I have been using MT4Stats for all my statistics publishing for the time I’ve been using the MT4 platform, and I’m sure you guys have been too (yeah I know about MT4Live, but I’ve never liked their font and general appearance…). Recently MT4Stats was updated with a lot of extras in the new Analysis tab, which I think is great additions. It is nice to see some graphs and the pie charts give a nice overview of the profitable pairs you are trading.
Last week I was made aware of a new alternative that actually looked kind of interesting called MyFXBook.com. Unlike MT4Stats and MT4Live you register one profile and then add all your MT4 accounts to that. So by just logging into the site you can see the performance of all your registered trading accounts. And it supports other platforms also, great if you have a Oanda account for example. You can choose if you want your accounts to be public or private, and if public what information to show. You could for example just show the balance and growth and hide the specific trade history. If the account is public others will be able to comment on it, just like with a blog. You can also add information about yourself in your profile that others can read and comment. The community aspect here could be very good I think, but still the site is very new and the number of people registered is small (that is not bad thou).
It also sports some other nice things like a monthly growth chart and the possibility to analyse your trading. If you are missing something there is a very good Suggestions box in the forum that is handled very good with the developers really trying to understand the suggestions. I myself left one about the possibility to use the magicnumber to sort all trades on the EA that performed it and the developers asked follow up questions to understand my idea fully. Very good, and hopefully they’ll implement it.
Right now I’m publishing my stats both to MT4Stats and MyBookFX as I think that they both complement each other (you have to use two MT4 instances trading the same account to do it). The main thing I think is better with MT4Stats is the bottom part of the page with the information about equity, floating P/L, margin and so. That information is not as easily shown at MyFxBook I think (and I haven’t even found the used and free margin information at all). Also I like the layout of taken trades better at MT4Stats. But do check out MyFxBook, and leave suggestions about the things you don’t like so they can make the perfect tool for us in time 
Quick review of the week on my live accounts.
Alpari UK live micro account
It has been mixed results that ended negative on my Alpari UK account (€22 loss). The week started nice and steady, then both FAPT and MD got lingering trades on Wednesday that went into S/L and took 12% of the account. Once again I was contemplating to close those positions when they we’re just a few pips behind, but I didn’t, as I really don’t think I’m supposed to baby sit these EAs. Once again I wish I had closed them…
I have completed my migration of Alpari UK trading to the VPS at SWTech. I haven’t noticed any problems or extra gains due to the minimal latency, but I will monitor it closely. I see about the same slippage that I have come to expect from Alpari UK (not so often, but still happens enough to be annoying). As of Tuesday this week (18th) Alpari UK will start using floating spreads, it will be interesting to see how much reqoutes / slippage that will introduce.
I probably will change the setup for FAPT a little for next week. I will add EURGBP again, with small fixed lot size to start with, and I will lower the T/P on USDCAD in order to get more profitable trades (albeit with lesser gain). I’ve seen statistics of an account with this setup that has been doing great the last weeks.
Forex.com/UK live account
Since RoboMiner is the only EA on this account now the graph above is quite uninteresting. But it has been a great week with $99.46 in profit. 9 profitable trades with AUDNZD and 1 with EURCHF. Right now I have only one open trade in AUDNZD and four in EURCHF. The good thing with open EURCHF trades is that the swap is positive, IE I make a little every day they are open.
All in all RoboMiner is really nice, it does what it is supposed to do. Of course the pairs traded have to “co-operate” with the strategy and move around a little, we won’t make money otherwise. I’m very pleased with the results as of yet at least.
Next week I hopefully have a nice graph here to show you from my live Jade FX account. Happy trading
I’ve finally gotten around to opening a MT4 ECN account. I have, for the last month or so, been actively searching for a alternative to my Alpari UK account to run scalpers on basically. I’ve been running demos loaded with FAPT (all four pairs) and MD Pro (also all four pairs) at multiple brokers and have now come to the conclusion that JadeFX offers one of the best (demo) data streams available to us mere mortals. Spread wise it is often even tighter on the majors than DukasCopy (with the JFOREX retail platform at least). But of course, it would have been better to run this test on live accounts, but I think that isn’t possible for most of us. As for commissions JadeFX has the lowest I’ve found at 5 USD / lot.
I’ve also opted to use their VPS service. The servers running my MT4 will be in the same datacenter as Jade FX’s live (and demo) trading server. I’ve not had time to do more than log in and run a simple ping as of yet, but it is really nice with sub 1ms latency. I see one problem with the actual VPS service and that is that it is run using VMWare (ESX i presume) and that we as customers isn’t offered our own sandboxes (with full Administrator privileges). I would have preferred Virtuozzo and Datacenter edition offering containers with Virtual Servers that we ourselves can reboot and such. I’ve asked support about the possibility to run as Administrator. I really want to be able to use AlwaysUp in order to run my MT4 sessions as services, with the possibility to restart them daily to avoid memory problems. The VPS service is quite cheap at $25/month plus Paypal fees ($27 for me) and you get 1 gig of ram.
As for funding and support I must say that they are really fast. My application for the account was processed in one hour and my VPS was setup in 3 hours. Support have answered all my emails (3 as of yet) within one hour every time. Very impressive I would say, and the answers have been helpful also, not just some bonehead answers I’ve been getting from some help desks over the years… (I’ve actually worked at a Help desk back office and I know not everyone employed at such places are Einsteins or even remotely interested in their work. No offense.)
I will start with just trading MD on EURUSD on Monday on my small deposit of just $500. I see it as kind of a live test to see that everything is working before starting FAPT and MD Pro on it (and add more funds). The main reason is that I have a spare MD license (left over from my Forex.com/UK account) so it is the easiest and cheapest to setup
I am contemplating setting up a FXCBS account also as I’ve noticed that they are offering quite a lot better spreads in EURCHF during the important scalping times. In the other important pairs like EURUSD they are not as competitive (compared to JadeFX), so I would primarily run EURCHF with FAPT and MD Pro there if I go for it. As you know my strategy have been to find a few different brokers and EAs to run as a mean to diversify my currency trade operation. I think it would be wise not to put all the eggs in one basket. Remember to sign at FXCBS through cashbackforex.com if you go for it, they’ll give you 15% back (brings commission down to 0.68 USD / lot)
Oh, have I forgotten about DukasCopy and FAPT Evo? Well, I have applied for an account there and I still own the license, but I won’t be going live right now. First of all I won’t be able to fund the $10K account this fall as I first thought (because I’m going backpacking for three months instead, need the funds for that) and second FAPT Evo really haven’t impressed me that much. Original FAPT on the right broker (hopefully JadeFX) have been keeping up with it. So hence my decision to wait with it.
I’ll keep you updated on my experiences with Jade FX over the coming days / weeks.
Got a VPS package last week from SWTech. Just been running demo accounts on it as of yet but it is planned to take over all my Alpari UK trading. Why? Well it has a 2ms latency to the Alpari UK trading servers. Some people have been suggesting that a (really) low latency like that could reduce re-quotes and slippage, which is very important when trading scalpers. And even more important when running the standard scalpers like FAPT and MD I guess, lots of similar trades for the servers to execute at the same time. If my order arrives 100 ms before the majority perhaps I am in a better position.
If it doesn’t affect trading performance it is still a very affordable VPS provider. I got the Medi package with 1.2 gig of ram for €25 / month. They offer both smaller and larger packages, but this one is perfect I think for a few MT4 sessions with RAM to spare.
If you go for it, do try AlwaysUp to run your applications as services. That way they are automatically started when ever you reboot your VPS and they will only be started once. To reduce memory usage I’ve put it to restart all the sessions at 17:00 GMT daily and reboot the entire VPS at 21:00 GMT on Sundays.
It’s been a while since I bought a EA. The last one, besides FAPT Evo (which technically isn’t even a EA), was FD2 and we all know how that went. Two weeks ago IvoryBot was the hyped one, but I didn’t get it. The people that did isn’t excited as far as I can see. If it does well, I’ll buy it, but it have to prove itself first.
I did however buy Forex Accumulator last week. Boy was that a impulse buy. Don’t even know why I got it, they have nothing to show for and so far I’m very afraid of it actually. It is way way way to risky even with the lowest possible settings imho. I’ve seen a lot of people already returning it, but I’ll demo trade it a little longer. I’ve been running optimization backtests and it is profitable but the draw downs are huge. I’ll be back with a updated post about it when all the optimization is done (probably 2-3 days left since I run back to 2006.01.01 and 2009.01.01 and do some manual comparisons. I want settings that is good both in the longer and shorter history). I really can’t see myself ever going live with it thou, the risk is to high I think. It comes with 60 days money back guarantee and was “just” $97.
There are two other EAs I’m currently looking to buy. S26 by Forex Barometer and Fractals 4 by Forex Hope. I’ve seen impressive forward tests with both of them. Both are $199 without refund possibility thou, so I probably can only buy one of them right now. It is leaning towards S26 right now, but I’ll wait a few days and see.
Update: I forgot about the Adelpha EA that is to be released today. It seems very very nice actually, but the price is $497 making it a hard buy for me. But if you have larger accounts than me to trade/play with, perhaps that price isn’t to intimidating. The backtests both for 2000-2008 and year to date (2009) looks very nice, but after all they’re just backtests. Fortunately the developers also have a mt4stats forward test going. Check it out (not sure if it is demo or live): http://adelpha.mt4stats.com/
It is that time again, called weekend, when I usually analyze the weekly performance. This time it isn’t an awful experience. It really have been a terrible few weeks, but hopefully that is behind us now and we can begin rebuilding our accounts steadily. The recovery really started with getting rid of GridBot a few weeks ago thou.
Alpari UK live account
Above is the graph for my Alpari UK micro account. €77.84 gained since last weekend. The only real loss was a USDCHF trade by MD Pro that I manually interveined with when it was in drawdown. I shouldn’t have done that, it had recovered and probably closed break even if I just had left it alone. This isn’t the first time the same thing happens, hopefully I have learned the lesson this time… I ought to since the whole point is that the Experts should be able to trade on their own.
Other than that trade it was a very nice steady week. MD had a solid week with only winners. FAPT made nice results in both EURCHF and USDCAD. Last weekend I changed the end time for FAPT to 23 GMT for both pairs, and I really think that was a good change. Most of the big losses have occurred later in the session. I will look into the starting times even more now, I probably will start several overlapping charts with FAPT with different risk taking. It is clear to me that the first trades taken is much more profitable than later in the evening, perhaps we should exploit this with higher lotsizes for the first trade… I’ll probably try a setup in demo and see what happens.
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Forex.com/UK live account
The graph for Forex.com/UK also looks nice this week. $87.49 gained in total. The bump in the beginning is the same USDCHF trade by MD Pro as above. I’ve actually removed MD Pro from the account after that trade, not because of it per se, but because of 3 crashes. One of the crashes hindered the very nice EA RoboMiner from a trade (it cost me $11). So now that account is only traded by RoboMiner, and it is doing great. I run 0.04 lots with AUDNZD and 0.03 with EURCHF. Very tempted to add even more funds and up the lotsizes.
Finally some recovery.
Last week Donna of DonnaForex.com announced in her forum that she had paid a programmer to produce a very simple EA. The strategy is to randomly place buy and sell orders, without any analysis or indicators. A simple coin flip to decide direction and then just let it ride till either T/P or S/L is hit. Then it flips the coin again and open another trade, 24 hours a day. The whole thing is supposed to be a joke. The background of course is all the EAs coming out with yet anther marvelous sales pitch promising gold, Ferrari’s and God knows what. Of course I thought it was hilarious and got a version of the EA and is beta testing it.
Sound stupid right? Well, it was supposed to be a joke. But before you dismiss it, check out my stats here (EURUSD, M5, T/P 8, S/L 60): http://patrickbateman.mt4stats.com
Insane I know. I’m a lucky guy I guess. There is some substance to the concept of course because of the small T/P (in relation to the S/L) I have chosen. This lets the EA catch small, almost Brownian, motion in price and in 50% of the cases pick the right direction in a trending market. Check out Random walk theory: http://www.investopedia.com/university/concepts/concepts5.asp or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_walk
Oh, the name of the EA is ScamBot 
Haha, this is getting comic. So I won’t even say anything about it…
Alpari UK live account
… well. Just that the last trade of the week, FAPT in USDCAD, lost €87. That was not a good feeling for a otherwise positive week (note that the €100 jump early in the week is the cashback I made in June that I deposited in the account). I will be evaluating FAPTs settings for this coming week. Donna announced Saturday that she will stop trading FAPT at Alpari UK after two months of not so good results, and since I am at Alpari UK I’m of course a bit worried. I will not stop trading there this week thou, but I will probably stop trading after 23 GMT on both EURCHF and USDCAD.
As for MegaDroid on Alpari UK nothing special has happened really. I turned down risk for the week early on and it haven’t traded quite as much after that.
Forex.com/UK live account
As for the account on Forex.com/UK I stopped MD completely before last week because of all the crashes. I then bought and started trading RoboMiner (II). I also enabled MD Pro with very low risk settings. Nothing spectacular on the account yet, but I almost made the $40 monthly fee of RoboMiner in the first two days. This Friday I also added another $500 (that’s the big jump in the graph above) and upped the lot sizes to 0.04 AUDNZD and 0.03 EURCHF. Hopefully this setup can make some steady progress.
As for brokers I am reviewing quite a few ECNs to take over my FAPT trading (and MD/ MD Pro with it). The favorites right now, in terms of performance on the demo trading, is JadeFX and TheCollectiveFX. Both have excellent spreads and data streams. I don’t know about the other important aspects thou (like support and not trying to rob you). FXCBS is also a real contender, however it hasn’t performed as nice in demo for me, but a lot of people are really pleased with them live. Cashbackforex.com is offering 15% back on the commissions there. The other ones I’m trying is ATC, Broco and GoMarkets.
Oh, perhaps I should say something about FAPT Evo also. I’ve been demo trading it for three weeks now, and I am very interested in starting it live. Last week it made 13% with Donnas High risk settings (that isn’t even that high risk I think). Dukascopy is a real hassle to sign up with thou with lots of paper work. Not like your average MT4 broker…
There’s a excellent article by Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge about the current state of the American economy. It covers basically all the relevant statistics that is used by economists to predict the future. It doesn’t look good, at all.
Read up: http://seekingalpha.com/article/151427-the-end-of-the-end-much-needed-perspective-on-recession-is-over-debate
So what does this mean? Well, I’m suspecting both the American markets and the USD should be hit by this in several stages over the years to come. Sure, last time (this fall) the USD strengthened as the crisis worsened. I’m predicting the opposite now as the majority of investors is starting to doubt the greenbacks long term value. I don’t think USD denominated equities and bonds will be seen as the safe haven it have often been in the past.
I’ve been demo trading RoboMiner since beginning of June with very nice results (this of course depends heavily on the movement in AUDNZD). I’ve signed up for the subscription service since the price for the full license is just way to much money to invest. $40 a month also adds up of course but at least that can be taken from monthly profits I hope
I have started it on my existing Forex.com/UK account trading 0.03 lots in AUDNZD and 0.01 lots in EURCHF. I’m prepared to add more funds if needed to weather out draw downs. I might also add more and up the lot sizes depending on other investments fall out or not. We’ll see.
Cashbackforex.com offers 15% rebate on purchases of RoboMiner, so check them out if interested.
