Some financial traders stand to profit from the end of the U.S. government shutdown as a backlog of economic data to be released in the coming week churns market price volatility to the benefit of their computer-driven models. With the issue of about a dozen potentially market-moving indicators postponed during the 16-day closure of federal offices, the rush of overdue numbers may help offset a drop in trading volumes during the shutdown, which ended on Thursday.
Seems I was right about the drop in volume during the US govt shutdown etc. I think this has spiked our news trading and caused large losses so far this month. The only question is: do we continue to trade as normal this month risking more losses from an out of kilter market, or cut our losses and wait and resume trading next month?
Hello everybody. I got really interested about this trading approach since is one of the things that pro traders claim to be wrong.
I was thinking to download tick data from my broker to have an idea about the strategy to simulate trade setups as in real scenario.
May I ask if somebody has found consistency with this approach so far ?
Hi zen4x, I'm actually replying to to the whole thread about things I have noticed about Straddle Trading in general in today's market. About a year ago, I was able to make money doing this. I actually made about 350 pips in 1 month. On another account I freaked out about the rare occasion I got 15 pips slippage. OMG, those were the days.
Unfortunately, the brokers and their liquidity providers have made it too difficult now! It is possible to make money but you have to be experienced enough to skip the trades that won't move at all and avoid the trades that move too much !
The whipsaw Aussie employment this month wiped out about half my profits for this year. I got whacked for -70 pips.
So the pro traders are right to avoid it, there is a reason for that. If you can make money through normal trading, I would stick to that.
The main problems are (in order of Worst to start with):-
My broker AxiTrader are a non-MM (I think) but they cap spreads, which can be good for straddling because you don't get spread spikes. Their execution is almost flawless too.
However, they are terrible for gaps and slippage. Also the capped spread is a joke during news because they can't give you the prices they offer especially during whipsaws. I have noticed that if price turns around and hits your stop, they will slip you horribly by 20 pips or more.
Currently, I'm unsure whether to stick to non-MM brokers or go back to Market Makers despite all the problems they invent.....
I was wondering how is possible that you suffered a loss for -70 pips when the stop is pretty much 15 pips at most.
I would love to employ a strategy like this since I can schedule my trades based on price and time. It would be difficult to work and trade at any hour of the day.
I hope it can be a profitable strategy that mixes technical and fundamental.
I do not up sell and I not work as IB, but I can say that HotForex is a quite honest broker in the last 3 years. Have a try if you think that the broker is playing his role in this game.
The loss should have been about 15 pips, but on my sell I was slipped 17 pips on entry and 23 on exit. Then the buy trade had no slippage but because it was set to open at a high price and price didn't move higher I lost 10 pips on that, so there you go 65 pips !
I have found this in the past with AxiTrader that Stop Losses slip quite far.....I don't know what the reason is. A similar thing happened in Feb on NZ employment.
Max Spread is normally set to 60 on Axi. If you set Max Slippage it can't actually prevent trades going live but would kill them as soon as possible if they have slipped further than the Max Slippage setting. I normally set this to 200.
I traded NFP on Tuesday 22 Oct 2013 at FXCM (UJ 0.9 lot, GU 0.9 lot), Thinkforex (GU 10 lot, UJ 10 lot) and Hotforex using only Amazing EA 4-0-0 ,on the same CPU Win 8.
The EA 4-0-0 only opened position at FXCM, while at Thinkforex and Hotforex it didn't open position. In the experts\files folder I could'nt find the log file (empty).In the log file I just saw the words" Compiling MACD, and other indicators". In'Run' command using %AppData% I couldn’t find the subdirectories either. In TF Terminal/Experts I saw :2013.10.23 06:09:07 AmazingEA.4-0-0 GBPUSD,M1 inputs: PointsAway=80; PointsGap=2000; ModifyGap=10; TP=1000; SL=100; NYear=2013; NMonth=10; NDay=22; NHour=15; NMin=30; NSec=0; CTCBN=1; SecBPO=20; SecBAO=5; SecBMO=1; STWAN=50; OCO=true; BEPoints=100; BEOffset=10; TrailPoints=500; TrailOffset=100; TrailImmediate=false; MM=false; RiskPercent=2.5; Lots=10; MaxSpread=0; AddSpreadToSL=true; SlipCheck=false; MaxSlippage=200; AllowBuys=true; AllowSells=true; TradeLog="AmazingEA"; 2013.10.23 06:09:07 AmazingEA.4-0-0 GBPUSD,M1: loaded successfully. Was it caused by my system (win 8) that prevented the MT4s to open orders or was there any bug on EA 4-0-0?
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Joined Aug 2010
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Status: Forex Trader
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Good day to all!
I see that there is something that we may be neglecting, I see that is essential to all who operate in news, which is the latency time. It is essential to have an excellent connection, an excellent PC, preferably a dedicated server or a VPS that is economically as close as possible to the broker.
Alan I wonder if it would be possible to add information about the latency?
Invest in creating their EAs, because one day you need one!
Hi Alan I traded NFP on Tuesday 22 Oct 2013 at FXCM (UJ 0.9 lot, GU 0.9 lot), Thinkforex (GU 10 lot, UJ 10 lot) and Hotforex using only Amazing EA 4-0-0 ,on the same CPU Win 8. The EA 4-0-0 only opened position at FXCM, while at Thinkforex and Hotforex it didn't open position. In the experts\files folder I could'nt find the log file (empty). In the log file I just saw the words\\" Compiling MACD, and other indicators\\". In'Run' command using %AppData% I couldn’t find the subdirectories either. In TF Terminal/Experts I saw :2013.10.23 06:09:07 AmazingEA.4-0-0...
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Hey Doc, without the logs it is impossible to say. Given how much money is involved, could you not spare the 5 minutes to re-install MT4 under C:\MT4 instead of Program Files. Then the logs are created in the normal place instead of in %Appdata%. It really is that simple. De-install Mt4, then when you install and it asks where it should place the software, change the parent directory from Program Files to MT4....
Instead of C:\Program Files\ThinkForex it should then be in C:\MT4\ThinkForex
That way the logs will be under C:\MT4\ThinkForex\logs and C:\MT4\ThinkForex\experts\logs and the Spread and Sessions data C:\MT4\ThinkForex\experts\files\Ticksdata.
I've been using v4 since July / August and if you aren't using MaxSpread, then it should be fine. If I had to make a guess, did you have enough margin?. Some brokers are changing their margin requirements during news. It would tell you in the logfile.
The other thing is the EA doesn't function if ticks are not received. You can check this by seeing if prices were saved in the Spread and Sessions log. If there is a big gap around the news time, your MT4 froze......
Good day to all! I see that there is something that we may be neglecting, I see that is essential to all who operate in news, which is the latency time. It is essential to have an excellent connection, an excellent PC, preferably a dedicated server or a VPS that is economically as close as possible to the broker. Alan I wonder if it would be possible to add information about the latency?
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I use a VPS but for straddle trading it isn't important to have low latency. It's much more likely that the brokers server will be the bottleneck...
When an order is triggered (created as pending but turns into market order then is closed, manually or stopped out) before news, another one is created if it is still before news time (SecBMO)
I need some opinions from users as to whether you'd prefer for orders to be replaced if they fire early or not. I can add a check that only ever allows 1 buy and 1 sell order per news event.
some changes in ea required. if buy position is open then sell position cancelled (OCO=True), if stoploss is trigered then reverse position double lot size same stoploss and taking profit (i mean if buystop trade stoploss trigered then sell position with double lotsize). upto 5 levels (means = .1,.2,.4,.8,1.6,3.2).
Quick Question about Recreating Orders When an order is triggered (created as pending but turns into market order then is closed, manually or stopped out) before news, another one is created if it is still before news time (SecBMO) I need some opinions from users as to whether you'd prefer for orders to be replaced if they fire early or not. I can add a check that only ever allows 1 buy and 1 sell order per news event.
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I have found in a trading manually that if an order triggers before a release, the currency pair is so jittery, it nearly always has turned into a whipsaw and loss. And now with your EA, that pending orders only close in in a few seconds or more, if any of these trigger early... I think it would be better to be out of it. Maybe even if an order triggers and closes before the news, the pending order that is left could be aborted.
{quote} Hey Doc, without the logs it is impossible to say. Given how much money is involved, could you not spare the 5 minutes to re-install MT4 under C:\MT4 instead of Program Files. Then the logs are created in the normal place instead of in %Appdata%. It really is that simple. De-install Mt4, then when you install and it asks where it should place the software, change the parent directory from Program Files to MT4.... Instead of C:\Program Files\ThinkForex it should then be in C:\MT4\ThinkForex That way the logs will be under C:\MT4\ThinkForex\logs...
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Thanks Alan, I'll reinstall using new directory C:\MT4\ThinkForex. By using 10 lot on Thinkforex it means I only use risk < 1 % of free margin on NFP (at Hotforex risk < 3 % of free margin). The Spreads and Sessions could'nt save the ask-bid price either on my Windows 8. My indicators using constant range bars and normal candle sticks ate my RAM Memory too much. If the problem still exists,I ll return to Windows 7 or XP.
Thanks Alan.
After re-installing using new directory C:\MT4\ThinkForex, the problem has been resolved. The logsfiles and the Spreads and Sessions can now be saved on experts/logs and expert/files/ticsdata as usual. The slippage is 0 on GU and UJ at Thinkforex on this Interest Rate. FXCM formerly gave reasonable slippage but nowadays after adding "dd" to all pairs gave big slippage, so I didn't trade interest rate at FXCM yesterday. Although it refunded positive slippage but it meant nothing because the refund was to small (picture at post 909) if compared with that big slippage.
I'm still using v 1.2.0. Got this from my EURCAD log:
2013.10.31 15:29:59 Buy Stop was @ 1.42818, changed to 1.42817
2013.10.31 15:30:01 Slippage of Sell Order was 21
2013.10.31 15:30:01 Stop Loss of Sell Order Reset to 1.42693, Take Profit of Sell Order Reset to 1.42151 at 1.42549
Can u guys tell me if the value 2.1 is the slippage only value, or if its the sum of slippage and spread in this version of the EA. Does this new v4 also logs spread?
DrBBMM, can u tell me the points away u use in those trades?
The slippage is worked out by comparing the open price with the take profit level and what TP was set to. That way I can work out the difference between the stop order price and the fill price. So 2.1 pips is just the slippage. Most of us use the Spread and Sessions indi that you can see on drBBMM's charts to record bid and ask and spread values into a csv file that you can check later. On his USDJPY you can see the spread was 5.7 so my guess is he used PointsAway=80-100.
