Three months have passed since the start of the current edition of the WTI, and what a difficult year 2015 is turning out. Since the start of the competition in December participants following a risk parity approach lost money in everything as asset classes went down concurrently. Those using leverage even made it worse with risk parity generating big drawdowns. The risk payoff for taking risk in equities was better than the payoff to take risk in bonds, but there was no balance point. Most participants following risk parity lost a lot of money mainly because interest rates being too low for adopting this strategy.

January saw the events caused by Swiss National Bank drastic move. Again a lot of participants trading forex lost a lot of money and are probably thinking twice about the way to operate FX. Most Asian traders in the competition lost all the equity in the account, along with the leader for December Alexander Ivanchev. After trying to come back he is left with 2% of his initial capital.

February saw the Greek program extension episode and the European QE, and the raising to the lead of two other Bulgarian participants. Todor Angelov now with gains of 405% mainly trades CFDs but also Forex. The CFDs positions are only in stocks regardless of the origin as long as they follow a trend. He now owns 2 stocks in Canada, one in Brazil and one in Switzerland. He only applies fundamental analysis with the help of a friend from time to time to tell him what is the technical position. So far Angelov’s key strength seems to be his patience and good discipline, holding positions for 3 months or more if necessary. So far he has not misuse the leveraged provided by the CFDs having regularly 80% of his funds free.  

In second place with gains of 132% is Mr. Grivnev a trader with rich experience has he likes to introduce himself. He likes to trade forex as simple as possible avoiding fancy strategies. This means that he also trades with the trend and if the trend is up he will not even consider open short positions regardless the time frame. That is what he means by trading simple. He takes into account odd risks to many investors, like trading in a bad physical or psychological condition, or not trading in days where he expects higher volatility because of news, or closing all positions when he goes on weekend.

Something all short term forex traders should do.