Jim,
I opened a new demo account and loaded v12a of your EA onto a AUDUSD Daily chart. When I ran the Strategy Tester for the July/August period, I got a few “OrderSend error 131” errors under the Journal tab. The results also seemed strange.
Does this have anything to do with lot size, or is it because I’m using a 5-digit broker? I don’t have much experience with EA testing (more of a manual trader) so maybe I’m missing something here.
Well, it is Invalid Trade Volume, so I’ll check he code. Doesn’t matter 2,3,4,5 digit broker, all work
what broker is it, and can you use 0.01 lots or just 0.1 lots?
I’m going to catch some sleep, will get back to you later.
Thanks for the feedback.
It looks like only 0.1 lot is allowed in demo trading though live micro accounts allow 0.01 lot size. I was looking around for new brokers and came across one called 1LotSTP.
Thanks for v12a, not sure if you noticed take a look at the time i posted my post and you posted your one with the v12a update, both at 01.07 lol
Have you tried using HotForex, this is who i am demo testing with, seems to work fine.
I did hear good things about HotForex but it seems that their demo account is valid for only 30 days. Besides, they are based in Mauritius (yes, they are regulated, but still) so I will need to learn more about their live account practices.
Personally, my choices are Trading Point, ThinkForex and FXOpen. I would add Oanda to the mix but PayPal deposits don’t go well with me. I’d choose them if they had more flexible deposit & withdrawal options like Moneybookers or Payza.
I have read the first post with system rules and I do understand it, but with all the changes and EA’s development are they still valid?
I’m sure that the basis are the same, just wanted to check if there is some major tweak that we should be aware of…
Again, thanks for all the work in here. Priceless!
P.S. - Accentforex has a 3 month demo account with MT4, i think they are ok.
The rules have changed since the first post but if you’re trading with the EA you can see the differences and trade as per the tweaked and tested rules. It’s easier that way.
Are you trading live with AccentForex?
Im not too sure how strict they apply that 30 day rule as i just looked at my current hotforex demo account and i first traded on the 11th of July, and traded last on the 7th of September, they can be strict if you don’t login for a while, so im not sure if my current demo account will exist when i return from my holidays hence why im starting a new one.
NewNine is completely correct. You can trade this system manually, the only reason you have seen alot of technical talk which was not mentioned in the early pages of this thread is that the EA does not think like us so we need to programme the EA for all conditions it can meet, hence the talk about the squished Fib lines, where as if we were human we may not enter for the day or do something else.
Nidolap as per NewNine said above, if you want to get a feel for what the EA can and is doing stick the EA on a few charts and trade the system manually and then you can see what happens. If you find any bugs or have any suggestions please feed them back to us, all comments welcome 
I do not trade live with them, just using their demo account but Customer Service is great so far and I googled a lot of positive feedback on this company.
My experience with MT4 brookers is zero, I do trade for a couple of years but have always used brokers platforms (IG Index, ETX Capital, etc.).
I’m going to test this EA too on my demo account, and will share the results here. Since this method relies on price action I don’t see why it wouldn’t work on the 4H TF, I’ll focus on that demo testing for the next week on 3 or 4 pairs (the one’s that AccentForex broker gives lower spreads on a micro account).
Regards!
If you can get an account with ArmadaMarkets Armada Markets – FX Trading | LMAX Forex Broker I think they offer the best possible spreads and liquidity.
Unfortunately, being in the United States, we are not allowed to use such attractive brokers. We’re stuck with the neo-conservative US brokers with NFA and CFTC rules that think they are protecting us, but in fact, they’re making us trade with “one hand tied behind our back”.
However, NewNine, the EA should work with all brokers regardless. I need to figure out why you’re getting the lotsize error. are you setting lotsize manually, or using the automatic risk setting. And does the error report the lotsize that seems to have a problem, maybe in your “Experts” or “Journal” tab?
Didn’t now this Armada Markets, pretty decent spreads! I’ll think about them when I start trading on live account, thanks for the tip.
By now the EA v12 is running on my demo account in the following markets (4H TF) :
Tt is the first time I’m doing this, hope that the setup is correct to run the EA. Didn’t change any parameter, using the auto risk calculation.
If you wanna me to test anything else during the week just let me now…
Ok, great.
Hi all,
Found an issue with the EA reconstruction proper fibs after the weekend and for subsequent times in the daytime.
Also for calculation of one trade per day. It was counting an open and closed pending trade as a trade, even if the actual buy/sell never got taken.
Corrections made.
Also put in safety code if someone put in MaxLots=0 by mistake. It would have screwed up lot calc. Wasn’t sure if this happened to NewNine?
I put the default candle wick size at 0 because usually, the minFibSize will prevent any bad events. And I was missing trades because of it.
There is an “All_Filters_Off” setting default=True. Since pretty much no-one is using the filters, this will speed up backtesting an incremental amount (not much, its still pretty slow).
After sufficient time, if litterally no one is using the filters, I will remove them from the code. They don’t hurt anything, just increases the file size.
The only filter that actually allowed ANY trades was NewNine’s idea of the 5 period MA high/low channel, but it still reduced the net profit.
The question we need to ask is where are most the losses happening. If it is indeed during consolidation times , we can play around with other methods/filters to try and weed out those trades. However, if net profit is still made, even during consolidation, than obviously, we don’t need to filter it out.
Last minute change: put MinFibSize to 25; If you think it should remain larger, let me know, can put back, but thougth we’er missing trades, and fib of 25 size should allow “not too squished” fib.
Also:
This only affects those using the RiskPercent that is reduced with multiple open trades:
Realized another last min fix re: accumulative trade reduction in risk, was reducing by all open and pending trades, so the last pending trade to open got the least account risk, but it might be the first pending to open, so changed the calcs to only open trades, and whenever the number of open trades changes, pending trades are deleted and reopened with new lot risk.
Unfortunately, you cannot modify the lotsize of a pending trade, just the stops, so no other way to modify the lotsize wihtout closing and re-opening. Shouldn’t affect anything else. By the way, I set up the code not to delete all pendings every time you change settings in the EA. So, if you have old pending trades using the previous accumulating lot risk system, you should manually delete the pending trades to get accurate lotsize calc.
Wicks_ea_v13a.zip (8.52 KB)
I made the channel filter with SMA, which is “Simple Moving Average”, and it didn’t increase net profit on EURUSD jan-sep backtest. Then was teling a friend of this channel , he said its not SMA, its SMMA , smoothed. Then I realize you wrote SMA but also “smoothed”, which I stopped reading after I saw SMA. So, I retested using smoothed channel, results: improved trading:
without channel:
56 trades
2.07 profit factor
$43.16 profit
DrawDown 3.2%
83.9% winning trades
with channel 5ma smoothed filter:
41 trades
2.95 profit factor
$45.41 profit
DrawDown 2.29%
85% winning trades
So, guys, set:
“All_Filters_Off”=false
"Uses_MA_Channel_Filter" = true
"MA_Channel_Mode" = 2 (which is MODE_SMMA)
– if you want slightly better results (at least on EURUSD daily chart backtest Jan-Sep.
My next version will default to this setting.
for those of you laze like me, instead of putting individual 5ma high, then low on each chart, I modified the “Moving Averages” indicator to make the 5ma smoothed channel. Why not. But still have to put it into your platform and drag onto your charts (sorry).
If i drew them in the EA, it would slow things down a bit. Indicator is better way to view it.
MA_Channel.zip (1.55 KB)
Ok for those interested here are two new demo accounts trading James v13a EA:
The PC i have running the EA on is on 24/7 will not be switched off or rebooted except at weekends if i need to do windows updates etc.
Each testing scenario below is in a different demo account, i’ll update the demo accounts with the latest version of James EA as we go along.
4 Hour Chart:
https://www.myfxbook.com/portfolio/whicked-wicks-babypipsjbentz-ea-4/382437
Daily Chart:
https://www.myfxbook.com/portfolio/whicked-wicks-babypipsjbentz-ea-daily/382435
I will not be interfering with the EA, so whatever the EA does it will do
Shall be interesting. I am not using risk, just default lot size of 0.01.
This EA development is fascinating, just when we think we are done, we discover something new
I know a few % here are there are small improvements, but this is great news !! Well done.
Yeah, we owe NewNine a tip of the hat, after giving him such a hard time!! Thanks NewNine.
Unrelated: by the way, found some windows system time funcitons giving UPC time, even in backtesting using kernel32.dll! Some genius posted a beautiful MT4 file of how to use all that “greek” stuff.
So, here’s the question now, when does trading really stop on Friday, in UTC time? According to my calculations, it stops at 21:00 UTC (GMT), even though sources on the web said it stops at 22:00.
Concensus please. I was under the impression that the currency market is fixed by UTC, so London opens trading at 08:00 in the summer and 07:00 in the winter.
Is this correct, or, Does it follow UK time then? i.e. whether UK is in DST or not, the market opens at 08:00??
Would like input from anyone with a better brain than mine.
thanks.
Sometimes its good to have a Devil’s Advocate in the group, thanks NewNine. With the Kernal32.dll is this compatible with all Windows versions or just the latest ones such as XP SP3, Vista, 7 or even 8 ?
Might be an option to have a hard coded time which we can set manually if this fails or is not compatible, maybe a simple error message would help.
Forex market opens on Sunday 5 pm EST (10:00 pm GMT), closes on Friday 5 pm EST (10:00 pm GMT).
This website and article should help solve this query:
Forex Market Hours
Also don’t forget to take into account start and end of British Summer Time which would make it GMT +0 or GMT +1
[ul]
[li]British Summer Time starts: Last Sunday in March[/li][li]British Summer Time ends: Last Sunday in October[/li][/ul]
as mentioned here (scroll down for British Summer Time Rule):
BST: British Summer Time: UK Daylight Saving Time (GMT +1)
At the moment current time in the UK is 18:12 but this is BST + 1 so UTC would be UTC + 1 as shown here:
Current local time in United Kingdom
Also UTC is similar to GMT, but not the same, but for our purposes for time UTC and GMT 0 are the same, you can see the comparision here:
Current local time in (UTC/GMT)
Current local time in United Kingdom
If you want to know more about the history of UTC, not sure if this helps ? I think its just garbage its here:
Coordinated Universal Time - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Another thing to consider is broker times, For example now, it is 17:58 GMT but my Broker which is Hot Forex which is +2 hours showing at 19:58, so we may want to be able to manually set + or - a set number of hours for our broker unless you can pull that info from our chart?
Just a thought this might be something you want to show on screen on the left so we can see the time it is using (according to our charts) just to help spot any bugs.
babypipsjbentz really sorry for the story here, hope this helps?
On a pure cosmetic look i do have a suggestion, not sure how many of you have zoomed in on your charts so you can see the Fibs nicely, but this is what i get, sometimes the bars interfere with the writing.
I have two suggetions:
