Trading aud/nzd successfully

White, sorry i have no idea about ECN platforms, but i can point out which parts I have made changes in the code, quite an easy modification.

Anybody have any idea about the big move at the mo? Don't see anything in the news...

Trying to figure that out too. When FED annonced that they'd pump 300 billion in the market they wasn't much of a reaction. And that is long gone.

That move is going on for a few hours now and still no news about some event has been made public? Hmmm..

and funnily enough the AUD/CAD is going the opposite way lol

Got a little reversel pattern. Missed my TP just by some pips.

mine too by about 6 pips

For once, I'm the lucky one with a TP hit... I'm only 1 level in right now actually even though when I first got up to look at it with 5 levels deep I was less than amused.

well there is a strong down trend in the daily lasting 2 weeks already so when we buy we are clearly at risk of runaway trade... makes me wonder if we could benefit from a daily trend filter, at least when we are in a stong trend like now...

Still can't explain why the EA opended the Trade 30 Pips earlier.
Happend at the sell side a few days ago too. If spread was the problem wouldn't it just wait for the Bid or the Ask to be 80 Pips away?

Hi Tjpld,

look at the lines at the end of your EA.
There are the commands for opening the first level.
I think your Buy-order is triggered by the Bid-price.So your first level will be opened Bid + Spread = ask.

aiti

Thanks I will take a look!
Turned the EA of for friday missed a sucessful 1 Level trade.

If the EA on a buy is on bid, when bid hits the line it enters and also counts the spread at the time. So 80 - 30 spread would put the entrance at 50.

If the EA is on ask it will place the trade at 80 but price will be at 110 because of the spread. If it is at 30. So choose your poison.

So no way to get it right all the time?

Not with variable spreads, no, but with a fixed spread company yes. When I started this system IBFX was fixed at 12 and it was great and made me good money, but now with variable spreads it has been a struggle. We have fewer trades and a higher risk to each trade.

Time for MB Trading. Of course they are variable too but not as variable as IBFX ^^.
Have been using the EA with 5 digits and ECN enviroment with good success so far.

spread can go to 40 pips, i believe it can trigger the trade. I have added this code in mine to avoid doing anything when spread is more than 20 pips:

int start()
{
// check spread
double spread = MarketInfo("AUDNZD", MODE_SPREAD);
if (spread > 20) return(0);

we are all waiting patiently

Thanks for the extra code, is it working? are you seeing fewer trades or just more time between trades?

Yes it works, the trades are closer to the MA lines now. I started testing 2 weeks ago, without the spread filter it opened the first trade within 5 minutes of starting the EA, way too far from the first MA level, and it hit the SL. Then the next day I put in the filter and for 2 weeks trades are closer to the 1st level MA. However keep in mind that the first level MA is 10 pips more in the one side compared to the 1st level in the other, so with 20 pips filter you wont see it again exactly on the 1st level MA, the difference can be up to 10 pips (= 20 - 10). Also, even 20 pips are too much, as I have posted before my initial estimates are that any spread 18 or more is a killer for this system, to perform well should be 14-15 or less.

I believe the best number would be spread < 15 for this filtering for IBFX. This is based on my observations of spread on IBFX, I will make follow up post on the details of this. If you decide to do this spread filtering on 15, then the opening conditions should be (if you want to have 1st order 50 pips from middle MA):

For sell:

change line:

if( Ask > Var4+(50*Point))

to

if( Ask > Var4+(64*Point))

which is about the same as

if( Bid > Var4+(50*Point))

because when you sell you sell at Bid price, and you want this 50 pips from middle MA

and for buy:

change line

if( Bid < Var4-(40 * Point))

to

if( Bid < Var4-(50 * Point))

or the about the same to use

if( Ask < Var4-(64 * Point))

this is not exactly symmetric because the middle MA is calculated based on Bid price, but it's ok. You need to change the template to have the 1st level 14-15 pips wider above the middle ma compared to the distance of level 1 below, if you want to reflect this spread, or you can make the level 1 distance above and below middle MA the same at 50 pips, considering the fact that trading decisions are based on Bid price and MA and candles are drawn on Bid price too, in this case keep in mind that the Buy orders will be always Bid + spread, which will not be more than 14 pips according to the spread filter (I think this is better solution because it allows you to visually check better when the 1st trade opens, altough all the buy trades will open 14 pips above the level line on the chart).

In other words, to sell you want the Bid to move 50 pips above the middle MA, and to buy you want the Bid to move 50 pips below the middle MA.

Finally a small note: the EA currently calculates many useless indicators which slow the PC down for no reason, especially when you run more than 1 copy of the EA. You only need the calculation of Var4, the others you can remove i.e. remove lines:

double stoch, stoch1, stoch2;
//---- long Stochastic indicator
double Var3 = iMA(NULL, PERIOD_H1, 1, 0, MODE_LWMA, PRICE_MEDIAN, 0);
double Var4 = iMA(NULL, PERIOD_H1, 1, 1, MODE_LWMA, PRICE_OPEN, 0);
double Var5 = iMA(NULL, PERIOD_H1, 2, 1, MODE_LWMA, PRICE_OPEN, 0);
double Var6 = iMA(NULL, PERIOD_H1, 2, 1, MODE_LWMA, PRICE_OPEN, 0);
double Var7 = iMA(NULL, PERIOD_H1, 2, 1, MODE_LWMA, PRICE_OPEN, 0);
double Var8 = iMA(NULL, PERIOD_H1, 2, 1, MODE_LWMA, PRICE_OPEN, 0);
stoch = iStochastic(Symbol(),Stoch_TF,K_Period,D_Period,Slow_Period,MODE_LWMA,PriceMode,MODE_MAIN,0);//iStochastic(NULL,Stoch_TF,K_Period,D_Period,Slow_Period,mamode,PriceMode,modest,0);
stoch1 = iStochastic(Symbol(),Stoch_TF,K_Period,D_Period,Slow_Period,MODE_LWMA,PriceMode,MODE_MAIN,1);//iStochastic(NULL,Stoch_TF,K_Period,D_Period,Slow_Period,mamode,PriceMode,modest,1);
stoch2 = iStochastic(Symbol(),Stoch_TF,K_Period,D_Period,Slow_Period,MODE_LWMA,PriceMode,MODE_MAIN,2);//iStochastic(NULL,Stoch_TF,K_Period,D_Period,Slow_Period,mamode,PriceMode,modest,2);
Var3 = iMA(NULL, PERIOD_H1, 40, 0, MODE_LWMA, PRICE_MEDIAN, 0);
Var4 = iMA(NULL, PERIOD_M5, 120, 1, MODE_LWMA, PRICE_MEDIAN, 0);
Var5 = iMA(NULL, PERIOD_H1, 2, 1, MODE_LWMA, PRICE_CLOSE, 0);
Var6 = iMA(NULL, PERIOD_H1, 2, 1, MODE_LWMA, PRICE_OPEN, 0);
Var7 = iMA(NULL, PERIOD_H1, 2, 1, MODE_LWMA, PRICE_OPEN, 0);
Var8 = iMA(NULL, PERIOD_H1, 2, 0, MODE_LWMA, PRICE_LOW, 0);

and replace with

double Var4 = iMA(NULL, PERIOD_M5, 120, 1, MODE_LWMA, PRICE_MEDIAN, 0);

look at the picture (middle part is the spread). You can see that in IBFX yesterday spread went as high as 47 pips (this is the highest point in the red line towards the right part of the image)... without the spread filter, the EA could open a buy at this point.

The red line is the max spread in each candle. You can see it regularly goes way more than 20.

The green line is the spread at close of bar and for the most part remains under 20, but not always.

The blue line is the minimum spread in each candle. For the most part it remains at 14, and on very few occasions (near the left part) it has gone as low as 11.

So basically our spread filter tells the EA not to do anything unless the spread is at 14 or less (if you filter with spread < 15). The perfect solution would be if our broker offered a fixed spread of 14, but given the fact that this is not the case, the next best solution is this filter, which as you can see from the graph is not so bad, because for the most part there is a time in each candle that the minimum spread reaches that level.