Pipalot,
Thank you very much for your help but now I am even more confused.
I left FXCM Trading Platform alone and I downloaded MT4. During the installation, it prompted me to open a Demo account and I did.
Now I have MT4 running and it appears to capture live data. The server it’s connecting to appears to be “MetaQuotes-Demo”.
It does show that I have an account in the Navigator under Accounts and that I have $10,000 to play with. I was able to place an order also.
My question is, what would be the difference between this and having a Demo account with one of the real brokers?
Thanks.
It is a real broker but like all demos may not totally reflect the market at times like news
it is a really nice system…going to try tomorrow
many thanks
Cool! I managed to add “Cowabunga - any pair” into MT4 and I attached it to each chart. I just wanted to confirm… the indicator should be on the 15 min. chart, NOT the 4hr chart, right? We only look at the 4hr chart to identify the trend… but I am not sure if the custom indicator does that automatically [B]or do I need to look at the 4hr chart to identify the trend and ignore the instruction of the alert if the general trend is opposite of what the alert tells me to do?[/B] 
Thanks Tony, I understand. It seems to be a pretty good simulation, I am definitely live with the prices and trading in demo mode.
To set up your email in MT4 you need to do the following:
Go into the Tools-Options menu. Select the email tab and put in your smtp server settings and email address.
You might find that you need a port number after the smtp server setting (with no spaces), usually port 25, for example:
smtp.your_internet_provider.net:25
I presume that you have already know your smpt server settings and you have asked your internet provider whether the smtp server needs a password. All I have in my email tab is the smtp server, the FROM address and the TO address (same), no passwords.
Then click the test button and see if it works.
The Cowabunga- Any Pair.MT4 indicator should send email and play a sound (“Incoming Mail”) almost simultaneously.
For me, the best thing about email alerts is that I can get them sent to my mobile phone. My phone company can offers an email address which goes straight to my phone (I currently use their cheaper service where only they tell me that email is waiting by sending a chargeable text message to my phone). It all costs a little bit of money but for me it is worth it because I don’t have to stare at charts all day endlessly. If your phone company doesn’t have any of these services then there are plenty of companies on the internet that will convert an email into a text message and send it to your phone.
Regards,
Pipalot 
Pipalot,
Thanks for your help. Still can’t get the email thing to work for some reason, but I’ll keep trying 
Mark, try checking your journal entries in MT4. If it is sending emails then you will see a journal entry for each email it sends. If it is failing to connect to your smtp server then you will get a journal entry. You might well find the problem listed in the journal.
Regards,
Pipalot
Pipalot, is there anything I need to do to activate your indicator? Is is limited to certain hours of the day?
I am getting live data, blue and red arrows (I have attached the indicator to all 4 charts so that I get more alerts) and I had MT4 open and connected to the Internet from midnight ET 'til about 9am on the 25th and today. I did not get the 2:30am ET alert yesterday for long @ 2.0479 which PigPippin talks about in the review. I also didn’t get any alerts today. I AM seeing blue and red arrows on the charts (do they represent alerts?).
What I am saying is, this is not a problem with my email but for some reason that I can’t figure out, alers are not generated in the first place, nothing in the Journal or in the log files which I found under C:\Program Files\MetaTrader\experts\logs.
Help?
Mark.
Hi Mark,
Yes the blue and red arrows are the visible alerts, you are supposed to open a trade just after the close of a candle which has an arrow on it.
The indicator will one give one email alert and then no more until you restart it. In other words, it will continue to show the alert arrows for all subsequent alerts but it wont email or alert you in any other way. The best way to reset it after you get the first alert is to just open and close MT4. Also you wont get any email alerts sent out if you don’t have the chart open (such as if you are looking at a different profile that doesn’t have your cowabunga charts in it).
So I suspect that you may have had one email / sound alert and then no more subsequently because you didn’t reset the system after the first one. I forgot to mention this behaviour previously.
Good luck, I hope that helps, regards,
Pipalot
Hi Pipalot,
I see… I think that’s what happened. I had the application open from a previous day when I may have gotten an alert and I never closed it.
Can you think of any way to automatically reset it after I get an alert? The reason is because I am trying to learn the system and compare my alerts to BigPippin’s on his daily commentary but at night I am sleeping and not at the computer so I can’t manually reset it. Thanks!
Hi Mark,
If all you want to do is compare your alerts with PipSurfer’s (he took over the Cowabunga blog from BigPippin in March 2007) then what you have now is fine. You will only get the first signal emailed but subsequent signals will continue to show up as arrow, they just wont alert you by email. So you can manually look at all the arrows and compare them to his blog. You probably don’t even need you computer turned on - when you choose to turn it on and open the chart it will populate it with all the arrows going back in time.
Regards,
Pipalot
Hi
I don’t know if this has been noticed before, but it seems to be something wrong with the indicator when OSMA moves from negative to positive. I compared the entry points that the indicator gave me with the entry points that Pip Surfer used in his blog at the 25th of October.
He entered long at a EMA crossover at 2.30am ET at 2.0479 Cowabunga System Update: 10/25/07 - Pip My System - Beginner’s Guide to Forex Trading, Free Forex Education, Learn to Trade Forex, Forex Training - BabyPips.com
In my graph though, the entry doesn’t appear. If you do take a look at the curve, you see that it is indeed a valid entry, OsMA moves from negative (close to zero) to positive.
I use the latest version of the custom indicator developed by pipalot, “Cowabunga any-pair”.
Here are printscreens of my MT4 graph compared with his
Without wishing to seem a pillock…can you please advise where I can obtain MT4 from.
Many thanks
You can get a demo account from any broker that uses MetaTrader, and then you’ll have “a” MetaTrader demo. However each broker will of course be using their own pricing, and I’ve seen several that vary substantially.
If you plan to go live with that same broker, then that might be the best place to get it. But if you plan to go live with a broker that doesn’t use MetaTrader (like EFX Group - MBTrading), then you can get the generic MetaTrader demo here:
Download MetaTrader 4, MetaTrader 4 Mobile or MetaTrader 4 MultiTerminal
I have also found that InterBankFX for example will vary wildly from the generic demo, while AdvisedTrading for example is usually spot-on with it or off by no more than one or two pips. I have never had a live account with either of those brokers, but have just noticed those differences in testing them.
But since I use EFXGroup, I prefer to stick to the generic MT4 demo; it is always the closest to EFX/MBT prices that I have seen.
I have only been trading for about a month, so I am by no means a veteran. But you’ll be amazed how much more you know when you HAVE been trading for a month . . .
Hopefully helpful
Jeff
Hi Pipalot,
I am actually trying to do more than compare my alerts to PipSurfer’s… I am trying to automate some parts of the trading… That’s why I’ve been asking so many questions lately =)
I did see that the alert only happens once and subsequent alerts are not reported. That’s a stubmling block for me, so I thought I’d ask you: can you think of any way that the indicator can be restarted automatically?
Thanks,
Mark.
What is special with PipSurfer’s MACD? I am using OsMA(12,26,9), but the value is still different.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance.
Hi,
Your moving averages didn’t cross over until just after that candle. It looks like the values must be taken from the centre point of each candle and the cross over hasn’t happened at that point.
I believe that Pipsurfer uses the broker FXCM, so if you use a different broker then you will get slightly different results occassionally. If you want an identical setup to Pipsurfer then try using FXCM and hope he hasn’t changed his broker (plus he uses X-tick software not MT4).
On this occasion I too did not get that signal, I’m using the broker Alpari. Ocassionally I will get a signal that PipSurfer didn’t get, that’s just how it works. In my view the indicator is accurate and there is no need to worry.
Kind regards,
Pipalot
How different? Small differences can be explained by using a different broker to PipSurfer, I think he uses FXCM.
Kind regards,
Pipalot
Mark,
It might be possible to change the code to get rid of the problem. My guess is that the code was originally made to work that way so that it didn’t send alerts for every arrow that it draws when it populates your screen when you first open the indicator / chart. If I get time I’ll look into this eventually but I suspect that it wont be for quite a while.
Kind regards,
Pipalot