A guide to using and recognising myfxbook accounts

Beginner Questions
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I am a big fan of myfxbook (and similar sites like Mt4i and FXSTAT just to show I am not an affiliate) because its practically the only way to show

a) other users trading track record

b) Your own trading statistics

I have been criticized in the past for saying that ‘I don’t trust a trader/teacher without a track record’ mainly because those teachers/traders wish to hide their own failure and continue to provide a second class trading or teaching service. Trading, especially retail trading is full of ego, and having to admit that you are not successful shatters that ego. Myfxbook is an example of a trade verification service that checks with the server to ensure that the trader is telling the truth about how they trade.

Myfxbook can be used with Oanda, FXCM, ctrader and any MT4 or MT5 terminal (Mt5 is still in beta I believe), so no excuses!

However some people can be misled by myfxbook not due to the fault of the website, but because people use mybook properly - the rest of this post will be a guide on how to use myfxbook. This might sound simple to everyone, but I thought it may benefit a few people.

Setting up your own account is simple - it takes about 2-3 minutes, and you do not need to divulge your information to do so. There are 3 ways to set up an account:

a) Download and use the trade publisher EA.

The advantages of this is that you do not need to give away your investor password - simply download the EA onto your MT4 and it publishes your trade data for you. The disadvantage of this is that if you use a lot of EAs already it might clog up your metatrader platform. You also need to know how to set up an EA, although that should be easy to do.

b) Use the online auto update option

You give your investor password to myfxbook (this password has no trading privileges and is a safe password to use) and your trading stats are updated directly from your brokers server. The advantages of this are that it takes about 20 seconds to set up and it does not clog up your metatrader 4. Disadvantages are that you need to give away your investor password - although in my opinion its a completely safe password to use (it was designed by metatrader for the very reason to allow other people to view your trading results safely).

c) Use the publisher option

You set up your metatrader publisher on your myfxbook to publish your results periodically. The advantages of this is that you don’t need to give away your password, and you can control when the publisher updates your record. Disadvantages are that it takes slightly longer to set up (about a minute for the website to recognise your data).

Now you know how to set up your myfxbook!

Originally when MQL4 designed the MT4 platform they included a way for people to safely show their results. This allows users to give the investor password to allow people to look at an account with no way to access trading. There are a few people here who claim that they do not use myfxbook because there is a way to hack, but that’s simply not true (its usually an excuse they use so they do not want to post their results). Just don’t use your master password - use the investor one. It uses all the information on your account direct from the server so it can backdate your info. If anyone wanted to prove they were a good trader all they would need to do is to add the publisher and all their info from their MT4 account would be available. That goes for all traders who have been around since 2007/8/9/10/11 etc. They could prove their results in less than a minute. Any attempt at interference/hacking has to be done through the server end (ie: by the broker), and if your broker is fiddling with your account, that’s nothing to do with myfxbook.

Next I shall talk about how to recognise ‘manipulated myfxbooks’ and people faking results. Its my opinion that you shouldn’t trust any teacher/trader who is offering services who does not provide verified results. If you see one of my last posts you will recognise that 90% of traders are losing traders - and purely statistically, the teacher or trader who is offering you a service is 90% likely to be a losing trader - and not someone who you should be learning from or trusting your money.

Myfxbook has several inbuilt methods to prevent trade manipulation: you can still place a manipulated myfxbook on the website, but myfxbook simply flags this - its up to you to recognise these flags.

This is the format of the top of myfxbook:

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Note the following:

  1. Green tick for track record verified

  2. Green tick for trading privileges verified

  3. Real broker listed

  4. Gain/real gain listed

  5. Absence of a ‘custom start date’

  6. Account listed as a real account

  7. We shall also talk about using the drawdown tab (next to growth, balance and profit) later to spy those accounts that hold onto losers for ages before blowing up.

  8. The account should have been traded for a substantial amount of time

  9. Traders/teachers offering ‘screenshots’ of myfxbook as proof of their trading

  10. The trading history should be open for viewing

All of these 10 points to identify trustworthy accounts versus ‘manipulated’ myfxbook accounts that are not really worth your time in recognising a proper track record.

1: The ‘track record verified’

The track record verified is important in identifying a real account vs a demo account or if an account really belongs to the broker they say it does - it basically gives a green tick if the information you provide matches up with the brokers data provided by its servers. Myfxbook matches up trading/deposit/withdrawal information with your server. Any deposits/withdrawals/trades that do not match up mean that this green tick is not provided. This can be annoying for some trading accounts since if you have any extraordinary deposits/withdrawals outside of what myfxbook recognises then the account may not get the green tick (such as brokers refunding mistakes or market maker brokers correcting previous price spikes that too many people complained about).

A lack of a green tick should make you suspicious that the account is really a demo account vs real, although there are some provisos to this. One common misuse of this is when traders attempt to mark their demo account as a real account. When you set up myfxbook publisher you can mark your account as real or demo. You can in fact mark a demo account as real or even say that your broker is a more reputable broker (for example saying your broker is GFT when it is really a dodgy broker in Vietnam).

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The advantage of marking a demo account as a real account means that a trader or investor can use the faster execution of a demo account to their advantage. Many trading systems will only work on demo accounts and will not work on real accounts because of slippage and requotes. Commonly arbitrage accounts that trade 1-2 seconds for trade duration generate huge profits via demo by trading latency between MT4 and the real price feed

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How it works is basically MT4 lags slightly behind the real price especially during news events - impossible to take advantage in real life - you can see this happening during NFP or interest rate decisions - the MT4 price will freeze for a few seconds, and the price will suddenly gap up or down. The real price does not gap. A demo account trading latency can take advantage of this delay and place a buy/sell order knowing what the price actually is and then gain profits. If you tried to do this in real life, your order would not be filled. You can see this if the trade history is open - note the duration of the trades.

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Another advantage demo traders have is that they are more relaxed in trading and can risk more. Over short periods of time in theory, a trader could line up a row of demos, go long on one demo, short on another. Of course, over longer periods of time trading this way is impossible (because the number of combinations would require 1000s of demo accounts), but over short periods of time this can be an exploit.

However, not having the green tick is not all bad - some accounts will not have it simply because your broker has given you credit for a mistake (which is not recognised by myfxbook) or a trade has been corrected because of a spike or error with your broker. These accounts unfortunately are marked with a red cross. Generally if an account has a red cross for verification, it has been trading a long time, it has an open history of trades and has not been exploiting MT4 with mega fast trades then its considered fairly trustworthy as live trading a demo successfully over many months is almost as hard as a live account. It is also worth noting that your broker will delete your history over time. If your account is years old, or your broker deletes data on the server after a couple of years to clear space, you may find that your account cannot get the green tick because the data cannot be verified with the server data (since the data has been deleted).

  1. The trading privileges should have a green tick.

This trading privileges is designed is designed to ensure that the person providing the results has the right to place trades on the account. This is to prevent people who have somehow got access to the investor password of a successful investor passing it off as their own.

For example, if I was an unscrupulous teacher and my pupils were clamoring for proof of my trading methods, I could go and find myself a successful trader, pretend I was an interested investor and ask for the investor password so I could check that successful traders account before I considered depositing my money. Of course, I have no intention of investing, and the ruse is just to get hold of the investor password and the account number so I can set up a myfxbook ‘proof’ of my trading. I would continue to teach badly all the while the successful trader can be an unwitting accomplice by trading a decent account which I claim as my own. However, the trading verification tick,lets you know that the myfxbook account owner has trading privileges and has not simply stolen the account from someone.

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Setting up the trading privileges should be fairly easy, but some traders may not like to give out their investor password because they are suspicious that someone will steal it, or do something with it. If a trader has his trading privileges unverified you should consider whether someone else is doing the trading. Obviously the proviso is if you see the trader trading the numbered account live via video or livestream then you can pretty much ignore this check.

However if an account has both red crosses for the track record and the trading privileges you should be very cautious that the entire account is produced from ‘stolen metatrader details.’

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  1. A real broker should be listed

How myfxbook works is that the trades are verified with a MQL4 server. However, if you have access to a server or can set up a server to mimic a MQL4 server you can provide trading results to myfxbook. However, the folk at myfxbook have listed only particular servers as belonging to brokers. So if you invent a server to provide fake results it will be listed as Other (MT4), because the server is not on the list of brokers that myfxbook have. These faked accounts can be marked as ‘real’ but they do not have a broker listed and importantly have no green ticks for track record and trading privileges. I have seen some enormous fakes in my time using this technique so don’t be fooled.

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The account above offers an other(MT4) and no track record (since there is no proper server to verify whether the account is real or demo) and trading privileges are not verified because the ‘fake server’ is not designed for trading! When myfxbook first started there may have been some excuse for this since not many brokers had signed up - but now practically every MT4 broker that I know of is signed up and you should be extremely suspicious of trading accounts listing Other (MT4) brokers as their broker. The likelihood is that it does not exist.

  1. Myfxbook uses gain and absolute gain.

Gain is a time weighted listed - ie: the gain from the initial deposit. The absolute gain is the overall return on investment (ROI). In my opinion this is the most important. The ‘gain’ can be manipulated by inserting $1 as the initial deposit. The trader then adds $100 at a later date and makes a further $100. The absolute gain or ROI is $100. The myfxbook will list the absolute gain as a little under 100%. However, it will list the gain as 100 000% because the account has gained $100 from an initial deposit of $1.

For example: the system below has actually only made 90% but the system has listed 2700%

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If so easily manipulated whats the purpose of ‘gain?’ The purpose of the ‘gain’ column does have a use - since myfxbook originally started as an account for investors to verify trading proof it was supposed to tell the prospective investor if they invested $1 at the start of the time period in question, what the overall gain is. Of course to do this properly the prospective investor should use the custom analysis tool to gauge time periods. However, this is worth looking out for.

If the account is used for constant withdrawals then you will find that the absolute gain will beat the gain (because the overall amount of profit made is higher than the money in the actual account). So do not disregard accounts such as the one below - its actually a decent account with 42% ROI even though at first glance it has only made 6%:

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  1. The custom start date is also very important:

Traders can cherry pick their best moments eg: a good month

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is actually this:

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Which is actually a large difference! Traders will frequently skip over their bad trading - which is not the point of having a track record!

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  1. The use of a real account is self explanatory.

Although its true that trading a demo account is no difference from trading a real account there are some advantages that can be exploited in a demo.

Demo accounts can take advantage of latency, arbitrage and several demos can run in sequence at no risk to the trader to produce a good looking demo account.

Some would argue that if you are able to trade a demo account into large profits (over a long time period) you should be able to do the same with a real account since the system that is used is the same. I think this is true as long as the demo trader is not exploiting the demo account. Although a demo trader can make 100%+ from trading high risk, over a long period of time, blowing the account is inevitable and will happen in demo or real account regardless.

  1. The drawdown tab

Traders can mask their equity curve by refusing to close trades (they don’t show up until the trade has been completed) but if you click on the drawdown tab then you can see the drawdown the trader uses. Using drawdown is a strategy in itself, and traders should not be penalised, but if you see a trader is routinely hitting 60%-80% drawdown then you should be worried. The drawdown on the side panel of the account is the maximal drawdown and is infrequentely updated. The drawdown tab should be where you are looking to monitor actual drawdown. An account that has a maximal drawdown of 50% once in 3 years of operation and routinely has a low drawdown is far better than an account that has sat in 40% drawdown 2 years out of the 3 years it has been operating.

  1. The account should have a relatively long history.

There are hundreds of accounts that are profitable for a 2-3 months. Accounts that are profitable for 2-3 years are far fewer. As I have mentioned previously - about 90% of accounts have failed after 3 months. It is relatively easy to trade successfully for 1-2 months. Simply buy constantly, or sell constantly and if you are lucky you will have done so when the market is trending in your direction. Demo traders can exploit this over a short period of time because demo accounts are throwaway. Over a longer period of time, trading in this way becomes impossible. The length of the trading history is one of the most important factors in judging whether a trader is good or not.

  1. Using screenshots of myfxbook as proof

I have seen a few teachers/traders attempt to pass off a ‘screenshot’ of myfxbook as proof of their trading. This is completely avoiding the whole point of having a verified account - by using Paint anyone can post up screenshots. DO NOT TRUST SCREENSHOTS AS PROOF. The WHOLE point of myfxbook is to offer an independent verification service - posting a screenshot is frankly a laughable attempt - for example - would you believe this account?

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The paint shop above took about a minute to make. Please do not fall for anyone who just provide screenshots. Myfxbook offers a safe, anonymous, actual verification service for this purpose. Making a screen shot actually takes more time than setting up a myfxbook (40 seconds for a myfxbook vs 1 min for a single screenshot to be uploaded). There is absolutely no reason for traders/teachers to show a screenshot of myfxbook while simultaneously preventing people from seeing the actual myfxbook account!

  1. The account history should be open

Although there is something to be said for hiding your current trades (since people can copy and in theory steal your liquidity), or even hiding the recent trading history for the week/month (if traders do not want their recent trading strategy to be analysed and copied), the overall trading history should be open. A hidden trading history can hide overleveraging, holding onto losing trades for 1000s of pips, doubling, quadrupling up on trades or other high risk tactics. Other tactics that can be hidden include funding your account when it is close to drawdown, or using 1-2 second trades that cannot be reproduced on a real account.

Anyone showing a long enough history of trades has shown that they are trading properly. Obviously this goes hand in hand with point 8) the age of the trading account.

Even users of Oanda, FXCM can use myfxbook, and there is no need to use a excel sheet, a screenshot or a photograph. Usually the traders who do, have something to hide in their actual results (or lack of them).

Oanda users can use a myfxbook slave account which can upload their trade results through the publisher through the methods above.

There are other points that you could debate whether is important or not. For instance, the amount of money in a trading account is hidden in many trading accounts. This means that a $50 account making 5% a day (effectively a demo account) is more valid as a $5 million account making 0.5% a day. Obviously the million dollar account is more valid, but people do have their privacy and I don’t think it is fair to criticize someone for wanting to keep their fortune hidden.

Hopefully that essay will help people recognize how to use myfxbook properly. The only way to bypass these rules is if the manipulation is done by the broker itself - but as long as you avoid brokers that have sprung up over the last month which are unregulated, and follow the guidance above, you should be safe.

So what benefit is myfxbook to those traders who are just tracking their own trading?

One the major benefits is the individual trade tracker which will inform you whether the trade is accurate or whether the trader is hitting and hoping.

Here is an example of an accurate trade:

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Here is an example of a hit and hope trade:

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Notice the start of the blue coloured graph on right hand side is the entry. The lowest trough is the biggest drawdown, while the highest peak is the biggest profit. The left hand side of the graph is the exit. The opposite goes for short trades which are coloured red. This tool can let you know how accurate your entries and exits are at a glance and is far beyond anything you can get in an excel sheet.

Myfxbook also does this all automatically for you. So if you want to spend an hour a week calculating excel then you can - myfxbook does it without you having to input calculations.

Another advantage of myfxbook is the monthly analytics. This allows you to sort by month, check risk reward ratios per pair, check your average holding times, check which currencies you trade. Trades can be sorted by profit, by pips, by percentage, all without any effort from yourself:

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Another bonus of myfxbook is being able to check your trades out by day. If you think that Mondays are a bad day, or Fridays are bad, now you can actually get proof. There are also tools that show best trades, holding times, best hours to trade etc etc.

All of this can be done manually by an Excel sheet and spending time with the Chart Wizard function. If you were to review your trades every week you would have to make, label and data entry around 20-30 different charts (hourly, daily, monthly charts for each pair traded, long and short trades, cumulative trades, for pips/percentage/profit). That would take an individual person working with excel around 3-4 hours if they were quick. Myfxbook does this automatically in ZERO time.

I will go on in another post to mention what I have learned about trading from myfxbook.

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1 Like
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Excellent thread! :slight_smile: Perhaps you might include some examples of both good and bad myfxbook systems.

5

Is there a list of benefits to the trader who opens a Myfxbook account?

I mean, other than the ego candy when the trader is positive on the account?

6

Also,

where is the JackMarket’s Myfxbook page?

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Yes, you are granted diplomatic immunity in 105 countries and you become betrothed to the Princess of the Nile, amongst other things.

The benefits are that your trades are analysed in great detail for you, with minimal effort on your part. No one compels you to make the system public. There are probably far more people using Myfxbook privately than you would imagine. No ego bias my friend.

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I tried it, the stats are overly complicated and didn’t give me anything beyond what an Excel sheet could with <5minutes of work per week. Pretty sure the only purpose is to show off…

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Why do I get the sneaking suspicion that you are akeakamai?

Congrats, you’ve now earned the mantle (in my mind at least) of “Most likely to be Ake’s new account”.

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What the business are you talkin about??? I came here to get the scoop on Jezz’s missing account.

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Hahahahaha, oooh too nice! Aaron, based purely on the quantity as well as the quality of your posts thus far, I am virtually certain it is you… welcome back :slight_smile: Let’s see how long you can remain energized!

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I was going to say five hours tops, but I see he’s gone already.

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myfxbook has some failures or well it might not see the difference between a real deposit an brokers mistake wich happened to me. My broker deposited me by mistake 2000 USD and after reporting it they debited back. However in myfxbook it looks like I had deposited like 5000 USD and lost the half. Ha Ha. Sothat tool is sort of limitated.

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I’ve edited the pages to list a couple of the abuses - but generally most of the ‘good’ accounts are good as long as they do not fall into any of the manipulations I have listed.

I have added to the post to include the benefits to the trader. Myfxbook also allows you to analyse each trade and plot each trade on a chart so you don’t have to reanalyse each trade.

Google search is your friend - appreciate if you try and search first. However, my account is relatively new and not worth posting as an example of a good account - maybe in 6-12 months or so if I am lucky to survive.

Also pretty sure you are ICT trying to be nasty to Jezzode when he beat you in that bet and trying to pass off myfxbook as ‘ego candy’ because your performance was not up to expectations.

Yes, the only bad thing about myfxbook is that the software does not deal with broker corrections/mistakes/deletions. However, it is possible to write a note next to your trades so you know what has gone on.

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Well, I googled your page, and so far it looks as though your performance is exemplary; 40% (floating) or so in one month, as well as total lots traded of 12.77 in 15 trades… suggesting that it is a rather decent sized account.

I see that you do not apply these rules to your own myfxbook page though, which is interesting :slight_smile:

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It is possible indeed to write an explanation but as a challenge I am waiting to trade a little more to show off my last year perfomance.

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Its only been around for less than a month so its not worth the time looking at. I wasn’t going to talk about it since so many accounts blow after 3-4 months.

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I have seen mentioned that people think that verification services are mere ‘ego candy’ - usually these people are traders or vendors who dislike having to verify their results. They would prefer you to believe screenshots or excel spreadsheets or wild claims of their trading acumen (which for some reason they do not think is ego candy even though it is less functional and only serves to show an account). They also claim that getting statistics or making your own statistics is just as easy to do by yourself - in fact making a spreadsheet and the data entry/chart generation would take at least 3-5 minutes for a very quick chart or a daily entry. Myfxbook does this instantly, saving you 30 mins to an hour every week. If you are thinking about getting results from someone, it will save you the emails and communication, again saving you time.

That post was slightly off the point - so what I actually learned from myfxbook like services?

  1. A realistic monthly gain usually involves a drawdown that is equivalent to around 2 x the monthly gain.

We can look at the top 10 systems on myfxbook that have been traded on real accounts more than 1 year that do not have a custom start date and are verified with real brokers:

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You will note 9/10 have drawdowns double the monthly gain. If you are looking at a system outside of the top 10 out of thousands of systems, then the drawdown increases. So even if you are aiming to be in the top 10 retail traders in the world, you will still experience a drawdown of 2 x the monthly gain if not more, on a regular basis. Note that the top 10 changes - traders drop in and out - realistically successful traders will experience a regular (once every 6-12 months) x 2 monthly drawdown, with a maximal drawdown of 4 x drawdown.

What does this mean for a normal trader?

If you aim for 5% a month, you should expect a 10% drawdown every few months, with a lifetime drawdown of 20%.

It means that if you are aiming for 10% a month, you should expect to experience a drawdown of 20% a couple of times a year. In your systems lifetime you should experience a drawdown of 40%.

If you aim for 20% a month, you should experience a drawdown of 40% a couple of times a year, with a lifetime risk of 80% - which is basically a margin call waiting to happen.

This really sets a ‘realistic’ gain that traders can expect to achieve. Anyone boasting a monthly gain of 20% plus is likely to blow their account in the future unless they are the 1 in a million (which could happen due to chance). If you think you are ‘one in a million’ then go ahead and believe - however, if you are slightly more humble you will trade within these realistic boundaries.

  1. You don’t have to aim for consistent gains to be successful. Successful trading systems are normally ‘variable in their monthly gain.’

What does this mean?

Most new traders aim for 5% a month, or 10%/20% a month. More novice traders aim for 1% a day, or 2% a week. This attempt to go for a gain every day/week/month can cause you to overtrade, and IS NOT NECESSARY. Normally very successful systems make money through having a couple of successful months, and a string of mediocre months.


  1. The trading expectation is actually really low - take a look at 8 of the systems of the top 10 (I only pasted 8 since the picture is too small to read with 10):

The trading expentancy is the number of pips you would get per trade including all losers and winners. Thus if you had 50% winners of 20 pips and 50% losers of 10 pips, your expectancy would be 5 pips (since you would make 20 pips on a winning trade, lose 10 pips on the losing trades, giving you 10 pips over 2 trades).

In case its too small, the expectancy of the the top 8 systems on myfxbook is:

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2.1 pips, 0.4 pips, -1.7 pips, 1.0 pip, 4.8 pips, 1.0 pips, 1.7 pips and 2.1 pips PER TRADE. That’s a mean average of 1.4 pips PER TRADE for a top 10 system.

This makes me draw some important conclusions.

  1. The average winning system has a tiny winning edge

  2. Spread and execution are VITAL for a winning system

Lets say the spread was another 0.7 pips for the pair that the top 10 system was trading. The amount of profit would be reduced by 50% per trade, which compounds. That’s a huge reduction of profits. Equally a 50% reduced spread is will increase the profits. Rebates will also increase the profits markedly. When I hear from retail traders that a pip or two does not matter, the statistics do not add up. Tiny edges make a huge difference and is the difference between a winning system and a losing system. This also explains why EAs fail when they are optimised for past results which brings us to our next point.

  1. Live performance for EAs is what matters - past performance is only a filter to dispose of poor strategies.

One of the most popular EAs is Robin VOL: The backtesting performance is brilliant, but the actual performance is poor:

Whereas the real results are as below:

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Hopefully this post has shown the value of independently using statistics to verify the way you think about trading profitably. Common trading misconceptions is that ‘spread doesn’t make a difference’ and that ‘drawdown should be maximum of 5%’ or ‘traders should make 20 pips per trade’ or ‘you should make 20% a month’ are total rubbish and belong on the trash heap. Pay attention when a guru starts spouting off absolute rubbish that has no proof behind it and is just rabbited from other people. Use myfxbook to garner what makes an effective system and have proof behind how a system works. Don’t waste time listening to ‘gurus’ and ‘experts’ who have no evidence to back their claims.

ALL THE EVIDENCE is out there on myfxbook on how to trade effectively - you just need to do the data mining to find it - just think what the motivation is for people to prevent you using this information is.

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Hi JackMarkets

Thanks again for the info, it is very appreciated! If you don’t mind me asking, how exactly are you extracting this information from myfxbook? Is there a function to filter all of the public trading systems on myfxbook?

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Search function on the left of this page: Trading Systems | Myfxbook