Hi Yankees,
If you don’t get any trades today, first check that you have “Allow Live Trading” and “Allow DLL Imports” turned on.
Otherwise please email us or chat at the website so we can help you, maybe do a remote assistance session.
Hi Robert,
Just a quick question, is it ok for us to close trades manually if we feel there will be a reversal etc?
Just wandering if this would somehow affect future trades?
Thanks
Fraz
Hi Traders:
The difference in performance among different brokers is not new to EA trading, or to Forex in general.
Forex is an unregulated market, where each broker has a similar, but different data feed (prices), and definitely different spreads. The small differences in prices may cause one broker to fill a trade that the other broker does not. If the price changes direction at that time, we have two accounts with different trades. These accounts will be out of sync if the price reversal is substantial, and may never be in sync again until they both clear their positions on that pair. It is quite common to see two account going in different directions, one long, one short on the same pair because of this problem. That is not because one of the brokers is better than the other. I have seen that happen with two account with the same broker!
And they can stay out of sync for a while. That is Forex.
Having said that, it is quite true that some brokers are better suited for certain strategies than others.
For example, there are brokers that do not like scalpers and they state it outright in their websites. They will enlarge the spreads during scalping hours, or even force you to keep a trade open for a minimum number of minutes, just to get rid of scalping strategies which they fear will take some of their money. These brokers usually are market makers who take the opposite position than the trader, essentially trading against you, like a casino would.
Due to professional constraints I cannot blast against any broker in particular (bite my tongue…). But I can certainly say that I prefer dealing with ECN brokers. In some cases some brokers offer fixed spreads accounts that can also be suitable, but I still prefer and use only ECN brokers.
[B]The minimum lot-size problem:[/B]
When you choose your broker and kind of account, you MUST make sure that your type of account will allow you flexibility in trading the lot sizes that the EAs Money Manager would like to use. This lot sizes should be proportionate to the balance in your account, so that the risk level remains proportionate as well.
Accounts come in different lot sizes:
Micro account will trade 0.01 lots as a minimum, and are suitable for accounts of any size.
Mini-Accounts will trade a minimum lot size of 0.1 lots. Although they usually have better spreads, they should not be used with our strategies unless you have at least $10,000 in the account. Otherwise you will be trading too hard, regardless of the leverage you choose (more on that later).
(Note: Before continuing, let me explain that the broker we use in our myfxbook Real Account (MB Trading) uses different size lots than most brokers, 10 times smaller, and when our account trades 0.1 lots, it is the same as most brokers trading 0.01 lots. Just to complicate matters further…sorry.)
The Money Manager will look at the Free Margin available in the account to calculate the lot size of the trade.
For example, if you have a $1,000 account, and the Money Manager entering a 1% order in EurUsd, the lot size should be 0.01. That will work out fine if you have an account that allows micro-lots (0.01).
But what happens if you have an account that only allows mini-lots (0.1)? The order that the EA triggers will be converted to the smallest possible order your account can handle, and instead of trading 0.01, you wind up with an order of 0.1 lots. You are trading 10 times harder, just because you have the wrong account for the size of your trading capital. If your account was $10,000, then the mini-lots would work out just fine and the fill of the 1% order would be appropriate when your broker opens a 0.1 order.
Brokers offer better spreads to traders that trade larger lots. For example FinFx in their ECN account, where the spreads and commissions are excellent, but the minimum size lot required is a mini-lot (0.1). If you use this kind of account because you think you are getting the best spreads, but your capital is too small for this account, you wind up trading way too hard, and you risk having a large drawdown when you have Stop Loses.
[U]And this has nothing to do with the leverage you choose! It has to do with the minimum lot size your account is allowed to trade.[/U]
Our strategy involves trading many pairs, each using different lot sizes to balance the pairs, so that no one pair can be too heavy on the others. For example, the Breakout Hunter trades with smaller lots than any of the scalpers, because it runs with larger Stop Loses.
But if your account is trading minimum lot sizes in every case, then all the trades will be of the same size, and a bad run on the BH can undermine the efforts of all the scalping pairs.
In a couple of days I will write extensively on the leverage problem. For now, let it be said that we recommend up to 100:1 leverage, and not more.
Hi Fraz,
Yes, it may affect future trades, which could be good or bad, whether you were right or wrong in predicting the reversal, and whether you got lucky in the following trades that come after, since now you are in a different “time line”, so to speak.
The main issue here is not that:
After many years of trading, I have come to realize that the robots trade a lot better than I do. My crystal ball that can predict reversals is so bad, that I had to give up manual trading a long time ago!
That is why we trade with EAs.
Thanks thought it might so thought I would double check.
Phew, just started my demo today with a broker using min 0.1 lot. I switched so the bot is able to trade with 1000EUR.
What version is the latest?
I’m running with 7.17 at the moment but just played catchup on the last few pages that suggest there is a newer one than this out now?
Yes Gazlim
We have v7.1.8. which you should have received by now.
Please email us so we can follow up on yours. I don’t know your EA Serial Number from your forum name…
Emailed.
My invoice Id is in the email so hopefully that will help
Cheers
Gareth
So far so good; this combo is currently running much higher than I could have wished for. If it runs half of this in the long term then we are truly in exciting times.
She is running so well I am happy to give her a couple of weeks holiday at Christmas 
Hi All, Great thread and a lot of interesting information.
Been testing on a demo account for a few weeks and have finally setup a VPS and a HotForex Currenex Account. The guys at Smart FX Tech have been awesome and re-issued me with a new serial number so I could move to the VPS. Great service thanks 
Looks like a great bot and am keeping things conservative to start with so will see how it goes. Can even remote in to the server from my iPad and keep an eye on things, makes life very easy.
Will post some results when I have them
Had some broker issues but everything is fine now. So today is the first trading day and im really excited.
good luck to all of us. May it rain green pips on all of us!!!
Lets hope so Johnny. If it does then we owe you and Robert.
This could be the best thing I have bought since that one way ticket out of London Heathrow in 2001.
Amen to that, to be fair I have had a fantastic week last week here’s hoping it continues
My demo account ($5000, 1:100 leverage) has been running since Oct 19, here are the running totals for the EAs.
euraud 542.29
eurcad 7.56
eurchf 124.94
eurgbp 20.87
eurusd -341.36
usdjpy 214.04
I am sorely tempted to start a live account without the Breakout Hunter, and possibly eurcad - but will that impact on the performance of the other EAs ?
Bought this bot with the intent to try it for a month on demo account. Had issues installing version 7.1.8 on IBFX, interestingly enough, version 7.1.7 worked perfectly fine. Sent an email to support, within an hour or so one of the support guys fixed the problem using remote assistance. Really good support.
Trading on IBFX demo using VPS (CNS). Will report results after first week.
Interesting. I tried updating to 7.1.8 on my demo IBFX account but it kept crashing the program when it would run. It got to the point that it wouldn’t even run at all and I attributed it to running the account for 4 weeks which IBFX says its a 30 day demo. So I created a new account on IBFX and 7.1.8 worked. Not sure what all was happening but it’s running fine now. I don’t give it a lot of concern regarding a demo account.
It ran sluggish for me on my high spec pc. I sorted it by reducing the number of bars on the chart to 1500 as suggested by a member of these forums. Now the bot runs great with no crashes or processor hogging. There are some quite clever people about these forums, thanks!
What is the recommended amount to start with on a HotForex Micro Account with 500:1 leverage?