What to do…

Been evaluating my EAs. The only one that I’m ahead with now is MegaDroid. FAP Turbo and GridBot lose some more yesterday. GridBot hit the safety net on GBPJPY. FAP Turbo did more damage in EURCHF.

It is clear to me now that I have been overlooking the performance and stability MegaDroid have been giving my account (although it didn’t trade yesterday). It only trades once in a while, but it is very profitable. I am forcing it to trade a little more by running it on three charts. I am also considering experimenting more with it in demo, trying it on M15 timeframe to start with. Read on DonnaForex forum about a guy doing this with nice results. The trading logic in MegaDroid seems very solid, so it would be nice to have it trading more, even though one of the strengths of MD is that it doesn’t necessarily trade every day, just under the right conditions. I’ll run it in demo for a while.

I’ve made the decision to increase the risk taking with MegaDroid a little, and at the same time reduce it with all the other EAs on my live account. I will stop trading GridBot entirely until they release the version with the hedging (expected sometime in July). They will release a new version tomorrow, but it is presumably only sporting a new automatic time zone function. Nothing that will help the actual performance of the EA. I am really looking forward to the hedging function, as it really is sad do deactivate this EA. I have enjoyed watching it trade, but the reality right now is that it is to risky. Others may make lots of money, but I am not. Will keep it running in demo of course, so if it does convincingly well I can always put it back, with small lot sizes (0.01).

For FAP Turbo I will follow DonnaForex settings, but I won’t use the high risk setting in EURCHF again. We’ll see in her news letter on Saturday if she will reduce it herself. If she doesn’t I will.

I am currently trading FD2 live with a fixed lot size of 0.02. It hasn’t made any remarkable trades, in either direction, so I will leave it like that for now.

So with this new setup of reduced risk I am hoping to make some of the losses back. But since I need 100% profit to get back I decided to fund the account with another €500. This hopefully gives me a better chance I think. I am still hopeful.

Crap. After the losses Monday with GridBot my account really needed some winners to start marching upwards again. It looked promising with gains from all the EA:s last evening and this morning. One lingering trade by FAP Turbo in EURCHF was behind -€20 when I left for work. I was considering closing it manually, but since it is against my rules I didn’t. I wish I had now… FAP Turbo closed it for a loss of €123 a few minutes ago.

The trade was only taken in the live account and at FXCM UK demo (where it was closed for a much smaller loss early in the morning). The demo account at Alpari UK didn’t have it at all. It’s a real shame that the accounts isn’t trading in sync.

So, I’m thinking about implementing a new rule. If FAP Turbo has lingering trades right before the London open I manually set a much tighter S/L. I really don’t think that a scalper should have positions open that long in the first place, and I don’t think the logic in FAP Turbo is adjusted for trades in the London session. It is programmed to scalp in the Asian session. Perhaps I should investigate using the Swiss Army EA for this, so it is automated.

With this loss FAP Turbo is probaly not in the green any more. Will have to calculate it when I get home. Seems scalping is harder and harder. Perhaps I should check out Xtreme EURCHF instead, but it costs $299.

I put up another demo account yesterday trading FAP Turbo (all pairs), MegaDroid (three EURUSD charts with 1 hour offsets and small risks), GridBot (GBPJPY, USDJPY and EURJPY) and FD2 (all four pairs). This demo is at Alpari UK and I funded it with €1000. You can follow it here: http://jasonvoorhees.mt4stats.com/

This new demo is really trading like my live account at Alpari UK, so perhaps the trades there actually will be useful in finding optimal settings. FD2 is making some really nice trades, hopefully it continues and proves that the defects from last week is ironed out and I can put it on the live account.

Unfortunately AUDNZD and CHPJPY isn’t offered at the Demo account, I still trade these live with the GridBot thou. CHFJPY is strongly correlated with the other Yen pairs of course. AUDNZD is both “Comdolls” (Commodity trending dollars) and is therefor very nice to trade with the GridBot. They usually trade in a range over the day and GridBot can get multiple small trades in. I keep out during the Sydney session.

I will keep my old demo (at Alpari US) running for a while, but the account there really was trashed by RoboMiner. I would not run that bot on a live account…

Update: This setup has made 40% gains in just two days now. Let’s hope FD2 continues to convince me to run it live next week.

So, I’m currently using four different Expert Advisers (EAs) that are trading 15 (!) different currency pairs. They are FAP Turbo, Forex MegaDroid, Forex GridBot and Forex Derivative 2.0. The last one is the latest (and greatest?) addition to the line-up. As of this writing it hasn’t done any actual trading yet, but it does very very well in backtests so I am hopeful. FAP Turbo is still the only one that have been profitable over my 5 days of trade, but I will keep MegaDroid and GridBot for a while to see how things turn out. FAP Turbo uses DonnaForex settings for the pairs she trade, and my own for USDCAD.

As for GridBot I’ve analyzed last weeks trades and made some changes to virtually every currency pair. I was considering dropping a few, but resorted to constrict their trading hours instead. This way I can still get more data on them, if last week perhaps just run bad for some pairs. So what settings will I be running this week? Here’s the Line-up:

GBPJPY and USDJPY:  LotSize 0.1, SafetyNet -50, trading between 18 and 3 GMT (Alpari UK offset)

USDCHF: LotSize 0.01, SafetyNet -13, trading between 9 and 18 GMT

GBPUSD: LotSize 0.05, SafetyNet -50, trading between 9 and 3 GMT

EURUSD: LotSize 0.01, SafetyNet -14, trading betweeen 9 and 15 GMT

USDCAD: LotSize 0.01, SafetyNet -20, trading between 11 and 19 GMT

EURGBP: LotSize 0.01, SafetyNet -20, trading between 9 and 14 GMT

EURCHF: LotSize 0.01, SafetyNet -20, trading between 9 and 3 GMT

EURCAD: LotSize 0.05, SafetyNet -80, trading between 9 and 3 GMT

CHFJPY: LotSize 0.01, SafetyNet -20, trading between 12 and 3 GMT

AUDUSD: LotSize 0.01, SafetyNet -14, trading between 10 and 18 GMT

AUDNZD: LotSize 0.1, SafetyNet -60, trading between 9 and 3 GMT

NZDUSD: LotSize 0.01, SafetyNet -14, trading between 11 and 19 GMT

EURJPY: LotSize 0.01, SafetyNet -15, trading between 18 and 3 GMT

GBPCHF: LotSize 0.01, SafetyNet -20, trading between 9 and 15 GMT

So, hopefully it will work out with these settings, and I get more good trades than bad. I’ve tried to stop lingering trades by settings a little tighter working hours and lower safety net on some pairs as you can see. Some I’ve also started trading at bigger lotsizes since they’ve been performing very well. AUDNZD has hit rate of 100% as of now for example, so I’m trading it at 0.1 lotsize. This pair is characterized by often trading in a range, perfect for grid trading. Unfortunately the spreads are somewhat unfavorable, but as long as GridBot keeps getting winners here I’m satisfied.