As for fx-auto – no real method. I had ATR channel until it started taken losses and then I killed it for now. Team Aphid was doing good, but got whipsawed last week for $500 in losses. Forex Fiesta C4 is okay but not blowing the doors off. Profits Club I stopped a long time ago and I’m trying out Dream machine right now. I guess if anything I look at the results, look for low lose losers. I even look at other pairs for a strategy to see if they let the losers run. I also look in fx-auto under build portfolio – look at the open positions and see what is happening in between the trades. The final results don’t tell the whole story. So when I found something I liked, that had good results, I would check the open positions and think holy crap – down 150 — but none of the closed positions where ever that bad…It’s just a good checks and balance…

Also, I have just pulled out another $1000 leaving me with $1900 left in the account, so now I only have $500 of the initial $2500 at risk – so I’m up $1400. I really am starting to think my run is over. I will keep this money in for a while, but I’m kind of tired and sort of see how many folks can always lose. We are all looking for returns way beyond what we should be getting. As I have stated before — SPY, QQQQ, MDY — big indexes is where my money is. Forex was suppose to give me some excitement and it has, but the thrill is starting to decrease. Making a few thousand isn’t going to change my life, but I’m starting to think if I lose a thousand it will probably start to bug me. I’ll continue to update my blog every so often with updates.

Equity has dropped to $427, was as low as $330 a few hours ago. I’m holding on for a recovery but probably should play with the 4.set but have not yet. My concern is as soon as I start the 1/6 will kick back in and work fine and I’ll be stuck with a semi-hedge and maybe a few more losing positions. I have traded my account with default 2.2 settings except for MM=false, mini=false, micro=true. I have traded only .02 lots and a couple of .03 lots. My leverage isn’t that large at all and I am getting killed. I want to make sure my account lives another day so I will not bastardize the original 1/6 strategy yet. Take a look at my LIVE account for the folks looking at starting. It’s bad, but I do think with time and a few tweaks we can get this EA working. Last week was a disaster for everything, the S&P was clobbered as well. I lost more money there last week then I would ever dream of trading in forex…yet the $900 I’m down off my highs of $1341 pi$$es me off many times more. Maybe because I want to find a fun EA that works. I think with money management and lot management and pair management and hedge management and whatever else we up come with will work…but only time will tell.

I hope we ALL get a nice recovery, live through this and build a better EA together.

Yep – all my retirement and other finds are basically in INDEX funds. I have a few mutual funds but the majority are in holdings of: SPY, QQQQ, MDY – These are the SP500 index, Nasdaq Index  and Mid-Cap Index. I was a register investment advisor with Merrill Lynch and Citibank, back in the early 90’s. I learned one important thing, a high percentage of money mangers (ie. Mutual fund managers) can NOT beat the index they compete against. So my strategy a few years ago was to move the money to those Index funds. I have a few others look at this Yahoo Chart link:

Yahoo Charts for my Index Funds

Those are my major holdings – anywhere from 6-16% YTD.

I’ve told everyone if you just want to start – buy SPY – The S&P500 Index – you are always going to get what the market is returning. As I said in other forums – Forex is a way from keeping me wasting my real money. I’ve had too many instances where I said – hey let’s buy some GOOG options. When you lose you lose and it hurts your overall portfolio. Now I just leave the real money alone, and get my excitement from Forex. No more gambling with retirement funds.

Minnelli