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Phantom 6 System

  • #801
  • Edited 10:29am Feb 4, 2011 10:25am | Edited 10:29am
Quoting roundrock
so you want to use one MMTU during trading session and another after that ? does it not imbalance the basket ? what if we have 3 trades of 1 lot each at closure and i change MMTU such a way new trade has lot size 2 ? is it intentional ?
yes, in this way you slow down with a slowing market and at the start of the next trade opening hour, the MMTU reverts back to the original MMTU
  • #802
  • Feb 4, 2011 3:43pm Feb 4, 2011 3:43pm
Quoting jcs
Just had a basket closure, so ea now shut down for weekend


Method - Post 740

Settings

Alpari UK 500:1 standard account ( 0.01 min lot size - $3,000 starting balance )

Phantom6_01xR
Check Minute 15
[font=Verdana][color=black]Recovery...


Here's the scoop.
I have the EA set up and running but the EA keeps shutting off trades due to exceeding the allowable margin parameter. It keeps losing due to the marin crunch. The account has a minimum lot of .1 required so I have adjusted the MMTU to get the .1 position size.
Is there a way I can adjust the margin limit?
  • #803
  • Feb 4, 2011 8:22pm Feb 4, 2011 8:22pm
Quoting Skeff
Here's the scoop.
I have the EA set up and running but the EA keeps shutting off trades due to exceeding the allowable margin parameter. It keeps losing due to the marin crunch. The account has a minimum lot of .1 required so I have adjusted the MMTU to get the .1 position size.
Is there a way I can adjust the margin limit?
To start I would suggest you try trading a demo with a broker that allows 0.01 lot sizes ( IBFX for example ) and start with MMTU at 0.4 or 0.5
  • #804
  • Feb 5, 2011 7:58am Feb 5, 2011 7:58am
Quoting jcs
To start I would suggest you try trading a demo with a broker that allows 0.01 lot sizes ( IBFX for example ) and start with MMTU at 0.4 or 0.5

I'm going to make that happen..... not sure a 50:1 small account would do it.
  • #805
  • Feb 5, 2011 10:14am Feb 5, 2011 10:14am
Quoting Skeff
I'm going to make that happen..... not sure a 50:1 small account would do it.
3k account at 50:1 is good for testing. As jcs said IBFX is good for this or Oanda. Both have unlimited time demo accounts for longer term testing. Some brokers only allow 30 day demos (Alpari for ex.). Others that I use for testing and allow .01 lot size are Vantagefx, smatrttradefx. Im sure ther are others as well.

Read thru the entire thread to get a feel for how these are traded. If you are getting margin calls you are trading way to big lots on a small account. Check out posts from frazerd and the settings he uses. He is probabably the most experienced phantom trader and his settings are sensible and well thought out for the account size.
  • #806
  • Feb 5, 2011 1:23pm Feb 5, 2011 1:23pm
Off the subject but maybe of interest to some folks here.

I just found something that is really simplifying my life and it is absolutely free. If you work on more than 1 computer and have to put files on a memory stick or email them to yourself to transfer them between computers, then this will be of interest. It's called Dropbox. You put a dropbox on each of your computers and any file you move into the dropbox automatically goes into the dropbox on all of your computers and into your web dropbox as well. So even when you do not have your own computer you can access your important files from any computer. You can also share designated files with other dropbox users.

I travel a lot and use a Laptop. I also have a desktop at home and one at the office and I have all my FX demos on a VPS. It used to be a hassle trying to keep all my FX stuff on all my computers but now it is simple. I have a dropbox on all my computers and one on my VPS. All my FX stuff is in files in the dropbox, so anything I do on any of my computers or on the VPS immediately goes to all the dropboxes when it is saved.

A 2GB dropbox is free. If you need more you can upgrade and pay a monthly $9.99 for 50GB or $19.99 for 100GB. Or you can refer friends and get 250MB additional space for any that join from your link and those who join from a members link also get 250MB when they join. So if this is of interest to you, check it out here and we'll both get 250MB extra space if you decide to join:

http://db.tt/twkPF4t
Frazer
  • #807
  • Feb 5, 2011 8:27pm Feb 5, 2011 8:27pm
thanks fraze for dropbox info

just make it clear

can we trade with capital under usd3K
  • #808
  • Feb 5, 2011 9:41pm Feb 5, 2011 9:41pm
Hi, Jcs, on your post of 740,

you talked about freeing capital by cutting some minimal winning/losing pos.

did any coder apply that idea?

that's an excellent idea, it is also mentioned by MBkennel, i remember.

Quoting jcs


I will continue to post updated results in the hope some capable and willing coder will modify the ea for this strategy in order it can be more intensively tested ( manual testing on a one hour system 12 plus hours every day on multiple accounts is not easy )
  • #809
  • Feb 5, 2011 9:52pm Feb 5, 2011 9:52pm
thanks for this great tool, frazerd

one off-subject question. i saw your question on Tadawul FX. have you started trading LIVE with them?

they seem use 0.05 lot as minimum position size.

even with 1:500 leverage, that only means they offer 1:100 leverage at 0.01 lot.

to trade this EA, i feel at least 5000$ is required to start trading 0.05 lot with them.

please discuss what you think?

Quoting frazerd
Off the subject but maybe of interest to some folks here.

http://db.tt/twkPF4t
  • #810
  • Feb 5, 2011 10:05pm Feb 5, 2011 10:05pm
Quoting charvo
Hi, Jcs, on your post of 740,

you talked about freeing capital by cutting some minimal winning/losing pos.

did any coder apply that idea?

that's an excellent idea, it is also mentioned by MBkennel, i remember.
Not yet unfortunately
  • #811
  • Feb 6, 2011 1:02am Feb 6, 2011 1:02am
Quoting jcs
Not yet unfortunately
I thought about it a little bit more.

Really, the margin level is pretty much correlated 100% with the number of open trades.

What we need is a simple maximum-open-trades limit.

This means, that if you are about to add a new trade, and you're at or above the limit, you have to cut open trades first. Which ones? Obviously the symbol must be different from the one you're about to add. Other than that, just take the one which has the smallest absolute value of open OrderProfit(), regardless of win or loss.
  • #812
  • Feb 6, 2011 2:49am Feb 6, 2011 2:49am
Quoting roundrock
here is an example

lets say RR trades this new idea and SS trades the existing idea

both start at same time. starting capital is 10000$. PP 1%

SS places orders. RR doesnt.

SS places orders. RR doesnt

SS places orders. RR doesnt

SS is in DD of 300$. Now RR enters these orders at current market prices. SS current equity is 9700 and RR current equity is 10000.

market comes back and SS reaches PP 1%. Gains 1%. current balance 10100

RR will close at same time as SS but will have account balance 10400.

-----

the idea is maintain...
Roundrock,

The idea is interesting
I am still wrestling with the logic and if it has any real advantage overall ...... and am going dizzy in the process !

Just my thoughts, the advantage is that the initial DD in basket SS is avoided in basket RR
But, when the trades are opened in basket RR you immediately reduce Margin Level to where it is in the SS basket
I have always been of the opinion the danger to this ea is the reduced Margin Level that leads to cut trades ( others may disagree ) so I am not sure there is any real advantage overall in the way the ea will perform

If say the RR basket reaches its ‘ trigger ‘ level and is opened at hour 00:00 and someone else simply opened a new basket at 00:00 and set an increased profit target equal to the RR basket, would one perform any better than the other ?
The new basket in this example would not have suffered any DD and start with full Margin Level so be at an advantage in this respect
Is opening the RR basket with previous trades that have not produced a pop of any benefit ?

If not then I think we would have to conclude it is pure chance as to when a new basket is opened and the ProfitPct targeted that is the deciding factor

I hope you find a way to test it out and report the results
  • #813
  • Feb 6, 2011 3:43am Feb 6, 2011 3:43am
Quoting mbkennel
I thought about it a little bit more.

Really, the margin level is pretty much correlated 100% with the number of open trades.

What we need is a simple maximum-open-trades limit.

This means, that if you are about to add a new trade, and you're at or above the limit, you have to cut open trades first. Which ones? Obviously the symbol must be different from the one you're about to add. Other than that, just take the one which has the smallest absolute value of open OrderProfit(), regardless of win or loss.
This sounds correct to me
  • #814
  • Edited 4:08am Feb 6, 2011 3:45am | Edited 4:08am
Quoting mbkennel
I thought about it a little bit more.

Really, the margin level is pretty much correlated 100% with the number of open trades.

What we need is a simple maximum-open-trades limit.

This means, that if you are about to add a new trade, and you're at or above the limit, you have to cut open trades first. Which ones? Obviously the symbol must be different from the one you're about to add. Other than that, just take the one which has the smallest absolute value of open OrderProfit(), regardless of win or loss.
I am confused here, or maybe simply not understanding

So when the level is reached you are proposing to cut the least profitable trade, regardless of win or loss
Surely if we are in DD, as we must be at this point to consider cutting trades, we must have loss trades in the basket .... if we did not all trades would be positive and we would not need to consider a cut as we would not have any DD

So we are back to the same problem as I see it, by cutting the least profitable ( which must be the largest losing trade ) in isolation we are immediately reducing the account balance .... I have never been able to see the advantage of doing this on purpose

The need to cut trades at a certain level before adding new is absolutely the whole point, to stabalise the Margin Level, but why purposely choose a method that reduces the account balance

I uderstand that as soon as there is no profit trade to cut the balance has to start reducing, no option if we cut trades, but by cutting a winner and a loser together whenever a profit trade is available we at least prolong the opportunity for a pop before the account balance starts reducing, which has to be a better way do you not think ?
  • #815
  • Feb 6, 2011 6:21am Feb 6, 2011 6:21am
TheMaxx post 770
Isn't this idea predicated on the idea that the system will go into DD more often than it will go into profit?
Roundrock reply post 771
Yes .....
most ( i dont have stats, but most of them) trades have at least 1 cut loser, which means we can at least expect 2% DD

My conclusion
If we can ascertain if Roundrock’s statement is correct and most trades do go into DD before profit all we presumably need to do is trade the opposite direction

After all DD is only a pop in reverse !

I have for a while been playing with the logic of a Hedged Baskets Phantom, which might find a way to take advantage of this very thing

So is it true or false has to be the first question ?
  • #816
  • Feb 6, 2011 8:15am Feb 6, 2011 8:15am
Quoting jcs
I am confused here, or maybe simply not understanding

So we are back to the same problem as I see it, by cutting the least profitable ( which must be the largest losing trade ) in isolation we are immediately reducing the account balance .... I have never been able to see the advantage of doing this on purpose

The need to cut trades at a certain level before adding new is absolutely the whole point, to stabalise the Margin Level, but why purposely choose a method that reduces the account...
Ok, Im going to post this again, same as last Sunday. You guys are getting wrapped up in the account balance. It does not matter what the account balance is, only the account equity. Now look at your open phantom trades, close a winning trade and look at your equity, now close a losing trade and look at your equity. Tell me what you see?

Or look at it this way, if trader A has 0.00 account balance and 500.00 in open trade profit, and trader B has 500.00 account balance and - 500.00 in open trade loss, whos account would you want to have?

Ok now thats out of the way. Lets look at the main problem of getting too many trades in a basket.

Alot of the mods that came about from the origanal ideas from MC, were to limit the number of trades (ie; "x" factor, pip_step, trading hours, cut loser, etc). Those of us who have been testing for awhile realized that too many trades in a basket slowed the way to equity pop. Most of the mods have worked good, but we still get that ocasional basket thats starts building up trades in a choppy market. Start getting drawdown and the thoughts of the "death basket" creep in. Everyone has their own tolerance level, but for me when I get around the 5% drawdown level is when I start to get uncomfortable. Now dont get me wrong, I think the EA has alot of potential. I have many weeks of 8-10 basket closes and minimal drawdown and thing are great. So we just have to figure out how to clean things up when the market is not going our way.

Ok, the two biggest problems from my experience.

1. one of the pairs is moving up, phantom takes 3-4 trades, market reverses and your stuck with losers.

2. one of your pairs is moving down, pair retraces up, phantom takes few trades, market then resumes down, stuck with losers. (and vise versa if the pair trades short)

this happens once, no problem, your counter balance trades kick in and all is well. The problem is when this happens over and over the trades start to build up. One of the reasons I use a small profit percent on my baskets.

I posted last week how I had a basket in 10% DD. this basket has performed well since november (no more than 5% maxDD). I decided to manually intervene and got the DD down to 3% and then let the basket run. Well in closed in profit monday morn and then had 5 more equity pops during the week. The more I trade these, the more I think you may have to, at some point, use your brain and not the computer. That was the first and only time I ever manually intervened in running this phantom. I was even willing to close the basket and take a small loss if didnt come back, because over all, I know I had over 100 profitable baskets before this happened.

Just my thoughts, I dont know if we could ever code enough safeguards into the EA to avoid all the possable pitfalls. This post is long enough so I wont get into how I manually intervened to get the basket back. It was my own way of doing it and I think everyone would have their own feeling on this.

All you guys have come up with some great ideas so keep testing and lets throw things out there to debate.
  • #817
  • Feb 6, 2011 9:29am Feb 6, 2011 9:29am
Quoting thorn
Ok, Im going to post this again, same as last Sunday. You guys are getting wrapped up in the account balance. It does not matter what the account balance is, only the account equity. Now look at your open phantom trades, close a winning trade and look at your equity, now close a losing trade and look at your equity. Tell me what you see?

Or look at it this way, if trader A has 0.00 account balance and 500.00 in open trade profit, and trader B has 500.00 account balance and - 500.00 in open trade loss, whos account would you want to have?

Ok...
By " you guys " you will be referring to me ... Ok, slapped wrists and at the risk of making myself look a total idiot .........

No matter if we are referring to balance when we should have been referring to equity the fact is if you close a losing trade it is negative, if you close a profit trade it is positive, if you close one of each at the same monetary value it is no change .... hope I got this correct

If we are closing losers in isolation the remaining basket has to produce a larger pop to recover these lost trades, yes ?
So again closing a loss and a profit at the same time keeps the status quo and only requires the same size pop to reach profit target as it did when we first opened a trade

I do not see the sense in making it harder for the basket to pop

Thorn
I am very pleased you are taking the time to read the posts and contribute, because you have clearly been trading these Phantoms alot longer than some of us new upstarts ( and I mean me here )
Please keep slapping my wrists !

I think I will now just let the ea do its thing and concentrate on manual intervention when I think necessary rather than hoping for some help in automating it
  • #818
  • Feb 6, 2011 10:22am Feb 6, 2011 10:22am
Quoting jcs
By " you guys " you will be referring to me ... Ok, slapped wrists and at the risk of making myself look a total idiot .........

No matter if we are referring to balance when we should have been referring to equity the fact is if you close a losing trade it is negative, if you close a profit trade it is positive, if you close one of each at the same monetary value it is no change .... hope I got this correct

If we are closing losers in isolation the remaining basket has to produce a larger pop to recover these lost trades,...
Hey JCS, I understand. Seeing your balance drop has a negative effect on your brain. LOL.

Once you have drawdown it doesnt matter if you close a winner or loser or both. You still need to gain winning trades to get the equity pop. The whole concept of cutiing loser trades was just saying , ok, this pair is going in the wrong direction so lets cut it to avoid any further drain on equity, and let the phantom take trades on pairs going in right direction. Now it works real well sometimes, I have had many baskets close soon after cutting some losers. I will give you example from my last basket close. On my phantom I trade eurusd short and eurcad long. you can see on chart both going down last few days. on small retrace i ended up with a eurcad long and going with trend phantom picked up some good eurusd shorts. Now as both went down eurusd trades gaining value eurcad losing. It got to point of where eurcad was cut. It then went down another 50 pips and basket closed soon after. If that trade didnt get cut it would have dragged down equity those additional 50 pips maybe not got closure of basket. That happens often enough that I keep the cut loser option in.

Does it happen the other way too? Sure it does. I have seen trades cut then the pair turns around and goes other direction. Dont get bent out of shape if you get quite a few cut losing trades in a basket. I sometimes get 10-15 in a row and then basket closes in profit.
Just keep an eye on your equity. Only you can decide how you want it to play out and how much drawdown you can tolerate. Like I said I only intervened once in 3 1/2 months because it got to level I no longer trusted the computer to get me out.

I have also played with the idea of maybe stepping in sooner. For example if you get a couple of smallish losing long trades on a pair that is in a long downtrend maybe just cut them early. We have all seen how phantom sometimes takes a trade on the smallest of retraces. That also applies in reverse, if you have a couple of small winners on a retrace why not cut them now before they turn into losers if the trend continues.

I have always been a trend trader so its against my nature to go against the trend. Still thinking about this because the phantoms work pretty good as is and I dont want to start over complicating things. But this is the approach I took when I had to rescue my last basket so maybe Ill leave that idea to any further rescues I need to make.
  • #819
  • Feb 6, 2011 12:27pm Feb 6, 2011 12:27pm
Quoting jcs
I am confused here, or maybe simply not understanding

So when the level is reached you are proposing to cut the least profitable trade, regardless of win or loss
Least absolute value of open profit, regardless of win or loss.
So with +100, -250, +50, -35 in open profits, we would choose -35.


Quote
So we are back to the same problem as I see it, by cutting the least profitable ( which must be the largest losing trade ) in isolation we are immediately reducing the account balance .... I have never been able to see the advantage of doing this on purpose.
The 'cut losers' strategy is independent---there you're presumably assuming that there's a trend which will persist and you're trading opposite.


Quote
I uderstand that as soon as there is no profit trade to cut the balance has to start reducing, no option if we cut trades, but by cutting a winner and a loser together whenever a profit trade is available we at least prolong the opportunity for a pop before the account balance starts reducing, which has to be a better way do you not think ?
No, I'm not sure about that. Open DD is just as important as closed (after all, except for transaction costs you could always close and re-open). If you have a trade which goes pear-shaped, eat it at some point.

Prolonging the opportunity also means not resetting the phantom for a long time, which may not be so wise. (I don't like the idea of resetting every 8 hours, I think the times at which they reset after a close {close to local extrema often} may be informative and contribute to an edge. Just a feeling not backed by data).

Also, the performance statistics from MT4 are only on the closed trades and so they can hide bad performance of persistent drawdowns and last-minute recoveries. That's a dangerous strategy---it will appear to be better in testing than it really is. Some day it will really go very bad. I think minimizing excessive open drawdown is necessary to be realistic.
  • #820
  • Edited 4:07pm Feb 6, 2011 12:51pm | Edited 4:07pm
Hello,

and good evening.
After some tests (actually I am running over 60) I have chosen Alpari-UK because it is the only that allows a leverage 500:1, is under GB law and doesn't limit the leverage with large real accounts.

I decided to compare the results (P/L, Lowest margin used, etc.) about Phantom6_01a, Phantom6_01x, Phantom6_01xR (3rd version), Phantom_AddSix_02a, Ph_AddSix_02ax (without features) and Ph_AddSix_02ax using the PipStep set to 10, UseTradingHours off and CutLoserMultiplier set to 1,5.

Other parameters are:
Currency: EUR
Initial balance: 10,000
MaxMarginToUse: 6.0
ProfitPct: 2.5

With these last settings I tripled an AVAFx demo account using not so margin (more than 250%) and Phantom_AddSix_02a (click here for details: http://www.mt4i.com/users/achab3/stats).

The tests will start in around 2 hours and it will live in 2 different places, a VPS and my dedicated PC: those 2 multiple tests will be perfectly identical.

Also this time I'll publish the live stats on Mt4i.com, here the URLs:

VPS test:
Phantom6_01a: http://www.mt4i.com/users/achab-vps-ph6_01a/stats
Phantom6_01x: http://www.mt4i.com/users/achab-vps-ph6_01x/stats
Phantom6_01xR: http://www.mt4i.com/users/achab-vps-ph6_01xr/stats
Phantom_AddSix_02: http://www.mt4i.com/users/achab-vps-ph66_02a/stats
Ph_AddSix_02ax with flat setup: http://www.mt4i.com/users/achab-vps-ph66_02axs/stats
Ph_AddSix_02ax with PS and CLT set to on (as decribed up here): http://www.mt4i.com/users/achab-vps-ph66_02axa/stats

PC test:
Phantom6_01a: http://www.mt4i.com/users/achab-pc-ph6_01a/stats
Phantom6_01x: http://www.mt4i.com/users/achab-pc-ph6_01x/stats
Phantom6_01xR: http://www.mt4i.com/users/achab-pc-ph6_01xr/stats
Phantom_AddSix_02: http://www.mt4i.com/users/achab-pc-ph66_02a/stats
Ph_AddSix_02ax with flat setup: http://www.mt4i.com/users/achab-pc-ph66_02axs/stats
Ph_AddSix_02ax with PS and CLT set to on (as decribed up here): http://www.mt4i.com/users/achab-pc-ph66_02axa/stats

I really hope this will help.

Good evening and profitable trades.
/achab
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