I just logged into my FXCM account to check up on how GalleonFX is managing my account, and to my dismay all the profits gained have been given back to the market. What can I say, I am naturally disappointed and I must admit I lost a bit of my initial fervor about GalleonFX. I kept a close eye on the opened positions in my test $1,100 account. At one point my account was up as high as $1500, but now as I speak it’s down to $1131! Right now I am sitting on a -$101 floating P/L (profit/loss). So, what is my opionion on this as far as why the crappy performance. Well, ever since I opened my account I noticed that while galleonfx give some pretty good entry signals, it really sucks at exiting out of profitable positions. I suppose their thinking (the programmers behind the automated trading sytem) is to avoid cutting a winning trade short, but what often happens is that a trade that is let’s say $200 in profit more than often ends up being a mediocre $23 or so gain, or even worse, a loss! I am not a forex expert by any means but I get the impression that galleonfx is running some sort of hedge and taking profits as a certain volatility level is reached which triggers the system to exit out of the trades if they are in profit. Perhaps those of you more knowledgeable can enlighten me.
The month is not over so I guess I still have a chance to end up with a mediocre profit- who knows! The only conclusion that I guess I can draw is that it might not be advisable to open an account with GalleonFX with just $1000 as they are currently offering (offer ends at the end of the month). Given the volatility that I’ve observed having such a small account size might not be a good idea.
Just my two cents. Hope to hear your opinion.
Cheers.
Alan out.
November 20th, 2007 at 6:53 am
[…] a pal’s experience with Galleon, I just logged into my FXCM account to check up on how GalleonFX is managing my account, and to my […]
January 8th, 2008 at 11:50 pm
my account started trading yesterday. i have -5,45% up to now, including floating positions of -900 EUR.
lets see, where this will bring us.
this can’t be really true…i am chased by bad luck.
i hope that galleonfx can deal with situations like the actual one. the market is in a range and will soon breakout. the longer the range, the heavier the breakout…
January 9th, 2008 at 4:35 am
dammit my account is in a tiny drawdown too. I wouldn’t mind this so much if it weren’t that my account was at one point I was quite a bit ahead of my original deposit. Now I am in the minus. I don’t know, but if this keeps up until June I’m out. I’ll look towards other Managed Accounts.
January 9th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
today i am -11 %. this can’t be true. -3200€. they combine so much strategies but all are crap. i dont have another explanation for that. no hedging detected, just about 30 floating positions, all are minus! no answer to my emails, which i sent 2 / 1 days ago. the first phone number does not work, on the second i hear an individuals mailbox.
i am hoping for the fxcm sentiment aggressive fund, which started trading yesterday.
January 9th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
did u successfully call them?
January 9th, 2008 at 6:48 pm
yeah I feel the same way as you do…I know the market is very choppy right now, but why don’t they adjust their trading robot to NOT open positions in a choppy market, or heck just manually set it themselves.
Right now all my floating positions are in minus too. Another thing that I’ve noticed is that lately they’ve opened some GBP/JPY positions which surprises me because before they did not use this pair. This pair is notoriously volatile and quite dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. It comes as no surprise then that almost all the GBP/JPY positions they opened ended up massively in the minus. This pair can swing wildly - especially right now given the lack of direction in the market.
As for their support, I don’t know as I don’t have much experience with their support staff.
My account size is not that big since for me this is only a ‘test’ account. But what sucks is that at one point my puny account was at $1500 up from $1100 (original deposit) and all $400 was given back to the market in a matter of days! A bit back before this I had the same scenario happen except it did not quite reach $1500 but got close and then went back down to below my original deposit and then back to around the $1420 mark. It’s like a yoyo - I mentioned this in one of my posts.
Makes me wish I was lucky enough to have entered before they had that huge %70 gain on the USD PAMM. This way I could at the very least have some room to play with. Now even the tinniest losing streak hurts and I’m hoping that I would get above my original capital with enough breathing room to make me feel comfortable.
In conclusion I am not really happy at the moment but I hope I am not being unreasonable and just bitching for nothing. Hopefully things will be in the green for me down the road; maybe even before the end of the month.
I’ll keep you guys up to date.
January 9th, 2008 at 6:50 pm
I never called them. I just once sent a standard bitchy e-mail but never got a response. They probably just ignore e-mails from people with small accounts or those who complain about their performance.
January 9th, 2008 at 9:16 pm
i’m out. just talked to my point of contact at fxcm and sent the RLPOA to stop galleon trading on my account.
up to now, i realized 12% loss since 01/07/08!
you can’t rely on a system, that is unable to handle the market in ranging periods and which is purely automatic and volatile, like sha said. it can work well, but it can even end in a disaster, when it comes to new dd phases.
at the moment, i am just using the sentiment aggressive fund, with accounts based in EUR and USD. still looking further.
January 10th, 2008 at 2:44 am
Hmm, I just may get out of this one too, but not just yet.
When did you join and how much is your total drawdown?
I agree with what you’ve said about handling market volatility. I don’t think their system takes that into account. Heck, they even traded during the Christmas holidays - a notoriously choppy market time due to decreased liquidity.
I’ll give it some more time and if I continue to register drawdowns I’ll look for other Managed Account opportunities and as usual report it over here.
I’m currently in the Sentiment Fund too and so far so good they’re doing okay. I’m in a tiny drawdown but it looks like the account is slowly recovering. The drawdowns are NOWHERE near as bad as with GalleonFX.
January 10th, 2008 at 8:23 am
May I enter the fray?
I have been with GalleonFX since Nov 22. Hence, I was apparently able to miss the initial Nov drawdown and benefit from the end of Nov. Mid December was incredible, including a one day 20% gain (approx. $200 profit-pretty exciting). Even with the negative turn towards the end of Dec, I still ended up for the month.
Here is my issue, as I am learning great deals since I began…
I have experienced at least 8 straight days of loss. I am not ever worried about opening tickets starting at an immediate loss as it is typical to see a turnaround sometime during the night (yes I am getting addicted to refreshing the reports page lol, mostly out of curiosity).
My issue reflects what Alan originally posted earlier (and in other discussion venues) - the INability to exit profitable positions. For example, two nights ago (Jan 7, 2008) my account showed over a $40 gain after starting the trading day down (again, not a problem with the start of trading). The next morning I checked and my account was DOWN $40 or more.
Who’s minding the store? It seems “Mr. Computer Software” likes to hold on to profitable tickets until they go in the red. Seriously, nearly every day since late December, specific tickets were in the positive and were allowed to go into the negative before they were closed out.
Perhaps I do not know enough about the protocols governing WHEN you can exit a ticket, but I have seen Galleon exit positions in the middle of trading day, so I know it’s possible.
I thought the basis for consistent earnings (thinking at least monthly, if not annually) in the forex market was to take little bits of profit (when available) multiple times a day, everyday.
Understanding the almost “mirrored” potential for loss, it seems that there should be more intensive administration of trading activities by a human.
I am hesitant to request trading stopped on my account. Reason being, I believe that one needs to think on a different scale, again monthly if not annually. Galleon, after all, is up over 100% gross for all of 2007, yes? AND that included four months of straight drawdowns. Besides, I am pretty sure if I stopped trading for a little while, I would not be able to monitor activities, not to mention missing out on any breakouts (I almost can’t afford to stop trading for this reason - yes, a “catch-22″)
On the other hand, as I have regularly deposited a few more hundred in my account for both Dec and now Jan, I am into my principal after being up over $400 at one point. Scary lol
Honestly, anything from a modest 25% to %50 annually would make me happy, especially with small monthly contributions.
Sorry to write so much, but it’s been a tough start of 2008 :)
P.S. I am also of the belief that smaller accounts are simply proportional and directly reflect the daily percentages everyone is receiving, including much larger accounts. This is why I have not emailed them nor have posted anything until now. I am sure that my losses are a scary indication of what some 5 and 6-figure accounts are experiencing.
January 10th, 2008 at 8:47 am
Hi Erl, thanks for sharing that with us and don’t worry about the long post - post as much as you want as logn as it is relevant I - and no doubt everyone else - won’t mind.
I may suggest to everyone, before this post starts amassing tons of comment to move this discussion on to the blog’s forum over here (I created a thread for it):
http://alansmoneyblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=1549.0