THIS THREAD IS NOW LOCKED. SEE http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... 112#p42112 FOR THE REASONS
SERIOUS WARNING
* Most Forex traders lose all their money.
* Using the robot posted here in trading Forex does not guarantee success.
* Trading this robot could lead to serious financial loss.
* Trading this robot without understanding its underlying trading strategies guarantees traders will lose their money.
* This is not a set-and-forget ea; there is no such thing and anyone who tries to claim there is, is either stupid or lying. This ea requires frequent manual intervention.
* At best, a trading robot is only 90% as good as the manual strategy it trades. At best. At worst, it can be much less effective. If the strategy is rubbish, so is the robot.
* To trade this robot, you have to understand:
o How to use EA's.
o The Beast, and its variant found at http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=263253
Welcome to a description of one man's journey through the train wreck of Forex trading from disaster to profitability. Follow in his footsteps, and you might be able to do the same.
Just for the most important few seconds of your financial life, ignore this thread and read a post that I feature at the bottom of all my threads these days. You will find it at http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread. ... ost4923611 It is an inspiring story and is the genesis of this thread.
MurphyMan's name is Sam. He is not a superguy. He is a regular trader like you and me. Somehow, through the morass of information, misinformation and multiple trading robots that somehow seem to follow me around, he found a way to make one of them profitable. In a different thread, and via pm's with me, he has offered to make his story public. I hope you will draw inspiration from it.
Here is Sam's story:
"My story:
I have been trading TOB for the better part of the last 11 months. When I first started I would do great for a week or so, and then get hit hard. Dust myself off. Do well again, then - Pow! Deep down I thought I could benefit from this retracement scheme if it wasn't for the hits. I wasn't really sure what the problem was. After a while, I started noticing that TOB would suddenly close trades before I wished. Those are the drops that you see in the chart.
In April, the Japanese earthquake hit. I was in some JPY issues and they plummeted. Against the posted advice of experienced traders, I stayed in hoping they would recover and I tried adding some recovery trades which just made matters worse. The final straw was when the nuclear reactors failed and the currency dropped straight down. Margin calls kicked in and all my trades closed in big negative numbers, right before my eyes.
At this point, I was starting to have a glimmer of understanding, that in FOREX, what goes down, will probably come back up. So, right when JPY was at its low, I took what was left of my account and got in a couple of buy orders in. It was a desperation move, but unbelievably, the JPYs came back up in a short period of time enough to keep me in the game.
This lesson taught me:
Sudden spikes are followed by distinct reversals, though maybe not all the way back.
Being over leveraged sets you up for margin calls and subsequent failure.
I didn't understand TOB hedging.
So, on 17 April I changed the way I traded:
1. Only traded .01 lots per $1,500 cash. (Now that my cash is getting higher I am closer to .01/$2,000.
2. Turn off hedging
3. Tough out the negative trades with BOS.
4. Take little trades off the table before they reverse. (Sometimes)
One of the things I noticed, is TOB would retrace into a little profit, then return with the trend and I would be negative, so I started closing out trades when I was showing a little win. Five bucks, 10 bucks, etc. I run TOB on the one hour chart, but if I'm looking at a possible reversal I go to the M1 and try and get a feel for what the market is up to. What is the level of Fear & Greed? I think you can see it in the one minute charts.
So after that, I started doing better. When I had a series of successes I might add in more cash, which would help me increase the lot size, but still stay at .01/$1,500.
I also found having too many pairs open mucks up recovery. If you only have a couple of trades open, but for five different pairs, you will not have enough margin left for recovery trades. I currently limit to four pairs, but I am considering going to three. I keep my margin limit at 600%.
Plenty has gone wrong in those months since the JPY situation. I had two occasions where I was in losing trades, and took "Manual recovery" trades which only made things worse. I probably had two months where barely any trades were taken and DD reached toward $4,000. (Gasp). But, I hung in there and waited and traded it out.
One last thing, I spend a lot OF TIME staring at the screen. Practice, practice, practice. "
TOB = The Old Beast. Since Nanningbob first positied his sixths lines theory, and macman contacted me with his variant on this, we have had a number or Beasts. The Old Beast was once The Beast. There are all sorts of Beasts lying around - far too many for us all to test for more than a few days.
Attached is the version that Sam is using to slowly build his fortune. Also attached is his setfile. So:
1. Download The Old Beast to your Empty4/Experts folder.
2. Download the .set.txt file to your Empty4/Experts/Presets folder. When doing so, change its name slightly About the only annoying thing about posting attachments at FF is the ludicrous restriction on set files. When saving this file, remove the .txt extension.
3. Close down and restart your platform, set up a few charts, drag TOB onto them and load into them the set file.
Please note that there appears to be a bug in the code that detects the number of pairs being traded, and I am buggered if I can work out what the problem is. I suggest you set NoOfPairsTrading at one less than the number of pairs you want to trade, until one of the proper programmers here can work out what I have done wrong.
The primary function of this thread is to disseminate to everyone else how one particular trader has taken one particular EA and turned it into a profitable robot. When you have questions about this, I shall leave it to Sam to answer.
The secondary function is to facilitate exchange of ideas based on Sam's work.
Don't bother suggesting additional filters; Sam and I will ignore them if we are in a good mood. If you annoy either of us, I shall remove from you the ability to post here.
Thread rules. These are easy. Break them, and I will prevent you from contributing to any of my threads:
1. Be polite to other contributors.
2. Be constructive.
* You are allowed to say,
o "I do not think this will work because....."
o "I think this will work better if......."
o "How about this........"
* You are not allowed to say
o "This is rubbish and anybody who trades this way is an idiot" or its equivalent. Flamers will be banned - apart from me and Sam. Megalomaniac tendencies showing here.
Have fun guys. Learn. Make money. When you make money, share how. Even if all you did was use the defaults and made money, this information helps to confirm that we really are on the right lines here.
One extra note: I have prepared this thread whilst under the affluence of several shots of incohol. I shall clean up any incoherent bits tomorrow.
Matters of general interest
Read this post:
http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread. ... ost4923611 Newbie traders, read this for inspiration and warning. Those of you who have suffered losses, read it for inspiration.
Masterly summary of hedging: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread. ... ost4977179
EA coding
I receive may requests to code EA's. Traders, if I code your EA for free, then I will share it here at FF. If you want me to code your EA without sharing, then my fee is $100 payable into my paypal account. I explain why at http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... p=803#p803, at the bottom of the post.
Useful utilities/EA's/scripts
MaryJane has posted a fabulous utility to allow us to resize EA input windows: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=299017
Multi purpose trade manager: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread.php?t=89371
Account equity analyser: http://www.forexfactory.com/showthre...16#post4693716 Also at http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread. ... ost4709098, which includes a template for both USD and the Euro.
Past-trades display indi by squalou; shows a graphical display of the success/failure of trades in your History tab. Breathtaking piece of work. http://www.forexfactory.com/showthread. ... ost3830610
My shell EA – the code I use to produce EA's so quickly. http://www.stevehopwoodforex.com/phpBB3 ... p?f=5&t=15 |
In the meantime, Erwin kindly does the business for me. I will ask him to enable mqh files.
