Commercial EA Update
The new version of GridBot was released a week ago. I was not impressed. After running backtests the entire weekend trying to find anything good with it I put it on demo accounts and hoped that the backtests we’re wrong. Well, it didn’t end well and I finally went for the refund. The money hit my Paypal yesterday. I’ve lost quite a lot of money and time on this bot. I really think it is possible to make a profitable grid trader (just look at Robominer), but not this one. Very disappointed actually since the developers are very inactive in their own forum also, not answering questions. (I still wonder where the hedge function in the new version is… I never saw a hedge of any sort).
FAPT Evolution is still running on demo, or at least I think it is, I’m not getting it to trade much at all. Reading forums the Dukascopy demo server really seems to give different performance for most of us. It is quite worrisome I think as they’ve stated that it should give very close to 100% matching performance with their live server (difference of course being the liquidity). The ones running it live seems to have a smoother ride although EURGBP apparently hit a S/L this week. I’m looking forward to Donnas update this weekend as I tend to use her settings for both regular FAPT and Evolution. She is very knowledgeable about these products.
As for MD Pro I put it up on a demo Forex.com/UK account and it has traded quite a bit (compared to regular MD), but is actually a few dollars behind for the week. EURGBP is the main culprit. Perhaps this pair isn’t really working out for scalping at all right now (as it is the same with FAPT and FAPT evo). The other pairs have done well. I’m thinking of replacing my regular MD on Forex.com/UK live account with the Pro version for next week. I still experience daily crashes with regular MD. The Pro version at least haven’t crashed the demo account once running it without MT4 restart all week.
After running Robominer on demo since June 1st I must, again, just state how impressive it is. They just released a new version that is updated to work with NFA regulated brokers after the new rules about FIFO is enforced, and they state that is is even more profitable with these new changes. Sounds good. I must buy it now and put it on a account somewhere. The developers are currently recommending Forex.com/UK, I have a account there already of course. I am also considering FXCM/UK bacause of their advantage in lower spreads. However they only allow trade with 0.1 lots, Forex.com/UK trades 0.01 lot size. The smaller lot size of course allows lower risk taking, but I’m so confident in this bot now I’m considering trading it at 0.1 anyway (think they recommend a account size of $35000 (updated see comments) to do this, but as long as you have funds to put in there in case of a sustained DD you can fund a smaller amount to start with).
Received spam email from FAPT Steve yesterday about a new bot they’re impressed with (they’ve promoted MegaDroid apart from FAPT before, and some manual systems) called IvyBot. It’ll be released next week and have a webinar planned for Monday. I’ll check it out. Could be something, but there’s so many new bots being released I just don’t know 
Oh, I almost forgot. The Joury EA bot I’ve written about have been found to be a free EA by a guy called TrendChaser. The developer himself doesn’t consider it to be a good strategy (it can work for a few months only to wipe the account he says). So hope no one bought it. It is available free if you want to play with it, I’m thinking about doing so a little this weekend, just for giggles.
I’m going to make charts for my live accounts later tonight or tomorrow for the weekly update. I can just say that it doesn’t look good now, and that the Alpari UK account have been doing much better than the Forex.com/UK account. The markets have really punished MD yesterday and today.
mm thanks for the update:-)I have to say though - I think you got it wrong with the minimum for trading at 0.1 lots (or did I misunderstand your post?). It requires minimum 20.000 usd to trade only audnzd or minimum 35.000 to trade both audnzd and eurch safely.
@hansen
You are correct, I’ll have to trade smaller lots. The account sizes the developers are recommending are accounting for the very worst case I think (an uninterrupted trend going to the very top (or bottom) of the range from the center). However, right now we’re already at the 1.24 level in AUDNZD and the top is at 1.29. If history holds true and the AUDNZD doesn’t break over at least 1.30 we need about half of the recommended account size. And if we also factor in that the price doesn’t just move in one direction (rarely), but whip saws its way there we will have profitable trades along the way now and then, but I can’t estimate by how much of course.
So, I have to think a bit more about it (and run some backtests), but I’m leaning towards a start with 0.05 lots trading only AUDNZD on forex.com/UK with $1000. I can add extra funds if needed anytime.
OK just for fun I did some calculations re. RM. If the audnzd range stays below its historical high, we need about 2800 usd free margin to withstand the possible drawdown for 13,4 subranges from where it is now (this is trading at lots=0.1). If it goes 500 pips above the high, we need about 7600. If it continues on to 1000 pips above that, we need about 12300 usd. In the case of 0.5 lots, we would need about 1675 (stay in range), 4300 (500 pips above high) and 7000 (1000 pips above historical high). These numbers are “synthetic” in the sense that this would reflect a straight rise up without the up- and downward oscillation that always happen, but i still like to know what maximum risk is or what maximum margin is needed. As you can gather from this, we are pretty dependant on the historical high not being broken… What are your thoughts, someguy?
The above numbers are calculated with 1:200 leverage.
@hansen
Very nice, seems reasonable. My thinking is that a break of the historical high is highly improbable, but of course possible. For such a price just one of the countries must have been hit by a huge event. It would be interesting to check what was going on down under during the peaks (and bottoms) in history, to further understand what is needed for the price to go above say 1.30.
If a new high of the magnitude you have been calculating (1000 pips) becomes a reality we need to be prepared to fund our account with about 4.2 times as much as needed just to not get a margin call within the range.
So, using your calculations, with a $1000 account I should use a lot size of 0.03 and be prepared to fund another $3200 if price breaks historical high with 1000 pips. (Am I correct?).
And this is just trading AUDNZD. EURCHF is more profitable in backtests (at least), so one would be tempted to trade that to…
the exact dd at 0.03 and 1000 pips above the highest high would be 3705.85 according to my calculations.
then of course swap needs to be accounted for as well. furthermore, i am not sure of rm stops trading at ~2900 high or if it continues to place sells for every 40 pips rise. my calculations may be flawed…
in case it stops at 1.2966 and places no more sells above that, my calculations should hold.
I hope it doesn’t stop, that would surely make us miss out on profit. I’m figuring that it is even more likely that price will reverse back the higher it gets. RM after all makes money by going into DD. I’m going to ask the developer about it just in case.
I’ll go with 0.03 lots to start with on my existing Forex.com/UK account (1:200 leverage) that I think is going to become dedicated just to RM since MD just keeps crashing with it…
If I get into DD I can add easily add more cash (at least up to the levels we have calculated) since I really believe in the simple system.
Good idea to contact the developer. Please let me know what he answers to this. I also believe in this EA as a solid system and the support appears to be great as well.
Thanks for the update bud!
I followed your lead and refunded GridBot. Figured I’d apply that money toward IvyBot. Robominer–is that something we need a real big account for? I can spare about $1000, but that’s it unfortunately.
It can be traded with just $1000 (after our calculations above) but perhaps it is just a tad small because of the price of the robot itself, also we need to be able to add more funds if it goes into draw down. It costs $40 a month. I’m starting out small with it, probably will add more funds along the way, but right now I’m prepping $10K for Dukascopy.