In last week’s Trading Cup Trader Spotlight, we featured Peizhi Zhang’s staggering July 2022 1500% gains where he showed his ability to locate support and resistance levels, his timely revenge trading skill, proper use of leverage to his advantage, and his discretionary trading style.
In today’s blog, we highlight another trader named De Jia Li who made 1,507% returns for the month of October 2021 starting with a $500 account balance. Both traders had low starting capital and similar gains.
We will uncover his chosen trading instruments, stats, trading style and strategy that helped him achieve an incredible return over 1,507%. Plus, we will discuss in detail the specific trading instrument he used that covered 35% of all his trades yet made up 93% of his entire October 2021 returns.
Before we continue, the Trading Cup leaderboard updates regularly so you can see the results of the top 10 competing traders. Our statistics section also showcases their key trading metrics to give you an insight into their trading strategies.
You can check out the live stats through the Trading Cup homepage.
Before we reveal the successful trading instrument De Jia Li utilised, let’s first review his statistics.
He performed a total of 293 trades across the following trading instruments:
For the month of October, De Jia has traded these 5 selected instruments only as his choice. Note that 35% of those are coming from trading Silver (XAGUSD). That is the obvious clue in this blog’s title which comprises 93% of his entire October 2021 gains.
How did he manage to generate such a strong result on trading Silver?
Drawdowns
Let’s have a breakdown on his drawdowns. In short-term trading, drawdowns matter a lot.
We divided his drawdowns into 3 major zones.
The first 53 trades had a peak of $5,848.86 PnL (Profit and Loss Equity) and this is where the first major drawdown level occurred where he bottomed at $1,822.32 resulting a 68.84% drawdown.
The next 42 trades peaked at $8,723.76 then pulled back at $7,754.46 resulting a 11.11% drawdown. Somehow, he made a good turn-around on his second major drawdown! A drawdown level within 10-20% range is considered a decent risk management when trading leveraged instruments.
As his October trading activity came to a closure, his next 60 trades peaked at $10,090.11 down to his final PnL of $8,037.41 resulting a 20.34% drawdown. Again, within the 10-20% range!
Special note also that his last 152 trades were held above $8,000 level which we can say he managed to preserve his month-to-date profits.
He had an overall average of 33.43% across those 3 drawdown levels for the month of October 2021.
Compared to our last week’s highlighted trader, De Jia Li has a more natural equity curve but that doesn’t mean he is the inferior trader between the two. At the end of my article, I will lay-out in depth one of his Silver trades to show his trading strategy and skills.
His monthly key trading statistics:
- Total Trades: 293
- Break-even trades: 6 (A trade result that is within the -1/+1 PnL value range can be considered as a break-even)
- Loss trades: 154
- Won trades: 133
- Win rate: 45.39%
- Average gain on wins: $173.28
- Average loss on losses: -$100.70
- Biggest Win: $970.94 (China50)
- Biggest Loss: -$741 (China50)
- Trade Direction: 214 Buys/Longs & 79 Sells/Shorts (73% of all his traders are buys/longs)
- Best Performing Instrument: Silver ($7,490.08 PnL comprises 93% of realized October returns)
- Worst Performing Instrument: Gold (-$408.20 PnL)
- Quickest Trade: 1 minute (China50)
- Longest Trade: 6 days and 11 hours (China50)
- Average Trading Volume: 0.94 Lot Size
- Smallest Trading Volume: 0.10 Lot Size
- Largest Trading Volume: 5.01 Lot Size (China50)
Based on the stats gathered, he traded for 3 weeks in the month of October 2021. He manually closed both his 228 winning and 27 losing trade positions thus making a total of 255 overall trades. Only 38 trades went according to his initial trade plan. We can see here he’s more of a conservative type of a trader applying strict management skills. He surely paid more attention to his risk management after the he suffered a terrible 68.84% drawdown making sure his returns are well retained. He got greedy over the China50 trades with the largest trading volume of 5.01 lot size scoring him a $970.94 gain as well as hitting him hard with the same leverage, costing him a disappointing -$741 loss!
It is very important to understand the risks involved in leveraged trading. Out of that experience, 44% of his trades were focussed on Silver from mid to the final part of his October trading journey with an average volume of 0.80 per trade only thus he found footing and started to pile gains for his account. We can clearly see the results of his adjustments on his second and final drawdown levels and by doing so, making the Silver as his best performing instrument. He appears to be more of a day trader type and not using algorithmic trading systems or EAs. Overall, he didn’t allow his emotions to lose control over his trading decisions.
Let’s have a look at some of his notable Silver trades:
XAGUSD 15-minute chart via ACY MT4
Remember that I pointed out earlier that 73% of all his traders are buys/longs. On this day, 12th October, he started with just 1 long position then added another as soon as the Silver price fell. He keep adding buy positions making 11 in total then markets moved to his favour resulting in $3,544 gains upon his exit. Note that some of these positions were closed that day and the next day but all ended well in profit.
XAGUSD 15-minute chart via ACY MT4
The following day, 13th October, he went long again with 8 bold positions. Five of these were added as soon as price got near his targets summing up a total of $1,181 gains for the day.
XAGUSD 15-minute chart via ACY MT4
Last example that happened on the 14th of October. He opened 2 initial longs then added 3 more, as the price got closer to his take-profit levels. All successfully closed out garnering $1,554 gains.
As a conclusion in this week’s trader spotlight:
- Drawdown Management
His trading strategy revolved around Silver applying excellent drawdown management skills even he has only a 45.39% win rate.
- Batch Trading
Strength in numbers. He utilised bulk trading orders at different prices as part of his successful trading strategy manifested on Silver trades. He understands both the rewards and risks offered in batch trading.
- Price Positioning Strategy
When the price got nearer to his exit targets, he added more to support his initial positions hence increasing chances of closing them out successfully. Such advanced trading skills!
Congratulations to De Jia Li for a successful trading result in October 2021!
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Every week, we scout for the next spotlight trader so stay tuned in our blog and social accounts.
Trading involves risk.
