Dear Investor,
We are quite pleased to announce that July’s month of trading has again been a very busy month for us, but it has also been a profitable one again! Despite a few challenges which presented themselves with the GuardianFX system (which we are currently working through – more below on this, please read) overall we are quite happy with the results. Once again, both prospective and current investors are encouraged to read this update in its entirety as there is some important information contained herein. We would like to thank all of our investors again for their understanding and patience as we tackled some of these challenges which ranged from small tweaks to our trading strategies all the way to working through issues at our new brokerage.
Our returns for the month of July are as follows…
July 2010 PERFORMANCE
Precision FX: +10.80%
Precision FX: +10.80%
Chrome FX: +14.57% (Average of ChromeFX A: 19.51% and ChromeFX B: 9.63%)
Mclaren FX: +0.14%
Guardian FX: +6.6% (the international PAMM is down -9.3%. Details below)
July Average: +8.03%
* Account Discrepancies – Once again, please remember that if your returns for a given month do not match our posted returns take note that our numbers are from the 1st of each calendar month, to the last trading day of the calendar month. If you have invested in the middle of the month, your numbers may not match ours and could vary significantly. In addition to this, if we have open trades at month end, we calculate our return on the current balance that day, NOT the floating equity. So open trades which have not realised their PnLs yet will be carried into the next month. The exception to this is now with the GuardianFX system at ATC. Due to the FXCM viewer they use we are reporting the gain/loss in EQUITY each month, so that this is less confusing for investors.
For certain systems we have also noticed small discrepancies between larger investor’s accounts (100K+) and very smaller investor’s accounts (<5K). This often has to do with the broker’s min position sizes and how they are distributed with the allocation software in our MAM/PAMM. All accounts are usually never out more than a percent or two max, and usually match within a fraction of this.
Our Performance Table has also been updated with the following statistics of interest
MONTH | PRECISION | CHROME | GUARDIAN | MCLAREN | AVERAGE | |
Dec-08 | 32.30% | 72.73% | 52.52% | |||
Jan-09 | 18.70% | -4.19% | 7.26% | |||
Feb-09 | 27.50% | 160.30% | 93.90% | |||
Mar-09 | 29.50% | 21.97% | 25.74% | |||
Apr-09 | -34.40% | 61.33% | 13.47% | |||
May-09 | 53.30% | 33.35% | 3.52% | 30.06% | ||
Jun-09 | 23.60% | 25.77% | 4.69% | 18.02% | ||
Jul-09 | 10.10% | 20.69% | 4.13% | 11.64% | ||
Aug-09 | 26.92% | 10.77% | 4.86% | 14.18% | ||
Sep-09 | -0.32% | 5.44% | 5.79% | 3.64% | ||
Oct-09 | -4.26% | 20.36% | 6.55% | 7.55% | ||
Nov-09 | 10.76% | -20.98% | 30.98% | 6.92% | ||
Dec-09 | 9.37% | 15.94% | 10.39% | 11.90% | ||
Jan-10 | 33.63% | 27.91% | 16.02% | 25.85% | ||
Feb-10 | 15.31% | 14.93% | 22.63% | 17.62% | ||
Mar-10 | 15.43% | -5.08% | 3.23% | 4.53% | ||
Apr-10 | -8.11% | -9.43% | -0.05% | -5.86% | ||
May-10 | 0.70% | -7.66% | 27.30% | 6.78% | ||
Jun-10 | 20.86% | 10.56% | 4.83% | 9.68% | 11.48% | |
Jul-10 | 10.80% | 14.57% | 6.60% | 0.14% | 8.03% | |
TOTAL COMP'D RETURN: | 1043.70% | 2677.02% | 302.76% | 9.83% | 1008.33% | |
MONTHLY AVERAGE: | 14.78% | 23.93% | 10.35% | 4.91% | 13.49% | |
MONTH-END TRADING RECAP and NEW DEVELOPMENTS (important updates – please read)
1. Precision FX - Scalping conditions were once again rather good this month. We ate a few losses this month, and accounts were at one point up to about 14% in equity, but overall we witnessed great performance with reasonably low risk with this system. This system still remains our flagship program and our bread and butter earner for the longest amount of time. It has changed quite a bit over the course of the past 2 years, but we are very comfortable that this system will continue to go the distance. Some of our longer-term strategies have been implemented this month, and have balanced out the diversification aspect of the strategy nicely. The system is already up +6.4% in the first week of August with 3.5 more weeks to go. We are working on a double digit month again.
2. Chrome FX – We had a great month with ChromeFX’s new split (dual) strategy performance in July. Chrome A being largely scalping based had an excellent run, and Chrome B - our aussie/kiwi cash machine ended up on high ground as well. We report the average of these two strategies (Chrome A and B) as the final return for the overall system. This system is finally in a good and profitable state with the dual strategies running in parallel to one another.
3. Guardian FX – For those of you in the Guardian FX account, we will be sending out an update to all investors individually first thing next week. We had experienced two sets of issues with our new brokerage which were not identified in our preliminary tests, and which effected the systems performance. Because both ATC and FXCM are connected at the hip in a unique fashion, we have uncovered some issues which had to be contented with on the system. The majority of the issues stemmed from ATC filling our slipped positions, and then bigger problems when the system placed partial fills and pending partials. The way the orders are pushed through ATC/FXCM’s servers has an effect on the system’s comments which are very important to the underlying functions of the system. Both our programmers and ATC’s have been working on this for the last week, implementing some programming changes to allow this issue to not affect how the system works at this brokerage. We will not be testing the new changes on the client accounts until they have been thoroughly test driven on a simulation demo first so as to not expose client funds to risk. We should have a full scope on the success of the newly implemented changes next week. We are quite certain with the team behind this from both sides, the fix should be a quick one.
As most of you know we currently trade 2 PAMM accounts here. 1 for international clients and 1 for USA
As you can imagine, we are very frustrated by the “high maintenance” required to get this system working properly. We moved from our old brokerage to ATC, where we thought all issues were solved which we had encountered at the previous brokerage, however it turns out that there were other issues which presented themselves at ATC. It’s a very tough job finding a brokerage which can provide all the conditions we need to run this properly the way we want to. The system is extremely high maintenance in this regard. However we will keep ploughing through the issues as they arise as we all see the value in this system. If we can get it all the conditions it needs, we have no doubt it will work very very well. Its just a matter of working through these few issues until we get it there. Anytime we switch brokers, this of course is inevitable as it is a major variable change in how the system performs.
4. McLaren FX– McLaren had a relatively quiet and uneventful month in July. The system made very few trades and ended up with a BE month more or less. This strategy simply waits for specific trade conditions to present themselves, and capitalises on them when they arise. Some months we see many of these conditions. Other months – very few.
NEW DEVELOPMENTS
Major Changes – Unfortunately we cannot go into TOO much detail about this at this moment, only to mention that we will be making some major changes to our business model as a whole this fall (late Sept/early Oct). This will include details on a move forward plan in how we are operating, and who we are working with. As you can see from our past updates, it is a tremendous amount of work to keep multiple systems up and running (especially ones which are very high maintenance like our GuardianFX system). While we see the value in having multiple systems the work load required to monitor and test and run them all at the same time, as well as the admin work that comes along with this is enormous. We will be looking to tighten up things slightly in our systems, and also with regards to the participation in them. We may end up taking a much less “public” approach with our business and trading. We have recently reached some capital bench marks which warrant a change in focus towards “preservation” and “perfecting” as apposed to attracting new business. This is quite different from one system to another, but it is enough in general where we are planning to shift our longer-term focus on the longevity of our systems for existing clients. Please keep a watchful eye for details as we move into the early fall season.
Audits – For those without live accounts, our Q2 audits should be out shortly within the following few weeks. Our CPA has been a little behind on a few things and is working to get these for us as quickly as possible.
SUMMARY
We hope our clients are enjoying their summer (or winter depending where you may live) and are happy with how our trading has been going. Our apologies again to the clients in the Guardian FX system for the delays we are experiencing in getting this one off the ground at the new broker and running like a well oiled machine. We are very close now and we are looking forward to reporting back with some good news on this front in terms of timelines. As always we are chomping at the bit to resolve any issues we may be faced with. Please visit our website and blog for frequent updates and newsletters, and do not hesitate to contact us at any time should you have any inquires or concerns you would like to discuss.
Thank you to all our current investors for your trust once again in trading with us. We are looking forward to trading this month and making August a month of healthy profits across all of our systems combined.
Warm Regards,
The Cayo Flow team
The Cayo Flow team
