3 Year Plan
Written by Dave on August 7th, 2008Following on from my last Project Rigor post, here is the over-arching plan.
Forex trading demo - Project Rigor
Written by Dave on August 6th, 2008
I have decided to undertake a trial of a forex signal provider. It would seem my appetite for Forex has not diminished.
I am not prepared to disclose which provider I am using yet. When I did that for options providers I was inundated with questions to rate and validate them which is not fair to those genuine providers who hit a bad run. For convenience I am calling this project Rigor.
I have my own strategy as well that I would like to test but it needs more work before I can apply it. This will be known as project CopyCat.
As this stage I am only demo’ing the service rather than burning my own money chasing instant profits. The qualities I am looking are:
- Low maintenance
- Consistently profitable
- Low draw down
- Back tests well
- Trades across multiple pairs
- Claimed performance matches actual
I appreciate that this represent an ideal scenario and it may still be worth considering a service that meets most of these.
The ultimate measure of success is profitability and to test this I am applying Hoosain Harneker’s advice from the book, Millionaire Traders. This will require me to triple my demo account twice before committing real money. I feel that this is a valid test.
This insight from Hoosain Harneker is perhaps the most practical piece of advice from any of our super star traders. Nobody can master a professional skill right away. Doctors practice on cadavers, lawyers spend countless hours in moot court, and mechanics toil for months in classroom garages. Practice does not guarantee success but lack of practice almost always ensures failure. In foreign exchange, which is Hoosain’s market of choice, every dealer offers a practice platform allowing traders to experiment with virtual money rather than real capital. In other financial markets plenty of software tools exist to allow the trader to “paper” trade in realistic market environments. For example, our other interviewee, Paul Willitte, who was already a successful equity trader, spent three months paper trading his account when he decided to make a switch to electronic stock index futures.
What makes Hoosain’s advice even more valuable—albeit much harder to follow—is that one has to achieve substantial success on the demo before moving to a live account. By mandating that you triple the demo, Hoosain requires that your trading methodology has a discernable edge that should serve you well in the real market. While his rules of trade are difficult, they are well worth following because they instill the discipline necessary to succeed in the real market.
This may be a test if these services are profitable, and quickly. I suspect that the discipline would be worth it in the long run, and I will hold on to that sentiment as long as possible.
The world has gone mad!
Written by Dave on August 5th, 2008The following is taken from the Herald Sun newspaper yesterday (5 th August, 2008)
Cotton wool can harm your kids
OVER-protective parents are setting up their children to be unhappy introverts or risk-taking rebels in adolescence, experts say. Banning activities such as tree-climbing for fear of danger is harming children’s development and risk perception, they suggest.
The warning came as British research found half of children aged seven to 12 were not allowed to climb trees, almost a fifth were banned from playing chasey and almost half were not allowed to go to the park by themselves.
Riding a bike to a friend’s house or playing unsupervised in the street was off-limits for a third of kids. The same vigilance was not applied to internet use, with almost three-quarters of children saying they surfed the net unrestricted.
Deakin University psychologist Helen McGrath said many parents had an unrealistic sense of danger, based on media reports about child abductions, assaults and accidents. “Parents vicariously feel all this,” she said.
“They think, ‘if it has happened once or twice in the past few years, then it has got a high likelihood of happening to my child’. “So they start to over-protect their children by not letting them out of their sight and the message they send is, the world is quite a dangerous place.”
She said as well as protecting them from perceived dangers, parents were more inclined to fight their children’s battles, such as intervening in minor problems at school. She said this cotton wool-style parenting meant children missed life lessons about how to cope, problem-solve and weigh up danger.
This made them more likely to live in restrictive comfort zones and increased their risk of depression, while others could be encouraged to engage in risky behaviour later in life. “If they don’t have the skills to deal with it, then sometimes their solution will be to turn to drugs or alcohol,” Dr McGrath said.
The British study of 1030 children and 1030 parents found just 29 per cent of kids’ favourite play experiences were outdoors. This compared with 70 per cent of parents, whose greatest childhood adventures were had among rivers, trees and parks.
Kiva Update August 2008
Written by Dave on August 5th, 2008I have talked about my defaulted loans in the past so please don’t let that put you off. Just understand that you should manage you risk.
For my portfolio’s performance, please see the image below. Click on it to see it full size.
Insul Mat Ether Thermo 6 Sleeping Mat Owner Review
Written by Dave on August 5th, 2008
Along with my BA3W Bivy, I recently purchased a Insul Mat Ether Thermo 6 Sleeping Mat. I chose this one because it is thicker than a thermarest style self inflating mattress and lighter.
I have been impressed with it’s thermal efficiency during some recent cold nights (one night was a low of 1.1 deg. C) and I was comfortable. I could feel it radiating heat back up rather than just transfer the cold air from the ground.
I haven’t quite had a ‘great’ nights sleep on it from a comfort point of view. I can sleep on my side and not touch the ground which is a great feature as it’s 9cm thick, but still for some reason I couldn’t settle. Maybe with more time I will adjust. It might try deflating it slightly next time to create a softer feel. To be fair, I don’t think I was more comfortable on my old thermarest style mattress either so I can’t say if this is a reflectiion of the mattress or something that I have to accept!
For Australian conditions, I can’t see thia ‘3 season’ mat reaching its temprature limits with a sensible sleeping bag and appropriate clothing. Please note that both times I used this mattress was in a bivy which apparently adds a few degrees of comfort to your sleeping system.
This matress has to be inflated manually but only takes 30 seconds.
I have also purchased a thermarest brand pillow. I will keep you posted on how the mattress performs during my next few outings.