The profit targets were at the previous resistance zones (the source of the sell offs). The first trade gave profit of close to 170pips and the second a profit of 200 pips. The risk for each trade was approx 50pips per trade.

The second move had more momentum and came from a stronger demand area than the first so I would be looking to buy $GBPUSD on the next pull back into a demand zone on the 4hour or 2hour timeframe.

Near to the close on Friday, AAPL was very oversold and coupled with the fact it was at the support zone, it made a long trade a low risk trade. The key was to scale into it – i.e. initiate half the position just before the close on Friday and the rest on price confirmation today (15min Solas TrendFinder Algorithm Entry – second image below).

The trade is now on with some nice profit locked in via the 15minute Solas TrendFinder Algorithm will be managed via the trailing stop (yellow dot).

With the EURUSD & GBPUSD pretty rangebound of late it has been the AUDUSD that has shown trend traits on the Solas M Series Portfolio. Picking up a short signal at 1.0550 at the start of March following a break lower on the February consolidation the Aussie has continued to extend its downside weakness against the Greenback and is currently barrelling down on the next significant support at 1.2000. A break of this level paves the way for a move to 1.0000 parity.

At this juncture all risk has been taken off the M Series Portfolio trade as the dynamic stop loss has contracted lower in line with falling price action and currently lies @ 1.0436 and in excess of 100pips profit locked in.

About the Solas Trend Finder Algorithm (STFA):
The Solas Trend Finder Software is designed for traders and investors who want to take advantage of short, medium and longer term trends across multiple timeframes on all major asset classes including global indices, equities, exchange traded funds (Etfs), commodities & forex.

Working off the base 0.50% risk per trade the portfolio returned 11.0% over Q1. For the more conservative trader who wished to reduce risk exposure the Q1 returned an extremely healthy 5.5% on 0.25% risk per trade whereas the trader/investor who wish to work their capital a little harder saw them reap the benefits with in excess of 16% gains.

The trend following strategy capitalised on the early bullish price action in the markets at the start of the year with some smashing trades captured, the highlights being the existing QQQ’s trade which is in place since Jan 4 as well the EPI & SLV trades in Jan-Feb.

In the last 4-6 weeks the market follow through to the upside slow down somewhat and the ensuing consolidation has seen the mean reversion strategy become more active with outstanding consistency with a 91% win/loss ratio on trades executed on the Solas M Series Global Portoflio live tracking account. Overall the 64% strike rate is very consistent with the trend following returns coming in at a very respectable 38% win/loss ratio.

To login to our free weekly market & portfolio review each Monday evening @ 7.00pm GMT please click on the following link: WEEKLY PORTFOLIO REVIEW LINK

About the Solas M Series – Global Portfolio
The Solas M Series – Global Portfolio is a multi strategy, multi sector, multi instrument construction. The portfolio trades both long and short with a view to giving you a broad diversification across various sectors using multiple systematic trading strategies in order to maximize potential returns, while reducing your down side risk.

For further details on the Solas M Series GLobal Portfolio please click on the following link: SOLAS M SERIES GLOBAL PORTFOLIO

Solas trade the Solas M Series portfolio on a live $100k tracking account.

About the Solas Trend Finder Algorithm (STFA):
The Solas Trend Finder Software is designed for traders and investors who want to take advantage of short, medium and longer term trends across multiple timeframes on all major asset classes including global indices, equities, exchange traded funds (Etfs), commodities & forex.

About the Solas Swing Trading Software (SSTS):
The Solas Swing Trading Model is an end of day trading strategy which delivers high probability trade signals both long & short within a defined trend across the main indices, equities, & etfs.

Silver futures prices surged a whopping 177% in an 9mth period from Aug 2010 to Apr 2011 before coming off the tracks and giving up 80% of the advance over the next 8 mths through to the end of 2011.

Having rallied 41% off the December lows of $26.14/oz Silver is most definitely taking the gloss off its Gold counterpart (where an impressive +16% rally in the same period doesn’t appear all that impressive up against Silver). Today has seen the precious metal forge new 6mth highs as it emphatically broke the $36.00/oz Oct high resistance.

The Solas Trend Finder software is tracking this latest advance closely and is long the instrument since early last week taking advantage of the latest wave of buying interest. Having taken out the Oct 2011 highs technically the precious metal has its sights set on the $40.00 round number followed by Aug 2011 highs @ $44.65/oz. Much work to be done in the interim and no doubt plently of volatility ahead however the Solas Trend Finder’s dynamic stop loss management is alreadt kicking in as it contracts in line with rising price action.

On of the most liquid ETF equivalents for trading SLV is also advancing very impressively since the turn of the year. As one of the components on the Solas M Series GLobal Portfolio we are long this instrument since mid Jan and as currently running +23% on the trade to date with 67% of open profit currently locked in by way of the in-built dynamic stop loss management.

Interests: We are currently long both Silver Futures (SI) & IShares Silver Trust (SLV)

FREE TRIAL:

To sign up to a 14-Free Trial of the software including full access to the portfolio content please click here and complete the relevant login details – FREE TRIAL REQUEST

About the Solas M Series – Global Portfolio

The Solas M Series – Global Portfolio is a multi strategy, multi sector, multi instrument construction. The portfolio trades both long and short with a view to giving you a broad diversification across various sectors using multiple systematic trading strategies in order to maximize potential returns, while reducing your down side risk.

Solas trade the Solas M Series portfolio on a live $100k tracking account.

About the Solas Trend Finder Algorithm (STFA):
The Solas Trend Finder Software is designed for traders and investors who want to take advantage of short, medium and longer term trends across multiple timeframes on all major asset classes including global indices, equities, exchange traded funds (Etfs), commodities & forex.

The trade entry was on yesterday’s open @ 134.57 and exit signal on last night’s close for execution on today’s gap higher open @ 136.53 for a very impressive $1.96 (1.45%) gain.

The Solas Swing Trading software is an end of day mean reversion strategy which generates buy and sell signals following a pullback in price action and exits into momentum as price reverts back in the direction of the dominant trend.

SPY is part of the Solas M Series Portfolio and this trade was executed on a live trading account.

14-Day Free Trial
To access a no obligations 14-Day Free Trial please CLICK HERE

About the Solas Swing Trading Software (SSTS):
The Solas Swing Trading Model is an end of day trading strategy which delivers high probability trade signals both long & short within a defined trend across the main indices, equities & etfs.

For much of the second half of 2011 the Euro was under sustained downside pressure owing to the escalating Eurozone financial crisis before finding 16mth support at the 1.26 level against the dollar at the end of the year. Following the impressive start to 2012 the Eurozone concerns went off the front pages (though never far away) as the markets posted an impressive upside rally. Recent days however has seen the Greek bailout crisis come back on the agenda and with it renewed weakness in the Euro.

The Solas Trend Finder software has quickly adjusted to the change in sentiment and indeed price action as it generated a new short signal on the Solas M Series Portfolio. The portfolio has made a very impressive start to 2012 and has produced profitable EURUSD trades both long & short ytd. The latest short signal comes with an initial dynamic stop loss @ 1.3179.

FREE TRIAL:

To sign up to a 14-Free Trial of the software including full access to the portfolio content please click here and complete the relevant login details – FREE TRIAL REQUEST

About the Solas M Series – Global Portfolio

The Solas M Series – Global Portfolio is a multi strategy, multi sector, multi instrument construction. The portfolio trades both long and short with a view to giving you a broad diversification across various sectors using multiple systematic trading strategies in order to maximize potential returns, while reducing your down side risk.

Solas trade the Solas M Series portfolio on a live $100k tracking account.

After initial consolidation at the lows the Solas Trend Following software generated a long bias at the start of 2012 @ $16.39 and hasn’t looked back as it has forged upwards 28% in the intervening 6 weeks or so. Adding to the impressive trade has been the equally impressive risk management as the softwares intelligent dynamic stop loss has consistently trailed higher in line with advancing price action and has 80% of current open P&L locked in.

Other impressive performers in the Solas M Series Portfolio YTD include QQQ’s, SLV & EWG.

January Portfolio Performance Report

FREE TRIAL:

To sign up to a 14-Free Trial of the software including full access to the portfolio content please click here and complete the relevant login details – FREE TRIAL REQUEST

About the Solas M Series – Global Portfolio

The Solas M Series – Global Portfolio is a multi strategy, multi sector, multi instrument construction. The portfolio trades both long and short with a view to giving you a broad diversification across various sectors using multiple systematic trading strategies in order to maximize potential returns, while reducing your down side risk.

Solas Financial trade the Solas M Series portfolio on a live $100k tracking account.

Traders who have tried to implement a trading system will confirm it takes a lot of disicipline to implement a trading system. It’s especially difficult to implement a single market trading model. All trading models will at some stage go into a drawdown phase, even if you are trading 2 or 3 models on 2 to 3 instruments. At some stage these models will go into the kindom of drawdown land and you may lose confidence in your models.

There will always be drawdowns, in fact most hedge manager including oursleves at Solas Financial spend quite a lot of time in drawdowns i.e. we do not make higher highs on our equity every day or every week.

Good systematic hedge funds strive to drive alpha but keeping drawdowns to a mininium. In our view the real measure of a money manager it to define risk as function of drawdown vs returns. Lets look at hedge fund manager A who delivers a 12% year with a drawdown of less than 3% and manager B who delivers a 20% return but suffered a drawdown of 20% during the same year.

Manager A is a far better hedge fund manager when measured on a risk adjusted basis. Manager B delivered a higher return but how did Manager B’s clients feel when they were 20% down. Manager A’s clients experienced a much more pleasant journey. The same process should be applied to your own trading – design your trading plan to never deliver a drawdown that causes sleepless nights or put you in an emotional place which causes you to question your trading stretegty.

How do good managers deliver good risk adjusted returns? In our view the magic sauce is a portfolio based approach using multi strategies, multi instruments trading with very small allocations of risk to each trade.

Often you will see capital allocations adjusted to the style of trading that is most likely to produce results in the current trading climate. For example in the 3 months to the end of 2011 – trend following or volatility models performed poorly whereas mean reversion models performed very well. A hedge fund who was running all 3 trading styles probably made profits during this difficult period.

More on portfolio trading in future articles.

The shallow pullback S1 & S3 strategies were the most active during January and also the most profitable. All instruments in this strategy closed out positive for the month with an 80% win/loss ratio . Leading the way was Fresnillo FRES.L (+25%) and Kazakhmys – KAZ.L (+23%).

The S2 strategy also performed very well holding very strong profitability ratios with 14 trades generated in all. Eurasian ENRC.L (+6.25%) was the best performer followed by BG Group – BG.L (+4.77%) and Petrofac PFC.L (-5.73%) the lagger.

The S4 & S5 strategy combination carried a more mixed bag in terms of performance for the month. The strong advance in the market resulted in less opportunity for deeper pullback strategies such as these. That said profitability @ 50% was respectable. Randgold Resources – RRS.L (+6.16%) and  Eurasian ENRC.L (+5.14%) were best performers while Petrofac – PFC.L (-5.87%) lagged.

14-Day Free Trial

To access a no obligations Free Trial please click on the following link:

http://solastrader.com/14-day-free-trial/

About the Solas Swing Trading Software (SSTS):

The Solas Swing Trading Model is an end of day trading strategy which delivers high probability trade signals both long & short within a defined trend across the main indices, equities, & etfs.