Slopey Peaky Bob

[MurphyMan]

EURCAD was my nemesis this week, for my live account. Up until this point, I had rung up $1,065 profit on a $3,000 account. Towards the middle of last week SPB started loading up buys on EURCAD but it just kept plunging. Then I found my settings caused SPB to stop trading on Thursday and it took me a day or two to get that squared away. This prevented other issues from opening and limiting the variety of my basket. As we went into the new week, my drawdown was almost up to -$400, wiping out much of my previously reported profit. The USA Independence Day holiday wasn't helping things, I'm sure.

Once the Thursday stop trading thing cleared up, SPB took a few more trades. I also changed ForexKiwi from 1,250 to 1,000 which allowed a few more trades to open to fill the basket a bit more.

As of Wednesday evening more SPB trades were filling the basket. Between the newer issues getting into profit and EURCAD coming up just a little I was only -$40 drawdown by Thursday morning. I thought that was a prudent time to shut it down, so I closed everything manually and will give SPB a rest until next week. So, instead of licking a major wound, I'm just tending to a minor scratch.

Also, winding up my first week of FXTestify.

That is all.

[toc17]

Hi,
I'm running SPB 1q for 2 weeks, and it's an awesome EA, congratulations to all the brains that are working on it

My settings are those of Steve.set, with only one modification: NoOfBarsOnChar = 800

Today he should have closed all trades with a profit of +60€, but he hasn't done that, and he is still accumulating € (right now +80€). I don't understand why he haven't closed at the TP.

Last week it closed the first basket at 60€, and early this week (July 3) closed the second also at 60€. I don´t touch anything, he is running on a VPS.

Has anything like this happened to you?

[yamez]

Results for a live GP account using SPB. Pretty much default settings.

I am not using the FX Testify DB since I place an ATR safety stop using APTM, to have a measure of protection in a black swan event. I also intervene occasionally taking profit on offer and to make my margin more comfortable. About 4.5% of trades have hit their SL. All this would skew the DB results.

[Alexfirst]

Make sure you have enough free margin, equity and patience to ride the waves...

PeterUK, can you please tell what was that DD in %?

All Relative... trading a fix lot size of 0.01 with some times up to 20 trades going taking up margin... I experienced about $200+ DD and then it recoved, it could get worst, hence you need a decent size account to not worry too much about DD and/or close trades within your risk tolerance, I'm also a semi-automatic trader

Ok. With fixed 0,01 I have also experienced a DD about 200$. Just wonder if someone had a bigger DD?

[Zennor]

Same DD about £200 but was ready for such events. If DD is a bother to you there are many features in the EA to prevent this with the consequence that profits/baskets will take a little longer to hit. Positive swaps only, use either or both the trade balance features on offer in the EA, margin check levels. Any and all these features can have a drastic effect on your DD so why not experiment and see how you get on.

[SteveHopwood]

Something I just noticed folks.

SPB will attempt to open/close trades over the weekend if you leave him running on an open chart. This results in umpteen attempts to open/close trades being sent to your broker's server. This will piss off your broker.

I will add a fix for this over the weekend. Close the platform or disable Expert Advisors in the meantime. This only stops trading and position managing activities; display stuff is not affected.

Quick fix for you DIY guys:
Do a search for, "//Using the EA to trade". It is almost at the end of the file.

Insert this code directly above the comment:

Code: Select all

   //We do not want trading and position managing if the markets are closed.
   if (!IsTradeAllowed(Symbol(), TimeCurrent()) )
   {
      DisplayUserFeedback();
      return;
   }//if (!IsTradeAllowed(Symbol(), TimeCurrent()) )
   

[Alexfirst]

Same DD about £200 but was ready for such events. If DD is a bother to you there are many features in the EA to prevent this with the consequence that profits/baskets will take a little longer to hit. Positive swaps only, use either or both the trade balance features on offer in the EA, margin check levels. Any and all these features can have a drastic effect on your DD so why not experiment and see how you get on.

Thanks for your reply and advice.

[SteveHopwood]

Another quiet week but still $246 added to the three accounts. $181 to mine, $41 and $34 to PJ's and Gareth's respectively. This represents two baskets on my account; one and a bit on the other two - the bit being Friday closures.

Overall, the three accounts are up $1950. My account is up $1016 since I loaded SPB on 1st May:

XAUUSDM30.png

I was curious about the GJ trades, so I had a look and dragged the biggest loser onto the chart - you will probably need to open the pic in a new tab and enlarge it to see the trade.

GBPJPYH1.png

This would have been taken when I had mistakenly only 800 bars per chart, so SPB would have identified the low about 280 bars before taking the trade as a peak low. It will be interesting to see if the pair turns around and eventually becomes profitable.

Rene, I know you read this. Would it be asking too much of you to knock out a script that:

• Cycles through the orders in the history tab.
• Filters by chart symbol, magic number and order comment.
• Draws green arrows to mark buy trade open/close and a trendline to join the - red for sells.

This would help us analyse unsuccessful trades to see what went wrong. It could be that we need an SS minimum strength filter. I am not adding one immediately - no point in fixin' something that ain't bust. We both know where that leads.



Edit: AUDCAD represents why I express profits in cash rather than pips. Nearly 47 pips "profit" but an actual cash loss of nearly $11.

[Gertje]

steve, you might find the attached indi doing what you want.

[SteveHopwood]

steve, you might find the attached indi doing what you want.

Hehe. I should have thought to look. Thanks.

This is an indi folks and so goes in your indicators folder. I have added the trade comment filter. I shall put it in post 1 later.