What to do…

I just couldn’t justify having $599 software on the shelf, not knowing if I ever was going to use it. Liquidity on DukasCopy have been very low and the last few weeks (3-4) FAPT Evo have been performing badly. Lots of rejected orders and huge slippage. Nothing like the scalpers heaven promoted by the FAP team (that called MT4 child play). I’m sure that performance will pick up during the fall as the liquidity in the markets increase, but as I don’t see it performing better than regular FAP Turbo at a good ECN MT4 broker I still can’t justify the cost (you get four FAP Turbo licenses for the price of one Evo).

Also, the $10000 minimum have kept me from starting to trade at DukasCopy. At the MT4 broker you can chose to start at a much lower level and you can trade $100K contracts at ECN brokers (and 0.01 lots at non-ECN). At DukasCopy you had to trade $1000K contracts as minimum.

The real sad part about the refund is that I will lose MegaDroid Pro. I have enjoyed being able to trade more pairs, but not even this “bonus” can justify the price of $599. EURUSD is still the moneymaker (with addition of USDCHF), and that is traded by regular MegaDroid for $99. I will settle for that for now. If and when MegaDroid Pro eventually is for sale I probably will get it, but not for the silly price of $699 that was stated in July. I think my limit is a $199 really, twice the price of MegaDroid. We’ll see thou.

So from this week I will replace MD Pro with MD on all my account.

I’m going to start Forex Shocker live on my JadeFX account tonight. I’ve been running it on demo for the past week, and it has been working out. So now it is time for it to graduate from demo school. Just one week might seem short, but performance wise I’m sure it is quite solid based on others live performance. I’m going to start trading it on EURUSD, GBPUSD and USDCHF with 0.1 lots during 21-23 GMT+1 (JadeFX time). This actually works out great because, at least in the demo, the trades have been quite quick and should be done by the time MD Pro’s main trading hours come around (which is 23-1 GMT+1). All pairs have behaved, but the three chosen have made the most per trade. EURCHF is actually the one that has made both most trades and pips, but I feel that profit per open trade should be premiered right now (since the account still is quite small and margin is limited).

MT4Stats is still down so I’ve moved my stats over to MyFxBook right now, and I quite like it. They tweak it now and then and it is getting better and better every day really. You can check the Forex Shocker JadeFX demo below.

Update: Of course Forex Shocker hits the first S/Ls since July the first night I’m live. Two stops hit with double GBPUSD trades for a total damage of $64. Fortunately Forex Shocker on EURUSD and USDCHF got one winner each and MD Pro got several so I still gained $8 for the day

Normally I really don’t pay attention to the, almost daily, releases of new EAs. There just have been too many that have been so disappointing lately (and I don’t think it is going to decrease either). However today there actually is a release that I kind of look forward to. I’ve for some time been looking at the Fractals 4 EA from Forex-hope.com. It is the fourth incarnation and it have proven it self in both backward and forward tests over the last few months (think it was released in June). I’ve been looking to buy it since it isn’t a scalper, but rather a break out system, but I haven’t had $199 from the EA budget to invest in it.

Today Forex hope releases a new product thou, called Forex Bling (I know, the name… yeah). It isn’t one EA, but a number of EAs that are meant to be traded together in a portfolio. There’s a scalper (actually four different, but they are probably based on the same code, that trade different pairs), a trend follower, a break out system and a grid trader. I’ve seen the affiliate report as well as some live MT4 stats and I must say that I am impressed. The Scalper(s) seem very good, definitely FAPT/MD class, perhaps even better. The others also are very impressive, but I think it isn’t real live, but rather demo trading. Still it looks very promising.

One of the things I like the most thou is that the package is offered as a subscription service costing $99 for three months. Considering that it, currently, comes with four different systems I would say this is very good. The facts that it is a subscription implies that they believe in the system, since they want people to keep paying for it. Also, they will be giving the first 100 sign-ups Fractals4 for free (it isn’t part of the package otherwise).

I’m going to sign-up today and start demos. In the mean time I’ve found these live stats pages, they are for the scalpers called ThunderStorm and ThunderBolt.

Another week then, I’ll just do a quick post with the graphs as usual.

Alpari UK Live account

Nothing to it this week. The removal of EURGBP and usage of custom levels in FAPT made a rather uneventful week. The moneymaker was (again) MD Pro with EURUSD and USDCHF in the lead. Total gain was €71.95.

Forex.com/UK Live account

RoboMiner keeps adding to this account at a rather steady pace. It has gone into a little deeper draw down now, but it’s still easily managable with the 1:200 leverage. If it goes down another few hundreds I’ll add more funds just to be on the safe side. As I said last week I am trading EURUSD and USDCHF on this account now with MD Pro and it unfortunatly hit a S/L with a EURUSD trade during the week for a loss of $42. Total gain in the account was still $69.11.

Jade FX Live account

Third week with JadeFX and another winning week. The losing trade in the end was my fault, I tampered with the S/L setting on a trade after London open. It hit the S/L I had set a few hours later, and then it turned another 10 pips down, with the original S/L level the trade would have been closed at least at break even by MD. I really shouldn’t interfere, but there where high impact news planned, so I thought it was worth it, but there is no way in knowing of course. Total gained was $58.35 (would have been another $16 at least if the last trade hadn’t hit my S/L). All in all this account is up $209 now in three weeks for a gain of 41%. Looks very good.

The week in total then ended at $229 which is quite good I think. Next week I might start trading a bit more on the JadeFX account with the addition of another EA besides MD Pro.

Recently I read a great piece of advise in a forum (I’m someguy over at Donnas forum) regarding what kind of “standards” we, as a automated trading community, should require before forking over hard earned dollar/euros/skulls for the latest and greatest piece of software that is being spammed to us from professional affiliates (I hate spammers and scamsters). It isn’t brain surgery of course, but now and then a EA comes along that actually looks promising and the developers are saying that they only will sell a few hundred copies (I like restricted releases, but hate when it isn’t enforced after the 100 copies are clearly already sold). That is when we need this “checklist”. Right now I think there actually is a few EAs for MT4 that live up to the standard, but even some of them use the marketing lingo of the scamsters (come on FAP and MD teams, redo your websites).

After this I started to think about my own expectations on the performance of my automated strategies. I think I need a better game plan. Right now I don’t think I am aware enough. I need to make a model for the risk I’m willing to take and base it on % risked per trade and also try to limit total exposure by limiting the number of concurrent open positions. I’ve just started thinking about it, so it is a work in progress. I think I will basically use my current model for my more “traditional” portfolio where I do monthly reviews and redistribute the funds according to previous months winners (basically what is sometimes called a rotation system, where you bet on your winners). For forex I’m thinking that I should demo trade a lot of different EAs and pairs and choose (on a weekly and monthly basis) the top 5 performers and just trade them. For example right now that setup would probably be: 1/ MD Pro EURUSD 2/ MD Pro USDCHF 3/ FAPT USDCAD 4/ Forex Shocker EURCHF and possibly 5/ Forex Shocker GBPUSD. I should bet on the proven winners (and perhaps even bet more on the # 1 strategy than the #5, say a ratio of twice the lot size for #1 compared to #5 and 2-4 somewhere in between.

I’ve also come to realize that I need to include my forex trading in my total portfolio. Right now I really treat it as a side project (that is taking more time than my “real” multi-asset portfolio, simply because I enjoy it more).  But as the correlation between my forex trading performance and the other asset classes in my portfolio strategy is basically zero of course it should be treated as a great addition and I think it should be a new asset class. I’m thinking even that it should be split up in sub-classes of scalpers and more long-term strategies. FAPT/MDPro/FS is a completely different case than RoboMiner.

As for the risk taking I think I should try not just to maximize my weekly/monthly gains of course. I have always tried to choose setups that take risks I can live with (IE to limit draw downs to levels I don’t feel sick about). But I need a better calculated model here also. I think I will base it on total exposure and historical draw down (in %), not on the gained/lost sum of money (if it is losing of course after some time it will be “rotated” out of the portfolio by the rules above) for the scalper class. For the more long term forex asset class (that right now only would include RoboMiner) I will just try to make the most and not risk margin calls I think. For RoboMiner that would mean that I would use a conservative lot size and just let it ride, it will make what it makes (the developers state 4-8% a month using default values I think). Other long term strategies could include systems like LMT or carry trades I think, but I’m not doing that right now.

I’m really looking forward to do some more math on this.

Okay, I just wrote the whole deal in the Subject didn’t I?

Well, I found www.collective2.com just earlier this week and was intrigued. It’s basically a collection of different trading strategies and also a forum for trading discussions. You can subscribe to different strategies (some are free, but the good ones cost money) and assemble your own portfolio using several of them. One of the great parts is that you can search for strategies with low or no correlation to the ones you already have in your portfolio. This is great from a diversification perspective, which is very important to a multi-asset portfolio of course. There is a huge diversity in the strategies offered, ranging from traditional equity investments to commodities and forex trading systems. You can also setup a strategy of your own and let others use it (and charge for it if you like).

All in all it seems like a great place to find trading systems which invest in diverse assets. Some of the strategies can even be fully automated (like EAs we are all familiar with). I’m going to look into this more when I have some spare time, but that is scarce right now.

If anyone have experience of C2 already or starts now, please enlighten us with comments.

I’ve had mixed results this week, but overall my accounts have gained $144. Details below.

Alpari UK live account

The week at Alpari UK ended down by €22. EURCHF trades done by FAPT stood for €85 in losses, which is really bad I think. USDCAD did better, but only traded once with €10 gained. MD stood for the profits with €50 gained on EURUSD. I will definitely monitor FAPTs performance the coming week, if it doesn’t improve I might stop trading EURCHF here. I might even move it completely to the Jade FX account since USDCAD really have been working out great in demo there (see below for Jade FX performance live with MD Pro).

Forex.com/UK live account

Going into this week I re-added MD Pro to the Forex.com/UK account, since it seems some of the instability problems I suffered from last time have been solved with the update to v1.01. And so far so good, it hasn’t crashed. I only added three charts trading USDCHF, but I’ll add some EURUSD also for next week. I’ll continue to run non-aggressive settings as I want this account to suffer very low draw downs.

RoboMiner have performed quite good as always. All in all the account gained $90.66 for the week, with $12 from MD Pro.

Jade FX live account

This is the second week live at Jade FX for me. I only trade MD Pro right now and it is doing quite well. Total gain was $85.66. No losses this week, but a few break evens. This really seems to be a characteristic of MD Pro, if it hasn’t been able to close the position by T/P in some time (I think 1 hour) it tries to close it at break even. I don’t dislike this, but during the week all of the orders would eventually have gotten the full T/P, so it is cheating us from some profits (other weeks it might save us a fortune, so as I said, I don’t dislike this behavior).

In the two weeks I’ve run this account it has grown by 30% from $500 to $650.84, which I find quite remarkable. I am trading 0.1 lots which is minimum. It probably will be hard to sustain that kind of growth, so I am prepared for it to hit a S/L soon. But lets hope it’s not next week so the nice streak can continue

I am considering moving my FAPT license from the Alpari UK account to the Jade FX account. If I did I would only trade USDCAD to start with, which really seems to be the best pair right now. In my Jade FX demo it has done extremely well trading 21 - 01 GMT. But I am reluctant to do this right now because the VPS that I got from Jade FX isn’t doing quite as well as the performance on my account. Twice now I have been unable to log in to it, and support have been forced to reboot it to solve the issue. I still don’t like not being Administrator on it, and this is even more disturbing when it is unstable. With Administrator rights I could reboot it myself as well as run my MT4 sessions as services. If this issue isn’t solved in the coming two weeks I see no other solution than to get a different VPS to run my Jade FX trading on. But I think it would be very hard to find another one with <1 ms latency… We’ll see.

Good luck to you guys going forward. 

I got my cashback from cashbackforex.com yesterday, $123.71 for July. It was burning a hole in my Paypal account so I went out and got Forex Shocker EA.

It is a scalper that trades six pairs and I have been observing it for a while. I’m mostly interested in trading EURUSD and GPBUSD since I’ve seen other peoples’ results from those pairs. But of course I will demo trade all of them, there could be a difference with brokers and latency so the other pairs also would be interesting. I will demo on JadeFX (kind of scalpers heaven) and hopefully everything works out so I can add it live in 1-2 weeks. Scalping GBPUSD would be a welcome addition to the “regular” pairs.

Straight off I must say that I don’t like the setup too much. It is a Plimus sale, without any money back period. All sales are final. Also you only get to trade one live and one demo account. The limitation on number of demo accounts is real stupid IMHO as we all like to test different brokers before going live. Hopefully it works out nice on JadeFX thou. I am not sure what the policy is about changing accounts after a while.

You can follow my demo progress here: http://halmoore.mt4stats.com/

And you can get the EA here: http://www.forexshocker.com/

Wish me luck

Update: I still haven’t gotten the unlock / license codes from the developers, 29 hours after my purchase. I think it is real bad and not very confidence building. Now I just hope I get it up and running for Mondays trading session…

Update 2: Just recieved the codes, so I’m going to start demoing on Monday. Took about 48 hours, so do take that into consideration if buying Forex Shocker.

Another week has passed. This was the first week live on JadeFX so it has been fun to see how MD Pro has been doing there. But it has actually been a good week at Alpari UK also, quite a surprise.

Alpari UK live micro account

The week ended with a gain of €106 which is very nice. The money makers have been USDCAD with FAPT and EURUSD and USDCHF with MD Pro. I added EURGBP recently again after not having traded that one for the whole summer. That was a mistake, I took three S/L:s with it during the week. It will be removed now. Other than that I will continue with the same setup for next week.

Forex.com/UK live account

With Robominer on the Forex.com/UK account it have been quite a uneventful week, but still $57 gained, all with AUDNZD. EURCHF is going the “wrong” way now and I have six open EURCHF trades, hopefully it turns soon enough. I am considering letting MD Pro have another go at this account also, with non-aggressive low risk settings, probably only trading EURUSD and USDCHF.

JadeFX live account

The first week live with Jade FX with a total of $65 gained (which is 13% !). EURUSD and USDCHF was the moneymakers. The only loss was made with EURCHF. Not much to say other than that MD Pro really seems to like the low spreads at JadeFX. I probably will add another $500 and get FAPT trading on it soon (hopefully during next week).

So, all in all a very positive week with roughly $270 gained over the three accounts. Hope it continues next week.

I know there’s people that is interested in my progress with JadeFX, so I thought I’d just make a small update now that MD Pro have traded my small $500 account live for the first night. I got three trades all in all with one USDCHF that made full 10 pips profit and two trades that closed as break even (one each in EURCHF and EURGBP). The exact same trades was opened in my demo account (there was a difference in price on the USDCHF trade with 0.6 pips in favor of the live account), which I consider very good news.

$500 is clearly to little to trade all four pairs of MD Pro with just 1:100 leverage thou. Margin wise each 0.1 lot (the size I traded) requires $100, but MD Pro seems to have a safety feature so that it doesn’t open too many trades. It will only allow two simultaneous 0.1 lotsize trades, so we might miss some opportunities there.

The plan right now is to continue with this small “live demo” setup for the week. I will perhaps just keep two or three pairs during this time. Will analyze the performance of the demo account during August to determine which ones. USDCHF is a given thou, it is the clear winner for MD Pro. After that i probably will add another $500 or so and get another FAPT license to run on it also.

Wish me luck