Trading Hero: Claudio Valerio

Transcription
Who are you, what do you do for a living and how long have you been trading?

Hi everyone, my name is Claudio. I am from a small village in Italy called Fondi, in the center of Italy.

I've lived in Geneva for 5 years and I work as an IT project manager for a multinational company, so that's basically my daily job, my daily life and, let's say, trading is a hobby.

I started to look at financial markets in 2016, with stock picking on the US market and then going on with it, I found systematic trading, automatic trading and I liked it.

So I started to develop my knowledge more on this reality.

Why did you choose systematic Trading?

Because on the market, on the training market for trading, there are a lot of trainers which supposedly everyone teaches you the best strategy ever, but then if you look at them, if you listen to them, everyone teaches you something that does not always have a sense, or what someone teaches, actually conflicts with someone else.

So, in the end, you are left really with a lot of confusion and insecurity.

So you are not really sure if you want to start trading or not and, at least for me, I was really insecure to start discretionary trading, let's say.

So, on the other side, about the automatic trading, I really liked the fact that you could test your strategy in the past, you could then evaluate the performance of the strategy, understand better what could be the expected return, the expected drawdowns and for me, that was definitely a better more structured way of working.

Besides, I'm a very impulsive person, so sometimes I don't think I'll be able to put some trades on in some market's situation, while the system doesn't care about those things and many times it works better than me.

Then I have a full-time job, so it was very difficult for me to find the time to trade as I really need to be focused on my job from 9 AM to 6 PM, so I like the fact that with automatic trading I could have traded the markets while working and I could just check the results in the evening or during the weekend.

Which markets do you trade and why?

Which market do I trade... despite most of the automatic traders are basically Futures Traders, I do a lot of trading on Forex so I'm basically developing most of my systems on the forex market and I'm currently trading live only the forex market.

It is not because it's the easier market to approach, actually I think everyone knows the statistics.

Basically from 80% to 90% of the forex traders lose money over time, but I choose it mainly because it was good to start with reduced capital and I have a reduced capital.

So I wanted to start without risking too much of my money, then you can work better on the money management and you can scale down a lot on the forex market.

So I was able to contain the risk and to push a bit more on the money management side.

How are you structured? Which platform, broker, and data feed do you use?

I use Multicharts as a platform and the broker... currently is Dukascopy and the data feed is also Dukascopy data feed.

I was using Interactive Brokers before, at least as a broker, but then I found out that the commissions for the size I was trading were too high, the interests were really high in Interacting Brokers, and also the reporting side of Interacting Brokers was not really super clear, so I decided to move to Dukascopy, and since one year I'm very happy with it.

All the systems are currently live on a virtual private server, so a VPS, which is in Germany.

What programs did you join with Unger Academy?

I attended the Trading Systems Supremacy which is the basic module where Andrea tells you how to approach and now to study each market, so that is the one got.

What was your main problem before you joined the Trading Systems Supremacy?

Basically the main problem was that I was really insecure if what I knew was actually a real edge on the forex market, so I was not sure if the strategies I knew were actually profitable or not.

That's why I decided to, I'd say, to go with the Unger Academy.

What solution did you achieve thanks to the Trading Systems Supremacy program?

Basically the program gave me a structured way to approach the different markets, not only the futures market but the approach I think works also on forex at least for the time being everything is going good.

It basically teaches you how to understand which is the nature of the market, which, let's say, triggers work better, it teaches you how to work with bias, monthly bias, daily bias, hourly bias and on the other side basically you really understand a methodology which you can replicate or enhance, let's say.

More than that, the product itself as also a forum in it, where you have basically other people checking your strategy, evaluating it.

You may see the strategies of other traders and that helps you, let's say, and increase the learning curve.

So basically you get more knowledge in relatively small time let's say.

Why did you choose one of my programs and not one of another trainer?

Basically because if you really want...I've always thought that if you really want to learn something, try to learn from someone which has already shown that is an expert on the field.

I think Andrea has already shown that by winning several trading contests and if it was not Andrea, especially in the last few years, one of the people which has also followed Andrea's method, so I really thought: "Okay, if this guy is an expert so I should learn first from him".

On the other side in the market of trading education there are a lot of trainers which, you know, they pretend to be good trainers but many of them have never played the game, I think many of them have never put a trade on.

So I really wanted to follow someone who is a real trader and Andrea had already shown that because every year he posts his results.

So year by year you can see the results that Andrea is having with his method, let's say.

If there was one, what was your main concern which in the beginning prevented you from buying the Trading Systems Supremacy and then has proved to be wrong?

I didn't have any concerns to be fair.

I basically watched the webinar, I liked it from the first time the way in which Andrea was showing how to approach the market, how to identify the filters, how to backtest, so I really liked the structured way to approach the market and I say: "Ok let's give it a try".

What results did you achieve after your attendance at the program?
What capital did you start with and what was your maximum drawdown?

So basically I started trading live in 2019, March 2019.

I had an account with 36,000€, so as I said before, not a very large account, and I didn't want to risk money, so I wanted really to keep my risk as low as possible.

So I started in March 2019 and then I finished now one year at the end of March 2020 with resulting equity of 50000€.

So a profit of 14,000€, which is basically a return of 38%, basically almost 40% of the invested capital.

This includes also all the commissions' cost, like, you know, the Forex Commission, the swaps, the spread, so all the costs are included in these 14,000€.

Basically, I mean you received the equity line so you can show it.

I've also sent the exit notes from the broker in case anyone wants to verify that the numbers sum up and also that I'm not saying something which is not true.

What I like about my equity is the fact that I didn't have a large drawdown during this period.

Basically, the larger drawdown was about 2,400€ which corresponds to 5% of the account and I got it during the last month in March 2020.

It was mainly due to the fact that the crude oil gapped down recently and that created, let's say, a flash crash in the forex market.

Several pairs, especially the ones that are linked to the crude oil started to make huge ranges, and, let's say, volatility was huge in the market with more than 400/500 pips per day on some pairs.

That was a bit of a problem in the first day, so I had to adjust on the first week, a large sum of the stops on some strategies stopped some other but then at the end, the March result, as you can see from the equity that most probably will be shown it's anyway a very positive month and let's see now for the rest of the month.

How much time did it take to reach these results?

I started the lessons in April 2018.

So basically it took me some time to develop a set of systems and also it took me some time to put in place the infrastructure, set up the VPS.

So basically... then I also had to change the broker because I was not happy with Interactive Brokers.

So basically it took me almost 2 years to get those results.

What has been the one thing most responsible for these results?

First of all, let's say, I had to keep the risk under control, so I was really keen on risk management and make sure that I will not risk more than 1%/1.2% on each trade.

Then, the other point was to really diversify a lot.

I know that in forex you can’t diversify too much, but at least I try to diversify in terms of time-frame, in terms of currency pairs, in terms of the type of strategy which I was using on each currency pairs.

So, for example, some reversal or trend-following, hourly bias, multi-day bias.

So basically I try to have 4 to 5 strategies for each of these typologies.

Today, for example, I have around 22 systems, which let's say, they are eligible to trade live, which is already filtering of a lot more.

Let's say, usually, if I don't like a system, I filter it out, I scrap it, I don't even consider it to trade it live.

So 22 is the result of the systems which have been considered good enough to be used for live trading and out of those, 14 of them are currently live.

Then the last point as one of the main points that impacted me to get those results, I think you need to keep on studying, to keep on learning new things.

I don't consider myself as a professional trader, for sure.

I think it was a good year and I was most probably also lucky, but I try every time to improve my knowledge.

Basically, I'm now studying a lot on equity control, how to rotate portfolios, I am trying to find, you know, how to enhance my method, something for example as a new filter... finding you know, try to find additional edges, let's say.

What did you like most about this trading journey and why?

Basically, I like the fact that Andrea is very practical.

While teaching how to approach the market he basically makes many examples, it goes step by step, so basically he teaches you something that is very easy to replicate and to enhance.

So basically I know he also teaches you something that works on, at least for my experience, not only on the futures but on other markets too.

So it was good to see that he was teaching by examples, I had also home-works which I did to verify what I understood was correct or not, and also, you know, he teaches you how to play with the platform, he gives you also some nice tricks that I think they are only derived from his experience sometimes.

When you watch twice the records you can see that sometimes you really get some nice tips.

So yeah that's what I like about the lessons.

To whom would you recommend the Trading Systems Supremacy and why?

I definitely recommend it to everyone who aspires to become a systematic trader and on the other side, also to those who are discretionary traders who would like to have an additional edge to evaluate what they are doing if it makes sense or not, let's say.

What advice do you want to give to people still looking for their own way of trading?

First of all, try to find a method that works, and that allows you to trade comfortably.

The risk... keep the risk low, so don't risk more than 1% of your trading account per trade.

Do not start only with one strategy, start with a portfolio of at least 6 to 8, just to make sure that you get some benefits from the diversification to lower the drawdown and, you know, to try to create systems that have a low correlation to one another.

So try to create systems that are not on the same currency or on the same future, try to use different time-frame, different approaches.

Yeah, so basically those ones.

Is there anything else you want to add?

No, actually, I just want to say good trading to everyone.

Just during this period you may have seen there is a lot of publicity, let's say, like "Boom of trading online" and "You have now a lot of free time because we are staying at home, because of the Covid 19..." so just pay attention.

It's not as easy as it seems, so basically make sure that you keep your risk low and don't approach the markets during those days.

It's not easy, and it can be very risky because of the volatility in place.

So please make just sure that if you start, you start with a low amount, maybe wait that this period is over and yeah, try really to learn from the people who have done this before and they are realistically showing what you can expect from online trading... that's it...

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