What to do…

As I’ve started to quickly convert one of my most trusted scalpers to MetaTrader5 (to trade on the Alpari UK ECN MT5 platform) I found this little gem: http://www.mql5.com/en/articles/81

It quickly describes most of the changes needed to get a MQL4 based EA running. When I go through the list I actually can’t understand why some of these have changed. Change without reason is always bad. It does omit trading functions, which is changed quite a bit in MQL5. It is probably a good idea to implement these from the ground up.

By accident I just visited the site of Alpari UK and noticed that their MT5 offering now is enabled for live trading (last time I looked it was only open for demo trading). MetaTrader 5 hasn’t been able to replace the old and trusted version 4 despite being available for quite a long time now.

Alpari UK is apparently hoping this will change if they sweeten the deal a little and is currently offering a MT5 ECN account without commission (!). And you only even have to deposit $200 to test it. The promotion is valid until 2nd of July 2012. Unfortunately I have no EAs to trade the account with, but hopefully I can convert some of my old MQL4 bots without too much trouble.

It is possible to trade micro lots and DOM is available (6 levels). Sounds really good when combined with razor thin spreads without commission (after the promo they will be $6/lot round turn, which is competitive for sure). I’m signing up as I’m writing this

Check it out: http://www.alpari.co.uk/en/trading-accounts/ecn.html (don’t know if you get any rebate by signing via Cashbackforex.com since you don’t pay any commission, but it never hurts either so do it. After the promotion is ended it could be a good idea).

I just asked myself that question as its been a few days since I started backtesting with tickdata from Dukascopy. Even short runs take a lot of time… Optimizations of a few parameters can take weeks. I just aborted a optimization run that was supposed to  take 1800 hours (that is 11 weeks roughly).

So, naturally I started thinking that maybe it is time that my 3 year old Intel Q6600 is replaced by a faster part. I must say that it have performed absolutely excellent, especially since I’ve overclocked it to 3GHz all the time I’ve had it. It is a quad core CPU, but sadly MT4 is a single threaded application, so only one of them is used at a time. I usually solve this by running four instances of the same test with one of the parameters range cut in four, but it is a hassle. MT5 solves all this as it not only is able to use all available cores in the host system it is able to out-source processing to agents running on other computers. But reality right now is that MT4 still is the main platform, and it probably will remain so for at least another 6-12 months.

I’ve googled for benchmarks, but I can’t find any. Sure it is a niche, but I really expected at least some results for MT4. I thought surely someone had bought a new computer sometime and tested it by running the same backtest on both. I know I would, but it seems I’m alone in this. Can’t find any benchmarks for either MT4 or MT5.

Read more…

Seems MetaQuotes is going to run their championship (ATC) again this year, now on the new MetaTrader 5 platform exclusively. It will run from October 4th to December 24th and it is possible to register already. They will host and run all EAs at their servers. There will be prizes for $80,000 in total.

So why is this competition better than the awful Forex Robot World Cup (FRWC) that some affiliate spamsters organized this winter? (I warned you about it before hand). Well, MetaQuotes is doing this to promote their platform, not to get access to EAs to sell for profit after the competition. That was the main reason to run the FRWC of course. Oh, and as I predicted the EAs that performed best during the two month competition have failed since. This is really the problem that I see with the ATC also, it is too short. Sure it is a few weeks longer than FRWC, but it is still too short to give any significant results. I would have loved seeing a 6+ month competition. That would weed out all the boom-bust strategies and perhaps reveal some more stable ones.

None the less, I will try to enter the competition. I have just started experimenting with MT5, but I must say I like it a lot as of yet. MQL5 is refreshing and the Strategy runner in MT5 is so improved it hurts whenever I go back to MT4 to test a EA.

Check it out: http://championship.mql5.com/2010/en

Alpari UK have launched their MT5 demo platform recently, check that out too: http://www.alpari.co.uk/en/cnews/show/id/570/

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?