GalleonFX – News Updates and Going Forward

It’s been a while since I closed my GalleonFX managed forex account, but once in a while I still visit their website out of curiosity to see how they’re performing. I was greeted with yet another huge drawdown figure. Check this out:

July 2008
EUR -24.8%
USD -24.0%
gross returns

Ouch!

Here is how GalleonFX staff rationalize yet another huge drawdown month.

Despite the very poor performance our fund has experienced this year, our fund is not going to go under. We have experienced a heavy drawdown,that is for sure, but it is due to the extended range-bound behavior of the market. We do not think it should last much longer, these things never do, and when the markets break, then we are poised to make a dramatic comeback.
That being said, We have developed an important update on all breakout related strategies to prevent them from falling prey to future range-bound periods. Breakout strategies are the ones that attempt to break out of the market’s predefined market ranges. Our breakout strategies attempted to break out of their long held ranges this July, but the ranges held firm, and the strategies were punished for their attempt, many hitting their stop losses when the markets reversed direction. This was the cause of July’s particular draw down. But now we have outfitted all these breakout strategies with an important exit, which we call a “Bailout Exit,” which forces them to exit the market when it is determined after X number of bars from entry that the ranges are still firm and not broken. This means that they will bailout of the market with a minor loss closer to entry (20-60 pips loss), instead of the full stop loss damage 170 pips from entry. If we had this exit in place, our draw down for July would have been significantly lower, as well as lower for many months in his past, without interfering with performance.
Galleon system developers and staff here at Galleon have a large amount of our own money in the fund at the moment. It accounts for about 25% of the fund’s equity size, and we are determined to keep it there to ride to take advantage of the inevitable come-back. The markets should breakout of their ranges any day or week now, and we are still poised to take advantage of that. And if the ranges still hold firm our bailout exits will prevent us from taking hard losses from the attempt to break out of them.