Introduction
My name is Clive Backhouse and I live in Sydney’s inner west along the Parramatta River. As our three children have left home, my wife and I live in an apartment overlooking the river with views to the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I fully retired eighteen months ago after 48 years in the Aviation industry, seventeen years working for the Australian Government and thirty one years in my own business.
Brief background about your trading
My initial interest in trading started in the early 2000’s, looking at share trading and CFD’s. As the internet became more accessible and faster, I also looked at, and read some early books, on Forex trading. This really caught my attention as it could be a way of making an extra income, and in the future, a retirement interest and income.
In 2009 I was approached by a Forex training company and signed up to do their trading course. The course consisted of the use and setup of a Trading Platform, all the different Indicators and how to apply them, Trade Management and how to interpret News events. This was great grounding in understanding the practicalities of trading, but it required screen time, which working full time, I didn’t have. So my practical trading was very sporadic. I made and lost some money, but it turned out to be nothing more than a hobby. The idea was that once I retire, I could really nail it! I had also been warned to stay clear of trading robots because in the long run they don’t work.
At the end of 2017, through a broker I had a trading account with, I was introduced to Trade View, and investigated their Algo Trading System, and a short time later signed up to their Systems Building Program. I completed the course over a period of three to four months and slowly moved from manually trading to fully automated trading, using Trade View’s established algorithms and starting to develop some of my own using the Trade View X platform.
That was 18 months ago, and I set myself the target of a 2 year ‘apprenticeship’ to become an Algo Trader.
What you learnt at Trade View
Basically, the use of Algorithms, their management and development, which has allowed me to trade 24/7. The Systems Building Program was very comprehensive, and the support that came from the Trade View team was fantastic, always being available with help and advice.
After building, testing and analysing, I also discovered that each Algo is only built for a certain condition, so if you are trading a number of currencies, commodities or indices, you need a basket of different Algo’s. After back testing each Algo to see what works in the current conditions, I then put them into a portfolio of successful Algo’s which I can trade with.
Depending on the size of your account, Trade View taught me how to properly position size and not to take too many trades at one time. The other critical factor was the management of the drawdown on each trade and the total drawdown of the portfolio, and to work out what is acceptable for your account.
Please share some of your successes and failures while learning to trade
When manually trading, I found the hardest thing was to decide whether to place the trade at all. Pushing the buy/sell button! Making the decision even though the indicators were positive.
I would also tend to close the trade as soon as I had a small profit, and leave the losses open in the hope they would return to profit. I was margined out on a few occasions and lost money.
With the lessons learnt over the past two and a half years, I am now running a successful portfolio of two or three algo’s, which I monitor constantly through Trade View X, and the bank account is growing steadily.
My biggest mistake with the use of Algo’s was allowing them to take too many trades, having too high a drawdown, and not monitoring how the Algo’s are performing in the current situation. This led to being margined out on at least one occasion.
Conclusions: What are your future Goals?
My future goals are: To continue to develop my trading skills and manage my risk. To develop a trading portfolio in which I can earn an annual income and become financially independent.
To continue to use and develop algo’s so my time is freed up for more leisure and pursuit of other hobbies.
And to enjoy the experience along the way.
