FXCM/DailyFX Signals and Strategies

Here are some free expert advisors that our programming services team coded for MetaTrader 4. They're based off of basic indicator strategies so you can do with them as you wish. Here is a brief description of each:

1. The ATR Trending System strategy uses ATR based volatility channels. It looks for break-outs above the top channel and breaks below the bottom channel. This system works best in trending markets. The trades exit when the candle closes back across the moving average price. CLICK HERE to download.

2. The Awesome Oscillator Crossover EA trades long and short based upon the change in color of the Awesome Oscillator. If its increasing it trades long and if its decreasing it trades short. The strategy has stops and limits to alter in order to control your exits from the market. CLICK HERE to download.

3. The Williams Percent Range Oscillator EA trades long and short based upon the level of Williams Percent Range. If WPR is above the upper level it trades long and if its below the lower level it trades short. The strategy is designed to always be either long or short in the market. Given that it oscillates, neither stops nor limits are used in this Expert Advisor. CLICK HERE to download.

Just noticed on the DailyFX website that there will be a live Q&A discussion tomorrow on the Analyst Picks. John Rivera is hosting it in case you want to pick his brain .

And lastly, I won't be posting again until next Tuesday (Sept 1). See you then and good luck with the trading!

(And keep an eye on www.fxcm.co.uk for the launch of CFD's )

It was launched sooner than I expected ...

New FXCM UK website http://www.fxcm.co.uk/

Oil, Gold, Silver, Stock Indices now available with CFD accounts




Back next Tuesday...

Jason,

Thank you for your thread. I have an account at FXCM and am Demo'ing the FSS. I got a little aggressive and found I incured losses only when I let the Margin get short.

But I fixed that. In the Demo account I seem to be making returns.

I went through this other thread called Systematic Trading. These guys are building their own systems. I asked about FXCM's System Selector. Here's what they had to say:

There is a history with your systems, and while some don't work, a good number of them apparently do, and work well.

How do you explain the response though?

thanks Jason.

I know its may sound a bit basic but what is the source of SSI? i mean does it calculate based on the number of trader that open the position or based on the number of volume that enter the market?Obviously 5 people trade with 10k will be different with 1 person trade with 100K for example...

Hi wtmckee,

I personally agree with Craig.

You will find MANY system (automated strategy) developers selling their strategy for a set fee or giving it away. If the strategy were so good, they would probably be more interested in taking advantage of its long term success for example through a managed account or trading their own account. If you outright purchase a strategy, what incentive is there for the system developer to have it work long term. A classic example of this is the commercial expert advisors for MT4 you are spammed with constantly. I get those all the time as well . Ok, so some have a 60 day refund policy, but what incentive do they have for it to work past 60 days. They could just create a new one for everone to buy once it stops working. I have seen some commercial expert advisors do well, but they are few and far between. Picking the good from the bad requires due diligence. And I don't mean to put down those that work togethor on the forums to code and improve strategies. I think a colloborative effort helps spark new trading ideas that you can take advantage of.

In the end, the system developer needs to have an interest in their own signals being profitable long term. The Forex System Selector (FSS) is designed to solve this. A $1 commission is charged per 10k lot traded. That is how the system developer is compensated for offering signals. The vast majority of our users on the FSS are choosing systems based on profitability, and rightly so. If the system is profitable, more people use it, and the signal provider makes more money in return as more traders choose it and more trades are placed. If the system is not profitable, then no one will use it, no trades are placed, and the signal provider is not compensated.

A couple of tips for choosing systems. Look at the start date for the system. If there are only a couple months of trading history and it had great profits with small drawdowns then you don't have a lot of information to judge the system on since it simply hasn't been trading for very long. If a system is hugely profitable, look at the drawdown. A larger potential for reward often comes with greater risk for loss. Would your account have survived the drawdown. Would you have had the stamina to hold on to the system seeing that type of drawdown. Here is a video we put together for sorting and selecting systems.

There is also a reverse feature you can enable. This instructs the platform to do the opposite of what the system does. If you find a system that consistently loses, then doing the opposite may work out better.

Hope that helps.

Jason

Hi Andrie,

The SSI data is measuring the number of orders and not the size of the orders. I asked John Kicklighter of DailyFX for an explanation on their reasoning behind calculating it this way.

Both measures were evaluated when originally creating the SSI, and they found measuring orders instead of net position size to be more accurate. Giving equal weight to smaller sized trades arguably worked better as a contrarian indicator since the smaller lot sized trades tend to be placed by those that have less experience and are prone to making the usual beginner mistakes.

There's a live event being held by DailyFX tonight for the Australian GDP announcement. The trading room will open at 9:15pm EDT before the announcement at 9:30pm. Just click on the picture below after 9:15pm to go to the trading room.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3458/...7b25673904.jpg

Is the price alert only alert based on price?

Can it alert when price reaches or touch certain indicator etc?

Also where do I see the SSI daily?
How often does it update?

Thanks.

The mobile price alerts are based on the market price touching the price you specify. We don't have it setup for the price reaching or touching an indicator, but I'll pass the suggestion along. There are also news alerts that will message you the economic release numbers.

For SSI, it updates twice a day through DailyFX Plus . Typically around 5am EST and 2pm EST. You will need a live account to login to DailyFX Plus https://plus.dailyfx.com/login/loginForm.jsp or if you don't have a live account you can register for a trial login through this webpage http://www.fxcm.com/trading-signals.jsp

See the attached screenshot below. I circled in red where the SSI button is located once logged in to DailyFX Plus.

Here's something interesting that Sean Hyman of the FX Powercourse pointed out to me just now. Gold has been forming a triangle since January and with today's rally it could possibly be breaking out. If you want to trade gold, it's now available in the CFD account with FXCM UK. The technical analyzer in DailyFX Plus also updates with gold signals. If you look at the screenshot from the previous post, the Technical Analyzer button is right above the SSI button.

Here's the latest SSI reading. Traders trying to pick a bottom in USD/JPY, and the positioning stands at 4.09 indicating over 80% of our traders are long USD/JPY. Just looking at a daily USD/JPY chart, we're right at support, and if this breaks, who knows how far it will go. DailyFX wrote an article about the seasonality effect of the S&P 500 which could push the USD/JPY lower. That would spell disaster for all of these long positions. So watch your position size and stop loss if you plan to go long at this point.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3496/...19677c27fa.jpg

Below is a chart of USD/JPY

In regards to the post from yesterday morning, www.CFDTrading.com , which is our research website for oil, stock indices, gold, and silver, picked up on the gold triangle and released a piece about it yesterday afternoon http://www.cfdtrading.com/2009/09/02...riangle-break/ . If you want to sign up to receive emails with the oil, gold, and indices research you can do so here Sign Up Link. Here's what they had to say:

Gold Triangle Break
Wednesday, 2 Sep 2009 4:26 EDT at 16:26 by Jamie Saettele

Gold’s rally pushed through what may be the top of a triangle. Price remains beneath highs in February and April but a rally above there puts the all time high at 1034 (March 2008) in jeopardy. Structurally, even a new high is probably just temporary. An unorthodox top in wave B of an expanded flat would pave the way for wave C to eventually drop below 681. Interestingly, the 1999-2008 rally is equal to the 1976-1980 rally in terms of price. 2008 momentum, as measured by RSI, did not reach the 1980 level. This creates a significant divergence that is typical of major turning points. Even allowing for a new high in gold, the metal appears much closer to a top than a bottom.

http://www.cfdtrading.com/wp-content...09/goldtri.png

To give everyone a heads up, DailyFX is holding a live trading room session tomorrow during the Non-Farm Payroll release. The room opens at 8:15am ET. You can click on the picture below to get to it.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2646/...8c982543ce.jpg

Here's a short quote from DailyFX's analysis of the NFP release, and a historical graph of NFP created by Bloomberg. You can find the full report here http://www.dailyfx.com/story/tophead...069787530.html

FX markets have been extremely choppy this morning after US unemployment data fell into two ends of the spectrum: surprisingly optimistic and deeply disappointing. Starting with the good news, non-farm payrolls (NFPs) fell by 216,000 in August, which was less than forecasts for a drop of 230,000 and the slowest pace of job losses in a year. At the same time, though, the unemployment rate jumped beyond forecasts to 9.7 percent - the highest since 1983 - from 9.4 percent.

http://www.dailyfx.com/export/sites/.../nfps_0809.jpg

Jason
Just wanted to say I love your CFD website. I trade crude and metals (CFD's) a lot and its a great resource, thanks.
Nice to get away from the gold bugs and tin hatters too.
Nicola

Continuing with NFP discussion, you can remember a couple of days ago USD/JPY SSI positioning was about 4. The latest SSI report from this morning shows USD/JPY positioning at 2.85, so traders are still going long at the support level which has held.

This afternoons SSI release will be interesting to see if that number decreased due to stops being hit or margin calls occuring. NFP can be dangerous due to whipsawing which can cause stops to be hit or overleveraged accounts to get a margin call. USD/JPY droped nearly 75 pips in the first 10 minutes before retracing entirely and heading the other way.

Take a look at the past couple of NFP's for EUR/USD and USD/JPY and the market has retraced the initial reaction. So be mindful of where you're placing stops before large releases.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2505/...f8a5c5c21e.jpg

Hi Nicola,

Happy to hear the feedback. The CFD release has been very exciting, and good to expand from currencies into other. I love being able to pull up the metal and indices charts to compare with the currencies. Gold in particular is one I've been watching a lot with a potential break of $1000 (though our gold charts have a bug at the moment , should be fixed soon ). If there are any metals besides gold and silver you trade, let me know. The initial launch has a focused set of the most popular CFD's, but later on there's the potential to add other products that you may want.

Jason

I just see gold and silver totally disconnected from fundamentals and I am not convinced that this move up was anything more than someone bought a lot. This story was interesting and the possibility of increased regulation in commodity trading and ETF's might also be something to do with people wanting to buy and have it delivered before hand.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hon...nwhmostpopular

I am probably a little biased because I find gold bugs so annoying though.
When price makes a new high and then there is no momentum follow through and it just sits there then it always flashes warning signals to me. The new high in crude two weeks ago is a good example of that. I'm sitting out to see ...

Crude looks set for more weakness next week.

COPPER - could you add copper? Its a great one to follow ...

Thanks for the article. That is interesting and their strategy makes sense for wanting to bring gold closer to home and become a hub for reserves. Another step to China becoming a more dominant force in the global economy. $63 million in gold reserves seems like a fairly paltry sum, but maybe China will add some of their reserves to the vault.

Agree on the disconnects. The typical talk of gold being correlated with inflation doesn't make sense with this rally. We haven't seen oil or commodities in general increasing at the same pace with this weeks jump in gold. Granted, when gold hit $1000 in February, oil was at $40/barrel so it has been increasing but not like we saw when oil hit $147/barrel. So what is the something else causing gold to rise? My theory is that there has simply been a move out of currencies in general towards gold. I can hear the gold bugs now in the background talking about sinister forces at work .

I thought you might say copper. I'll pass along the suggestion.