Hi Successdoc,
100:1 is the maximum leverage we recommend, to stay away of any danger of a margin call, given the fact that we trade many pairs together.
$1000 is about minimum for the Combo Pack, unless you do not trade all the pairs. This will allow the Money Manager to balance out the pairs.
$500 or so for the Scalper alone
$250 for the Breakout Hunter alone
And this assumes that you have a micro account, with 0.01 minimum lots available
Thank you for the quick response. From reading this thread I think you can make adjustments to modify settings to fit a 500:1 account. Correct?
Hi Successdoc,
500:1 is too high. You are going to be better off starting with another MT4.
If you bring down the lot percent in the Money Manager, the first orders will be too small. If you do not, when you have multiple orders you will be trading too hard. It is easier to contact the broker and get it changed to 100:1
Success doc,
Anything more than 50:1 makes me nervous. I suggest you have a look through the Babypips school at the top of this site. Although this EA is āset and forgetā it really is benficial to understand what is occurring and for that (in my opinion) you really need the underpinning knowledge.
Hi Traders:
This explains the [B][U]recommended minimum account[/U][/B] balances for our EAs.
[B]Micro accounts[/B] can trade with much smaller account balances than Mini Acconts.
The minimum account balance recommended for a MICRO account (where the minimum lot size is 0.01 lots) is:
- For the Combo Pack, $750, (better if close to $1000.)
- For the Master Scalper alone, $500.
- For the Breakout Hunter alone, $250.
Your brokerās account should allow āmicroā lots trading (0.01).
[U]For [B]mini-accounts[/B], where the minimum lot size is 0.1 lots, the smallest recommended balance is [B]much higher[/B] than for micro-accounts, that allow 0.01 lots.[/U]
The main concern is that you need to be able to open multiple lots on the pairs if you are going to use the Combo pack, to balance the Breakout Hunter in sync with the Scalping pairs, since the SL is much larger, and you do not want a SL in the BH to consume the profits of the MS on a bad day.
If you trade the Master Scalper alone, this is less of an issue, and you can trade flat lots across the board.
To use a MINI account, you need $3000 minimum for MS alone, so SL will not exceed 3% of the balance, trading minimum lots.
BH can work with $1000 when trading alone, and will still keep losses within acceptable percentages of the account.
For the Combo Pack you need 10k to trade a Mini Account, or the BH will be too heavy on the MS pairs.
It is a mistake to open a Mini-Lots account in order to get the better spreads, if you are not going to fund it adequately. You are far better off using a Micro account.
[U]Regarding[B] leverage[/B]:[/U]
Our Money Manager is optimized to trade between 50:1 (max in the US) and 100:1.
When you trade with larger leverage, you expose your account to Margin Calls.
The way it works is that the first few orders will be of the same size, but as more orders come in, you can get in trouble.
We trade many pairs simultaneously and our Money Manager uses a percentage of the Free Margin of the account to determine lot sizes. Every time an order opens, it uses some of that available Margin and the Free Margin is reduced. The more orders you have going at one time, the less Free Margin you have, and consequently the MM starts opening progressively smaller positions.
If your Leverage is too high, it will allow the MM to continue trading at the higher lot sizes.
If at a time when you have many open positions the market reverses for a while, you could get you into the situation in which you have exhausted your Free Margin. This authorizes the broker to issue a Margin Call. Not niceā¦
āMargin Callā is an excellent movie, highly recommended. Loved it!
But having a Margin Call in your trading account hurts. Been there, done that.
Much better to call the broker and reset your account to a 100:1 leverage, and sleep well, knowing that when you wake up it will be a few dollars up or down, but never have been liquidated for trading at a high leverage.
I had similar symptoms, problem was that I could no longer start MT4 because it kept on crashing when I tried starting it.
To fix it, we downloaded most recent version of MT4 from IBFX site (slightly newer than the one I had installed), installed it, opened new demo account and then installed 7.1.8 (did it following the advice from Smart FX support).
Iām running both demo and live account at the same time, both with IBFX. Setup as below:
DEMO
IBFX, standard size, 50K USD deposit, leverage 50:1. Trading all bots, including Breakout_Hunter. MT4 running on VPS (CNS, UK). Standard settings for all bots.
LIVE
IBFX, mini size, more than sufficient deposit to handle trading on all pairs. Trading all bots except for Breakout_Hunter (following feedback from this forum). MT4 running on VPS (CNS, UK) - same server as DEMO account. Standard settings for all bots (very low leverage).
[U]Results are similar, but not the same.[/U]
Difference is EUR/CAD pair. There were 3 trades opened in demo account, but [B]not [/B]in live account. All other trades opened at the same time, and closed approximately at the same time (up to 15 minutes difference), with similar results.
16-Nov is a no-trade day for this pair, however, the trades in demo account were opened on 15-Nov, so I would expect the trades to be opened in live account as well.
I think that is what eventually fixed my problem as well although I went as far as starting up a new account with IBFX. My other accounts had the update system built in. IBFX was the only account/MT4 that didnāt update itself. Maybe they want better control of the platform with all the extraās they add in. Regardless, I created a new account and installed the latest platform from IBFX.
I must say, only after a few days, it is doing a lot better job than MB Trading that I started the same day. Really too early to tell. Iām giving it until after New Years to run the EAās in a live account. I feel confident right now that it wonāt blow my account, Iām just going to wait until after the holidays. Also to see which broker to use.
Tim
Thanks for the continued information you provide. Can you also make recommendations for brokers for US based customers?
Hello Traders,
Hi, Successdoc: For US based customers we recommend MB Trading. If you have more than 10k, then FinFx is an option outside the US that will accept US clients. Some people seem happy with IBFX, although I have not tried them myself.
Arthur, it is normal to have different results in demo than in Live, since they are different feed. It is rare, but it is normal, since in the Live account the broker must actually fill the order, where in the demo it is just a number in a computer. Demos are good simulations, but Real accounts are the real thing.
Here is the link to our Real Account, opened with the release of version 7, which contains the News Filter and other improvements. It was updated to version 7.1.8 on Nov. 9th.
Broker: MB Trading (ECN), TimeZone: New York (currently GMT -4 on DST). Entries marked āwithdrawalsā correspond to the ecn commissions on trades charged by the broker.
Started trading on Oct.4th, 2011,
Since the Real Account is rather new, I am posting the older demo tests.
They run each EA independently and show several months of trading. MB Trading cancelled all Demos on Nov 4th, but it helps to show the months before the Real Account started.
Breakout Hunter, started in April 2011. Updated to version 7 on Oct. 4th.
Master Scalper, started in August 2011, started with release of the previous update. Also updated to version 7 on Oct. 4th.
Robert, if I have trades that I would want to close early, more for TP reasons. Will this affect the EA in any?
Hi Tcruzn,
Why would you want to close them early? Unless you have inside information or a tsunami is coming in, it is best to let them trade. Sometimes you could be right in your instinct to close early, but in the long run, the EAs are right most of the times. If you close early you take small profits and full losses, which become harder to offset. Plus you get the EA out of sync. Not good. Just check on them once in a while, once a day maybe, to make sure everything is trading smoothly. Other than that, let them workā¦
It would be great if we could have a trailing stop loss.
For example last night I left a usdjpy trade which was at 24 of 26 pips, but when I checked this morning it was still running but then at around a slight minus figure. Whereas if it had a trailing stop it would still be closed in good profit?
I understand that you may end up with slightly less in a single trade but hopefully would turn these trades positive too.
But Iām guessing its not there for a good reason but it would be great if it could be added in
Hi Fraz,
Trailing Stops in our strategies would not work as well as it may seem. Believe me, we have tested everything.
The EurChf and EurGbp have a kind of trail, called Breakeven function, which does something similar.
But the other pairs leave too much money on the table, since you never know what the reversal point is and you wind up with smaller-wins and same-size-losses, which is a bad exchange.
The very reason why we choose to trade with EAs is that otherwise we always cut short the wins and let the lossers run. A really bad combinationā¦
Just let them work, they are pretty awesome!
Cool I understand.
But if we were still naughty and closed a trade manually how do we get back in synch.
Just thinking about trades opened like 12hours ago but havenāt closed and are closed at breakeven etc.
Iām not looking to close trades manually other than if they have been running for too long, assuming getting back into synch is not an issue.
There is no āsyncā to be afraid of. Sometimes it will play in your favor, sometimes against. But you will change the trading day. And it will get back in āsyncā when the new session begins, assuming no positions would have been left over for the whole day.
Thank you Robert for the response. Iāve been in short EurUsd since tue and was concerned of the ea not opening any more EurUsd opportunities. Since this ea seems to look out for trending breaks. However, I noticed it did open 4 longs for quick TP when I woke up this morning. This is my first week with your combo ea and so far Iām impressed. +23% for the week. 
I do trade manually using price action and this seems to keep up with me. Love it.
23% gain for the week?!? Thatās awesome! I thought I was being happy with my 1 or 2% (2% dropped to just under 1% yesterday). Do you have a link to myfxbook? Would be nice to be able to compare some trades. Regardless, if you are getting that kind of gain from doing some manual closes then I say go for it. My intention was to find a true set it and forget EA that works. If I had to intervene then I defeated my purpose. But the bottom line is you do what you want to make money right? Sounds like you have something that is working for you
Tim
Can I ask a kind of related, but not question here ?
On my VPS, I can only run one instance of MetaTrader 4 for some reason. This being the case, how would I run a demo account and a live account at the same time ? I can only log into one account at a time it seems. Do the EAs keep working when I log out of an account ? This seems unlikely to this novice.
Any help gratefully recieved.
You would need to use two different mt4 accounts, for example I have a hotforex and fxcm running at the same time.