What to do…

I just checked out my Paypal history for last year to see what I used it for. Mostly Forex related stuff actually. Buying robots, paying for VPS services and getting cashback. It’s the last one I just now fully realized how big of a deal it is (or can be atleast). During last year, since April 26th when I opened my Alpari UK live micro account, I’ve recieved $909.31 from Forexcashback.com in cashback. That is awesome for a account that currently holds just about €1000 (about $1430 today). Also, I had recieved $141.24 from the Aslan Group for my Forex.com/UK account, but that isn’t quite as impressive of course because that account right now have a balance of $3600. For my ECN broker JadeFX I have no cashback, since they don’t accept IBs (Introducing Brokers, or partners like Cashbackforex.com). But on the other hand they have very low spreads and charge just $5 / lot in commission.

So, unless you trade a low-cost ECN broker like JadeFX you should definitely secure a cashback deal. Currently Cashbackforex.com offers 14 different MetaTrader 4 deals with most of the big names, even some ECNs like GoMarkets and FXCBS.

True to form I usually publish these on the weekend, but this week I’ve only had RoboMiner active so there isn’t too much to show. But I’ll do it anyway.

Forex.com/UK Live account

A small profit of $38.35 was realized by RoboMiner during the last week of the year. All closed trades where in AUDNZD (like most of the 5 months I’ve been trading RM). EURCHF is currently going lower and RM keeps adding long positions, 7 in total during December. I’ve increased the lot size to 0.02 since EURCHF  is approaching it’s historical low, and I don’t expect it to hang around these regions that long.

The bump in the graph is a AUDNZD trade that had more negative swap than the profit it made of the 40 pips. Not good at all. I’ve changed the magicnumber of RM AUDNZD and changed the T/P value of the open trades so that they actually will make a profit when closed. One of the changed ones where closed this week for a gain of 80 pips.

Perhaps this isn’t news to you, but I’ve just been discovering all the wonderful new functions that the guys (or girls?) at MyFxBook.com have been adding this fall. The most valuable being the custom analysis on magicnumbers. I don’t want to get to pesky, but guess who made that suggestion to them? I’m very glad they understood my idea and implemented it quickly for us all to enjoy. I’ve been updating all my accounts with the MyFXBook EA and been registering the magicnumbers. It is so simple to analyze a single EAs performance in a multi-strategy account now.

Example view of MegaDroids trades on my Forex.com/UK account this fall (from October 19th) above. You can easily see that the chart with a GMT offset of 6 have been the best (on this account all the charts are non-aggressive so there is only the S1 magicnumber to display).

Okay, I’ll stop ranting about this now. Do check MyFXBook.com out thou, it is the best tool out there. There’s even nice widgets like the one below (also for my Forex.com/UK account, trading RoboMiner and MegaDroid). I would like a little more customizable widgets thou, will make that suggestion also…

With the upcoming release of MetaTrader 5 I’ve actually started investigating alternatives to the good and old MetaTrader 4. Why, isn’t MT5 good you say? Well, after running the Beta for just a day basically, I can say that it feels almost the same as MT4 and that it probably is very good. MQL5 seems good, but why MQL4 isn’t still supported I can’t understand. It would have been nice being able to use old EAs and indicators. Unfortunately the strategy tester isn’t activated in the Beta, so I can’t test that yet, but it is said to be multi-threaded and able to test multi-asset strategies, good stuff. Also there’s a order depth function (and view) now, which makes MT5 much more equities-trader friendly of course.

There is a change to the way positions are handled that I don’t think should be enforced by the platform though, and this is my gripe with MT5. It seems the NFA really have scared the Russians at Metaquotes into submission, so there is no hedging possibilities and a strict FIFO order execution in MT5. This isn’t good for anyone I think, and especially not for us that run multiple strategies (EAs) on the same account. Also, grid traders like RoboMiner is effectively hindered (luckily RoboMiner have a different strategy for NFA brokers with today’s MT4 that should work with MT5).

I’ve mailed my brokers (Alpari UK, Forex.com/UK and JadeFX) with questions about their plans about the upgrade, and the possibility to stay with MT4 (or even run both in parallel). We’ll see what they say, if they know themselves. I would like to use MT5 for trading equities and futures, and I really think this is what MetaQuotes have been focusing on.

Hopefully I won’t need another platform, perhaps the non-NFA regulated brokers can get a different version with hedging and free order close order, but just in case I’ve started looking around a bit. I already have experience from the JFOREX platform used by DukasCopy (as used by FAP Turbo Evolution), but I never liked it. Also the minimum accounts at DC is $10000 and the minimum contract size is $1M. That is too much for me, so it isn’t a alternative.

Another quite popular product is the NinjaTrader (current version is 6.5, but 7.0 is in beta). I’ve downloaded and started fiddling with it. NT works with quite a few different brokers, including Forex.com that I already have an account with. There’s also a few ECN brokers like PFG and MBT. First impressions is that it is a good product, not quite as intuitive as MT4/5, but very manageable. The scripting language seems great.

So, is there any other alternatives?  I’m looking for free platforms (or at least platforms that the brokers pay the fee for) with small deposit limits ($1000 or so) and regular lot sizes (0.1 lot for ECNs and 0.01 for bucketshops). Of course it has to be possible to run automated strategies. Any tips?