MetaTrader - MQL4 programming - Part 3

Welcome back Forex fans.

Here's my 3rd installment on programming MetaTrader. In case you missed my prior posts, you can find them here MetaTrader programming part 1 and MetaTrader programming part 2.

In this post, we'll take a look at the MarketInfo() function. This function pulls some necessary information from the broker's about the symbol in question. Go ahead and create a new EA file called MarketInfo. Paste the following code above the init() function:

string sSymbol;

Now paste this code into the init() function:

int init()
{
// Grab current symbol
Print("Marketinfo Startup");

// Grab current symbol
sSymbol = Symbol();

// Print it out and finish up
Print("Symbol: ", sSymbol);

return(0);
}

Now setup your Start() function as follows:

int start()
{
double dRetval;

dRetval = MarketInfo(sSymbol,MODE_LOW);
Print("Days high: ", dRetval);

dRetval = MarketInfo(sSymbol,MODE_HIGH);
Print("Day low : ", dRetval);

/* Skip Bid, Ask, Point, Digits, they pre-defined variables */

dRetval = MarketInfo(sSymbol,MODE_SPREAD);
Print("Spread: ", dRetval);

dRetval = MarketInfo(sSymbol,MODE_STOPLEVEL);
Print("Stop Level: ", dRetval);

dRetval = MarketInfo(sSymbol,MODE_LOTSIZE);
Print("Lot Size: ", dRetval);

return(0);
}

/* Skip these
MODE_LOTSIZE 15 Lot size in the base currency.
MODE_TICKVALUE 16 Minimal tick value in the deposit currency.
MODE_TICKSIZE 17 Minimal tick size in the quote currency.
MODE_SWAPLONG 18 Swap of a long position.
MODE_SWAPSHORT 19 Swap of a short position.
MODE_STARTING 20 Trade starting date (usually used for futures).
MODE_EXPIRATION 21 Trade expiration date (usually used for futures).
MODE_TRADEALLOWED 22 Trade is allowed for the symbol.
MODE_MINLOT 23 Minimal permitted lot size.
MODE_LOTSTEP 24 Step for changing lots.
MODE_MAXLOT 25 Maximal permitted lot size.
MODE_SWAPTYPE 26 Swap calculation method. 0 - in points; 1 - in the symbol base currency; 2 - by interest; 3 - in the margin currency.
MODE_PROFITCALCMODE 27 Profit calculation mode. 0 - Forex; 1 - CFD; 2 - Futures.
MODE_MARGINCALCMODE 28 Margin calculation mode. 0 - Forex; 1 - CFD; 2 - Futures; 3 - CFD for indexes.
MODE_MARGININIT 29 Initial margin requirements for 1 lot.
MODE_MARGINMAINTENANCE 30 Margin to maintain open positions calculated for 1 lot.
MODE_MARGINHEDGED 31 Hedged margin calculated for 1 lot.
MODE_MARGINREQUIRED 32 Free margin required to open 1 lot for buying.
MODE_FREEZELEVEL 33 Order freeze level in points. If the execution price lies within the range defined by the freeze level, the order cannot be modified, canceled or closed.
*/

As we can see from the code, the MarketInfo() function allows us to pull the day's high and low when using the MODE_HIGH and MODE_LOW parameters. This could be useful when coding an Expert Advisor. The daily high/low counters reset when the daily interest rate roll occurs which is at 5PM EST.

Calling MarketInfo() with the MODE_SPREAD parameter pulls the current spread for the pair which you can get just as easily by subtracting the Bid from the Ask and dividing by Point.

The MODE_STOPLEVEL parameter returns the number of pips away from the current price at which you are allowed to place the a stop order or take profit order. In the above example, the Stop level value is 4 so if we went long the market at an Ask price of 1.4340, the closest that we could place a take-profit order would be 1.4344. If the current Bid price were 1.4338, the closest we could place a stop-loss order would be 1.4334.

When I first found out about this, I thought was kind of unfair. I suppose it prevents the market maker from constantly getting scalped and ensures that on trades that go against the customer, they make at least the spread plus the stop level. Of course, there's nothing preventing you from entering market orders to close a position within the StopLevel.

The MODE_FREEZELEVEL parameter returns the number of pips away from the current price at which limit orders are "frozen" and cannot be changed. For example, if the FREEZELEVEL were 5 and the current Bid/Ask was 1.4356 x 1.4358 and you had a limit sell order at 1.4360, you would not be allowed to modify or cancel your limit order since it was within 5 pips of the Bid price.

On my terminal FREEZELEVEL came back at zero, so i'm not sure its enforced with FXDD on their Metatrader platform.

Now save and compile the EA and drag it onto a chart of EUR/USD. Now drag it onto a few other charts such as GBP/USD and GBP/JPY to get a feel for the different Spread and Stoplevel values.

That's it, come back later for more MT4 programming.

MetaTrader - MQL4 programming - Part 2

Welcome back, fans of Zulutrade and automated forex trading.

Let's continue our look at programming Expert Advisors in the MetaTrader platform. At this point, you should know the basics of MetaTrader and how create an apply an Expert Advisor. If you need a refresher, see my prior post MQL Programming Part 1.

Now open up MetaTrader and create a new EA called welcome.mq4 and save it in the Experts folder under your MetaTrader install folder. Then exit MT4, and restart it and you should see your new Expert Advisor called Welcome on the left side under the Expert Advisors folder.

Now open up the Welcome.mq4 folder and add these 2 new variables in the header section before the init() function:

// Total bars on the chart
int nTotalBars;

// Number of bars to look back
int nLookBack = 5;

Now complete the Init() function as follows:

int init() {
datetime dNow;
string sDate;

string sTime;
dNow = TimeCurrent();
sDate = TimeToStr(dNow, TIME_DATE);
sTime = TimeToStr(dNow, TIME_MINUTES);

Print("Initializing Welcome EA");
Print("Server time: ", sDate, " ", sTime);

// Grab total bars
nTotalBars = Bars;
Print("Point: ", Point);
Print("Digits: ", Digits);

return(0);
}

In the Init() function, we grab the server time using the TimeCurrent() function and use TimeToStr() to convert it to its date and time components and print them out. The print output appears on the "Experts" tab and are a convenient way to interact with the user.

We also grab the values of the Bars pre-defined variable which return the total number of bars on the current chart. We also print out the value of Point variable which shows the point size of the current pair. With FXDD and the EUR/USD pair, the Point equals 0.0001. and Digits equals 4.

With that behind us, we know all the real action takes place in the start() function which gets called each time a new tick arrives at the terminal. Let's take a look at now to access price data from inside the Start() function.

Pre-defined variables Bid and Ask return the current market prices for the pair.

Pre-defined variables Time High, Low, Close and Volume return the values of the bars on the chart. Each variable is really an array, and the 0th array value (High[0] for example) shows the High for the current price bar currently being formed. High[1] refers next oldest bar. Close[10] would return the closing bar value 10-bars back from the current bar.

With that, let's code a Start function that prints a message to the Experts tab each time the pair makes a new n-bar high. For the purposes of this example, let's use 5 for the bars to look back.

Now let's code the start() function as follows:

int start()
{
// Use to index into price array
int i = 0;
bool bNewHiLo = false;

// Zero's bar is the bar current in the making
double dAvgPrice0 = (High[0] + Low[0]) / 2.0;

Print("Avg/High[0]/Low[0]", dAvgPrice0, ",", High[0], ",", Low[0]);

double dAvgPriceN;
double dAvgPriceHi = 0.0;
double dAvgPriceLo = 999999999.0;

// Calculate N bar high and low for this bar
for (i=nLookBack; i>0; i--)
{
// Calculate average price for this bar
dAvgPriceN = (High[i] + Low[i]) / 2.0;

// Save new high and lo
if (dAvgPriceN < dAvgPriceLo) dAvgPriceLo = dAvgPriceN;
if (dAvgPriceN > dAvgPriceHi) dAvgPriceHi = dAvgPriceN;

}

if (dAvgPrice0 > dAvgPriceHi) {
Print("New ", nLookBack, " bar high at: ", dAvgPrice0);
bNewHiLo = true;
}

if (dAvgPrice0 < dAvgPriceLo) {
Print("New ", nLookBack, " bar low at: ", dAvgPrice0);
bNewHiLo = true;
}

if (bNewHiLo == false) {
Print("No signal ", nLookBack, "-Bar Hi/Lo/Current: ", dAvgPriceHi, ",",dAvgPriceLo, ",",dAvgPrice0);
}

return(0);
}


There's a lot going on here, so let's go through it one line at a time.

At the top of the start() function, we calculate the average price for the 0th bar - the bar currently in the making. I decided to go with average price for the bar so I don't give any additional credit to the opening or closing price for the bar.

Next, I declare variables dAvgPriceHi and dAvgPriceLo to hold the high and low prices for a given lookback. I initialize dAvgPriceHi to 0.0 and dAvgPriceLo to a high value so that first real price that comes along will get saved as the high or the low.

After that, the for loop is used to step through the price bars starting with 5 bars back and stepping forward until we reach bar 1. I calculate the average price for each bar and compare it with the previously saved high or low. When that loop finishes, dAvgPriceHi has the highest average price for that 5 bars and dAvgPriceLo as the lowest average price for that 5 bars.

Finally, I see if the average price for the currently forming bar (bar 0) is higher than the highest high (or lower than the lowest low) across the lookback period. If so, I print an alert out to the Results tab.

You can probably see where I'm going here. I'm working toward an expert that buys on breakouts of a n-bar high or sells on breakdowns from the n-bar low. I can make the value of N a variable and use the back-testing and optimization feature of Meta-trader to find good values of N for a given tradeable and bar pair.

Now compile the EA and fix any syntax issues. Now drag the EA onto a 1 minute chart of EUR/USD and watch it go to work.

That will form the basis of my first EA which is based on Donchian channels.

Finally, I realize there are limits to including the code itself in the blog. I'll figure out a place where I can publicly post the EA code as its developed and just highlight the interesting parts in the blog.

Zulutrade - Top Providers by Live Trade 12/24/2009

Welcome back Zulutraders and Forex fans.

To your left, please find the top 20 providers by live trade for trades closed from 12/20/2009 through 12/24/2009.

Overall trade volume was about half the levels of the prior week indicating many traders are taking a break from trading for the rest of the year.

Our favorite Cheetah moved up to the #4 spot from #5 last week. The other 4 traders just swapped positions with Surfing and LowestDD getting bumped out of the top positions and being replaced by sharp forex and smart forex.

Former favorite Bigwin had a big week, raking in a bunch of pips and moving from position #26 the prior week up to #17 last week.

That's all for now, check back later for more updates on automated forex trading.

Zulutrade - Accounts Update 12/24/2009

Welcome back Zulu-fans. Here's a recap of the week's action.

Things were quiet in the live account. Cheetah picked up 3 pips and that was fine with me. My live account now has just about 380 pips left, so we'll see if Cheetah can pull it back from the brink. On the demo accounts side...

Blinov was looking sharp and picked up 105 pips with 6 straight winners with only a 64-pip draw down. Blinov has now picked up 330 pips on 17-straight winners since adding him on a demo account back less than 2 weeks ago. He has about -394 pips in open losses, so we may have just been lucky not getting stopped out.

Next up is Missforex who picked up 48 pips on 4 straight winners. He is up 392 pips since the beginning of the demo period only 2 weeks back with 10 straight winners. Unlike Blinov, Missforex has no open positions.

Ferrari was down 14 pips on the week in quiet action.

Hayate had exactly one trade and hit my 180 pip stop. Ouch.

kingtrade didn't trade last week and has only traded 4 times in the month of December. Zulutrade shows he has in the neighborhood of 70 live followers, just waiting for him to spring a trade.

280pips.com is down -44 pips on the week, but I can't blame the provider since I had him reversed.

Student picked up 12 pips, but now has 6 open EUR/USD positions in the red. This is uncharacteristic of him, since he usually takes his losses. At this point is is painting the tape to keep his performance graph on an upward trajectory.

That's all for check back for more updates on Zulutrade, Metatrader, and automated Forex trading.

MetaTrader - MQL4 programming - Part 1

Welcome back Zulu-traders and fans of the Forex.

Here's wishing you a Merry Christmas and all the best for a healthy and prosperous New Year!

Let's take a look at programming in MQL4 - the language of MetaTrader 4. Even if you don't plan to write your own Expert Advisers, its good to understand how they work. So how do you go about learning MQL4? You read the book, of course, which is found here.

I got through about half of the book and the author spends a lot of time on programming basics. If you've ever done any programming, the language looks pretty familiar and is probably closest to the C language. I'm not going to attempt to teach you programming here, so I'll just extract the most important concepts to get you started.

Anyway, there are 3 basic things you can program and execute inside the MetaTrader platform. To execute one of these items, simply drag it from the navigator on the left and drop it onto a price chart. Here are the 3 things you can program:

1) Expert Advisor (EA) - An MQL4 program used for automated execution of trading strategies. The EA is called automatically by the MQL platform at every "tick" or change in price from the quote server.

Only one EA can be attached to a given chart, but you can apply multiple EA's to a given currency pair by opening multiple windows for that pair and dragging a different EA onto each window. It's typically advisable to run only one EA on a given account at a time, otherwise it becomes too much to keep track of.

Most MT4 users address this issue by installing MetaTrader into different folders (you get prompted for the folder at install time) and running multiple instances of MT4 on your computer. This would allow you to run 3 different EA's against 3 different demo accounts all at the same time.

Expert files get placed into the Experts folder under the folder where you installed MetaTrader.

2) Script - An MQL4 program to automate a series of operations involving price or trading. Scripts are allowed to call trading functions. A good use for a script would be to close all open trades. Scripts are executed only once on the chart at the time it script is dragged onto the chart.
Script files get places into the Scripts folder under the folder where you installed MetaTrader

3) Custom indicator - An MQL4 program to calculate technical indicators on the current price chart. Custom indicators calculate values to be drawn on the price chart (such as a moving average) or in a separate windows such as an oscillator. Indicator scripts are called automatically by the MT4 platform at each tick. Trading functions cannot be called from inside indicators. Multiple indicators can be applied to a chart at a given time which distinguishes them from EA's and Scripts.

Script files get placed into the Scripts folder under the folder where you installed MetaTrader

Each of the above types of program contain 3 pre-defined functions:

init() - called only once when the Indicator, Script or EA first starts. This is a good place to do any first time operations in your programs.

deinit() - called only once when the Indicator, Script or EA ends. This is a good place for clean up operations.

start() - called each time a new tick arrives at the platform for both EA's and Indicators. This is where most of the action is. I believe start() is called only once for scripts.

Now that we have that behind us, let's write our first program in MQL4.

• From inside the platform, click on 'Custom Indicators' on the left side and press the Insert key.
• At the wizard which appears, select 'Custom Indicator' and click Next.
• For the name, call it first.
• Complete the rest of the screen with your name, copyright and blog if you have one and click Next.
• Leave the following screen unchanged and click next.

Once the program appears on the screen, setup the init function as follows:

int init()
{
Alert("Hello MetaTrader");
return(0);
}

Alert() is a simple function that pops up a message on the screen.

Once you are done coding, click the Compile icon at the top and fix any syntax errors which appear. Once the compile is clean, select File, Exit and notice that the file will be saved in your indicators folder.

Now exit the MetaEditor window and return the MT4 platform window. Now select File, Exit to exit Metatrader.

Now start MetaTrader again and your new indicator (called first) should appear under the Indicators folder now. Now simply drag the new indicator onto a price chart and you should see the alert.

Congratulations, you just wrote your first MetaTrader program!

That's enough for now, check back later for Part 2.

MetaTrader - Intro to back testing

Welcome back Zulu-traders and forex fans.

Let's take a look at backtesting with the MetaTrader 4 platform.

Backtesting is the first step in evaluating an Expert Advisor. After all, if the robot doesn't make any money in backtesting over a one year period (for example), why consider it any further? More important, backtesting allows you to get a realistic idea of the amount of drawdown to expect.

To learn the basics, check out this 3-part video series YouTube Backtesting Videos.

Disregard the part about downloading data from the Alpari Website. You can pull down updated data inside the MT4 platform by going to Tools, History Center, double-click your pair, select your timeframe and click download.

The Expert Advisor evaluated here is called Framework and can be downloaded for free by clicking on the link. This EA uses crossovers in the Commodity Channel Index (CCI) which is an oscillator whose values typically range between -100 and +100. This system uses 3 separate CCI values with parameters of 5, 25 and 125 representing short, medium and long term values of the CCI indicator.

The trading logic is relatively simple. Take a long positon when the medium CCI is below the zero line and when the short and long term CCI's are both above zero. Take a short position when the medium CCI is above the zero line and when the short and long term CCI's are both below zero. The system uses a take proft of 255 pips and uses no stop loss.

While there is no stop loss, the system will close out all open positions and start to trade in the other direction once it gets a signal opposite any open trades. The system also pyramids (adds to) positions in the current direction as long as trades are open once a certain number of bars have elapsed.

The results from testing were pretty impressive across multiple pairs when tested on a daily timeframe from 1/1/2009 through today. Here are ending, high and low values on a $10,000 account over the test period:

Pair, High, Low, Ending
USD/JPY - $14,962, $8324, $10,606 (big drawdown from the high)
EUR/USD - $12,252, $10,244, $12,252 (all winners)
GBP/USD - $10,705, $8947, $8947 (ended at the low)
GBP/JPY - $14039, $8888, $11865 (stomach churning)

Overall drawdowns from the entry were contained to under 20% from the initial deposit. But there were some roller-coaster changes in account equity for example with USD/JPY going as high as almost $15,000, then drawing down to under $9,000 to end up at $10,606.

In summary, this robot isn't for me but is an interesting learning experience. The drawdowns can be large and (unlike Zulutrade History), all open positions are closed out at the end of the test period, sometimes ending in a sudden closing loss such as the GBP/USD example above. This trades might eventually work out, but I would rather know the closing equity than leave open trades off the grid - like Zulutrade does in their test results.

Also, there are issues with the quality of the test results as shown by the modelling quality metric on the results tab. There are many issues to consider when testing robots, and i've learned alot from this exercise. I've also started to work through Daniel Hernandez's e-book from http://fxreviews.blogspot.com/.

Long story short (and confirmed from Daniel's e-book) if you think MetaTrader expert advisors are an easy path to riches, think again! Enjoy some time off and check back later.

Zulutrade - Top Providers by Live Trade 12/18/2009

Welcome back Zulutraders and a happy winter solstice to all!

Those of us in North America still have a few nasty months of winter ahead, but summer is now officially on the way!

To your left please find the top 20 Zulutrade providers by Live Trade for trades closed from 12/13/2009 through 12/28/2009.

Our favorite Cheetah dropped to #6 on the week down from the #4 position last week.

Sharpforex moved up to the #3 position from #14 last week. This provider, along with Build the Case are the only providers on the list who are trading their own money on Zulutrade.

Finally kingtrade moved onto the list for the first time since i've been posting the list. We picked up kingtrade as a demo provider since he was recommended by reader Rossco and reviewed in my post Review of Rossco's picks. This provider has an awesome record with only one loss (-2 pips) out of 263 trades since appearing on the Zulutrade system back in August 2009.

Good trading and have a great week.

Zulutrade - Demo Accounts Update

Welcome back Zulu-traders. Here's weekly recap of demo accounts I'm following.

Most of the providers came from my query Consecutive Trades with Low Drawdown posted back on 12/8/2009.

Missforex was the screaming winner on the week who picked up 347 pips in 6 straight winners. The last 2 trades came very close to souring and got as far as -172 pips into drawdown before coming all the way back. If this were real trades, there is a good chance those -180 pip stops would have gotten hit.

Next up is Blinov who picked up 225 pips on 11 straight winners with a maximum drawdown of -35 pips. Blinov appears to have one live follower who has gained 239 pips.

Next up is kingtrade who picked up 32 pips on the week and has now made only 4 trades in the month of December. But they were all winners and he's up 97 pips so far.

Next up is Ferrari who picked up 26 pips on the week. At one point, he was up 81 pips but got knocked down by a -56 pip loss. Ferrari has the distinction of trading his own money on Zulutrade which is rare.

Next up is 280pips.com who lost -108 pips on the week. His performance was case of cutting the winners and letting the losers run. I'm toying with the idea of reversing some providers and this provider could be a candidate for that strategy.

Last up is Hayate who picked up 82 pips with 6 straight winners, then gave it all back and then some with a 186 pip loss.

Finally I would like to that all of my readers who come back to this blog often and visit the sponsor links. My Zulutrade experience has been discouraging to say the least, but your comments and feedback have lessened the pain and turned it into a learning experience.

Also, we have had some really excellent comments from Townjet (JT) Redford and Dazzer just to name a few. The last few comments by Redford alone have summarized many months and years of experience in a few paragraphs, and we really appreciate it.

Zulutrade - Live account update

Welcome back Zulu-traders.

It was another bruising week in my live account and my live account is now nearly wiped out.

The week started out on a bright note (and I breathed a sign of relief) when I saw the bulk of my remaining funds were successfully withdrawn leaving just over $500 or 500 pips remaining. I'm still waiting to receive the check, but I'm not too concerned about that since I've withdrawn money successfully from FXCM in the past.

Before I get too negative, there was some good news. Cheetah had a decent week and picked up 35 pips on 4 straight winners with a max drawdown of -18 pips. Cheetah was back in his old form (after a rough week last week) and was carefully picking trades with low drawdown. Cheetah is now the only live provider remaining in my account.

Now back to TheKillerz who had another rough week. I had a feeling his trading would continue to be rocky, so I was quick to hedge or second-guess his trades. He was inactive until noon EST on Monday and it was looking like he was taking the week off. He then went short EUR/USD and I hedged that trade quickly. TheKillerz closed that trade with a -67 pip loss, and I was able to take a 13-pip profit on that hedge. On Tuesday, TheKillerz went long GBP/USD and I closed that trade out with a -25 pip loss and he ended up taking a 30-pip profit.

I then took the controversial step of reversing TheKillerz signals for Thursday. He came in and bought GBP/USD and Zulu did the opposite and sold. I also hedged this trade and ended up taking a 3-pip profit on my hedge and a 25-pip loss on my reversed signal. At that point, I decided second-guessing the provider was a bad idea and removed the reverse.

Well Friday came along and I woke up in the hole -50 pips. That trade continued to go the wrong way and TheKillerz ended up taking a nasty -126 pips loss on that trade. Had I kept my reverse in place, I probably could have closed the week in the green. But it shows the slippery slope of trying to second-guess your provider.

So this drubbing puts me close to out of the Zulutrade game. I still have a few hundred pips left and Cheetah on the live account, so let's see where that takes us.

Finally, some of my demo providers had good weeks. But it shows the difficulty of the Zulutrade game - if a user has an excellent record in the demo account, how do we know that performance will carry over to the live account? In almost every case Ive seen, the provider works for some period of time, then goes into drawdown and wipes out whatever gains they made and then some.

I can't get over the feeling that the behavior of the providers is influenced by the number of live followers they have. That's may be tough to prove -but it does show a fundamental flaw in the Zulutrade model - that providers are compensated by transaction and not on the profitability of their own subscribers.

That's enough pain for now, check back later for updates on my journey to profitability in the forex markets.

Intro to MetaTrader 4

Welcome back Zulutraders and Forex fans.

Its no secret that the MetaTrader platform is taking the forex world by storm. Even forex giant FXCM caved recently and started offering their own customized version of MetaTrader. And a growing number of Zulutrade providers are now using MT4, even if just to trade their signals manually.

Meta-trader is definitely the future of Forex trading and here's why:

• Contains full-featured charting and free real-time data provided by the broker
• Open demo accounts of any size with the click of a button
• Integrated reporting, news, Alerts, Broker mailbox and best of all ..
• Integrated automated trading through "Expert Advisors" - computer programs that trade your account 24x5, around the clock, tick-by-tick without you having to watch every hour of the day and night.

This last one is huge because (due to the 24 hour nature of forex) you can only be up and paying attention to the markets at best half of the trading day before you have to spend some time with the family or go to bed. Plus with features like automated trailing stops, you can have the technology edge you need to make money in this ultra-competitive arena.

Also, there's a growing industry of expert advisor programs competing for your trading dollar. Most of them have a one-time upfront charge for unlimited ongoing usage. Its become a war of technology between the EA developers and in some cases the Forex brokers themselves who stand to loose money when a really good robot stats chipping away at their dealing desk.

Realizing that this information is old news to some of you, this post is to get the rest of you folks up to speed. For those of you not already running MetaTrader, do this.

To Do List
1) Download MetaTrader from your favorite broker. Here are a few links to get you started:

FXCM UK-based MT4 page
FXDD MT4 page
Forex.com MT4 page
Alpari UK MT4 page

2) Get familiar with the major parts of the platform, charting, order entry, etc.

There are some excellent videos on Youtube to walk you though at:

Metatrader videos

Take your time to get to know the platform, there's a lot to it.

3) Learn how to setup Expert Advisors by going through the above videos.

4) Finally download some EA's and play around with them in demo accounts.

To find some free EA's, go to Google and search for "free expert advisor download"

Eventually, I would like to program my own Expert Advisors, and i'm now heading in this direction.

Also, if any of you have been using a particular EA and having some success, please share that with us and we'll demo them along with you.

Okay, get busy and check back later for updates and good trading,

Tcxmon

Zulutrade - Top Providers by Live Trade - 12/11/2009

Welcome back to the Zulu-jungle.

To your left please find the top 20 Zulutrade providers by Live Trade for trades closed from 12/06/2009 through 12/11/2009.

Wintrade moved up to position #4 and almost quadupled his live trade volume from the prior week.

Build the case made a first-time appearance on the list and has the distinction as the only provider on the list of top 20 who actually trades his own real money!

Let us know if i'm missing any interesting providers or observations here and have a great week of trading.

Zulutrade - Demo accounts review

Greetings Zulu-watchers.

Here's a review of open demo accounts.

On top (and expiring today) is TheKillerz who lead the pack of all the demo providers, up +400 pips. In fact, he was the only provider to show a much of a profit during the demo period.

TheKillerz was up over 800 pips at one point, but went into a nasty drawdown with a series of loosing trades. Even so, he had an incredible run with 28 consecutive winners trades, picking up 685 pips in a 3-week period. But all runs come to an end and this one did in spectacular fashion. All eyes will be on the TheKillerz next week to see if he can bring my and JT's accounts back from the brink.

Next up is EliteCapital who is down -8 pips since the beginning of the demo period. He hit my -180 pip stop 4 times during the demo period and he had a good number of winners, but they were relatively small in size and not enough to make up for the stops hit.

It was a similar story with PraetorianGuard who was down -100 pips on the demo period and hit my stop 3 few times during the demo period.

Next up is Coolie1997 who is down -76 pips since the beginning of the demo period. Coolie hasn't traded in the month of December and is either on hiatus or taking the holiday period off.

Next up is king trade who didn't trade at all last week and remains up 64 pips since the start of the demo period making only 2 trades.

Last up is Student who lost 23 pips over 4 trades since being added last week. At least he can cut his losers.

Check back later for some new demos and enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Zulutrade - Live account shredded

Welcome back Zulu-traders.

I was hoping to have a better update for you this week, but it didn't work out that way. This week my live account was crushed.

Before you read any further - don't invest any funds with Zulutrade that you aren't prepared to loose. Zulutrade looks like such a great concept from the outside, but from the inside I can tell you that all its done for me is loose money.

I sent a funds withdrawl form over to FXCM for the remaining funds in my account except for about $500 or about 500 pips. So i'm giving Cheetah and TheKillerz one lot each and one more shot to keep me in the Zulutrade game, and then i'm done with real money. I might keep blogging about Zulutrade though since I find it to be pretty interesting. Better yet - I should find some other way to make money with Forex that actually works (like Metatrader 4 Expert Advisor's perhaps) and blog about that.

First, let's review the week's action.

It all started out well on Monday when TheKillerz came in and picked up about 110 pips in less than an hour on 2 GBP/USD sell trades. Tuesday also went well for TheKillerz when he picked up a quick 45 pips on a pair of GBP/USD sells. I was feeling good and confidence was high as they say in civil defense.

Meanwhile Cheetah got into some trouble on Tuesday just before I was about to post Consecutive Trades with Low Drawdown - which showed that Cheetah had over 400 consecutive trades with less than a 100-pip drawdown. Well he made a liar out of me and hit my 120-pip stop on a GBP/USD buy that went the wrong way.

I ended up sticking with Cheetah and he recovered from his drawdown and ended up picking up 27 pips on the week. Altogether, he's added about 33 pips to my account total since adding him back on 11/30/2009 which is not much considering the drawdown.

Things got rough for TheKillerz on Wednesday when he had a pair of GBP/USD sell trades that he stopped out down -120 pips each. Just after that, he came back and went the other way and bought GBP/USD. These trades went almost 100-pips in his favor, but he rode them back down and closed them for +7 and +8 pips which i'm glad he did because I was about to do it myself.

This time he turned around and sold GBP/USD again and this time picked up 71 and 74 pips, making back the better part of the -120 pips losses earlier in the day. Overall Wednesday turned out okay and he was only down slightly on the week at that point.

Thursday, things really got ugly for TheKillerz. First he sold GBP/USD and took a pair of 100-pips losses. Looking to recover his losses, he went long a pair of GBP/USD. I didn't like the looks of this trade, but stuck with it anyway, and rode this pair down for another pair of 100-pip losses.

Not content with loosing 400 pips in one day, he came back and went short GBP/USD again, not far from where he went short earlier in the day. By this time I had had enough for one day and didn't like the looks of this trade either. So I closed the first one at scratch and hedged the second one by going long GBP/USD. This turned out to be a good move because TheKillerz ended up closing this last trade down -76 pips and I took a 49 pip profit on my hedge.

So overall, TheKillerz lost me over -423 pips on the week and it would have been over -500 had I not stepped in to limit the damage. So his overall affect on my account went from +100 pips to -320 pips in a matter of one day.

I understand loosing trades, and when things don't go your way sometimes you just have to turn off the computer, walk away and live to trade another day. But when you keep coming back for more when your obviously getting whipsawed is not good trading. If you walk away when you are up +100 pips on the day, why not walk away when you are down -200 or even -400?

It helped a bit that I had Cheetah in the mix because there were a few times in the week when Cheetah and TheKillerz traded against each other, one long GBP/USD and the other short. As I mentioned in a comment, I like these 'Delta Neutral' trades because there's a pretty good chance both trades will be closed out at a profit.

That's enough pain and suffering for now, check back later and enjoy your weekend.

Zulutrade - Comment on comments

Welcome back Zulu-fans.

Thanks for all the great comments to yesterday's post Consecutive Trades with Low Drawdown.

Rather than adding on more comments, I thought I would just put in a quick post to reply to everyone's comments I haven't gotten to already. I already replied to Redford and townjet, thanks for the comments guys.

Setec - I haven't made any further progress on brokers that handle micro account with Zulutrade. Best of luck with yours and let us know how you make out.

Regarding the request for analysis on intra-trade drawdown - the original query in yesterday's post is based on providers that have a large number of consecutive trades with drawdowns less than 100 pips. In other words, the table shows the top 20 providers with the highest number of consecutive trades with drawdowns less than 100 pips (before Cheetah's blowup anyway).

Even with low intra-trade drawdown, you still have to consider the total drawdown you would experience with the provider when you run them with a given number of stops and lots. For example, if you were doing 2 lots with a 120 pip stop, and the user had 6 straight trades with -80 pip losses, that would be -480 pips of drawdown and you have to consider that. Let me know if you guys want to see a different type of query and and i'll consider running that.

Setec- Thanks for the data regarding the intra trade drawdown. I think what you are saying here is that The Hunter is a good provider because is average low (-7) is higher than the average low of TheKillerz (-52).

I tried that type of analysis Profit to Drawdown back in October and a later post where I picked some demo providers based on that Profit to Drawdown Provider Analysis. In fact, I found Student based on that analysis. As it turns out, I think that analysis was flawed because it was based on pips alone, and not based on number of lots opened. If I had to do it again, I would normalize it on a one-lot basis.

Dino - Right you are - Cheetah hit a -120 pip stop on Monday, and TheKillerz closed out 2 trades at -120 pips today. At one point, TheKillers was short 2 lots of GBP/USD and Cheetah was long one lot of GBP/USD at the same time. I actually like this situation because it lowers your overall risk, and if you can stomach the drawdown, its a pretty good chance you will make money on both trades.

Dazzer - Thanks for the kind words. I think you are smart to be slow to commit real funds to Zulutrade. I've lost a lot of money with Zulutrade and I think its a common newbie mistake with Forex to rush into any trading with real funds before you understand what you are getting into. I know because I've done it myself. The saying that comes to mind is:

"Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement".

Thanks for the tip on Ferrari he looks like a winner - and trading with real money. What a concept!

Check back later for some new demo accounts.

Zulutrade - Consecutive Trades with Low Drawdown

Welcome back Zulu-traders. Well I promised a juicy query and here it is.

To your left, please find the top-20 providers in the Zulutrade database for maximum number of consecutive trades without a 100-pip drawdown. This requires some explanation, so bear with me.

The Provider and Id columns are pretty self-explanatory.

The Trades column is the number of consecutive trades without an intra-trade drawdown exceeding 100 pips.

The TotalPips column is the total profit for that provider when run through my 2-lot, 180-pip filter. I should point out that the stop might as well be 100 for this query since these providers are so good at keeping losses less than 100 pips.

The MaxDD column is the maximum drawdown when using that provider when run through my 2-lot, 180-pip stop filter. Note that this figure is for a closed-trade basis and this represents the total amount you would have lost from the highest high to lowest low when trading that provider with my 2-lot, 180-pip filter.

Finally, the profit factor represents the amount of profit earned as percentage of drawdown encountered. The higher this number the better. Also, note that a few of the providers have 100% wins, therefore the profit factor is undefined since there are no losses.

You can do your own diligence on these providers. But I have my picks, so check back later for my own providers to test in demo accounts.

Zulutrade - Top Providers by Live Trade - 12/4/2009

Welcome back to the steamy Zulu jungle.

To your left please find the top 20 Zulutrade providers by Live Trade for trades closed from 11/29/2009 through 12/04/2009.

Cheetah moved up to the #1 position on the list, from #2 last week.

Our other favorite TheKillerz moved up to #22 on the list (not shown on the left) from #55 the prior week.

I took a at 3A, Digital-Pip-Bot, and 303pips, but they all generate a bit too much drawdown for my taste. Let me know if I'm overlooking any good providers here.

I made some good progress on the 'Providers with consecutive trades with drawdowns less than 100-pips" query. But it needs some more work before I'm ready to post. So check back later for that and have a great day.

Zulutrade - Live Account update - 12/04/2009

Welcome back Zulu-fans.

Here's a quick update on my live account. This past week I was up +109 pips total, bringing my account back from the brink after some recent drawdown.

Cheetah picked up 6 pips on the week on a single mini-lot. He started the week with a pair of losses going into drawdown -35 pips. He then climbed out with 4 consecutive winners and got his performance back to even on the week. This performance is pretty flat for a mini account, and he's trading more like I would rather have a single, full-sized 100K lot. It doesn't look like this provider is going to make much in the way of weekly pips, but he does avoid much drawdown which is a key strength.

TheKillerz had a strong week, up +103 pips on a single mini (10K) lot. Our Egyptian friend was kind enough to comment on yesterdays post Demo accounts update so take a look if you missed that. We are considering allocating another mini-lot, but this will be a game-time decision, so check back before Sunday's open.

Meanwhile, my Zulumon MS-Access database is now freshly loaded up with last week's results and how has over 460,000 trade records across 1,300 providers. We have some interesting ideas about new queries to check mid-day Sunday for an update.

Cheers and all the best,

Tcxmon

Zulutrade - Demo accounts update - 12/4/2009

Welcome back to Zulu-burbia.

Well I've recovered from my iPhone envy enough to get together a recap of demo accounts. I skipped demo accounts review last week, so our hard-working providers are overdue for an update.

First up is TheKillerz who has been utterly sublime since adding him as a demo back on 11/13/2009. Since then he had 28 straight winning trades and picked up 685 pips. His streak was broken this past Tuesday when he took a pair of 45 pips losses on a long EUR/USD position. He recovered later in the week and is now up +722 pips in just under 3 weeks. And that's on a 2-lot position limit with a 140 pip stop which he didn't come anywhere close to hitting!

The other day I was joking with JT over at http://zulutrade-top.blogspot.com/ about how I didn't want to start gushing about how awesome TheKillerz has been lately because as soon as I do so, providers seem to blow up. At least that's what happened with Pro-B5 and Coolie 1997. Anyway, Mr Rabea is on a roll and let's all hope he keeps it up.

Next up is EliteCapital who is up +122 pips since adding him back on 11/19/2009. His performance has been a bit of a zig-zag and he's hit my 180-pip stop 3 times in the 2 week period since he's had an open demo. He went into drawdown on a pair of USD/JPY trades last week on the Dubai news last Thanksgiving Thursday. At that point, he was down -307 pips and thinks were looking pretty bleak. But he came screaming back with a single AUD/JPY trade where he picked up +402 pips on that trade alone.

Next up is PraetorianGuard who is up +33 pips in the 3-week demo period. He performance has been pretty similar to EliteCapital which is not surprising since they are the same provider. I would describe the performance as "lumpy" and he has also hit my stop a few times since the start of the demo period. Overall, I like this provider, but I'm thinking for my account size and risk parameters, a micro account with 5-lots max and a 250-pip stop might get better results.

There's most definitely a "sweet spot" in terms of lot sizes and stop losses such that taking the same amount of capital it would take to buy 1-10K lot would be split into 10 1K mini lots which can be allocated to the provider. In fact, looking back on drawdown analysis from Lot Limit and Stop loss , most good providers came in less than 1000 pips of drawdown. So it starts to look like .. open an account, and deposit $1000. Allocate 1 signal provider to that account and give him 10-micro lots max with a 200-pip stop per position. That's it, either boom or bust. If your not willing to allocate $1000 (1000 pips) to a provider, your probably going to panic out before the provider is able to trade his way back out of a drawdown. But I digress.

Next up is Coolie 1997 who is now -76 pips down on the demo period. His long NZD/USD and AUD/NZD positions both hit my 180-pip stops which took is performance into the red. On the public side, Coolie is still with those trades as well as a pair some other trades. Also on the public side, he recently took a 500-pip (system default) stop on a long GBP/JPY position. Another reason the avoid the GBP/JPY, it rips your account to pieces and a 180-pip stop just isn't enough as we saw with EliteCapital and PrateorianGuard.

Recent addition king trade made no trades this past week which was a bit of a disappointment. By the looks of his live followers, he's got a lot of new users who have made 0 pips with him who are just waiting for him to spring a trade.

I meant to follow Student but I spaced out and missed a week of demo. I'll have an update for him next week.

We're going to take a look at Zulu's recent additions from a Web-scraping perspective and see if we can extract the live follower data for each provider. If we can do that that might lead to some interesting queries and allow us to see how much deviation there is from Zulu's public "Followers" versus "Live followers." Check back later for that.

That's it, enjoy the rest of your Friday and the weekend.

Zulutrade - iPhone App available

Hey Zulu-Traders.

Looks like Zulu has a iPhone app available now. Since i've been a Blackberry user all along, this is could generate an extreme case of iPhone envy.

I've tried to view the Zulutrade site through my Blackberry bold, and its a pretty lousy user experience. I don't think its worth the money to upgrade, but I would sure like to see it. If anybody out there has an iPhone, give it try and let us know what you think.

Cheers and good trading.

Zulutrade - More awesome new features!

Welcome back Zulu-fans!

Well I have to hand it to the programmers over at Zulutrade for some new features they quietly slipped in in the last day or 2. These are great features and definitely worth a look.


First up, click on the Performance tab and click "Show Advanced Filters". There's a new checkbox to filter on traders that are trading their own money. Clicking this box shows a total of 55 traders trading their own funds versus over 2,600 active providers on the system. Right at the top of the list in terms of number of followers is Got Pips?

This filter by itself is incredibly useful. Its interesting to note, however that of the top 20 traders on the Zulu system by Live trade listed here Top providers by Live Trade, none of them trade their own money. It was interesting to see Trendcatcher on the list since we've often remarked that he trades like its his own real money.

Next up, click the provider history page for TheKillerz and note the little flag indicating his country of origin. Now scroll down and click on the new "Live Followers" tab.

Now you can see the live accounts that are following that provider, and how each of them has done in terms of total pips earned with that provider.

Take a look and you can see me in there "FXCM 16010xx" and that I earned 271 pips following TheKillerz. You can also see FXCM11xx from Germany who is following a whole bunch of recent favorites from Coolie1997, Bigwin, Cheetah, EliteCapital, King Trade and TheKillerz as well as Surfing which i've never really considered following.

This last feature seems like a bit of an invasion of privacy - kind of like your stock broker disclosing your account positions to their other customers. But its all anonymous enough, so I overall I like it. It provides a whole new way of fishing for promising providers.


Let us know your comments, useful feature or invasion of privacy?

Its you chance to speak out, Zulu-fans. Check back later for comments.