Dear Investor,
We hope that this message finds you all well as we enter into the month of August. We will shorten our updates down significantly on the monthly updates and get into more details on the quarterly updated.
The good news this month is that we were positive across the board. We didn’t shatter any records, and some were just barely positive, but given the overall state of the markets we are pleased! Navigating these waters lately is like doing so in a patched up leaky old inflatable boat. Most people around the world have watched this whole “debt train” cruising down the track toward a mutual guaranteed devastation now in both Europe and the USA. Most have been watching with a gloomy interest but also mixed with justifiable fear for the future.
During the past few weeks, markets have become increasingly anxious, in turn creating an environment of heightened price volatility and crazy whiplash movements. Right when all of this Euro Zone volatility looked to be settling a bit, US officials have been preparing for a possible dollar default, and the dollar is now near a record low. While the situation is likely more serious in Europe, the spot light has certainly been “shifted” to the USD at least temporarily. Unfortunately these two currencies are the base currencies for most of the pairs we trade. So again, we are proceeding carefully this month in the markets. More than anything we just really want some stability to return again to the FX Markets. While we do not necessarily think that the austerity measures and debt ceiling solutions are even solutions at all, they certainly will bring some stability back again to the markets. If an agreement is reached in USA, as expected, on the debt ceiling this could lead to a sigh of relief in the markets and for many FX traders as well as traders investors and speculators of all other global markets. This is certainly shaping up to be a summer to remember, and similar to that of the 2008 crisis and just as long and drawn out.
Our returns for the month of July are as follows…
SYSTEM | INOVA | OFM | Broker Average | |
Precision FX | 0.45% | 5.19% | 2.82% | |
McLaren FX | 2.68% | 1.29% | 1.99% | |
Vega FX | 1.07% | 51.13% | 26.10% | |
July Average | 1.40% | 19.20% | 10.30% |
* 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 at midnight server time, NOT the floating equity. So open trades which have not realized their PnLs yet will be carried into the next month.
* Please keep in mind that we are now trading some of our systems at more than one broker. We will always have discrepancies between different brokers no matter who they are. For certain systems we have also noticed small discrepancies between larger investor’s accounts (100K+) and smaller investor’s accounts (<5K). This often has to do with the broker’s min position sizes and how smaller trades are distributed or rounded with the allocation software in our MAM/PAMM. Please take note that while our returns are calculated from 1st of each calendar month to the last trading day of the month, our performance fee period (the period in which high water mark performance fees are calculated on), is from NFP to NFP. NFP is the non-farm payroll and is the first Friday of each month.
Our complete Performance Tables have also been updated with the following statistics of interest (broken down by brokerages) on this following page: http://cayoflow.com/performance.html
MONTH-END TRADING RECAP
Trading on all systems was again a difficult task this month, but seemed to improved near the last few weeks. We ended up closing some of our systems down early, and will keep a close eye on things this month should we need to do the same. We have been working on a trade copier for quite some time, and have implemented it onto our Vega product for now. We feel that this will be the only system that may work for this, as it does not have any of the short term scalping or price action based systems on it which are very broker dependant. We are of course testing this on all systems though. This was responsible for much of the large discrepancies between Vega at both brokers this month. The copier was not configured correctly to read and place position sizes between brokers, hence magnifying both the gains and losses at OFM brokerage. This has since been rectified, and the discrepancies should be few. An updated profile has been written about Vega, and an updated profile is in the works for McLaren. The McLaren strategy has been (and is still being) “refined” a little more. A few pairs will be removed, and it is very close to finally becoming diversified by adding in a short and mid term strategy to its general long term counter-trend strategy. This should really smooth things out, and these updates will take effect this month.
INFORMATION AND NEW DEVELOPMENTS
In general we will spare many of the details and the in-depth market commentary we normally get into each month, and save them for the quarter end updates. Our commissions are now being reduced and standardized across all of our systems. For most systems its lower and some slightly higher now sitting at $11/RT across the board at both brokers effective immediately. We will always work on bringing these lower when we can. On the broker front, things are working smoothly, with the exception of our copier which is our issue not the brokers. Sparen has still not completed all retail exit accounts, and we will follow up with all Sparen account holders separately on this topic in the following day as we have some important information to share and discuss on this, so please hang tight on this topic. We know that it has taken an enormous amount of time on their end, and just want to ensure we are doing all we can to see that each client gets their exit funds back and accounts closed as quickly as possible.
SUMMARY
We are happy to once again report a positive and profitable update this month. In the meantime we are looking to keep an edge and navigate our way through this month’s shark infested and turbulent waters as best as we possibly can. It has been a tough go the past few months but we never give up and never stop trying to improve.
As always we will do our best to communicate in the form of monthly updates, or on a “per needed” basis as we go through the month on any issues which may present themselves. Please visit our website and blog (http://cayoflow.blogspot.com/) for frequent updates and newsletters (note: we are always adding new content to our website) and do not hesitate to contact us at any time should you have any inquires or concerns you would like to discuss with us.
Warm Regards,
The CayoFlow Team
No comments:
Post a Comment