CrazyIvan 1.9 Released

While some of us (names withheld to protect the guilty) have passed the last week frolicking in some Australian luxury resort, the Mole has been spilling several pints of his blood to complete a new major release of CrazyIvan. I’ll spare you the gory details but suffice to say that the past five days have not been pretty as getting certain parts implemented turned out to be a hurdle run littered with barbed wire fences.

I’m glad I got to the finish line but I feel like I just gave birth to oversized evil twins. Anyway, not that you guys care either way so let’s move on to the good stuff. Here’s the skinny on what is new and improved:

• More detailed messaging – Occasionally some of you were sending me emails asking me why CrazyIvan would exit a particular campaign before a stop had been touched. There are several ways how CrazyIvan exits – obviously it does not have predefined target, thus it has inherent mechanisms on how to advance the initial stop loss (ISL). On top of that there are also various triggers that get it out of a trade early – for instance if a new risk multiple has been gained but there was a pull back below the newly gained threshold (e.g. 1.32R was achieved but the candle closed below 1R). Another exit occurs when 1R cannot be achieved within a three candle period. Unless you know these rules intimately I would most likely continue to receive questions on an ongoing basis so in the interest of self preservation something had to be done. I decided to provide a lot more context in alerts preceding the actual exit reminder. So each time CrazyIvan changes its mind – it will be sure to let you know why.
• Logging – I thought long and hard about how to best implement the activity logging of CrazyIvan. In the end I decided that persisting trade objects to a correlated spreadsheet in Google docs (now Google drive) would be the best way to do this in a transparent and flexible way. This allows you guys to immediately see what trades have been taken (and which ones you may have missed) and it also gives us many ways on how to extract the data into charts and statistics. Well, I quickly wound up regretting that decision as the Google spreadsheet and document APIs are disjointed and having one talk to the other turned out to be a royal pain in the rectum.
  In the end however sheer will power and stubbornness won the day and I am happy to report that the Google logging module has been successfully implemented, tested, and now deployed. I am not yet ready to start sharing the spreadsheets for two reason – one they just got launched and two they only log live activity. And then three of course – I need to make sure everything is logged accurately on a live account running for more than a day.
  The spreadsheets will be publicly available under a submenu below the CrazyIvan menu item above. A new entry will appear a few seconds after a trade completes. Each strategy will have its own spreadsheet – so you’ll see spreadsheets for EURUSD.360, AUDJPY.360, EURUSD.30, etc.
• New trending module – Not that you would care about this but the hammer long and shooting star short entries rely on trending markets and I decided to completely rewrite the trending module from scratch. Reason being – I had to fix something on the old one and realized that it had turned into a frankenstein monster – really ugly and about to rip my head off. So I wound up killing it and writing it from scratch. Which will give us better and more precise trending entries, at least according to Ivan’s rules (as conveyed to me by the Convict).
• Other little bug fixes and improvements – There’s obviously a lot happening behind the scenes and not a day goes by when I don’t find an opportunity to fix something or at least refactor it and thus improve the code quality. As we are moving through this beta testing phase it seems that Crazy.Ivan is running pretty reliably and with your help I have been able to improve the strategy significantly. My sincere thanks to everyone who has been contributing – every single email is appreciated.

So what is next for CrazyIvan? We’ll keep it running in beta for a few more weeks I think just to make sure it’s ready for prime time. If you have not done so already – make sure you re-subscribe so that you won’t get cut off!! And I’m sure I’m going to find a few more little issues to nail down – hopefully nothing major – I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Scott will complete the CrazyIvan cheat sheet in the next week – it’s something many of you guys asked for and it explains all types of entries that comprise the current version of CrazyIvan. In the future we may decide to include some of Ivan’s more advanced entries but that will most likely not happen for a few more months.

As for the types of subscriptions we will offer – again I gave this a lot of thought and have decided to separate it into the following:

• CrazyIvan.30 Trending – this strategy trades about 15% of the time but when it does it is very busy – expect about 100 trades a month. We will start out with the EURUSD, the AUDJPY, the GBPUSD, and up to two more FX pairs. I am also considering to add the ZB and/or the ZN. Scott is still working on a configuration that we believe is appropriate for the ES but it’ll probably be another month or two until we get there.
• CrazyIvan.360 – that’s the six hour version which only quiets down during sideways low volatility periods. Expect around 50 trades per month. This is great for someone who can attend to his/her charts five minutes four times each day. Yes, there is the overnight issue – not sure how to exactly address that but Scott tells me that sleeping through the night rollover will not greatly affect the end result. I await more detailed statistics from him – it’s about time he made himself useful. Same symbols as the 30.
• CrazyIvan.720 – the 12 hour version which also only quiets down during sideways low volatility periods. You will only need to attend to your charts for about five minutes every 12 hours. Perfect for busy people with a career who cannot spend much time in front of their trading setup – minimal commitment. Or you’re just lazy – like me. Expect to receive about 30 trades each month and we’ll start out with the same products as the above.

I know what you’re going to ask already – will there be a combo sub? Frankly, I don’t know yet – it all depends on the level of interest and how things unfold. I would prefer to get this out of beta first and then gauge the level of interest. After having spent over six months of almost every spare minute it’s time to release it into the wild and see if it can stand on its own. Everything else will be decided once I get a better feel on how you guys fare with it and how difficult it will be for you to abide by a rule based automated strategy. There will be times when you will hold your nose while taking an entry – sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. The tutorial page is pretty verbose on what it takes to trade a rule based trading system (RBTS) and although it may have a solid edge long term it may not be for you. Or it may be exactly what you were looking for – every single trader is different.

What I like the most about CrazyIvan this far is that, thanks to all of your input, it has advanced to something very different from the other types of systems I have encountered out there. Usually you sign up at a place like C2, look at some profit charts, and then decide on some system that appears to be matching your basic requirements. Then you get the signals and you simply trade them without ever knowing how they are produced and why.

CrazyIvan is completely different and unique in that it only trades but also educates you and provides much context regarding what it does and why it does it. Over time it will actually make you a better and more seasoned trader as it will implicitly teach you discipline and consistency – qualities that are often difficult to acquire on your own. It will also instill on you a rigorous approach to position sizing and money management. After a few months of doing it this way you’ll wonder how you could ever trade without it! Finally and most importantly it will teach you what Ivan calls the ‘language of the market’ – price patterns are great way of understanding to what the tape constantly tries to tell us. Only problem is that most of us never listen as we are too busy running our mouths and our respective imaginations 😉

It’s not too late – learn how to consistently bank coin without news, drama, and all the misinformation. If you are interested in becoming a subscriber then don’t waste time and sign up here. The Zero indicator service also offers access to all Gold posts, so you actually get double the bang for your buck.

Cheers,