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BOOK YOUR FREE STRATEGY SESSION NOW >>In this video, we talk in detail about the trading performance of the winner of our monthly "Trader of the Month" contest for February 2023 and another trader who did a great performance:
-Marco, the winner, with a profit of almost $38,000
-Pierluigi, with a profit of over €13,600
The contest is reserved for Unger Academy® students and rewards the participant who achieved the best live trading performance with a €1,000 Amazon gift card (click here if you want to learn more about the contest).
With performances like those, the question arises as to how they traded the markets so we can be inspired for our live trading.
Today's video is especially rich in valuable tips, ideas, and lessons for us systematic traders!
By watching the video, you’ll discover:
-All the details about Marco and Pierluigi's trading performance
-On which markets they traded, with what kind of strategies, and with what risk profile
-Their advice for those approaching live trading
Enjoy! 😉
Introduction
Hey everyone and welcome to this brand-new video!
Today we’re going to be looking in detail at the results of the February Trader of the Month contest.
We’ll discover which student achieved the best live trading performance overall, and we'll also have a look at the performances of those who, although they didn’t win, still achieved some pretty good results.
We will also try to give some trading advice based on their direct experience in the markets during the past month.
So basically, we’ll see what worked best and then try to figure out if it can be replicated for our own live trading.
I just want to remind you that the Trader of the Month contest is reserved for Unger Academy students only. In fact, every month, our students can participate by submitting their live results and competing for a chance to win a €1,000 Amazon gift card.
I am one of the coaches at Unger Academy here.
Pierluigi's performance, €13,600 gained in one month
Alright, so let's start with the first trader, Pierluigi.
This is his Interactive Brokers statement.
And we can see immediately that he made a profit of €13,636, which is a +5.41% on his beginning capital, with a very low drawdown of just 2.73%.
I’d like to remind everyone that to win the Trader of the Month contest, it isn’t enough to have a good percentage, but the risk parameters are also considered in the ranking.
Therefore, a trader who has managed to minimize the drawdown is preferable when the returns are, you know, more or less the same.
The equity curve is indeed quite regular, especially compared to the benchmarks, namely the stock indexes.
And we can see immediately that Pierluigi is a well-capitalized trader.
He started with an initial capital of €252,000.
I just want to point out to everyone that the higher the initial capital, the more challenging it is to achieve higher percentage returns.
That’s basically because a psychological aspect comes into play, because a 10% drawdown on small capital is much more tolerable than a 10% drawdown on a greater amount of capital.
So great job, Pierluigi!
Let's go and take a look at the top performers. We see that the DAX is the biggest contributor to this performance.
It’s followed by Heating Oil, Gold, the Nasdaq, and the Mini SP 500, so clearly, the stock indexes have indeed taken the lead.
On the other hand, the most considerable losses came from Live Cattle.
Pierluigi's trading (approach, risk profile, markets)
I've had to opportunity to talk with Pierluigi to learn more about his performance.
He currently has a portfolio of 50 strategies, and on average, he activates 15 to 20 strategies at the most every month.
These strategies are selected through the Titan software, with reasonably standard risk parameters.
He told me that he recently considered increasing these risk parameters and that's just to be able to include more systems.
And talking about systems, well, the question is, what kind of systems does he use?
Well, he uses Unger Academy systems, namely our templates, as well as some proprietary systems he has developed over the years.
As we have seen, the markets traded are indexes, energy, metals, currencies and meats, so we are certainly talking about a well-diversified portfolio.
I just remind you of the importance of having several trading systems for different markets in order to achieve a smoother equity curve at a portfolio level.
Pierluigi works mainly with large futures, but we have seen that he is well capitalized, so he can certainly afford it.
Also, he uses more or less all the software provided by the Unger Academy.
Lately, he has been evaluating the Validator as well, which he knows the least.
As far as suggestions go, he did tell me something exciting.
This raises a long-standing question about trading during holiday periods.
And why? Well, because Pierluigi told me that he had his best week ever during a ski week. As a matter of fact, he decided not to shut down the systems at all even though he was going on holiday.
He left everything on, and during his holidays, he managed to get some really remarkable performances.
This is undoubtedly one of the main advantages that systematic trading offers us because we know that we do not have to sit in front of the monitor for our trading operations to continue.
However, well, sometimes you can feel the need to mentally detach yourself from trading, which is an activity that can still bring some level of stress, let's say, albeit limited by the systematic approach.
So, there is no one rule that is better than the others.
Everything is left to our personal approach.
I used to be very strict in this regard, and never turned off the systems.
Then, however, over the years, it became natural also to start taking breaks, you have to go and enjoy some holiday time with family.
Marco's performance, winner with almost $38,000 gained in one month
And now to the winner of the contest, Marco, who managed to earn almost $38,000 last month, in February, for a return of 46.52%, but with a pretty significant drawdown of 38%.
So, congratulations, Marco, because these are almost incredible achievements, in my opinion.
These are very remarkable results, although they were accompanied by some heavy drawdowns.
Certainly, Marco has a well-capitalized account.
We saw in the list of trades that Marco made that he works with many contracts. So, his trading approach is definitely not for the faint-hearted.
I'm not going to hide from you that I would feel a little bit uncomfortable with such major monthly drawdowns.
But nevertheless, we decided to reward Marco because the return was remarkable and it goes hand in hand with the drawdown we see in this statement.
Just a clarification: the initial account balance is lower than the final one.
That's because Marco made a cash out at the beginning of the month and withdrew a substantial amount, I believe $165,000, from his account.
We then reconstructed Marco's trading operation using the list of trades in the broker statement.
This here, this is the equity curve for the month of February.
As you can see, the gain is considerable, but a couple of trades in particular spoiled that performance a little. However, it’s still very good.
It’s clear that if this drawdown had come at the beginning of the month, things would certainly have been different from a psychological perspective that is.
So Marco was able to withdraw a significant amount of money, that I believe, came from previous earnings.
However, if this drawdown had occurred at the beginning of the month, it certainly would have been a little more complicated.
But, sometimes you know, luck helps, let's say, and so Marco was able to gain.
The drawdown he suffered more or less brought him back to where he started and then he was able to finish the month very well.
Marco's trading (approach, risk profile, markets)
So first, let me tell you that Marco's results are consistent.
His name is already known to the Unger Academy, so Marco, well done!
As we said, Marco has a very aggressive risk profile, which you can see in the equity curve we have just showed, but also in the trade list, where the trade size is very large.
Definitely a little bit outside the risk parameters that we would recommend here at Unger Academy.
The instruments Marco uses are mainly indexes, metals, and currencies.
So Marco also has a diversified portfolio, slightly less than Pierluigi, and also uses futures as his main instrument.
Marco then told me that his 6-month performance is in the 6-figures range, so really remarkable results, even considering that Marco hasn’t been around as a trader that long.
To describe Marco's trading approach, we can say it’s a short-term swing trading.
So these are short trades within the same trading day, according to a trading style known as “swing trading", which works through the breaking of supports and resistances of considerable significance.
So, again, congratulations to Marco. Well done!
And if your goal is to achieve such results with your live trading as we have just seen in this video, and in doing so, you would also like to participate in this contest that is dedicated exclusively to Unger Academy students for a chance to win a €1,000 Amazon gift card every month, then click on the link in the description of this video.
You will be redirected to a page where you will find the contest rules. From there, if you want, you can book a free consultation with one of our tutors, who will give you all the information that you're going to need.
Finally, I would like to remind you to please subscribe to our channel and click on the notification bell as well to stay updated on all our new video content.
With that, we thank you so much for watching and we will see you soon in our next video! Bye-bye for now!
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.
