Welcome

[cuzgeorge]

Hi Steve and all,
really great to be onboard, looking forward to that 'Hopwood Style' and hope to be able to contribute wherever i can, still a noob, but reading and learning fast. thanks to all who made this forum possible and for the continuous sharing amongst all. What a great space to be part of!
kind regards to all,
cuzgeorge

[jerrykhor]

Hi Steve, just found this site..
nice to be here and hope to contribute my efforts ..

[AG2012]

Hello Steve.
I'm so glad to see that you have a place of your own now! I was following your threads back at "the old place", and am quite happy to have found this one. Also a warm hello to the old names I remember from the "old place".

Well Steve, with your permission, I'd like to contribute here if I may.
I have recently developed an EA, to trade by means of an indi, which a gent named "Sachmo" very graciously provided, over at another forum. He started the thread asking if anyone could help to code an EA for his Gann Square of 9 indi, so I took on the challenge.

I don't consider my self anywhere near the caliber of coder that you and a lot of the other guys (here) are at now.

Please advise, and thank you for starting up your "new place".

Cheers
AG

[SteveHopwood]

Hello Steve.
I'm so glad to see that you have a place of your own now! I was following your threads back at "the old place", and am quite happy to have found this one. Also a warm hello to the old names I remember from the "old place".

Well Steve, with your permission, I'd like to contribute here if I may.
I have recently developed an EA, to trade by means of an indi, which a gent named "Sachmo" very graciously provided, over at another forum. He started the thread asking if anyone could help to code an EA for his Gann Square of 9 indi, so I took on the challenge.

I don't consider my self anywhere near the caliber of coder that you and a lot of the other guys (here) are at now.

Please advise, and thank you for starting up your "new place".

Cheers
AG

Hi there. Great to see you here.

Start a thread in the Automated Trading section - right at the top of the forum list on the first page..

Cheers

[AG2012]

Thank you Steve. I've started to work on the post, almost finished it but didn't save to drafts, and lost what I had written after leaving for a moment and coming back LOL!
Oh well live and learn

[SteveHopwood]

Thank you Steve. I've started to work on the post, almost finished it but didn't save to drafts, and lost what I had written after leaving for a moment and coming back LOL!
Oh well live and learn

Don't you just hate that?

Visit http://lazarus.interclue.com/ and see if Lazarus will work with your browser - mine is Firefox and the utility is invaulable. I have not lost text for yonks using it.

Remember to add a disclaimer to the top of your post. Copy mine if you want; lots of others do.

[AG2012]

Thanks again Steve. Post is done. Will do...

[Fx93]

Hi All,

Cool forum Steve, hello everyone!

Just wanted to introduce myself, I've been backtesting methods manually on thinkorswim for a year or so. I really believe there is a mechanical system that can make at least 30% a month.

One thing I haven't seen here, but which would be nice, is general EA rules that you have found helpful. For instance, the "only one loss per trend" rule by using a 34/55 EMA. This prevents many losses by an EA where the market condition has proven unsuitable for it at that time (steep sell-offs, etc).

I also think a break even stop after about 10 or 20 pips is good in general.

I usually only create strategies for small timeframes so I can maximize leverage in relation to my risk. Here in the US I can trade .1 lots per $300. This means if I make 10 pips/day, that's $10, which is 3.3% a day. With a 10 pip SL, it is the same risk per trade. I don't really believe in large DD systems.

All of the low timeframe mechanical systems benefit from incorporating indicator divergence it seems, and I have come up with various rules to do that. For instance, using a 32 and 128 period stochastic one could say to buy when the 128 goes below 5 but the 32 is still above 5. This ensures divergence is present.

I'm optimistic that this forum will achieve a nicely profitable EA, when I looked it seemed there was no one real favorite atm. Is there?

Also, I looked but didn't see a clear favorite Empty4 broker for here in the US. /cry.

I'm going to look through all my material, work on some new stuff, and hopefully be able to offer a profitable system soon!

LOL @ autocorrecting the b word to criminal!!!

[garyfritz]

I think you may find the 30%/mo EA to be a bit more elusive than you expect. Steve's been at this for years and isn't rich yet, and he's not the only one. I'd be deliriously happy with 10%/mo -- that would triple your money every year! I have a system that has shown results like that in the past, but I still haven't managed to produce those results with real money.

10 pips per day sounds easy, but doing it consistently is tough. More importantly you need to understand the importance of position sizing. You can't just leverage yourself up to the maximum allowed by your broker -- your system may not support it. You can actually turn a winning system into a loser by leveraging too high. (Example: flip a coin, win $2 on heads, lose $1 on tails. That's a huge winner. You will maximize your profits over the long haul by betting 25% of your account on each flip, but your equity will have huge runups and drawdowns. Bet 50% or more and you're guaranteed to go broke eventually. Bet 100% and you'll go broke on the first tails.)

So don't assume you can trade 0.1 per $300. Figure out how much you can lose in a trade, and size your position so that 10 pips represents 0.5% of your account, or 1%, or whatever. Until you're very sure of your EA's behavior you probably shouldn't get a lot more aggressive than that. Your 10 pip SL example risks 3.3% of your $300 account per trade. That can work very well IF your system performance supports it, but first you need to understand the system performance. Once you characterize it, you might look into some more aggressive sizing strategies.

I'm not trying to burst your bubble, but over-trading is one of the fastest ways to go broke. Start out carefully to make sure you can stay in the game. THEN show us that 30%/mo EA!!!

[Fx93]

Yes, I have found it to be elusive. I've tested a few that do over 100% for a month, then fizzle out. It's amazing that even on a 1M chart, you have to test a year or so to see if they really work.