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BOOK YOUR FREE STRATEGY SESSION NOW >>Here’s our usual annual appointment with an overview of the personal performances of Andrea Unger and our R&D manager, Francesco Placci.
In trading, the end of one year and the beginning of another mean only one thing... or rather, three: analysis, lessons learned, and new resolutions.
It may seem obvious, but an objective analysis of what we have done over an entire year is a highly constructive exercise for our future performances.
But let's get to the point. Here’s what you’ll see in this video:
-How their trading year went
-The returns they achieved and the associated drawdown
-The performance of the Equity Line of their accounts
-What worked and what absolutely did not work in 2023
-What are their resolutions for 2024
Enjoy watching!
Introduction
Andrea Unger
Hi, guys. Welcome here from Andrea Unger and Francesco Placci.
Francesco Placci
Hey! Hello.
Andrea Unger
As usual, we are here to show you how our year has gone in trading. As I mentioned in our end of the year greetings, I stopped all my systems right before Christmas, and my intention is to start them again after the first week of January, most probably. This is not a contradiction with automated trading, where everything goes on its own with no need of intervention of us traders. It's just a question of common sense, because historically this period shows low volumes and the moves in the markets are not really interesting. They don't respond well to all the inputs and the structure of our systems, so it's more or less useless. And in addition to that, it obviously creates some concerns, because you know that systems are working and you always want to take a look at how things are going and if everything is okay. So it's better to stay quiet in this period. So I stopped everything. I think Francesco did the same.
Francesco Placci
Yes, I stopped all my systems too, also because I have to go to the mountains, so I prefer to... to stay...
Andrea Unger
This is a smart thing. That was smart... In any case I want to show you the statements of Interactive Brokers.
Francesco Placci's Performance (+13.8%)
Francesco Placci
Okay, this is my account.
Andrea Unger
Yes, it's a poor account, so it cannot be others than yours.
Francesco Placci
So it hasn't been a very good year in terms of results. I realized almost 14% from January until now. And so the year was quite good in terms of regularity of the equity line, I realized a max drawdown of, let's say, 5%. But also the performance wasn't as expected and this is probably due to my error because I stopped developing new trading systems as I used to do the previous years. So, we can say that my old trading systems are not so in line with the market, at least they haven't been during the 2023. So my intention for the future is to start developing new trading systems, because we know that at least after, let's say, 2 or 3 years, they have some difficulties to stay in line with the markets, so this is my main error.
I have to say that it hasn't been a good year also regarding Cryptos, you know? Because I stopped all my intraday trading systems on Crypto, they completely stopped working. I think that the market has changed a lot, especially for the intraday. But we can say that swing-trading trading systems continued to perform as normal.
Okay? So I'm actually trading Cryptos with a small amount of money, I have to say, with only swing trading systems. There is a lot of work do to reestablish my portfolios, both in futures market and in Crypto markets. And I have to say that I was lucky because I bought an interesting startup on Cryptos. Mintlayer is the name, which is basically a Layer 2 of bitcoin. And this is doing quite interesting performances. But you know, Cryptos, especially small Cryptos are so volatile, so we'll see during the 2024. Anyway it is an interesting...
Andrea Unger
You can monitor Mintlayer's performance. If it is fair, then you will see Francesco disappearing, you know, he is somewhere on the beach on Hawaii, enjoying the sun.
Francesco Placci
You know, I consider that money already lost because it is a startup. So I know the risks of this kind of investment. But I have to say that the project is very interesting, so we'll see during the next year. Anyway, these are my performances, they are positive. So I can't concern too much, especially because...
Andrea Unger
From the words of Francesco, it seems that he was lazy, not doing the right thing because he complained, my error, my error, my error. Actually, I know he did not develop new systems. He did not focus on systematic trading on futures this year, but it's due to his concentration all focused on options development. You know probably that Francesco loves options trading and he focused very much on research and development on options this year, and this took all his energy. So, I mean, it's not a question of laziness, it's just a question of focus, which was elsewhere and... Hoping he'll come back on futures next year, but in any case, I also believe he found out some interesting stuff he's now testing and so we will probably see something interesting also on options during the next months.
Francesco Placci
I hope too. And I have to add that becoming older, my risk aversion is growing. So I try to keep the drawdown under control. And even if I realize a small amount of money with my trading, you know, that's my approach compared to your Andrea, that is...
Andrea Unger's Performance (+25.7%) and the positive response of Crude Oil
Andrea Unger
I'm older than you Franz, and you know I also try to adapt to my new age and my new mindset, which is more conservative. I will show you. I try to show my account now, if I can get hold of this. Here it is. Here we go, and for the first year, since we started this terrible thing of sharing our performance, you can see at last I beat Francesco. I got a performance which is higher than his. I can now retire. I have done my day. And as he also mentioned, also the drawdown figure is obviously worse than his, much worse, close to 3 times his performance but, I mean, it's not my fault.
It's not because I was crazy, just the markets. And you can see that all this drawdown was at the very start of the year. I had a terrible start and the first month was awful. You can see it went down like a falling knife. I don't know what happened, because I can tell you that looking at the metrics of my systems, they all show to be still okay. And they were, because, you see, the last end of the year, but they all everything went wrong together.
So I was obviously much concerned. I was completely uncomfortable because even in spite of experience of over 20 years with systematic trading, when periods like this happen, I don't feel well. This is clear. Emotions are out of the markets to a certain limit. But when things go really wrong, you obviously start thinking that something is causing the pain and you try to find a solution. I didn't find a solution because I just left things as they were, because I didn't see a reason to change things. And it was the right decision, because you can see that after the first bad period, there was a small recovery right here, and then again down, which was even worse than the first period, because when you see the recovery, you start hoping. And then it went down again. And that was painful, believe me. But at last, things turned out to get on the right track. And you can see the rest of the year, apart from some trouble in autumn, early autumn, things went well. What to mention to this performance? I got 2 positive surprises or feedback from the year. One is on Crude Oil. My Crude Oil systems, which had been sucking for years now, started to perform well again.
I can tell you that in the last years, especially the intraday systems were really performing poorly on Crude Oil. This year was a nice year and the systems that were put at work, chosen from my software Titan, they showed to be in line with the market moves. So the market went back to move in a way that responded so well to my systems. And an interesting part of the performance you see here was taken from Crude Oil, which is fine, I'm happy and I hope it's continuous. On the other hand, the second surprise or positive feedback comes from Mini Nasdaq.
Andrea and the Nasdaq Breakout
You say, okay, Mini Nasdaq is not nothing new. It is, because even if you think that Mini Nasdaq is explosive, it's everything starting from 2001 most probably, or even earlier, 98 or so, I can tell you that Mini Nasdaq was not really trend following in the way we intend trend following, breakout trend, profit target or whatever. No, Mini Nasdaq was sort of mean reverting, not mean reverting as Mini SP, for example. But it was still trying to go up and down. So there were systems which worked on reversal of the moves that worked well.
And in the last 2 years, Mini Nasdaq started to be really strong in breakout moves, trend following after a breakout, explosive moves leading to interesting profits. And most of the performance you can see here together with Crude Oil comes from Mini Nasdaq and the set of systems I have on breakout. I believe also Francesco noticed it not from his personal trading, but from the submissions we got from the students who excelled in the Trader of the Month and the Strategy of the Month. Is that right?
Francesco Placci
Yeah, that's correct. Many students realized very interesting performances due to the Mini Nasdaq and also they won the competition because of especially Mini Nasdaq and Crude Oil.
Andrea's goals for 2024 + Waiting for DAX to recover
Andrea Unger
So, I mean, this is interesting on two sides. We get two interesting markets, very liquid markets, so there's room for everybody. Both have a micro version, so also smaller capitalized traders can participate. The interesting message from this is that diversification is still the king and the solution, because you need to have everything ready. We don't know in advance what comes next. We don't know if 2024 will be the year for Nasdaq again or for Crude Oil or for, I don't know, Lean Hogs, for example. If we have the systems ready to boost, we are on the right place. This is probably the right message, because I can tell you, I'm expecting a return of the DAX future because DAX has been really poor this year. I have many systems on DAX and they all performed poorly and a lot of money was given back by DAX. But they are there. They are there. They have been good for years. I expect them to return on the right track, I hope soon. They are there. They are there waiting to be chosen and from Titan, not from me, from my personal decision, and then to perform again.
So it's important to have the right stuff there to be ready to start in my opinion. And this is what I intend with diversification. To be in the right place at the right time, and to be there you need the right thing, the right systems developed on the right market. I don't know if you noticed the same and if also you notice that Dax was performing poorly in the last 12 months.
Francesco Placci
Yeah. I have to say that I never been a big fan of DAX futures, as opposite to you.
Andrea Unger
Yeah, I was trading DAX already in the 2008 competition, which I won, and so I'm a fan of DAX. But DAX gave me great satisfaction throughout the years, not in 2023, and I can tell you that I saw also other systems from some friends who were completely gone during 2023. So again, I expect it to return because DAX is too important to be killed, let's say, but I will also focus on DAX, trying to develop something new, see if I find some new patterns in this market.
Francesco Placci
I used to trade the small brother of DAX, the FTSE MIB futures in the past, but it's not...
Andrea Unger
The Italian future. I have also traded that in the 2008 competition. They were correlated somehow, because as the little brother, like you said, they move together more or less. Different shapes. The Italian future is less liquid, so the moves are sometimes more explosive because there are less volumes to keep things in place so you can find more moves. But I don't trade it any longer now because the data provider I use does not supply that market. I have other stuff to focus on, so it's not a problem in this case.
Francesco Placci
Me, too.
Andrea Unger
So, in any case, I didn't trade Cryptos. Listening to Franz, it was not a wrong decision because we are waiting for them to regularize a little bit. And this is it. As said, this is the first year - you can check the past years - where my performance is higher than Francesco's. I'm happy. This is my purpose, this is my scope. This is the reason of my life. And I can just tell you, we meet again, hopefully with even better performance in 12 months from now. And I wish you happy trading, the best year possible, 2024. And something to add, Francesco?
Francesco Placci
No, happy New Year to everyone and we'll see you next year.
Andrea Unger
Hoping the video comes out soon and wish to see you 12 months with happy faces and happy smiles on our faces again. Ciao, from Andrea Unger and Francesco Placci.
Francesco Placci
Ciao!
We'll help you map out a plan to fix the problems in your trading and get you to the next level. Answer a few questions on our application and then choose a time that works for you.
BOOK YOUR FREE STRATEGY SESSION NOW >>Andrea Unger here and I help retail traders to improve their trading, scientifically. I went from being a cog in the machine in a multinational company to the only 4-Time World Trading Champion in a little more than 10 years.
I've been a professional trader since 2001 and in 2008 I became World Champion using just 4 automated trading systems.
In 2015 I founded Unger Academy, where I teach my method of developing effecting trading strategies: a scientific, replicable and universal method, based on numbers and statistics, not hunches, which led me and my students to become Champions again and again.
Now I'm here to help you learn how to develop your own strategies, autonomously. This channel will help you improve your trading, know the markets better, and apply the scientific method to financial markets.
Becoming a trader is harder than you think, but if you have passion, will, and sufficient capital, you'll learn how to code and develop effective strategies, manage risk, and diversify a portfolio of trading systems to greatly improve your chances of becoming successful.
