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.
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
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.
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.
swvps has us and uk packages. this may be a choice for you.
Many thanks firecapt, have registered with them now.
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.
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…
Hello,
you may also try CNS. I’ve been using the for a while and I’m very happy with their UK based servers.
I have a question for SmartFXRobert if I may 
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.
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 ! 
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!
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.
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 ?
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.
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.
yeah its been really frustrating !
i went live 10 days ago with this ea … i started with a 5000$ account … i won some …i lost some …and back to square one , the 5000 $ +/- .
the second day i won some … i lost some … and back to square one , the 5000 $ +/-.
it’s been everyday story for the past 10 days now ! … i hope it will get better
Have you tried switching off the worst performing currency pair / pairs ? market conditions for euro versus commodity dollars seem to be rather messy at the moment, at least according to my demo anyway.
Yes E/U conditions have been pretty bad and that’s why I am sticking with it. I don’t see the point of turning it off during a test as then I don’t get a full picture of worst case - just best case. I mean - how would I know when to turn it back on? Doesn’t seem like a god idea to me. If I go live and see bad performance from one pair for a more reasonable period (a month or so) then I might de-risk that pair or turn off if really bad.
My mistake SD, I thought you’d gone live :). That sounds like a good strategy, mind if I use it when I go live next week ? 