My EA Gift to Traders

Hi Dave

The order was placed at 119.016 so by my calculations the breakeven should have activated at 118.816 and then it carried on down and is still active its the highlighted trade in the trade manager.

I will follow your suggestion and do a fresh install on a new demo account and see if that sorts things out

What you are saying is correct. I will do a back test on yesterday for USDJPY and get back to you.

I have now put links to the data downloads in Drop Box at Post #1

I believe I have found the problem and thanks for your input. It was an error in my code.

This is what should have happened. I have enclosed the source code update and after I have redone the optimizations and the new zip file I will upload to Post #1

Thanks Dave

done a fresh install ready for Monday.
Will do some back testing over the weekend

Hi Dave I PM you
according to same bar multi order execution error i send you a snap shot

I wanted to touch on the issue of money management.

The EA has a range of techniques to control your investments in varying complexity

1. Fixed wager, wager as percentage of equity, wager as percentage of equity but based on the projected stop loss
2. Fixed stop loss and fixed take profit
3. Set stop loss and take profit on a nominated ATR (Average True Range)
4. Close trades on reversal of indicators, close trades on the TDI (traders dynamic index)
5. Trailing stop loss
6. Set stop loss to break even after a nominated pip profit.
7. Set take profit on a risk v's reward nominated ratio
8. Increase wager by a nominated multiple progressively on losing trades (up to a limit 20% of equity)
9. Increase wager if a nominated pip gain is not achieved (up to a limit 20% of equity)

For any given currency set and time period, the equity curve and maximum drawdown are progressively improved as points 1 to 9 are introduced.
In particular, points 8 and 9 were introduced by Alex8585 and are perhaps the most controversial. We all are aware of the Martingdale system and how it has been comprehensively disproven. The casinos control this type of bet progression by setting minimum and maximum wagers. Typically the maximum is 100 times the minimum. For example a minimum $5 table will allow a single wager of $500. In Martingdale a progressive losing bet sequence would be 5, 10, 20, 40, 80, 160, 320 and then the final wager would be 500 but that bet would result in an overall loss even if it was a winning wager. So in reality a sequence of 7 losses only allowable to recover a profit of $5.

We have tools which are much more sophisticated, such as being able to regulate our risk v's reward ratio, minimum wager of .01 and a maximum wager of nominally around 50 so our minimum to maximum ratio is around 5000. This combined with the risk v's reward ratio and the ability to set our bet progression ratio to any figure give us a very powerful arsenal. Combine all this with our detection abilities (fundamental and technical), I sincerely believe we are only tapping the surface at the moment. Our most formidable opponents are the market makers and the major bankers who control the price flow. We all know how many EA's are in existence both commercially and through the forums which display great promise with curve fitting techniques and ultimately never hold up because of the constantly changing marketplace.

Last month we witnessed the great CHF debacle where many got burnt. Nobody really had the insight to see it coming but now we see some brokers actually advertising that they are going to write off client losses in a bid to retain customers.

This brings me to the point of this post, I have just completed a massive back testing exercise where all the money management factors were optimized on a continuous straddle strategy. Why this strategy - because we really never know how the market is going to behave so I am putting greater emphasis on money management. The most powerful weapon by far is the ability to leverage your investment.

In a nutshell, just say we have a potential investment of a percentage of our equity say 2% of $5000 ie. $100.

So we wager $100. Realistically what are our expectations, say win $100 or lose $100.

What if we viewed it like this - if we lowered our investment size but employed a trailing stop loss, set stop loss to breakeven, increased our wager size with consecutive losses, employed a risk reward ratio and set a minimum level for a result not to be treated as a loss.

Here is the basic result on the back test (AUDUSD 01112014 to 31012015 Cont Straddle 1 min chart)
Simple TP and SL with no trail $1930 and various increasing returns as each successive factor is introduced -
Up to the ... full optimization $28,429.

This is the astounding part - that return was produced from a initial investment of 0.5% of equity. The absolute essence of it is the stop loss multiplier of 2 (the result of an optimization from 1.1 to 2 with a step of .1) and the low initial wager. I have purposely capped the maximum wager at 20% of equity. (After that back to the .5%). The values achieved during back test will of course vary with scenarios. My preference is for a starting point of 1.5% of equity and a StopLossMultiplier of 1.2. This gives a progression of 16 losing trades before reaching the 20% cap of equity value. If you reduce the initial starting point percentage you are able to achieve a greater losing sequence before reaching 20% of equity. As a result of my back testing on all currencies and all time frames the 16 loss sequence seemed quite adequate.

The real point here is that you need to be in a position to make the most of that winning trade when it comes, and if it takes a number of break evens or low profit wins (because of the trailing stop loss caught up), you are giving yourself the best chance to capitalize. You have to accept that sometimes you will have a "bad hair day" when the trade simply goes pear shaped from the beginning. The majority of your trades will be in the break even or trailing stop loss scenario and this is where this money management strategy excels.

Anyway all is in the set file with the optimized parameters ticked.

I have enclosed all the graphs and the initial and final set files and the latest TradersGift EA in a single zip file. One significant change I have made is to remove the consecutive loss count and just use the overrider of max 20% of equity. Later on I will update the EA at Post #1. Edit: now at Post #1

There are somewhere around 500 downloaders and maybe 5 active contributors and that ratio is way out of whack. If you can't talk about technical aspects at least have the manners to contribute about money management aspects.

Even if you want to be critical and start a debate, that's OK with me. I'm sure there is enough in this post to you thinking.

Please if you download - at least acknowledge with a simple post expressing your sentiment.

Hi Dave
I am returning back to FF after along gape and found your thread as more interesting and going through.
Is there a consolidated version of the methods as it will take atleast a week to go through the entire thread.

Thanks
Velli

There is at Post #339 but I have temporarily removed the download as I am in the process of updating the .set files for Continuous Straddle incorporating all the concepts of Post #526. Edit: all files are updated

Edit: Download is available now. The latest EA is now at Post #1

hi Dave...i just finish read your thread..im a bit confusing here...do i need to attach all the indi,tpl,preset and profile in the mt4 to make this EA run

Dave thank you for all the hard work. I will download new files tomorrow and provide both technical and performance feedback throughout next week.

SD

New Trading Strategies and Trading Concept zips now at Post #1.

All include Risk Percentage 1.5 and StopLossMultiplier 1.2

Dear Dave ,

Before i start i would like to define that is only my opinion and my thoughts .
I made some testing also and came to the fact that if win ratio won't be increased it will definitely fail in the long run no matter how many consecutive losses you can stand , because soon or later that day will come, that is why i insist from the very begging some gains MUST be withdrawn on regular basis how much it is up to your appetite.

But as soon as i realize that we are not children here win ratio CAN'T be increased no matter how many indicators and filters you gonna use it is only time wasting , and believe me my experience has proved that many times . I don't claim that all the indicators are useless but the only thing you can take s the trend nothing more , impossible to take precie price where to enter a trade. So as soon as we agree that fine tuning the entries is a fairy tale for beginners and looking for the Holy Grail.

I think opening only one position in one direction will fail the only thing that i am currently working manually is hedging and try to make a very difficult combination of hedging and the proper Money management it requires too much time and patience. The concept is that we don't care at all where will be the entry , but we know exactly how we gonna act in any secario , when we enter a trade afterwards according to the results we start the calculations and following different money management because there are many scenarios.

As soon as it is something totally different from the concept of the thread i won't expand on this matter.

About scaling i made some research but this can be applied for long term better i can't figure out how this can be done on small time frames i mean only H4 and higher in my opinion i want to repeat that.

The most that i manage to do is for H1 on MACD with combination of EMAevent and Support and resistance i am including the set file. showed good results for the whole 2014.
New EA does not open any trade for me downloaded twice installed and re-installed issue same , while with the previous version trades are opened normally.

I downloaded your set file and when I ran the strategy there were trades, but I did notice a potential problem in the file. However I then downloaded the EA from Post #1 and again there were no trades so I have uploaded the EA again and this should solve your problem. I honestly have no idea what happened there.

Back to the set file, the MACD has 2 strategies enabled, signal crossing line crossing the main MACD line and signal line crossing zero. That would mean if either condition is satisfied, the trade would take place. I'm not sure if this is what you mean.

Regarding your trade ideas, as I don't know where you're heading, it is hard to comment. Maybe you can PM me and enumerate what you are thinking.

Anyway please get back to me if you have a further problem.

Dear Dave

Thanks much for the great idea.

I don't have much to add as I am very new in these circles. I think the problem of "no trades" is still there. I have downloaded the updated EA and like alex8585, no trades so far.

Thanks.

Dave ,

I downloaded again and got error . I have attached the error i get in journal.

According to my ideas let me do some testing and will let you know.

I'm assuming you are using the set file you sent me. I did an every tick back test and tried to recreate the issue but couldn't see any problem. If you are using other criteria it's important that at least you send me the .set file and as much info as possible because it takes time to try and recreate errors.

Because I don't know the date range also, I'm shooting in the dark trying to recreate the conditions. Anyway I have enclosed the final entries of a log of an every tick back test from 1/1/14 to 5/2/15

Dave .

I re downloaded once again same. set file attaching . test run on EUR 15min and AUD 15 min chart 1-1-14 same.

I used the above .set on AUDUSD and EURUSD on 15 mins every tick back test and found no problems. Can you show me the front page of the strategy tester ie. the page where you select the model for back test.

Dear Dave_c
i want trader gift ea : revese TRADE : ture/false