I'll get to updating more details one day.

For now I have updated the charts to show % equity from myfxbook as have decided to keep actual $ private. The chart are a link to myfxbook which show the actual trades but not the equity$ (but if your smart you can guess from the lot size & knowing that I usually now only risk 2 to 5 % of equity for any trade).

The one thing I kind of don't like is the large drawdown numbers are from early days trading with $500 & wetting my feet with a commercial expert which didn't go so well . Since then I have gotten serious, deposited some more cash, programmed my own EA's & learnt to control risk properly, but hey it's an honest result, nothing has been altered.

Forex Trading Project

Forex Trading Project

 

My new project (well not so new, it’s been going since Christmas but really taken off in the last 3 months) is an FX trading project.  With the equities markets playing up a little I decided to branch out to FX trading, specifically auto trading using the Metatrader platform.  The concept of auto trading certainly appeals to me since I have a full time job.  One of things that I always found difficult was the amount of time I spent researching & setting orders for my stock trading which was always fairly aggressive & short term anyway, so this seems like a useful tool, hence I started investigating MT4.

 

The beginning…in the beginning I think it was good old Fapturbo the got my attention.  I was personally very suspicious of all the ‘pie in the sky’ claims but never the less I saw potential hence commenced the journey & bought 1 copy.  My broker at the time promptly banned FAPT until they brought in a better price feed & order mechanism.  In the mean time I studied coding for a few months from various examples & tried a few free programs, of course most / all were pretty crud or relied on martingale techniques until they blew up!.  Eventually FAPT got working again & I also created similar programs for myself.

 

Current state of play…

My current trading style is all short term reversals or scalping like fapt & have about 8 to 10 different MT4 Experts running depending on available pairs & spreads from the broker.

 

I am using 2 commercial experts on real accounts - Fapturbo & Megadroid.  The others are all my own programmed variations on the same theme but for multiple other pairs.

 

Results…

Initial trials with experts were a bit patchy in Jan / Feb.  Made a few classic errors, luckily I started with a small account so could top up & start again.  Usually I was being too aggressive before I found a risk level I could tolerate, the last few months have been going well, fingers crossed it keeps going: there are so many things that can go wrong with these bots!!

 

For some real time results, see the links on the blog to my real (yes real) accounts.  

 

That’s all for now, might add some more posts to document what I have learnt & discuss the systems.

 

Cheers in fx…Dave (engtrader)

Blog maintenance...currently working on blogg layout & updating links

SPI Final Update 16-6-2009

SPI Final Update 23-6-2009

My final update for the SPI system. The system can continue but I have other interests so am closing this trial & the trade signal frequency has dropped off now volatility has reduced significantly, it’s really back to pre-2008 levels, last year was exceptional as even the late real time results last year shows.

In terms of results it wasn’t too bad, but at the end my act vs model performance dropped off due to a few things – a couple of failed models, bad slippage using ASX CFDs & missing a couple of trade signals. It doesn’t take much at times to hit the eq

uity curve but overall still made a profit. The model curve represents the final model after re

moving I think 3 failed sub-models. I haven’t changed anything for 6 months.

The 3 main lessons from the exercise I found were:

1. Keep position size down
2. Don’t use models with not enough trades (ie not a statistical sample)
3. Read no1

Anyway, signing off on this exercise. I enjoyed the challenge. Perhaps in the future I can convert this to autotrade using a metatrader broker with a SPI contract, but that’s for another day.

A final chart of act vs model equity & some results are shown below.

Cheers, Dave

SPI Update 2-Feb-09

SPI Update 2nd Feb 2009-

Another trade finally!  There have been a few triggers but no filled trades since end of November 2008.

3 short trades just completed, not exactly to plan but profitable in the end.

SPI ASX CFD	Short	28/01/2009	3455	2/02/2009	3468	-13	Large Exit Slip
SPI ASX CFD	Short	29/01/2009	3530	2/02/2009	3468	62	Large Exit Slip
SPI ASX CFD	Short	30/01/2009	3501	30/01/2009	3502	-1	Order error

Total Points = +48

Order 1 & 2 were exited today at open, but I didn't check the ASX CFD open price and had HUGE slippage.  I really hate the way ASX CFD's are executed, you have to watch the open yourself otherwise the market makers hit your bid/ask irrespective of the actually underlying price.  I use IB as my broker so I think I should have pegged the exit price to the SPI reall value & exited at market. 

Still, the overall trade was in profit, just could have been better.

Order 3 on Friday was an order error, I made a mistake on the exit if-done order & left the same price as exit in so I entered & exited on 1 day for a 1 point loss instead of exiting today for a profit.

Summary of Points since trading 30-9-2008

Total	1644
No Win	11
No Loss	5
Total	16
Win %	69%
Avg Win	214
Avg Loss	-142
W/L	1.51
Expectancy	103

Even with the problems my win / loss is still positive which is good, I just need to improve execution.

Till the next trade....