Going live with zulu trade

I decided to give it a shot with zulu trade. This wasn't an overnight decision. I have been thinking about it for some time. Basically zulu trade offers what I am looking for. I don't have time to watch the charts for trading opportunities neither do I have time to watch and follow the market to close any open position. Another option could be to trade on a higher time frame like the day chart but I have never liked that trading style anyway.

You can say a lot about demo trading but demo trading will never be the real thing. After opening that live account my first concern was how to keep it safe....I don't like to take risks so I opened a small account of 1000 euro. Because I want to avoid any huge slippage or any kind of problem between zulu trade and the broker I decided to use AAAFx. This way I got fast execution times and I avoid the extra commission you have to pay with certain brokers.

I will use zulu traders signal providers but that doesn't mean I will not throw in some manual trades when I see a good trading opportunity. My first goal of course will be to make profit. It doesn't matter if it will be small or not. I am not interested in making huge profits. I just want to make profits and I want to avoid any big risks. Therefore I decided to start very slow and after that we will see how to continue.

I have added 1 signal provider that seems to be taking acceptable risks and that has a nice equity curve. I also enabled the public profile on zulu trade so you can see how I am doing.

http://www.zulutrade.com/Follower.aspx?ref=1&id=735944

Like you can see on the public profile I only added TradeGuru. After looking at his trading records it looks likes he knows what he is doing. Like I said I hate to take huge risks so I am going to use micro lots and I am using advanced settings for this signal provider. The settings I used are based on some basic analysis I made using a simple Excel sheet. I worst case scenario this signal provider opens 4 trades that all hit the hard stop I have set. In this case I would suffer a 700 pips loss. (7% balance loss) of course that would be a new drawdown record for this signal provider.... Let see how this turns out before adding any other signal provider....

First experiences with zulutrade demo account

When I opened a demo account my first idea was to add zulutrade's best signal providers. Zulutrade gives every signal provider a rating according their performance. So can I be any easier. I add their best signal providers and let it run.....

Well I soon found out that it wasn't a good idea at all. Altough their high rated signal providers had been profitable for months they sure didn't seem to be profitable after I added them! In particular I am talking about Forex Cruise Control and jianhong111. I remember my first days when I was trading without any experience....Well the way these signal providers were trading was even worse. Adding to losing positions. Not closing positions, letting the loss go insanely high. And with high I mean high. Jianhong111 made some bad trades losing over 1000 pips. Forex Cruise Control had some real bad entries and has them still open, cumulating 2748 pips in loss !!! When I saw this happening I thought that I was hallucinating and first impression was that zulutrade had found the fastest way to blow up an account! If this would have been a real account with oversized positions I would have had a margin call.

But I didn't let it go so far so I closed the positions and removed them. Damage made was 1231 pips. Never seem so many pips favorate in such a short time. So I removed them all and decided to pick my own signal providers. I picked the following signal providers:

• TradeGuru 
• swiss10 
• NARROW FX-LV 
• for333 
• denganyouqianle 

I also decided to add a stop on each signal provider. The result was amazing. Not only did I have few losing trades but the losing trades were also smaller. In no time these provider managed to erase all losses. You can see the history of the demo account below.

Today I also had another experience confirming that you need to put a stop on each signal provider. I had one position that was closed by the signal provider but it wasn't closed on my demo account. So it hit the safety stop I had put on this signal provider....

Conclusion:
Don't pick zulutrade's highest ranked signal providers. Do you homework and find yourself some good ones. Also i would advice to put a safety stop on each signal provider. Of course don't put the safety stop too close and make sure safe is checked. (safe means you use the signal provider stop if it is smaller than yours). You will find signal providers that will make winning trades. Trick is to make sure you keep the possible drawdowns and losses under control!

I am open for comments and suggestions.....

Opening a demo account on zulutrade

To be able to further test zulutrade I opened a demo account. Opening a demo account is very easy. They have a sign up page and after filling in some personal information I was ready to go. When you open a demo account it is always important to use the settings that you would use if you would open a live account. I my case if and I say if I would open a live account I would open a real small account because you never know. If you have a small account it is important to limit the risk so you don't get a margin call to easy. So I used a 1/50 leverage.

After you have signed up for a demo account you can start choosing some signal providers (SP). If you click on the performance tab on their website you can see all the signal providers you can chose. Like we said in the previous post a “signal provider” is a trader that shares his signal with other zulu members. Of course share isn't exactly the right word because a signal provider receives a fee for every trade somebody makes following his signals.

 Zulutrade has made is real easy for you with their zulu ranking they give each signal provider. The signal providers with the highest zulu ranking are shown on top. When you click on a signal provider you can see all the details about his trading. It is extremely important to analyze a provider in detail before considering using his signals. Don't look at the winning trades only. Especially check the losing trades and the draw down that can occur when you would decide following his signals.

When I start looking at the different signal providers I noticed the following things:

• They don't all trade following the trend? 
• Most of them have a bad risk/reward ratio, meaning they have a smaller “Take Profit” then their “Stop Loss”? 
• Some of them seem to be adding trades to a losing position and are averaging out afterward? 
• Some of them use martingale positioning sizing? 
• I see scalpers taking a few pips profit with SL above 100 pips ??? 
• I see signal providers with 100% winning ratio.....but..... you know how? If they have a losing position they wait and hope their position gets out of loss again?? Even when the position is 250 pips or more in loss. Crazy of course. 

Of course they are signal providers that are not trading like that. We will see and try to find the better ones......