How to Pass FTMO Challenge

[Samuel Jackson]

I would think that passing a challenge this way would most likely just result in being warned against this and provided with a free retry but would not be passed through to verification stage.

It would be better to half your lot size and do it slower with consistent trade size.

[Petko Aleksandrov]

I tried to record as much as possible from the trial period with FTMO Challenge, and I hope it is useful:

[Alan Northam]

Hi Petko,

How do I read the Forex Profit Supreme Meter?  Is there instructions?

[Alan Northam]

Here is the results of my live $10,000 FTMO account after the first 5 days.  The account includes 3 EURUSD strategies, 3 EURJPY strategies, and 3 USDJPY strategies.  The net loss of 1% on 11/10 was caused by important news events for the USD.  I will be using new strategies this next week to include 2 EURUSD strategies, 2 EURJPY strategies, and 2 USDJPY strategies.  I have decided to reduce the risk somewhat during this next week since the account is at 40% of the $1000 goal needed to be reached within approximately 20 trading days.

[Samuel Jackson]

Hi Alan the indicator is provided and explained in the Forex trading course London, NY, and Tokyo.

[Samuel Jackson]

Is that a full challenge account rather than the free trial time Alan?

I would try to be as consistent with your trade size as possible as otherwise it will likely not get through the account review but a small adjustment weekly shouldn’t be a problem as long as it is not a large reduction or increase in lot size.

Also just because it is at 40% this week doesn’t mean it will keep that trajectory abs it may have a drawdown for example for a week. I would advise being clear what your plan is before starting trading and then sticking to it throughout the challenge personally.

It would be good to see the equity curve also.

[Alan Northam]

Hi Samuel,

I went on Youtube and learned how to read the currency strength meter.

I know there are lots of currency strength indicators and websites.  The problem I have with them is that there are so many how do I know which one is the correct one to use.  One indicator will show one currency as being the strongest or weakest while another indicator will show a different currency as being the strongest or the weakest.  I don’t trust them because they all indicate different currencies as being the strongest or weakest.  The problem is that none of these indicators will explain how they determine the strength and weakness of a currency so its like trusting they are measuring the strength and weakness of a currency on blind faith.  I can’t do that! I would have to know the math behind how an indicator determines the strength or weakness of an indicator before I could have faith that it is measuring the strength and weakness of an indicator correctly.

[Alan Northam]

Hi Samuel,

It is a live 30 day challenge!  I have FXblue filtered for the first day and last day of the challenge.  So far after 9 day it calculates a 12.2% monthly return and a Profit Factor of 2.1.

[Petko Aleksandrov]

Hey Alan,

I think you are doing pretty good job! To be honest with you, I am using FPSM for quite many years now and haven’t compared with others. But it works fine.

Anyway, I am working on a system to combine the Expert Advisors with the FPSM but it will be half-automaed.

The idea is to place on the charts Portfolio of EAs for the M1 time frame that will scalp the market.

For example, if after London opens the GBPAUD is very bullish, I would place a portfolio of GBPAUD EA that will go only long for a few hours.

But it will take me a few months to test it…

 

[Alan Northam]

Hi Petko,

The big issue I find in using FPSM is that the strength of currencies according to the meter doesn’t change when you change the time frame.  In reality the strength of currencies is different for differing time frames.  I would think better success would come with a currency strength meter that measures the strength of currencies based upon the time frame being traded.

[Samuel Jackson]

Hey Alan,

So this sounds like it’s going brilliantly unless I am missing some something?

It sounds to me like you have passed everything except the minimum 10 tradings which could happen tomorrow? In which case you can close all your trades and let ftmo know you have passed right?

Curious to see a snip of you equity curve and also know how you went against the drawdown targets.

Thats a big achievement to trade consistently for minimum of 10 days and hit such targets while managing your drawdown. Well done 🙂

Keep us posted, will be great to see how you go on the verification but it’s definitely looking really good at the moment.

You should Sedona post a snip of how you performed against a the targets and your ftmo stats btw, it’s a big achievement

[Matthew Roberts]

Sorry for the lengthy post and thank you to anyone who chooses to read it.

I have an update on my $200,000 challenge.

I was unsuccessful in creating enough profits to pass the challenge with my initial form of strategy generation. I was always ending in profit so that is good.

The profit was never enough to pass through, so I would get free retries. Excellent!!

I came really close one time, like within $3,000.00 close then I hit a drawdown phase that ate up all my profits and it put me straight into the negative.

The account got back into the positive with 4 days left on the challenge.

So, I took the bots off just in case another drawdown was coming.

This earned me another free retry.

 

Then I thought to myself, I’ve ended in profit twice and not created enough profits to pass why don’t I switch things up?

I couldn’t help myself and tried doing things differently… The different thing didn’t work and it failed lol.

I should have followed my initial instincts and kept it the same.

Anyways, it’s back to the demos for me.

 

I’d like to try switching up my strategy generation process to find strategies that perform better.

I’ll share what was “almost working” and how I was generating strategies that ended in profit but were not quite hitting the targets.

It was a process that I started trying a while ago and Samuel suggested a few things to help out in a previous forum post.

So, thanks Samuel for your input, I got a lot closer to passing an FTMO challenge because of you!

Maybe you or someone else has some more insight for me to adjust even further to get closer to that FTMO dream. The next post will have settings.

[Matthew Roberts]

In the reactor generate new strategies

1. Historical Data

Data Source: Premium
Symbols used: EURJPY, CADJPY, USDJPY, and GBPJPY.
Timeframe: H1
2. Strategy Properties

entry lots:  0.60 (I’m using 200,000 USD settings 1:30 leverage)
Trade Direction: Long and Short
Opposite Entry Signal: Reverse
Stop Loss: Always Use
Stop Loss Type: Fixed
Stop Loss Min (pips): 20
Stop Loss Max (pips): 200
Take Profit: Always Use
Take Profit Min (pips): 20
Take Profit Max (pips): 200
3. Generator Settings

Search Best: Net Balance
Out of Sample: 30% OOS
Max Entry Indicators: 4
Max exit indicators: 2
Generate strategies with Preset Indicators: Off
Use Common Acceptance Criteria: On
Common Acceptance Criteria

Complete backtest:

Minimum Profit Factor: 1.2
Minimum Count of trades: 300
In Sample (training) part:

Minimum Profit Factor: 1.2
Out of Sample (trading) part:

Minimum Profit Factor: 1.2

Continued into optimization on next post

[Matthew Roberts]

Optimize Strategies

Full Data Optimization: Off
Walk Forward Optimization: Off
Normalization: On

Normalization:

Remove Take Profit: Off
Remove Needless Indicators: On
Reduce Stop Loss: On
Reduce Take Profit: On
Normalize Indicator Parameters: On
Out of Sample: 30%
Numeric Value Steps: 20
Search Best: Net Balance
Normalize Preset indicators: Off
Use Common Acceptance Criteria: On
Perform robustness testing in next post

[Matthew Roberts]

Other important notes

In tools:

Correlation analysis threshold  0.98
Detect balance lines correlation: on
Detect strategies with similar trading rules: on
Trading session: open to all hours of every day
Data Horizon:

Maximum Data Bars: 200,000

Minimum Data Bars: 300

Use start date limit: 32 months ago from the day I generate

Use end date limit: 2 months ago from the day I generate

 

Validator 1:

I take all of the collections I just made and run them through these settings.

Acceptance criteria: Profit Factor 1.2

Out of Sample: In sample

No Normalization or Monte Carlo this time.

Use start date limit: 2 months ago from the day I generate

Use end date limit: 1 month ago from the day I generate

 

Validator 2:

I take all of the collections that passed Validator 1 and run them through these settings

Acceptance criteria: Profit Factor 1.2

Out of Sample: 50% OOS

No Normalization or Monte Carlo this time.

Use start date limit: 1 month ago from the day I generate

Use end date limit: the day I generate

 

Then I pick the top 10 strategies for each pair and export a portfolio.
I immediately place them onto the challenge account.

The idea here is to create strategies that profited for long periods of time and are still profitable for the last 2 months and profitable bi-weekly last month.

The performance is never as good as the backtest but that’s the whole idea behind forex I think. As I’ve heard from a user in Popov’s forum “You can’t train algebra.”

Anyways I run these strategies for exactly 2 weeks. I delete them, then create new strategies using the same generation settings.

 

By the way, I’m now doing this through Express generator cuz I can do almost the entire process with a single click of a button.

It was very tedious to do this before hand.

[Author]

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