New version - 7

While I am getting ready to the live activation of my expert advisor I performed a few last (so I thought) optimizations, and a settings mistake led me to different settings with completely different results. The setting result was large targets. Since my expert advisor has special logic for closing the trade it compensates in cases of targets that are too far.

Since the change is far targets, I understood that trailing stop loss is  essential. That's how version 7 was born.

The new results are available here. Those results are remarkable, and I wish it will stay like that. 

Since I need more time to fine tune the settings, next week I will start live trading.

Last descisions before moving to live trading

I decided that I am going to run my expert advisor in live mode to trade automatically, without MBTrading. Why? I found a bug related to MBTraing API and it looks suspicious. If I, a simple API user, found a bug, it might be a sign for the future to come. I have a problem with Metatrader brokers (for example read it), but since my expert advisor has long targets it will be very difficult to bypass the market rates in order to make me lose. 

Also I chose an American broker since there are a few new limitations that protect the customers. I added a Skype dll to my expert advisor that will SMS me each time a trade was made or closed. I added global variables support in order to recover from shutdowns. 

That's it. I opened an account at the chosen broker, and I am going to start trading one week from now.

Launching in ten days...

It appears that there is a bug with MBTrading demo accounts, which was related to my problem. They SDK support guy told me how to bypass it and it works. The robot is working. I added a Skype plug-in to my robot, in order to send me SMS every time an order is closed, or being opened.

I decided to use Alpari at the moment as my signal supplier, and an optimization is being run in order to find the best set.

Next week will be used to final tests and checks, and afterwards the robot will be launched for the first time.

Metatrader platform difficulties

In the last 3 days I was busy debugging the MBTrading robot application. I had a problem related to closing the trades, and I am still in touch with their support team. Except that, the robot is ready.

I noticed a problem related to back test with Metatrader platforms - The Metatrader platform from Metaquotes is very fast, and very comfort to back test, unlike the Alpari platform. I compared them and Alpari is much slower. The second problem is that Alpari has different performance with the same data.

I need a signal supplier which is reliable, and it's platform will be able to conduct my optimizations rapidly. I am examining different brokers in order to find a good signal supplier for my robot.

Version 6

This week started with two successful trades, and no more. While observing the expert advisor's performance, an idea for a filter came to me, and I decided to check it out. It seems that the new version (from now on it will be version 6) makes the same net profit, with half the trades, and with half the drawdown as well. The back test's results are available here.

The robot that trades with MBTrading is robust to logic changes, and will continue working with any version that I will choose. So, it seems that we will continue with version 6.

Week's summary

The robot software (which trades via MBTrading) worked well today, made 2 trades according to the expert advisor's orders. The software is stable and simple.

I had a problem this week that the forward testing of version 5 did not match exactly the back test's. I suspected that since I ran two different versions in parallel it might be the reason. So since yesterday only version 5 is being tested on that platform, and the results match at the moment - there were 3 trades since then.

What's next? I have to make a small addition to the expert advisor that will store global variables in case of Metatrdare platform shutdown. I will continue the robot's testing, and if it will be fine, maybe I'll start live trading two weeks from now.

Progress report

The robot started working, and it's stable. I had a few trades executed, but it needed a manual confirmation. I fixed it. I will have to check carefully the orders execution, and compare it to my expert advisor, since MBTrading works differently. In order to make a buy order, you have to place a position, and against it an open order with the limits. It's more complicated, and therefore it requires extra care.

I noticed that with the Alpari platofm, the forward testing did not match exactly the back test's results of this week. I suspect that since I ran versions 4 and 5 together on the same platform might be the cause. I left only version 5 for the forward testing.