Welcome back Forex Fans.Here's a weekly update on Forex Robots I'm following.
Megadroid finally came out of its spring slumber and made some trades this week. Megadroid demo picked up 19 pips in 2 trades and continues to lead the pack up 20.5% year to date.
The graph above shows the performance of Megadroid demo which is up 236 pips in 37 trades with only one loosing trade. That's a pretty impressive performance and not bad for a 'set and forget' robot. I don't know of another commercial EA with as high a win rate and so little drawdown. If anyone knows of a better one, please leave a comment.
Megadroid live continues to lag and picked up 8 pips on the week. Even so, it's up a respectable 8.4% for the year. It took the same trade as Megadroid demo on Monday and picked up one less pip. On Tuesday, a new wrinkle came in when I saw this on the Experts tab:
17:00:08 stdlib EURUSDFXF,H1: loaded successfully
17:00:08 MegaDroid EURUSDFXF,H1: Sell operation failed - error(133): trade is disabled
17:00:08 MegaDroid EURUSDFXF,H1: Sell operation failed - error(133): trade is disabled
17:00:20 MegaDroid EURUSDFXF,H1: Sell operation failed - error(133): trade is disabled
17:00:25 MegaDroid EURUSDFXF,H1: Sell operation failed - error(133): trade is disabled
17:00:29 MegaDroid EURUSDFXF,H1: Sell operation failed - error(133): trade is disabled
I Googled the error(133) and here's the explanation: "your broker forbid trading operations by expert advisor". In other words, the broker just plain old denied the trade. Just when I saw it all - another broker dirty trick!
I did some research on the brokers recommended by Megadroid support and landed up on http://www.iamfx.com/. I had a chat with them and here's the deal:
- Lowest spreads in the business - 1 pip or less for EUR/USD
- Free VPS to execute your trades with a deposit as little as $500
- Based in the United States
So what's the downside?
- You have to pay commission. Don't quote me, but I had a chat with their support and I beleive they said commissions are $2.50 per 100K lot, $1.00 per 10K lot and 50 cents for a 1K lot.
- The minimum lot size they will trade is 0.05 lots with a micro account
- Broker is based in the US so leverage is limited to 100 to 1.
So is it worth it? Well i'm currently paying a 2-pip spread to Forex.com with no commissions. So with a 2-pip spread on a micro account (dime pips) with 0.10 trade size, i'm paying an extra buck on each of the trade in pip spread. To make matters worse, i'm missing out on a bunch of trades due to all the broker manipulation crap with Forex.com.
So I think I'm going to open an account with iamfx.com and see how it works out. If it trades Megadroid as well as the demo account, it will be well worth it. Plus, I can get some experience with a VPS and stop trading from the family computer in the basement.
Will it work out that way? We'll see.
Check back for my progress and have a great week.
What also bugs me is that a broker should not even know you are using an expert adviser. What I am using in MT4 should have no transparency to the broker. My trades could be manual or otherwise for all they should be concerned. (So do brokers download my EA's, de-compile them, and spy on me too in who knows what manner?) I decided to cut to the chase with Tiger Tail and start using it live. I am wondering what faults will show themselves. One I just thought of while reading your post is, if a trade fails to execute, should I sleep for a few seconds and try again. Try again how many times? Looks like Megadroid tried 5 times by your printout. Maybe I will find my slippage at 3 is too small, etc., who knows. It would definitively appear you need to do something about your broker. That is just flat out BS. I tell ya, not that Megadroid would make you rich fast, but it always seems there is someone out there stifling people like you or I when we find a way to make some money by means of Megadroid or other. Rich want to stay rich and keep the middle class in their place.
ReplyDeleteJT
JT-
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment.
The brokers themselves make a pretty big investment in Meta-Trader, so they certainly expect you to trade with expert advisors.
Specifically, brokers can identify EA trades by the "Magic Number" which is sent as a parameter to the OrderSend() function. The Megadroid folks suggest changing the Magic Number regularly to avoid detection. I haven't done that in a while and perhaps I should do that.
In terms of the order retries, I checked the Megadroid code, and they only call the OrderSend() function one time. As long as the conditions to enter orders exist over several ticks inside your EA, the order attempt will repeat automatically just like it did above. You can see that 3 of the 4 attempts were about 5-10 seconds apart indicating they were probably called on separate ticks. Also, you can see the EA started up just prior to when the order was submitted. So that could have contributed to the error somehow.
I agree its kind of absurd that the broker would go to all this trouble to setup Meta-Trader, and I would go through all this trouble to send them orders, then they will just flat-out refuse to take the order. It might be a temporary situation, but if it persists, it will prove out the point that the broker has some other financial interest in the trade besides just pulling the in the spread.
I've tried to make some progress with IAmFx, but its been slow. If I don't get their demo MT4 up and running in another day or 2, I may have to do a blog post about it. Well see.
Thanks again for the comment,
Chris
One thing I have been doing on my ordersend call is do a mathrand() on magic number. My magic number is different every time I send the order (or should be as I tested the function to print out the mathrand number and it looked pretty random to me). Not sure if I am cloaking myself so to speak, but maybe it helps. I also leave my comment blank when I run the ordersend. I wonder what the majority of people do with the comment...
ReplyDeleteMy ordersend is set up only for one shot, so I will see how that pans out. I may have to increase my slippage to 4 instead of 3 but I don't expect that I should have problems with 3.
It all kind of makes you wish you could go work for a broker for a couple of months just to see exactly what they do, and don't do.
JT
JT-
ReplyDeleteThat's good thinking and its good to see your many years of education in Information Technology shining through!
Keep in mind that sometimes EA's use the Magic number to distinguish between trades made by that EA and other (non-EA) trades made in the same account. When cycling through open trades, the EA uses the magic number to determine what trades to close (because they belong to the EA) versus trades the came from other sources.
Another use the magic number is to distinguish between orders originated from different strategies in the same EA. Megadroid does this and runs 2 different strategies in the same EA and provides 2 distinct EA properites to set these values. They advise (in the manual) not to change the Magic number once trades are open because the EA won't be able to identify which orders belong to which strategies.
So all that said, its a good idea mixing up the magic numbers to throw off the broker. As long as it doesn't confuse your own EA!
Cheers,
Chris
Hello Everyone,
ReplyDeleteI've attached a list of the highest ranking FOREX brokers:
1. Best Forex Broker
2. eToro - $50 minimum deposit.
Here is a list of the best forex tools:
1. ForexTrendy - Recommended Odds Software.
2. EA Builder - Custom Indicators Autotrading.
3. Fast FX Profit - Secret Forex Strategy.
I hope you find these lists helpful...