TwentyEight is the trader of TDD. This DARWIN has currently a >€175,000 DarwinIA allocation and has already earned more than €3,000 in performance fees. We wondered whether TDD could be considered a hidden gem in a jungle of more than 3,000 DARWINs and asked our Exchange’s users to submit questions about it. Quite a few did this.
Here are the questions, together with TwentyEight’s response to them. Thank you all, both TwentyEight and community members who’ve sent questions! Enjoy!
1. TwentyEight, tell us a little about yourself. How did you get started and how long have you been trading for?
So, I have worked most of my adult life in the Hospitality industry and have owned and co-owned several ventures and have been lucky enough to live in several different countries around the world. I’m currently based in Australia on the Sunshine Coast, I’m a real health and fitness fanatic, love my golf, my dogs and the beach.
I’ve always been entrepreneurial and even as a teenager was always business oriented and about 10 years ago I realised that I’d had enough of the Hospitality business. Again as a teenager I remember having a great fascination with the stock market so I decided to start gaining some knowledge in the investing/trading world. However it wasn’t until the beginning of 2015 that I decided to take the plunge and opened my first account. After my first year I quickly realised that it would be prudent for me to look for a mentor. I didn’t want to waste years fumbling around in the dark so I did some investigation and found a trader based in the UK who had an excellent track record.
The rest as they say is history. It was a great decision and even though my style of trading is different to his now it was a fantastic eye opener and I learned a great deal in the 6 months we had together.
2. dondinero: There’s no information about you or your DARWIN on the exchange, e.g. a description of your strategy, a description of the user. Will you tell us something more?
Hi Dondinero. Yes it’s something I have been meaning to get around to. I am a 100% manual trader and utilize Price action at key levels. I mainly trade the major forex pairs and like to trade breakouts from patterns that occur at major key levels. My entries are usually taken of off the 4 hour chart and ideally would run for a couple of days up to a couple of weeks. During periods of consolidation when a pair is stuck between levels I will take trades on the 1 hour time frame and only look to hold for maybe a couple of days. This is the weaker part of my trading and I am currently working on this in the hope of reducing my drawdown and consolidation periods.
3. Forexintradia: Hi Twenty Eight, I´ve always respected and admired traders who can handle well low ratio of win/loss trades and keep the discipline. How have you get used to win only 32% of trades and keep it calm? Is it in your personality, is that you trust your backtesting results blindly, or have you gotten some specific training? Congratulations, your performance is great, but your behavior is outstanding, keep it up!
Hi Forexintradia. I believe that discipline is the most important trait to have as a trader and I believe that this is one of my strongest traits. My strategy does not handle periods of higher than usual volatility or choppy price action very well so I naturally go through periods of drawdown or consolidation. It is tough sometimes but I know it’s not going to last and more favourable conditions will return so I have to be patient and very disciplined.
You asked about specific training; aside from the mentoring program I went through I have had a lot of help from a fellow trader who is also a performance coach. She has helped me a great deal with the Pyschological side of trading and this is still a big part of my on going development as a trader. People underestimate the Pyschological side of this business but it’s something I continuously strive to understand.
4. FedericoSellitti: You had your worst month in 2019, February, but you also had your best month right after that, March 2019. Did you increase your risk or change something in your strategy?
Hi Federico. The only thing that changed was market conditions. After some weak performance in October and November 2018 I cut back on my risk for December and January then I actually began to see things start changing in February so went back to my usual R/R (which is never to have more than 2% of risk at any one time) but my strategy suffered a few false breakouts. It was very disappointing but was able to capitalize from March onwards when conditions did finally move back in my favour.
5. Tony: How do you prepare your trades?
Hi Tony. Once I have higher timeframe levels marked out it’s all down to how price reacts at these levels. I find weekly price action very reliable and gives a great indication of where price is likely to go and also watch out for patterns to develop at these levels. After this it’s down to the lower timeframes to look for entries and stops.
6. Manoj: How do you run on Maximum number of open positions in single direction per instrument, Maximum acceptable exposure in single instrument as percentage of equity, together with swing, scalp and intraday strategies? How do you align all with multiple timeframes?
Hi Manoj. I hope I have understood your question correctly. So I very very rarely have more than 2% open risk at any one time. The last time this occured was in April 2018 when the dollar was breaking out and a couple of AAA+ set ups emerged. My risk there went up to 5% with some very tight stops. It is quite usual for me to have a couple of positions open in the same pair if I’m looking for a good move and I’ll look to close some after an initial burst and then let the rest run.
7. Jaico: Do you plan to modify your close strategy to have a better score in the Os attribute? Although the low score of this attribute didn’t prevent you to have a D-score of 74.
Hi Jaico. As I briefly explained to Dondinero I am currently working on refining my strategy. As my equity curve shows I go through periods of drawdown or consolidation which, in my opinion are too extended. As you can see this time around it is so far only a consolidation as opposed to last years drawdown which is good but yes my close strategy during times of market consolidation and changes in volatility are definitely a problem so it is something I am looking at.
8. Juan Luis Alcibar: What type of trading do you practice? I’d also like to know what happened during TDD’s stagnation period and if you needed to change anything to get out of the drawdown.
Hi Juan. I think this has already been covered but just to reiterate when going through periods of drawdown or consolidation I just stay as patient as possible. I’ll usually drop my risk a little as well but it’s just a case of discipline and patience. My trade set ups have a fairly high failure rate and although I don’t intend to change anything too drastic, because my winners more than compensate, I am currently working on small changes that will hopefully smooth out my equity curve.
9. Antonio: Hey TDD, first of all, congratulations for your DARWIN’s recent results! What return/risk would be a realistic expectation on the long term for TDD? Thank you and congratulations again.
Hi Antonio and thanks. I think it’s tough for a trader to give prognostications of returns but I feel that I still have so much to learn and as a result I believe that I can continue to perform at my current levels as a minimum.
10. bianka: Are you analyzing other DARWINs? Which ones do you find mature enough for investing? And which ones do you find promising?
To be honest Bianka I have been so focused on my own performance that I haven’t really spent anytime analysing other Darwins. However I am well aware that there are some great traders here that are performing very well and it was great to see lately how LVS has come back from almost a year of drawdown. That takes courage, conviction and self belief in what you are doing.
11. Juan Luis Alcibar: This is a question to the trader of TDD and to Darwinex. I think TDD is a great DARWIN. Why doesn’t it receive more investment? If I had a lot of money, I’d create a “buy and hold” DARWIN portfolio and TDD would be among the DARWINs I’d include in it. I think Darwinex could create baskets of DARWINs for long-time investors. Curves likes TDD’s offer more trust than spectacular curves which can offer sudden shocks.
Hi Juan and thanks. I’ve had quite a few investors come and go and even had one that invested 50,000.00 Euros in August of last year but I guess that investing can be as difficult as trading is. A lot of traders have no patience or discipline so chop and change all the time which means they never get anywhere and I guess the same can be said about investors. That’s why I think it’s important to see 2 years worth of results before investing and then if you like what you see stick with it. It’s a good idea of yours to have a basket of Darwins to invest in but I have a feeling that Darwinex is already thinking/planning for this. In fact I believe there are some exciting times just around the corner for Darwinex and its top Darwin providers and that’s why I’m working hard to improve my strategy.
