Many have been wondering: How he did it (actually, it is more, how ‘WE’ did it)? To tell you the truth, 8 years ago, I wouldn’t come close to think it was remotely probable that I will be designing trading algorithms. I have no background in programming nor my former bosses nurture (or care) any future development.
It just happened…
I got married to the woman I loved (does not mean she loved me) and then, in less than 3 months I was preparing my divorced. Yes, I was crushed, devastated and took years to heal, but time is the most powerful medicine you can find.
As I avoided going back home to fight with my wife I found myself dedicating hours to my sales calls and surprisingly, learning how to use MT4. Yes, Metatrader 4 was popular and the online trading platform of choice for millions of traders (still is and I am confident will be) they say is created by Russians and I can see it.
In the Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell shares the 10,000 hours one must dedicate to any enterprise before mastering it. Well, some debate the idea, however...the reality cannot be denied. It works.
I (José Ricaurte Jaén Celada) will take you on my journey and how I met Ondro and built the most advanced Multi-currency Algorithm named; Osiris.
Since 2006, I was a stockbroker, so as you can imagine I have seen everything from the newsletter industry (USA) and heard it all from FX signals/traders/MAM services. You cannot create something new under the Sun.
One night, I think around 10:00 PM we had a client trading a martingale strategy and he had one basket short NZDUSD. I noticed the last trade on the basket had something like $4350 in profits. So, if you see it, you think all is good and you are heading towards a beautiful and juicy payday; think again.
To my surprise, that basket NZDUSD ended at a loss; but why? Yes, I started asking questions (to myself, no one cares at the office) so I went to review all the trades placed in the basket. I calculated mathematical distance, swaps (deadly), lots size and more.
And...I figured it out. The main reason why strategies tend to fail is lack of evolution from its foundation. Sure, you can do a lot of damage learning how to manage your risk, but you do need to have the ‘edge’ at that moment, I decided to focus my work ‘day and nights’ to improve the martingale approach and how to make it effective on different currencies not only US pairs, crosses and exotics.
The Big Break came sometime in the Spring of 2014. I built a small list of clients and had together close to $4M, now, remember it is just me doing all of it.
I wrote down (always write down your goals and ideas) Osiris Genesis structure and added a few ideas to improve risk management. I was ready, however, I had one challenge...I am not a programmer (next to this one, I had limited resources to pay for development).
What do you do when you have limited resources and one idea? Simple, you go out and sell the dream. And, that is exactly what I did.
As I shared with clients the key idea behind Osiris, some laughed, but remember people will laugh at you until they see others succeed, then they regret not investing with you on early stages. It happens all the time and in the trading business it is even worse.
Now, I had the opportunity to make money for clients around the world: London, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Germany and Denmark. But...it was not enough...still it was a manual process
And Yes, I lost some money too, nothing makes money 24x7, never forget it.
Finally, one of the clients was happy to allocate capital in this venture and fund the hours of discussions, logic and programming.
Introducing Ondro from Slovakia.
Honestly, I never heard of the country...or maybe yes, I did. Potentially, the Europe Soccer Cup.
Ondro took time to understand my ideas, I am sure he hated working with me at the beginning. You see, programmers have structure and sequences in ‘how’ they do things. I create and design, but lacked (noticed lacked) the flow to have a smooth communication with him.
From the moment we met, it will take us almost 5 years to get to our moment of truth...releasing Osiris and all the versions created. Yes, I fulfill what I always wanted, total commitment to the strategy.
When you take any idea, then translate it to codes, let’s say things can work a bit differently. Not that much, but you need time to make it work.
I was travelling back and forth my home country (Colon, Panama) had the opportunity to hike the Zugspitze in Bavaria. On the other hand, Ondro likes flying. I think it is called Paragliding, yes risky, but he enjoys it.
We test several versions, I cannot remember how many, but we pass 12 to 15 versions before having a minimum viable product or MVP.
On June 23, during the Brexit Referendum, we decided to keep running Osiris and see what will happen (yes, common myth among retail traders is to turn off EAs during news events) we wanted to embrace any scenario, after all, we are building an automated tool.
The outcome may surprise you, we yielded +40% in one single month of trading. And no, not all the trading came from GBPUSD.
We have our MVP (minimum viable product) and lots of data collected, what do you think I did with all that? Simple, time to find new trading capital. And we did it, not much something close to $500,000 in Chile.
No, trading is not like the videos, photos or parties you see online. I was not trading with a Mojito on my left hand nor Ondro had a boat.
We traded for 6 months, but the money was not a lot, something close to $1200 per month, and we had to pay expenses and share it 50/50. Also, money managers did not like us much, they said we have no clue about the trading business. We think it has to do with the fact Osiris is a slow Algo, and it does not trade a lot. Who knows…
Osiris Genesis was the first design I had, but I never stopped and Ondro never gave up.
I had an accident in early 2018, and almost died. As I needed to patch myself, I took from my vault one designed I had to trade crosses to be more specific, wild currency crosses like GBPNZD, EURAUD and the most deadly of all; GBPJPY.
Osiris Ragnarok was born. The new trading model will have less noise, increase accuracy and will do something no other automated strategy has ever done; detect trends.
You see, from all the data we have collected,, we noticed a couple patterns. One of them, If/when Osiris takes the first trade is the beginning of a new currency basket...then why not using this trade to start following the trend?
That is exactly what we did!
Osiris has a few key characteristics making it durable and robust if you compare it with other EAs you can think of.
Wait, we are not done…
Ondro got tired and I was bored of having the same issues with server providers, so what do you do..you build your own infrastructure...
If you read all these, now you know ‘Why Osiris’ this is not another joke a random guy put together to work today and go broke tomorrow.
It is not only the data, but all we have structure to allow users to have a real shot at trading. We wanted to build technology to change our trading and lives.
This is our Why; and yours....