Why Asirikuy Live Results Are Not Public: Explaining Some of My Views on Live Testing

It is not atypical for people to send me emails regarding the live results of Asirikuy systems. Emails with phrases like: What is Teyacanani’s average monthly return? or, do you have any live tests for Atipaq? Are commonly found within my email inbox. Many people are puzzled by the fact that I do not share live results as this sometimes seems a bit “shadowy” since some people out there believe that I am trying to sell some systems simply on my word and reputation. However this is simply not the case. On today’s post at mechanical Forex I want to carefully explain to all of you the reasons why I do not share Asirikuy live tests publicly and why I believe this is the most adequate and ethical behavior regarding these results.

First of all let us consider what a live test is useful for. If you have a certain automated trading setup you want to sell to other people with the mere idea of getting them to believe they can reproduce your results then showing a link to some investor access verified live account which shows profit is the best way to get them to pay for and use your software (with the aim of reproducing your results). If you’re an EA seller who wants to get people to buy systems with the hope that they will “just work” and generate cash for them then you will probably be all for and support having public live tests (because this hugely benefits your business).

My problem with the sharing of current Asirikuy live account tests (and we currently have more than 70 real money accounts) is that people will inevitably believe that they will be able to reproduce the results on those live accounts on their own accounts. This encourages people to join the website just to get and run the systems without taking the time to learn about them, their logic and statistical characteristics. The main problem with this is that Asirikuy systems currently have – at most – about 2 years of live testing, something which is not representative of really long term results. Someone may get very excited about a 6 month live tests which has shown a 40%+ profit only to start trading the system before it goes into a statistically predicted draw down of 20%. The person is frustrated with the system that “failed” and starts shifting through Asirikuy systems attempting to follow the “best performers”.

I strongly believe that live tests should not be used to encourage people to join my site because they encourage the idea that equity curves on live accounts will continue to behave as they have up until now without any consideration of long term statistical characteristics. People will use systems without understanding them, they will not know anything about Monte Carlo evaluation or adequate risk assessment and they will be disappointed when the Maximum draw down of a 1 year test starts to increase to what is considered the long term statistical norm for the system. The fact is that if I shared live results many people would join just to get the systems and reproduce these results and this is a SURE WAY to fail in trading.

Again I would like to emphasize that Asirikuy is NOT an EA selling website. I have absolutely no intention to make people believe the systems we have developed are the best and that they can “make a killing” by using them on the market. On the contrary I want people to know that the key to profitability in algorithmic trading lies within understanding and the gathering of knowledge which is precisely what Asirikuy is about. The website is about teaching people how to succeed in this business (using the knowledge I have put into practice to do this myself) but it is in no way going to try to “push” any magical trading solution onto people who want to join. The website proposes an education in automated trading, which is the MOST IMPORTANT thing to achieve success in this field.

There are already a couple of people discussing Asirikuy systems online and a few websites showing live results of the systems (for example my friend Chris’s blog) but I will NOT share Asirikuy private live results with the general public as this puts my website very effectively as if I was trying to sell some kind of “expected performance” to prospective members. This is terribly irresponsible to do from my part as I would be discouraging learning and understanding, I would be providing live tests which give a future expectation that ignores long term profit and draw down cycles which are precisely what must be perfectly understood in order to trade successfully. I therefore consider this sharing against my website’s main objective which is to share an education, not a “set and forget” solution.

In general I believe this has had the precise effect I have been looking for, it discourages the “holy grail hunter” and encourages people who truly have an intent to learn to join the website. This means that Asirikuy members are generally focused on understanding what they are doing and analyze live results in the context of all Asirikuy knowledge. In the end that is precisely the reason why Asirikuy live results are only available to members, because the knowledge and understanding gained within Asirikuy is VITAL to put the systems and their results into the right context, without any false expectations or wrong assumptions. In the end if you need live tests to join Asirikuy then you’re looking for the wrong thing on our website (just a set and forget system) and it is probably best for you to move on.  Our community is about people who want to learn and understand and holy grail hunters will definitely not benefit from it.

If you are interested in Asirikuy please remember that this is geared at people who want to succeed in automated trading through understanding and knowledge, it is NOT about finding any holy grail or about getting you to use some “set and forget” solution. Joining Asirikuy just to get systems is a BIG mistake which will only have financial loss as a consequence. If you truly want to succeed in automated trading by UNDERSTANDING what you’re doing, creating a solid base in system design, evaluation, development and analysis please consider joining Asirikuy.com, a website filled with educational videos, trading systems, development and a sound, honest and transparent approach towards automated trading in general . I hope you enjoyed this article ! :o)

Print Friendly, PDF & Email
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “Why Asirikuy Live Results Are Not Public: Explaining Some of My Views on Live Testing”

  1. Hi Daniel-

    Thanks for mentioning my blog.

    I like to think i’m doing a service by showing people what’s possible with your systems. And if I get you a few new customers along the way, it benefits you as well.

    Also, i’m intrigued with the challenge of how to select among your various systems and allocate funds between them. With stocks, its relatively easy because the winners always break out to new all times highs. And once they break $80, then $100, there’s a pretty good chance they will to to $120, but not before trading back to the low 90’s first. Why is that? I don’t know, but i’ve seen it happen over and over and it appears to work.

    With Forex systems its starts with a solid understanding of the system’s underlying logic, and back-test performance. I did a pack of reviews of your systems on my blog late last year and I only got as far as Atipaq. I still need to do Quimichi, Sapaq, Atinalla FE, Coatl and the new one you just announced this week.

    After that comes a demo test and if that passes, then its onto live trading with an amount of capital that’s roughly equal to the degree of confidence I have in the system. For example, I have about 2 times as much confidence in Atialla No1 then I have in Atinalla FE.

    As a result of that, i’m diversied across 5 different systems, every one of which is a portfolio of some sort. When you consider instances (a pair plus a system) is almost 30 instances total which is really great for diversification. As Jim Cramer often says, “diversification is the only free lunch.” Plus its a good use of capital since there’s always something going on – its unusual to see a week go by without a single trade in a given account.

    So far the results have been pretty good, but we’ll see what happens. As you pointed out above, and often bears repeating:

    “Past performance is no guarantee of future results”.

    Take care and keep up the great work,

    Chris

    • admin says:

      Hi Chris,

      Thank you for your comment :o) Well I do think you are providing something very interesting which is a completely independent view about Asirikuy systems and how they work. I personally do not have anything against people sharing their results of Asirikuy systems when they do it themselves, as third parties as they have complete freedom to do so (their trading, their account). However I feel that when I personally do this it is unethical and gives the website the wrong image. As I say it would give the impression that Asirikuy is about systems, which is not the case :o) Bear in mind that I am not only about getting new members and in fact I prefer to have 1 or 2 new members who are committed and focused on learning what they’re doing than 100 members who just want to “set and forget”. Each new Asirikuy members demands some of my personal time and therefore member quality for me has always been paramount as a big component of Asirikuy for me has always been quality support and formation :o). That said, I believe that you’re doing a great job with your website and the fact that you’re also a stock trader brings in a very positive and interesting perspective :o)

      Regarding the allocation of capital between Asirikuy portfolios, that is indeed something very interesting! As you say for most people this goes in line with the confidence they have on the systems which is most of the time proportional to short term results. When people have positive outcomes in live trading – even on the very short term – they feel that capital allocation for that strategy is a good idea, which often can be the case if adequate balancing measures are taken into account. For different types of traders capital allocation may be done in different ways. Traders who want to have higher performance usually allocate more money to better performers while more conservative traders generally allocate money in virtue of robustness instead, even if robust strategies are currently within draw downs. The idea here would be that strategies that have less probability to fail deserve to trade more capital by pure nature, as a conservative investor might prefer to have more money on treasuries than on stocks, even though stocks might be performing much better. In the end I could say that there is no simple rule of thumb to do this and it depends greatly on available funds and trader preferences. A clear knowledge of your real Vs your perceived risk needs to be taken into account here.

      As you say, in the end diversification is a great tool and as long as you maintain a clear perspective on the long term statistical characteristics of strategies diversification will help you get to your goal as your probability to reach WC scenarios on all accounts will be extremely low. Jim Cramer did have a very good point when he said that this way of trading is the only “free lunch”. The holy grail of algorithmic trading is indeed diversification. In my mind success is a combination of understanding, expecting and evaluating (as the Asirikuy mantra goes), understand what you’re doing, know what to expect, and evaluate your results against the long term statistical information you get from backtests and MC simulations.

      I am also very glad to mention your blog, always enjoy your weekly posts :o) I will also be happy to read your reviews about the new systems once they come up! Thank you very much again for commenting Chris,

      Best Regards,

      Daniel

  2. […] (note that profit figures are not shown as Asirikuy live results are NOT published publicly (read here to learn […]

Leave a Reply

WordPress › Error

There has been a critical error on this website.

Learn more about troubleshooting WordPress.