What to do…

Boy this was a turbulent week. I’ve come out on top for now in my manual trades and Green really have been helped by the decline in AUDNZD that followed the rate decision from the RBA on Tuesday. The huge drop in EURCHF as SNB stopped selling CHF at a fixed rate sure didn’t thou. Two of my accounts (Alpari UK and Forex.com/UK) is in deep drawdown now with a majority from it in long EURCHF and some is trapped in EURCHF hedges put in too late (IE price have reversed since opened).

Total gain over the week was $2033.47.

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I took the plunge three weeks ago and got myself a shiny new “smartphone”, a first for me. I’m not a huge Apple fan so I got a HTC Desire with Android 2.1. It is very impressive. Since the first hour I just can’t understand how I managed before. It is very responsive and the screen is very bright and sharp. The browser works great on all the Forex and news sites I frequent regularly, even MyFXBook works great. All in all everything is better than I expected.

There is one thing I kind of miss thou, a mobile edition of MetaTrader. There is one, but it only runs on Windows phones (not even iPhones, weird decision by MetaQuotes if you ask me). There is a third party application at http://metatraderandroid.com/ but it isn’t a full replacement by any means.

My solution for mobile trading have been to setup a special VPS account to log in to with Remote RDP app (available for free in Android Market with limited, but good enough features). In the VPS I have MT4 sessions for all my accounts running. With 2X zoom level steering regular MT4 is quite easy. A problem is that the Remote app keeps showing the virtual keyboard as soon as a text input field is active, it can become quite irritating, but after a while you know when it is going to pop up so you can close it quickly. Using this setup I can check in on my accounts where ever I am and I can open/close trades easily. One bonus also is that I can use all the indicators and EAs available for the regular MetaTrader, something that is not possible on the mobile solutions. The drawback is that the interface isn’t optimized for touchscreen use and that RDP is heavier on your Internet communications (no biggie if your on WLAN or have unlimited 3G data plan).

MT4 session on VPS accessed via RDP on the HTC Desire

I’ve been looking for some simple chart software to run on the phone, but I haven’t found any good ones. Google have a app called Stocks, but it is only useful for stocks on NYSE and NASDAQ, nothing for international investors or Forex traders. There are numerous apps that are called something with Forex or Currency, but they’re all just simple currency converters. Hardly useful for traders, just tourists. I’ve also been trying to find a app to easily access the Forex Factory calendar (I use it all the time in the browser), but it seems no one else have needed it. I would like it setup as a widget that shows upcoming events and even sounds an alarm on certain select ones.

As for MyFXBook I’ve been looking for a app or widget accessing their information more easily than via the browser, but it seems no one has taken the time to write it yet. There is a API to use so it should be quite straight forward. I’m thinking of giving it a go myself. Would be great to be able to see all my live accounts in one screen I think, with just the most important stuff like balance, free equity and open positions. The problem of course is that the spare time I actually have available for coding is spent on coding EAs

If anyone has some other tips I’d be delighted to hear about them. Android Market is huge as it is and I probably have missed some goodies.

Hopefully MetaQuotes will deliver a Android version of MetaTrader 5 this year. If they get it out the door soon…

I’ve been hearing a lot of different suggestions about the best brokers for the Year I’ve been involved in automated Forex trading (It’s only been a year? Really? My memory plays tricks on me it seems). GoMarket AUS have always been suggested by some, but I never got around to actually test it in any serious way. I have now and I will start a live account there. On paper and in demo trading it is nothing short of awesome.

GoMarkets AUS constantly have among the best spreads on basically all pairs (Majors and Exotics, especially ones with AUD involved). If you go to MT4Spreads and check out for example EURUSD you’ll likely see something like this.

What is important to understand then is that GoMarkets doesn’t take commission when trading. All the other brokers on that list, except Alpari UK, does. That means that even thou IamFX for example has a tighter spread you will have to pay them to trade it, and in that case it equates to almost 1 full pip in commission cost. The price is roughly the same for all the others.

Another important thing is that if you choose to sign up via CashbackForex you will get 0.35 pips back, effectively making the spread right now a very low 0.65! You can get cashback on other brokers via CashbackForex as well, but my research show that none comes close to the effective spreads offered by GoMarkets when commission and cashback is applied. They even beat my low commission favorite JadeFX.

There are three additional points that really make GoMarkets AUS stand out I think:

1. Possibility to have Swap-free account (fee is payed instead). Excellent for grid and longer term traders.
2. Possibility to open Nano-account making it possible to trade very small lots (0.01 of $10K lot, IE just $100)
3. Proper regulated company in Australia

My main problem is that I already have four active live accounts, and I don’t want to add additional funds to new ones right now. But I hope that I can force myself to withdraw funds somewhere and wire it down under.

So, head over to CashbackForex and signup for GoMarkets AUS. It’s real easy.

I traded my first session with Forex Harvester yesterday evening. As I’ve mentioned before it trades the gap in prices sometimes produced between Friday (NY) close and Sunday (Sydney) open. I set the EA up on the five recommended pairs (EURJPY, USDJPY, EURUSD, GBPUSD and USDCHF) last evening just an hour before market open. It was a very easy process as there really isn’t many parameters to tweak. The only one really is if you want to use Money Management and set a risk % or if you want to set fixed lot sizes. I choose MM and 1% risk (default is 20%). 1% might sound as nothing, but it is good to be cautious. I don’t ever think I will trade it with the default risk (20% is ultra huge), but I will increase it as it proves to be a stable winner.

So how did it go? It went great. Gaps was present in all pairs except USDJPY and Forex Harvester traded them very nicely. In total it did 35 trades which trapped 409 pips. As I traded the minimum risk (1% which gave 0.01 lot size) that only equated to $41.16 in gains, which of course isn’t too much to brag about (less than 0.5% of the account), but this was a very nice start.

I’ve let my guard down again, allowing scalpers to trade during chaotic markets. Basically all my scalpers have had a really hard time the last two weeks (of course not every night, but enough). There have been a lot of drifting in prices during the usually range bound fluctuations in the Asian session which have triggered stoplosses. Usually the price actually have recovered in time for London open, but that doesn’t matter of course if the stoploss have been activated.

I’m thinking about implementing a set of filters in order to weed out bad trading days for the scalpers. I think that it should be fairly easy to set rules for maximum movement during the day and prior days to avoid too crazy markets or trending ones. I found one article about the same idea(s), but they haven’t automated the process or even detailed it very much I think. What I’m thinking of is a EA that evaluates current conditions at a set time (say 19.00 GMT) and emails me if the conditions are right for scalping. If I want to act on it I log in to my VPS and start the MT4 sessions with scalpers loaded. It will be a semi-automatic approach and it will require a more active stance from me, but I think it might be very worthwhile. The EA will only be able to sort out the bad days to trade in chaotic markets thou, I don’t expect it to be able to catch the drifting in prices.

This week I will trade with reduced risk for all scalpers Monday and Tuesday and then turn everything off until next week. NFP is released on Friday and that usually means unpredictable movement and much more volatility.

This is not funny but again my scalpers failed and my manual (and long term) strategies gained. I’m starting to see a pattern…

AUDNZD really is behaving strange I think as it has descended substantially towards the 1.27 level during last week.  gain by it, but I don’t understand the motivation for a 500 pips lower valuation now compared with just three weeks ago. In my view nothing new of worth has come out of either Australia or New Zealand to motivate this huge drop, that doesn’t even seem to be stopped yet. Tonight there is a new RBA meeting and it is expected that they hike the rate by another 0.25%. That should of course send the AUD higher, but who knows right now. Seems that the market isn’t expecting a rate increase (as prices have been falling) but still this is what analyst sentiment is indication. IE, what happens if the rate is untouched? Even more downwards movement? Or is it fully priced in all ready? I have no idea, I just trade my simple system right now.

Total gain over the week was $108.20.

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This was another terrible week for the scalpers, especially Thursday when Forex Shocker and MegaDroid really wrecked havoc. Other than scalping this week was okay. Green didn’t make much since price was out of range most of the week, but my manual trades in AUDNZD got nice results (the same strategy that Blue is / will be based on).

Total gain was $436.41.

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I constantly keep a lookout for new promising EAs, but as you know most of them are garbage. Especially, it seems, the ones that is promoted the hardest (like FRWC and that new one right now Delphi). I think I’ve found a good one now thou, Forex Harvester. I’ve been keeping my eyes on it for quite some time, and it has performed very nicely over the last three months.

What makes it really interesting is that it isn’t another Asian session scalper (like FAP Turbo, MegaDroid, Forex Shocker and about 1000 other EAs), this is based on a unique strategy. It trades Sunday nights, the first few hours of the trading week and it trades if there are gaps in price from Friday close. The strategy is that the market will close these gaps and Forex Harvester places trades accordingly. I hope that FH will be an good addition to my automated setup, and at $147 it is a buy for me. I plan to use it at my Collective FX account.

Here is a live statement from the developers them self: http://www.myfxbook.com/members/MT4Trading/harvester-live/18004

Another nice thing is that one of the developers is very active in the forum over at DonnaForex, and very friendly and helpful. The actual site promoting the EA is the usual garbage thou, don’t pay attention to it.

We all love MyFXBook of course, who wouldn’t (if you don’t use it, you really should check it out. I don’t use any other stats service anymore). Now they got a small contest together with FXDD. The price money isn’t much and it is traded on demo accounts, but it could be a good motivation to finish my latest project, called Blue, and perhaps even get a new scalping strategy implemented (called Yellow). I don’t think Green is suited for a short period like a month and starting capital of just $1000.

Check it out: http://www.myfxbook.com/contests

I’m terribly late with this update. It was a terrible week so I haven’t had any motivation to write about it, but the idea with this blog is to force me to analyze performance and think about past results. So here is the post. The losses are in a great part due to a human mistake (mine). Like I wrote last week I put the wrong stoploss level in a lot of my hedges in AUDNZD, I set 1.3020 instead of 1.3120, losing me 100 pips in quite a few trades.

Also my scalping at JadeFX primarily (my main account for this kind of trading) was not very successful, a first for 2010 actually. Hopefully it recovers the loss in the coming weeks.

Total loss over the week across all accounts: $1775.40. Just terrible.

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