Ben is a breakout trader with 17 years of market experience who has also started diversifying into mean reversion strategies. He’s also the trader behind the DARWIN SUG, which currently holds over $650,000 under management from more than 100 investors in Darwinex.
Before delving into trading, Ben was a professional poker player. Today, he recognises this experience as an important part of his trading journey since he had to endure psychological ups and downs and perfect his mathematical and statistical analysis.
In 2007, Ben’s trading career officially began with stocks, but he soon shifted to the 24-hour Forex market. Being a programmer, Ben found it fascinating to develop his own algorithms using the programming language provided by the trading platform. A year later, Forex trading was taking up most of his time.
In 2012, Ben encountered some contest-winning EA code which was “basically” a Donchian Channel Breakout. He then decided to add his own twist and committed to it - “It has been the bulk of my trading ever since”, he mentioned in our latest episode of the Market Masters.
Today, his trading approach remains very analytical and meticulous. He’s used to experimenting with different types of filters and timed exits to enhance the performance of his strategy significantly. In our interview, Ben explained that, at this point in his career, most of his signals have been walk-forward tested on multiple markets, paying special attention to the sample size.
Ben’s DARWIN SUG was created in 2018 and today scores very highly on the risk-based metrics, namely Risk Adjustment (RA) and Loss Aversion (LA). He attributes his strong performance in risk management to his breakout trading style where losses are kept minimal by not holding onto losing trades for long.
Despite the recent increase in investor capital, this trader remains modest, attributing his success to his gradual skills improvement as he continues studying, trying out new theories, re-reading books, and better grasping old concepts. He also claimed to be getting “more picky about which walk forward tests he trusts enough to take live”.
For the future, Ben plans to keep diversifying by implementing more strategies and -because he now has a more established track record- hopes to start attracting investors who better understand the long-term nature of his strategies and won’t tend to pull out at the first sign of a drawdown.
If you want to dive deeper into Ben’s strategy at Darwinex, learn more about his definition of sample size, his choice of filters, time frames, timed exits, and more, make sure to catch the second episode of our interview show, Market Masters:
