my opinion, of this type of training that Andrea Unger provides, this Academy,
is to teach you to research the markets and find an edge, an advantage that statistically
can give you the possibility to profit in speculation, because then we, the little traders,
are the speculators of these underlyings.
But it also gives you, how do you say, sometimes I agree with a comment that another student
made, it gives you the possibility to shoot at goal without the goalkeeper because it
gives you semi-finished products, so things that you can work on later even more, already
nice and performing.
I have a system that I use on DAX, in fact, it is a variation of what Andrea explained
in a module during the course, making us reason on some of the logics of the time windows,
breakout of maximums or minimums and then, I repeat, I put in some of my own.
But perhaps, what I am using is 20-30% away from the basic model so the difference that
I've seen, I also attended the course of another school, precisely in order to have an even
broader vision and I saw the difference between those that tell you: "these are the setups
of the system" and just leave you there.
Maybe it's a system that could also work but they don't help you understand how it was
built in order to allow you to build others on your own and in order to succeed, in the
long term, and let you be in this world because then the markets change, they evolve... you
have to keep your strategies under control.
There are no systems that last forever and this is something all systematic traders tell
you.
So the advantage of the Unger Academy is that it tries to give you the possibility to be
autonomous in system building.
I have to admit that the thing that obviously struck me is Andrea's name and his four world
championships won, the Robbins Trading Championship.
The top!
First of all, it was the course of spending money for nothing, in short.
My concern was to make the transfer for the purchase and then find myself with something
that wouldn't give me anything in return, like maybe just a few useless theories.
But then, fortunately, that didn't happen.
I am also doing these interviews because I've been able to touch the threshold of the first
ten thousand dollars, euro actually.
By the way, I managed to touch the threshold of ten thousand euro because the exchange
rate right now is a bit far from being equal, which makes the difference.
In fact, I must say that it was also good for me because I had a boost of six thousand
euro more after the activation of the Academy communication.
So I have fully compensated the cost of the training.
The results I had now, as I just said, are about, more or less, exactly equal to 16800
euro more than when I started.
I started with a capital of about forty thousand euro and so I used a technique suggested by
Andrea Unger, to size the number of contracts on the stop loss of each strategy and so I
dedicated only strategies that allowed me to stop more or less around 1000 euro because
I wanted to dedicate 2.5% of my reference capital to my strategies.
In reality, however, I did something a bit stranger: I put only twenty thousand euro
on the broker, holding a bit in the back the other twenty thousand in case I had a higher
drawdown.
This also led me to set up systems that did not take too much of my account.
Currently, the twenty thousand euro that were supposed to be held back have stayed there,
held back, I am not using them, while those put on the interactive have become nearly
37.
Let's say that I consider as my actual start date, March first.
It's been seven months.
The money management I'm using is the Fixed Fractional so, I take my capital, I calculate
its risk percentage (which I've placed at around 2.5%) and then I size the entry in
position on the basis of the fact that my maximum loss due to the stop loss I entered
into the system will be about one thousand euros.
So far, I haven't activated an upward escalation mechanism, in the sense that as my capital
was growing and the strategy was bringing in money, I haven't increased the number
of positions except on some systems in which I had started a bit low, those on forex because
on forex I had read that it was better to be prudent under some aspects, because as
these were unregulated markets, the strategies didn't always do what you expected them to
do... and then forex gives you the possibility to start low, right?
So, let's say, I have a system on the euro-dollar where initially I had two mini lots, so 20000
euro equivalent, which then I brought to forty thousand (40000), which among other things
is one of the systems giving me more satisfactions.
With just that, I took home about four thousand euro, during these six months.... even less...
since at the beginning I was a bit of a beginner - not that I am not one now, but perhaps I
learnt something on my own-...
I started to put together a strategy, then two, then three...
I didn't start already with one portfolio.
Now that I have about twenty running but I haven't started right away with 20, I put
them one at a time.
The highest drawdown that I had to suffer was of about 6000 and change, 6500 euro, which
was pretty close at the beginning.
In the sense that, at the beginning I started with a +1000-1500, then I immediately got
the drawdown, I admit that part of this was due to technical errors, due to the difference
between when you do the simulation and when you go live, banally, I mean, the matter of
the continuous, the future continuous, that points to a well-defined instrument; the difference
of half a point between DAX and miniDAX (it doesn't make sense to go into details now)
but these were contests in which the stop loss was not triggered properly, so I lost
more than I should have lost or the order wouldn't start when it had to start and it
was, by chance, a positive trade that I had lost.
Let's say that those who face this world must understand that supportive technology needs
precisely, slowly, to make sure that you acquire skills that you did not initially have because
there are so many details that you can not deal with just by studying.
The school's forum certainly helps, and sometimes gives you some indications and some solutions.
In fact, a few of the solutions I've also found thanks to what I read on
the forum.
I think it was diversification because this type of being on the market through algorithms
that are actually silly, because they are quite simple, trivial algorithms.... not banal,
but not so complicated.
They are, sometimes, even five lines of a system that tell the system "do this if that
happens".
Being diversified on several markets, even on several instruments, or several techniques
because I have a system on DAX that goes in countertrend and another that goes in trend
and so then they somehow help each other because it happens so that one goes well the other
goes badly and vice-versa, luckily, the sum of the systems gives a positive delta and
so the equity grows.
However, maybe if I had not had that countertrend, which is the best performing at this market
stage, my equity would have been affected.
Of course, if I did not have that other one in trend, I would now have more money on my
account.
But at the beginning you can't know which systems will go well and which ones will go
badly.
So, surely, diversification is the most important thing.
In fact, returning to a question you asked earlier, "Which position sizing do you use?"
right now I like better the philosophy, as the account grows, rather than increase the
number of contracts on a strategy that is going well, I prefer to add another strategy
that then helps the entire portfolio.
Yes, well, it's clear that once you reach 80-100 strategies, perhaps at that point you
have a broad enough diversification to say "oh well, at this point, if things go well,
I'll increase the number of contracts", but I'm still at 20 and for now I am thinking
more of finding other techniques, other strategies and other systems to add.
Just recently, you see, I put in my portfolio a strategy I found on the forum, the one on
the ADX of crude oil, and I was lucky: it did a $ 1000 trade last week.
What I liked most was the concreteness in explaining certain trading techniques.
Here: Andrea takes a real instrument, he shows you how to arrive at that system, which he
has obviously studied in the past because then to make a system, sometimes, it requires
months of work, right?
He shows it to you in half an hour, he shows you the various steps.
But he shows it in a practical, operational manner, using perhaps a platform... this is
maybe some people's limit.
Not for me, because if you want to use a different platform, then it's more difficult for you
to follow him.
In fact, this is also why I preferred then to use the platforms he uses because that
was much simpler, right?
Now maybe I can feel ready to change, perhaps in an year... but at the beginning it was
complicated, so I preferred to repeat the steps and when I saw that the steps he was
showing were simple to do and the results themselves were the same then I appreciated
even more this way to teach.
So, not just theory, not just "this is the system I studied in laboratory, here is what
it does!", but we start from zero, we start from a minimum, from an embryo, and we see
how to develop a system that must do certain things, how to improve it, which can be the
threats behind it, be careful for this, this and that type, etc., etc.
So I really found this type of approach much more effective.
I repeat, the other course that I attended was not this direct.
It started off with a system that was already complete, you just took it as it was... but
Andrea shows you how to get there.
There, I think, is the real difference.
I would recommend it to anyone who wants to start off with the mathematical-statistical
analysis of financial instruments and who wants to put some capital at risk to make
it more profitable.
I understand, I admit that I have a high schooling: I have a degree in engineering, so for me
some things were much simpler (I'm always a bit, let's say, armed with computers), so
certainly some of the obstacles were easier for me to overcome.
But I admit that here we're not talking of NASA's missile sciences, so these are things
that are easy to understand.
So, whoever has time to dedicate during the weekend because they have no other good-natured
hobbies and want to earn from a sort of a second activity, something more than whatever
they bring home with their job, I advise them to start on this type of path.
Surely, the warnings I give also to all of my friends who ask, is to also be a bit of
risk preference and the ability to support the losses, which is the most complicated
thing in this world: to face the negative periods.
Obviously, I'd recommend the basic course of Andrea Unger, the Trading Systems Supremacy,
I recommend it to anyone who wants to face trading in a bit less conventional way compared
to "I'll buy this and that share on the Italian market" or when I see the mix of two moving
averages, I buy and I sell... things that you can sometimes read in books, but are then
books that sometimes give you techniques that don't have even one factual counter-proof
of the fact that they work.
The main thing, the advice that I give is: if you trust statistics and you want to try
out the ideas you have, equipped with the platform that you allows you to do so, you
take the data, which is also sometimes free (you can find them) and you test the things
that you want to do, in fact in the past they've worked, you do not have the guarantee though
that they'll work in the future but you have a good starting point.
So, let's say, that making the first course of Andrea you have an exceptional accelerator
because perhaps in a month you'll manage to learn to use also these platforms.
These aren't lessons dedicated to the use of the platform but then in the end, seeing
the things that you do, 90% of the features you learn and then you can test your ideas
and, moreover, take home some interesting ideas that I repeat, are not courses that
tell you only how to do but they also give you good starting points.
So, this is my advice.
Another advice: I've read a lot, I devoured trader books this summer, even as retired,
that tell you how, sometimes, you need a bit of Zen, to fight your own ego, an entire series
of mechanisms that would then help you in the time of need, right?
Because many people tell you the tale of how the systematic trader does not have the psychological
rebound.
But they do, because the negative moments are always difficult to deal with, right?
In other jobs too.
Here, you have them a bit more often, there are more unknowns, so I advise you also to
read a bit.
I've also read the Larry Williams book, I mean, I just threw myself a bit onto the literature
of the sector.
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