My experiences with FX Autotrading a live account
- Thread starter FX245
- Start date
FX245,
I to would like a bit more information from FX-Auto. Namely:
-Average trade length (days)
-average net Pips per winning trade
-average net Pisp per loosing trade
I ran Currency-Specialist EUR/USD form 4/2/07 to 5/4/07(CS-EURUSD.xls). They did O.K. for a while but the pips they would allow on a loss to the the pips on a gain, were not good. 65 winners to 29 loosers, three trades for 0 gain or loss.
Wow that is a nice win/loss ratio. The part that made me uncomfortable was the pips per trade. Of the winning trades they averages +18.2 pips, on the loosers they averaged a loss of -29.96 pips. Shouldn't that be turned around??(winners bigger then the loosers)
A little more information would be nice!
Hi Wyoweim,
Thanks for sharing this info - very helpfull !
I know that fx-auto is following up this journal (and others) closely - so I guess the better we explain the importance of more stats, the sooner we'll get a statement about what we can expect when.
I'm interested to learn more about your auto-trading experiences, please tell us some more !
Cheers.
Just received a PM from a fellow fx-auto trader, and thought it would be interesting to reply in here ...
Hi FX245,
Very much enjoy reading your journal regarding your fx-auto performance.
Can you tell me why you selected ATR channel? Their performance does seem to be very good lately. However, as far as I can tell they have not been on the platform for very long. I have had an fx-auto account for quite a while now and my experience has been that periods of over performance by the signal providers have then been followed by significant drawdowns. For example, when I first started, OMI-fx were the top performer and indeed I was up 13% in my first month with them. Shortly after their performance really deteriorated (hurting my account badly). I have noticed this pattern with the other signal providers also. I tried quite a few but always the same pattern.
Another point â wondering how you calculated 70.8% below. If the 12.8% is compounded consistently at a monthly rate for 12 months, I get a figure of $25469 or 424%.
starting balance: 6000 (14MAY2007)
current balance: 6802 (+13.4% - new high)
current equity: 6770 (+12.8%)
forecasted yearly return: 70,8%
Regards
On the ATR channel question ... well that was from an insiders tip I guess... ATR channel finished on 9th place in the Automated Trading Championship 2006 and apparantly have a great live track-record before they came on fx-auto .... we'll have to see how consistent ATR Channel will prove to be ... there are no guarantees here...
Can you share what signals you have in your portfolio today??
On the forecasted yearly return .. I calculated since day9 of my trading what the yearly return would be given the current % P/L. my forecasted yearly return is then the average of all of these yearly returns .. that way I middle out the highs and lows, and over time this will become a better and better forecast.. hope that is clear .
PS - to the sender of that PM .. when I tried to reply you, I got this msg: "Sorry! That user has specified that they do not wish to receive emails through this board. " :eek:
Hi FX245,
Very much enjoy reading your journal regarding your fx-auto performance.
Can you tell me why you selected ATR channel? Their performance does seem to be very good lately. However, as far as I can tell they have not been on the platform for very long. I have had an fx-auto account for quite a while now and my experience has been that periods of over performance by the signal providers have then been followed by significant drawdowns. For example, when I first started, OMI-fx were the top performer and indeed I was up 13% in my first month with them. Shortly after their performance really deteriorated (hurting my account badly). I have noticed this pattern with the other signal providers also. I tried quite a few but always the same pattern.
Another point â wondering how you calculated 70.8% below. If the 12.8% is compounded consistently at a monthly rate for 12 months, I get a figure of $25469 or 424%.
starting balance: 6000 (14MAY2007)
current balance: 6802 (+13.4% - new high)
current equity: 6770 (+12.8%)
forecasted yearly return: 70,8%
Regards
On the ATR channel question ... well that was from an insiders tip I guess... ATR channel finished on 9th place in the Automated Trading Championship 2006 and apparantly have a great live track-record before they came on fx-auto .... we'll have to see how consistent ATR Channel will prove to be ... there are no guarantees here...
Can you share what signals you have in your portfolio today??
On the forecasted yearly return .. I calculated since day9 of my trading what the yearly return would be given the current % P/L. my forecasted yearly return is then the average of all of these yearly returns .. that way I middle out the highs and lows, and over time this will become a better and better forecast.. hope that is clear .
PS - to the sender of that PM .. when I tried to reply you, I got this msg: "Sorry! That user has specified that they do not wish to receive emails through this board. " :eek:
my experience has been that periods of over performance by the signal providers have then been followed by significant drawdowns
That is what you would expect if the history is fairly short. If you would follow 50 trading systems that simply flip coins (i.e. entry/exit at random) for their first 10 trades, just by chance, some of them would show a great performance. The same 10 might be the worst performers during the next 10 trades.
Before trading a system you'd want to ask yourself the question: How likely is it that the historical results I see, might have been due to pure luck. Typically this question is easier to answer if the number of observations, both in terms of trades and trading days, gets larger.
Then there's another aspect, which is volatility. Typically, exceptional returns come at a price, which is exceptional risk. Thus even if a system's exceptional short-run performance is not due to luck, you better be prepared for some wild swings as the system might be very volatile.
That is what you would expect if the history is fairly short. If you would follow 50 trading systems that simply flip coins (i.e. entry/exit at random) for their first 10 trades, just by chance, some of them would show a great performance. The same 10 might be the worst performers during the next 10 trades.
Before trading a system you'd want to ask yourself the question: How likely is it that the historical results I see, might have been due to pure luck. Typically this question is easier to answer if the number of observations, both in terms of trades and trading days, gets larger.
Then there's another aspect, which is volatility. Typically, exceptional returns come at a price, which is exceptional risk. Thus even if a system's exceptional short-run performance is not due to luck, you better be prepared for some wild swings as the system might be very volatile.
Ya, I was concerned about that myself, but when I looked at the results objectively, and especially when I actually looked at the "history" panel with the actual trades over time, I just chose the pairings that were making the most money over long and short time periods, and quants kept coming out on top in all my breakdowns. i was/am hoping that using different pairings will compensate for one of the systems having a bad month, in fact that is exactly what happened my first month using the system. quants can lose 300 pips, but they can also make 800, my personal preference is fewer trades more profit, and catching the trend moves on the forex means staying in longer.
*****Quote from FX245:
Hi Wyoweim,
Thanks for sharing this info - very helpful !
.....
I'm interested to learn more about your auto-trading experiences, please tell us some more !
Cheers.
FX245,
Some on my auto-trading experiences:
I have been using auto-trading since the end of March as a supplement to my live trading. Being new to Forex as of 11/06, I wanted to see how others traded. I thought auto-trader would be good. (so far good and bad)
I had asked the question on lot size earlier. I received good answers. What I have been learning, growth should be exponential. (as your account grows your lot size should grow also) If you are willing to risk X% (2,3,4 or 6%) then risk it.
Auto-Trader has a nice function in their Money Management, the Fixed Fractional. This will increase your lot size as your account grows but keeping your risk the same. The risk of 1 mini lot on a $5,000 account is not the same as 1 mini lot on a $1,000 account.
One problem is not enough information. In setting the Fixed Fractional you need to know the typical stop loss. How do you find that?? You end up trading the signal in a fixed lot or e-mailing the provider. Trading history is already there.
Another thing to be careful of is the Max Positions a signal provider uses!:eek: Some will do as many as 6 positions at one time. If the provider wins a trade it's great. If they loose it's -x # pips times 6. In a matter of a couple of hours I lost 25% of my account. Using the Fixed Fractional at 4%, I had the stop loss right. The problem is the number of positions, the provider I had was using 6 positions. All 6 positions opened and lost 4% each. The result would have been the same on the fixed lot or the Fixed Fractional. (Both were at .1)
A nice option to have would be to limit the # of open positions for your account. (1, 2 .. or all 6) There are providers I would like to use but they can open more then 2 positions at one time. At the present 2 positions are all I would like open at one time.
Just a little rambling from me. hopefully it can help someone!
I had a couple of suggestions for FX-Auto, which I emailed to them.
1) The introduction of a Trailing Stop function on the portfolio management.
They told me this function is available if you use MetaTrader 3 when placing an order using FX-Auto, but as I have MT4 I'm unabale to do this.
Also I'm not sure if it applies to trades opened by the Signal Providers.
2) Commission being charged on winning trades only
This is a bit more radical! I suggested that clients shouldn't get charged commission on losing trades.
Commission could be 2 pips for winning trades, so signal providers would still get paid the same rate, just that it would be performance-related, and give them an incentive to perform well !
The reply back from FX-Auto was that they were not making any changes.
If others on this forum agree with my suggestions, maybe we could petition FX-Auto to bring about these, and any other changes. Maybe a web-poll or survey would help.
What do you think?