Hello Vijay,
Would it be possible for you to please have the “Track Record” & “Trading Privileges” verified on MyFXBook for your accounts (especially, the “PARMAR 3P TRAIL”) so as to view extra details, such as the MAE and MFE Analysis.
Many thanks and best regards,
Carnino
Hello Vijay,
I have been analysing the history of trades for the PARMAR 3P TRAIL System | Myfxbook account and I think there may be some inconsistencies in your trailing logic of your EA. It seems to be a continuous trailing instead of a [B]discreet trailing [/B](in accordance to your original 3P strategy).
The Trailing points should be at fixed stepped or discreet points (5, 10, 15, etc.), but in the history it seems to be off and hitting at strange values (3.4, 5.7, 11.7 and 12.5). Slippage does not explain these nuances, as all the S/L targets are being hit with zero slippage, so something must be wrong with the trailing stops.
From my back-tests, continuous tick trailing is a VERY BAD idea. Not only is it very detrimental to your profitability, but it will also make the EA very slow and generate too much traffic with the servers because of the many “OrderModify” commands constantly being issued.
The trailing stops should “step” only when the price has moved sufficiently away for the discreet points which in this case is every 5 pips. In order words, setting break-even only when the price is at least 5 pips away from open price, setting it to 5 pip when the price is at least 10 pips away from the open, etc.
Could you please check this on your EA and have the issue corrected, otherwise the forward test will be invalidated in comparison to the back-tests.
Regards,
Carnino
[I]EDIT: PS! Obviously, if you are using your 1 pip Trailing Gap technique, then you will have to offset the discreet trailing points by that value.[/I]
FXDD demo account: entry at 1.70397 S/L at 1.70347
Cheers
Stickerman
I am hoping someone can help me with a problem I have been having. I was following this system manually for a while using FXCM’s Trading station demo program and all was working well, except I could not set my trades each day after the NY close because of work. I decided to use Mata Nui’s EA from post #53 using an MT4 demo account to automatically set my trades, and then when I got home each night I would manually modify them to expire just before the closing of the next day. Things seem to work except I have noticed that my trades look correct until they are triggered. Once they are triggered all three of the take profits change to the same value as trade number three. It has not made much of a difference the past few weeks because when there have been winners all three trades had been winners. Today though, my trade #1 should have been a winner and the second two should have been losses. When I look at my account history it has happened again all three of my trades had a take profit of 1.70560. The EA had originally set my pending order take profits to be 1.70460 for the first trade, 1.70510 for the second, and 1.70560 for the third. But according to Account History they were all three set to 1.70560. Now when I look back at other losing trades they all show up that way in the account history. All three trades have the same TP. I am not very familiar with MT4 because I normally Trading Station. Does anyone have any idea what I might be doing wrong?
Hello Grock,
First of all I would strongly advise you against using [I]Mata Nui’s EA[/I] as it is seriously flawed. It has too many bugs and does not cater for different types of brokers. So please, do not use it (specially not on a live account).
Secondly, there could be special conditions that your broker may be imposing on your orders that would be the cause of the orders changing their T/P levels. I have never used [I]FXCM[/I] before and so don’t know if that is indeed the case or not. One way to find out, is to manually place the 3 pending orders in [I]MetaTrader 4[/I] (not [I]Trading Station[/I]) and see if that kind of behaviour continues to happen. If so, then it really is a broker “thing”, but if not, then it is the EA that is causing it.
Hope that helps!
Regards,
Carnino
Thanks, I will give that a try.
Carino,
I notice that you are a programmer. Do you know the language that uses .LUA files? That apparently is the language used for making Trading Station EA’s.
Vijay and Carnino,
The current lot ratio per the 3 trade setup is 3-1-1. In your opinion, how would either a 3-2-1, or 3-1-1-1 (4th trade @ 20 pips take profit) trade setup fare? You would not make a small profit but would still maintain a break-even scenario with either of the lot ratios if just the 1st TP level is reached (irrespective of the broker spread cost). Earlier, I believe Carnino opined that a 3-1.5-1 was more profitable than our standard 3-1-1 setup. :33:
Hello grock,
Yes, that is the LUA scripting language which is quite common in many other areas outside of trading. However, I do not have experience with the [I]Trading Station [/I]platform that [I]FXCM[/I] uses and I do not know of any other broker that uses it either. If you go that route, you may become locked into to using only [I]FXCM[/I] and not be able to use your code with other brokers.
MetaTrader 4 (and the MQL4 language) is not necessarily the best (and has many negative points), but it is the most popular and the most common platform used by most Forex brokers. This leaves you free to pick and choose your broker (or multiple brokers) without having to fear being locked in with them. Also, you can find many resources (such as free EA code, user forums, etc.) all over the web.
Obviously, this is my personal opinion and there will be contrasting views from other users. So please, take some time to research all the alternatives and then form your own opinion of what is best for you.
Regards,
Carnino
Hello BobKat,
I think that you may have skipped over a significant part of this thread’s discussion. I suggest that you go back to Page #20, Post #200 and reread all the relevant posts/pages in detail up to the present day.
You will be following a discussion and line of thought between myself and Vijay about different percentage allocation of lots. It starts off with what you called the “3-1.5-1” (which is not the ratios I suggested), but the discussion progresses to the point about using single 100% allocation orders with a trailing stop (which is currently being forward tested by Vijay).
Regards,
Carnino
Hi carnino,
Hope you are well !
I was bit busy with some work so could not make change in forward test. I will modify the EA and also account with US dollar. With new month it will be easy to keep track on both account.
regards
vijay parmar
Hi Vijay.
Could you clarify something for me. Early in the spread you said you don’t recommend ECN broker, but later you that you use ICMarkets, who I thought were an ECN broker.
If you could clarify if would be helpful: I ask because I had had a problem with my FXDD platform and have tried Alpari, but the spread seems quite high on this - over 2 pips.
Regards,
Stickerman
Hello Stickerman,
I think that [I]Vijay’s[/I] main concern with the choice of broker and account type was that he preferred not having to pay commissions on transactions and only have to pay the spread, preferably a fixed one at that. Whether it is an ECN broker or ECN Account type is not really the primary concern. It was more about how he wanted to manage the costs of trading.
Also, as you noted, having a [B]large spread is not favourable[/B]. It should also be noted that ECN or NDD (No Dealing Desk) accounts tend to have more slippage which can be a problem for this type of strategy.
So, in summation, what is really important, irrespective of it being an ECN account or not, is that you try to find a broker and account type that has small spreads, little or no slippage, and low overall cost of trading.
Regards,
Carnino
Thanks for the swift reply Carnino, and for the explanation.
I’ll keep researching brokers to find one with an acceptable spread, particularly on GBPUSD.
Cheers,
Stickerman
Carnino,
I have not skipped over the previous posts. I have read them all. You stated, "So, in order to meet the above conditions and maximise returns, our ratios of “a:b:c” is “50%:25%:16.667%” or the equivalent of “a:b:c = 6:3:2”. If you reduce the equation to lowest terms, it becomes 3:1.5:1 as I had posted.
I simply asked if you or Vijay had an opinion as to whether 3:2:1 or 3:1:1:1 would fare well compared to the original setup.
Best regards,
Bob
My apologies! You are correct; “3:1.5:1” is equivalent to “6:3:2”, but I did not immediately recognise it. Obviously these ratios can be expressed an infinite number of ways, so in order for everyone to use the same values and not misinterpret them (as was the case here), we should follow the rules used in maths and stats; i.e. that such ratios should always be expressed in the smallest whole numbers whenever possible. Hence the correct expression is thus “6:3:2”.
As for the other ratios you referred to (3:2:1 or 3:1:1:1), as I stated in post #200, it all depends on the probability of the outcomes, and I quote …
However, this was soon invalidated when it became apparent that the best ratio was “0:0:1” (0%, 0%, 100%), irrespective of the outcome probabilities.
[B]So the short answer is that 3:2:1 or 3:1:1:1 (or even 6:3:2) are irrelevant.[/B]
The best solution so far demonstrated in the back-tests for all currency pairs and periods is the single 100% orders with trailing stop. The only reason that I have not continued with more details on further enhancements is that I am waiting for [I]Vijay[/I] to catch up to this realisation.
[I]Vijay[/I] is currently running a forward test on this but he still needs to fix a few things in his EA in order for it to work correctly with the trailing stops.
Regards,
Carnino
Carmino,
Thank you for your valiant efforts to help us all maximize the performance of Vijay’s system.
You said, [B]“So the short answer is that 3:2:1 or 3:1:1:1 (or even 6:3:2) are irrelevant.”[/B] I do find this statement to be a bit short-sided. Just because the 0:0:1 scheme is more profitable in the long run does not mean it is irrelevant. I will trade some profitability for knowing that if price moves in my direction for just 5 pips, I will still be profitable. In short, it gives me great confidence to pursue trading this way… Since May 27th, I have won 9 trade setups out of 14 trades on Oanda with Vijay’s original scheme… The forex market has constricted price movements over the past few years. What happens if prices constrict even tighter, and the average breakout consistently falls short of 15 pips before price retraces and hits the small 5 pip stop more frequently than not? That “house of cards” may fall rapidly.
Also, I question if my results on Oanda using a later daily candle isn’t more beneficial than it appears on your backtests. A lot of factors may account for my win/loss ratio of 64% wins compared to the lower 42% or so with Vijay’s EA. Just food for thought…
Great trading!
Bob
Please can someone help explain to a ‘silver surfer’ the reason for this situation:
I mentioned in a previous thread that I had problems with my FXDD demo, so I tried elsewhere.
I have now downloaded a demo from Alpari which at this time (11.00pm UK) has a spread of between 2.5 and 3 pips, plus a demo from IC Markets (which I thought was what Vijay was using) of 5 pips! Obviously these won’t be good in this system.
Can anyone tell me if I’m doing something wrong with these demo accounts? How do I get a more acceptable spread, bearing in mind I am trialling a 1000.00 demo (to mirror what I can afford to set up when (if!) I go live.
Keep up the good work folks.
Stickerman
Hello Bob,
My apologies if I seemed disrespectful, but you did ask my opinion in your post and I did just that - my answer (my opinion) was in line with my current line of thought and all the previous details (statistics and back-tests) that I have provided.
In my posts there was a progression to my thoughts and I never once said that the 3P method was not profitable, but I did say that the [B]Single 100% Order with Trailing[/B] was [B]more profitable[/B] and had a [B]higher win rate[/B]. With this in mind, it is obvious that I will find all possible allocation percentages for the 3P to be irrelevant, since none of them will ever offer any better outcome.
Obviously I wish (and expect) to have my posts, discussed and either agreed upon or refuted, but that should equally be substantiated with statistics and back-tests. So please, if you feel that my answer was “short-sighted”, then please add some real statistics and/or back-tests to refute my findings.
Also, if you think that I may be stepping on someone’s toes or derailing [I]Vijay’s[/I] method, please let me know and I will gladly move on.
Regards,
Carnino
Please remember that it is the week-end and spreads are way-off during this period. You will have to wait for the initial market-open momentum before spreads become more realistic such as during the week-days.