Smart FX Technology

Trading Systems Expert Advisors and Automated Trading
135

Hey guys …
I finally started testing this EA with my ACM demo account and cirrushosting.com VPS , the installation & setups was really easy .
I’ve been running it for 4 days now , I used the default settings but the only thing I’ve changed was the GMTdifer , I added 2 hours since my broker is in swissland, but I left the GMDdifer AutoDetect value = true .

  • I noticed the following , the ea makes some profits but it keeps losing them the following day or in the same trading day! and i get back to square one every time !
    I don’t know if it’s happened to you guys too or it was just me .
  • the 2nd thing I noticed that it never won a single USDJPY trade, I don’t know maybe it’s was the market or I need to give it some more time ! ( I admit … im not patient …and I cant wait to go live !!) :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I got one last question … what’s the MACD & MOVING AVRAGE ? and can I apply them to the charts along with the Breakout Hunter & Master Scalper EA’S or they will cancel each others ? (they were never mentioned in the manual !)

Sorry if some of the questions seemed stupid … but im really new to this whole world !!

136

Hi Sudacan,
No problem, we’ve all been newbies at some point, now it’s your turn, no big deal.

GMT settings need not be adjusted, unless you are planning to backtest. While online with a broker, the adjustment is done by the EA automatically. That setting is there for backtesting historical data, which is not live online, but old data.
In fact, nothing requires adjustments of any kind to trade. It is completely automated in version 7. Just drag it to the chart and turn it on, 3 clicks.

The charts come loaded sometimes with the MACD and Moving Averages when you open an MT4 demo. Those are nice if you like that sort of thing, but unnecessary for the EA to work. In fact, having an EA that is so heavy in calculations, you are slowing it down by having additional indicators in the same chart. I would delete them.
If you want nice indicators for your own pleasure, maybe open another chart of the same pair, and have them there, not together with the EA. These issues are not mentioned in the manual because if you load a new chart, it would start clean, without indicators, and since there is no need to add them…

We started our real account on Oct 4th, and are up about 9%.
If you started about 4 days ago you missed the action, the last few days it was ok, but not much progress. Comes and goes in waves. The important thing is that when we do not make money, we don’t lose much. Staying put in the difficult days is good news. And it allows you to be in the game for when the good days come.
You’ll get used to it…
Here is how we did:

Broker: MB Trading (ECN), TimeZone: New York (currently GMT -4 on DST). Entries marked “withdrawals” correspond to the ecn commissions on trades charged by the broker.
Started trading on Oct.4th, 2011,

Since the Real Account just started, I am posting the older demo tests.
They run each EA independently and show several months of trading.

Breakout Hunter, started in April 2011. Updated to version 7 on Oct. 4th.

Master Scalper, started in August 2011, started with release of the previous update. Also updated to version 7 on Oct. 4th.

137

Thank you Robert for the super quick reply …and for clearing that point for me
im confident that i made a good choice “if not the best” buying this EA ,and i know that i just needed to be patient and give it some time since some pairs has it good days and some bad days as well .

thank you again :slight_smile:

138

Robert(Smartfx) - you mention that you use MBT for this EA - do you find the short blip/downtime each evening has any real effect? And do you use the Photon VPS service that MBT have paired up with. Obvioulsy the 3 month intro offer sounds very appealing.

Same question to anyone else who is perhaps using MBT and interested to know the VPS service you use for this broker.

Regards

Paul (aka Barnov)

139

Hi Paul
the short blip at 19:00 gmt is their natural rollover. Not a big deal, just a 5 minutes blackout, nothing we can do about it, never gave me a headache.
Yes, we use Photon for a few years now, decent server, few interruptions over the years, we like it and use it.

140

Hi Robert,

I received emails related to the release of version 7.1.7. I am currently running 7.1.4. Do you think it is important to upgrade to 7.1.7? What are the changes in new version?

Thanks

141

Hi Goalmillion,
The difference between v7.1.7 and v7.1.4 is small.
We added a display function so you can see the “current day” report names on the charts, as opposed to the whole week’s list, leading to less clutter in the charts.
There was a correction having to do with some timezones which applied only to traders east of gmt +3, mainly in Australia and Singapore. That is also fixed now.
Other than that the functions are the same, so if you are not in those timezones and do not care about uncluttered charts, you do not need to switch it.

142

Hi all

New poster here - I’ve just bought / downloaded the master scalper / breakout ea, and I’m looking for a UK based VPS to run MT4 with before dipping my toes in the water.

On jonnykanoos’ recommendation, I looked at Thrust, but it seems that their simple vps package is now out of stock.

Could someone recommend a reasonable Windows VPS for the UK ? It seems that most are based in the US.

Many Thanks

themtharhills.

143

swvps has us and uk packages. this may be a choice for you.

144

Many thanks firecapt, have registered with them now.

145

Important VPS info: - JohnnyKanoo you should take note of this

I had an account with ThrustVPS, but about two days after I started using them, their server crashed and was down for about 5 hours. I missed an important trade from another one of my EAs due to this. I immediately cancelled my account and signed up with Netcetera.co.uk.

Netcetera is a Hyper-V cloud based VPS service with your virtual server distributed across many physical servers, so if any one physical server fails, your VPS will shift to new hardware and happily keep trucking along. I am extremely pleased with them, and strongly recommend a cloud based service to anyone looking for a VPS. Cloud services can offer practically 100% guaranteed uptime. I’m on the $15/month plan, running 3 copies of MT4 with plenty of resources to spare.

146

Apologies for dragging this somewhat off topic, but I’ve heard nothing from swvps since they took my money at 1 pm yesterday afternoon. I wrote an email to their sales team, which was forwarded as a ticket to their tech desk, which the tech desk didn’t reply to.

How long do these things take to set up usually ? It all seems to have gone a bit quiet…

147

Hello,

you may also try CNS. I’ve been using the for a while and I’m very happy with their UK based servers.

148

I have a question for SmartFXRobert if I may :slight_smile:

I’ve been looking online at a couple of other expert advisors, one of them was marketed as the fade machine / trade machine. Their live results are at myfxbook.com members thetrademachine fade-machine 16836 (replace spaces with slashes).

After a long period of doing well, their expert advisor started to dip on Nov 22, 2010, and continued to do so until Aug 23, 2011. As a newbie, I assume that their poor performance was caused by trading during periods of volatility, (but to be honest I have no idea why this happened.)

Would I be right in saying that you effectively prevented this from happening to your scalper tool, by avoiding volatile markets ?

I guess what I’m asking is “is there a market condition that would cause the scalper / breakout tool to lose, over a medium / long period of time, as can happen with some other EAs” ?

I’m guessing that scalping has always happened in any market conditions during the quieter periods of the trading day, as long as markets have been around and regardless of market conditions. If this is the case, then that would make a scalper tool a very robust method to use in an EA.

Hope you don’t mind me asking this question - but i think it’s an interesting one.

149

After a quick email exchange, I’m now live with swvps. Thanks for thw tip though moh, if it doesn’t work out with them, I can always try CNS next time.

Edit : Just did a ping to the hotforex server, and I’m getting a 9 millisecond latency. Must be on the same business park or something ! :slight_smile:

150

Hello Traders,
Thanks themtharhills for the interesting question.
One of the problem with EA trading is narrowing down the possible market conditions to the most predictable patterns. If you trade the news, for example, you will find all kinds of market responses, from NFP wild volatility, to complete apathy in some cases where the news were anticipated. If you are anticipating either one of the two examples, and get the opposite one, you are in a bit of trouble, and that is the main problem with news trading for an EA.

We try to “standarize” the kinds of markets that we wish to participate, by filtering volatile times, news time, etc.

In our Breakout strategy, we avoid news spikes and wait for the trend to confirm itself as a viable move 15 minutes after an important report. We also avoid those typical times of “back and forth” action, such as the London morning, Dow opening, etc.
In this manner, when we enter a trend, we have some degree of certainty that it is not just a news spike, or a false breakout. It does not always work, of course, but the probabilities are on our side, and also the long term profitability.

When it comes to scalping, the situation is even better, since we only scalp when most of the markets are asleep. That is a sure way of making market conditions similar. After London closes and before Australia and Japan open, we have a good degree of certainty about the number of participants in the market, the anticipated news announcements or general political gossip that might upset the market, etc.
Furthermore, each scalping pair has its very own schedule:
EurAud and EurChf, start at 16:00 just as soon as Europe closes, assuming other scalping conditions and volatility requirements are met.
EurCad, however, waits until the oil market closes in NY (18:30 gmt), since the Cad is highly affected by oil prices. UsdJpy also enters at 18:30.
Finally EurGbp enters at 19:00, because with this pair we scalp a very narrow channel, and want it to be very quiet to perform best - entering sooner will find you “off channel” for long periods of time, should there be the slightest trend leftover after Europe closes, which would waste the whole day waiting for it to “come back”, instead of scalping away once the dust has settled into a narrow “scalping” channel.
Granted any trading strategy, and therefore any trading EA, has markets conditions which would cause losses. But the more homogeneous the market conditions, the easier, more controlled action we can expect.
Long live scalping!

151

It’s been a little bit of a frustrating last week or so week. Up quite a decent amount then giving it back again - is this everyone’s experience this week? Breakout Hunter has been the culprit I’m afraid but I am hoping this is just unfortunate market conditions.

152

Can I ask a really dumb question ? MT4 seems to be very good at displaying charts, but less so when it comes to showing trades. It could be that I just don’t understand how it works. What do people use to monitor their trading history ? (sorry, forget this, I’ve found the account history tab… D’oh !)

oh, and another thing. When I finally get off the demo account, I think I’m going to keep the demo running for everything on a second MT4, and if an EA performs poorly, switch it off live until it picks up in the demo account again. Does this seem like a reasonable tactic ?

153

Yes the last few days have been bad for Ea’s all round.

It’s also been tough trading on the euro in general so I think it’s just a bit of a bad patch for Smart FX.

Be patient with it.

154

On the first day of my demo account, the scalper struggled in euraud and eurcad, but won every trade in eurgbp, eurchf, and eurusd. If that continues, I’d be happy to set up a live account just running those 3 scalpers.