Generator in EA Studio: Strategies

[richard]

Yes.  I live in Australia and got the same from my brokers…..  I am now looking at alternatives.  We have a few months to sort out alternatives….  Let me know what you come up with and I will do the same.  So far Dukascopy is looking good.  There leverage is 1:100 but can go to 1:200.  I would love to find a trustworthy 1:500 broker.

It seems that if you are a wall street banker you can have all the rules and regulations changed so that you can use massive leverage and get a free bail out when you get it wrong, but the small retail trader is the one that can’t be trusted to manage his own money……..  Oh well that’s the way it goes.  The other thing that I am following closely is the talk of another Bretton  Woods agreement and the likely restructure of the forex markets as we know them in the next few years…..  I think we will all need to be able to adapt quickly in the next few years to keep doing what we are doing here……  Just my opinion…

[Petko Aleksandrov]

Hey guys,

I think the reduced leverage will become real all over the world in the next years. They “protect” the traders this way…

However, that doesn’t mean they will protect the newbies from the Scam brokers, because they still scam the people by not allowing them to withdraw.

Asser, I was able to help you. Keep the spread to 2pips. That is fine.

[Asser]

Thanks Petko.
You are a good teacher (so is Ilan) and you help me a lot as you always do – only sometimes I misunderstand you… Hey I’m human 🙂
What do you mean by: Keep the spread to 2 pips?

Sure Richard.
The only alternative would be offshore brokers. Contrary to popular belief, having an offshore account is not illegal and you need not to hide it from the tax authorities. I know I’ll probably be bashed saying this, but good offshore brokers that are regulated, just not under the well-known regulatory entities, could be just as secure because ESMA, CySec, FCA, etc. often mean nothing for many traders. The so-called highly regulated brokers can still get away with anything. The problem with offshore brokers is that there are many crooks who establish an offshore broker website just to suck traders’ money and vanish. We have to find offshore brokers that have been in business for quite some time and have good satisfied customers.

My own challenge with one good offshore broker is that my bank (a large and well-known bank) didn’t allow me to fund my account with that broker. That’s the same bank that was exposed in my country for having helped laundering billions to their customers in their offshore branch, go figure! My bank can harm me by terminating my loan any time they like if I don’t follow their rules. What a world we’re living in!

[Tanya Jay]

Hello algo traders!

I signed up for EA studio and gave it a try for the first time last night.

I tried to create the strategies last night for 10 hours. It generated only 4063 strategies in 10 hours. Isn’t it too little? 

Below are my testing criteria:

– GBPJPY; H1 – 9221 bars
– From 2021-01-05 07:00 to 2022-06-27 20:00
** I only have this length of data provided from IC markets as I just downloaded it yesterday **

Strategy properties
– I keep it as is, with no change. (Long and short, TP/SL 10-100)

Generator settings
– Out of sample: in sample
– Working minutes: 600
– Everything else stays the same

Acceptance Criteria
– 300 trades
– PF 1.2

Can someone tell me what I’m missing?

TIA 🙂

[Samuel Jackson]

Hi Tia,

There are a few issues with your settings (I’ll expand on this later as on the train on way to work now). But your low generation number isn’t to do with your settings.

I believe that you have made your window inactive or shut your screen off on laptop maybe? EA studio needs to run on an active browser.

Can I ask a few questions to help you get the most generated EAs for your setup.

1- What browser are you using? (Chrome is by far the best)

2-Are you running on a desktop or laptop

3-What computer processor does your computer have?

We can tackle the low generation number first and then once sorted will discuss some of the other parts of your settings 😉

[Tanya Jay]

Hi Samuel,

Thanks for your response.

To answer your question,

1- What browser are you using? (Chrome is by far the best)
– Chrome

2-Are you running on a desktop or laptop
– I’m running on the VPS using chrome. Same VPS I use to run EAs on demo accounts. I just opened and ran them on 4 different chrome windows (not tabs). I’m traveling with my laptop all the time so I need to run them on VPS.

3-What computer processor does your computer have?
– Interserver VPS. 2 Cores. 60GB SSD. 4TB transfer.

What did I do wrong here?

[Samuel Jackson]

Hi Tia,

That all seems fine, 4 windows sounds about right for your vps. Although make sure you don’t push your vps too hard as multiple terminals as wel as 4 browsers could be a bit much on a 2 core vps.

Have you checked your processor utilization?

You didn’t minimize the chrome windows did you? You should make sure that you resize them and that all 4 are active on the screen.

As a quick test set then running on the vps, take note of the number of strategies generated and then log out of your vps (but make sure the windows are active). Then log back in after 15 minutes and make sure the strategies generated number has increased significantly (depends on settings but approx +10,000 say)

Then you will know that all is well. If that still doesn’t work then let me know.

It could also be that you are running too many browsers for your vps which can cause a drastic slowdown of Ea studio but if you confirm the results from the above test first it would be good

[Tanya Jay]

Hi,

Thanks for the thoughts. I upgraded my VPS to 6 cores (12 GB) and will test them tonight.

Can you recommend good settings as you mentioned earlier that there is something wrong with my settings above?

[Samuel Jackson]

Hey Tanya,

2 main issues is the amount of data is not enough, especially to generate 300 trades on h1.

also some OOS would be a good idea and also Monte Carlo for robustness.

what courses have you been through?

also what symbols are you planning to trade etc?

Did you resolve the issue of low generations first with a single EA browser as it seemed to be a window becoming inactive issue?

Your 6 core vps should be able to handle about 4-6 browsers comfortably depending on how many mt4 terminals you are also running but make sure to check your processor utilization also.

[Tanya Jay]

Hi Samuel,

Did you resolve the issue of low generations first with a single EA browser as it seemed to be a window becoming inactive issue?
– Yes, I did. Upgrading RAM helps.

What courses have you been through? also what symbols are you planning to trade etc?
– I bought 8-10 different courses on Udemy (Top5, 100 EAs on EURUSD, Crypto monthly, US30, etc). I bought them and tested them out on my demo right now. I mainly bought different ones because I want to diversify my portfolio and learn as much as I can. However, 90% of all courses are repetitive, except for this EA uploaded parts.

2 main issues is the amount of data is not enough, especially to generate 300 trades on h1.
– I see. That’s the only available data I got from downloading from my broker (IC Markets). What would you recommend me to do in this scenario? Also, what’s the ideal OOS %? 20% or 30%?

[Samuel Jackson]

Hey Tanya,

I would recommend using the premium data (or historical data tool – both are the same really) to generate your strategies using more bars and more trades.

Then once you have a collection of EAs that have say 300 trades over 5 years on this data. I would download the collection and run it through the validator with your IC data selected to check that it performs well over that data also. Obviously when running through the validator you would relax the number of trades made. So for example if you had min trades set to 300 over 5 years using premium data then if only have a years data with your broker you would reduce the number of trades to 300/5 = 60.

I’d recommend 20% OOS personally but only use OOS for the strategy generation and not when running them through the validator for your broker data. Likewise with your monte carlo. Validator on broker data should purely be just checking that the statistics are correct.

 

 

[Tanya Jay]

Understood. I will try your recommendation.

I have 2 more questions:

1. Based on your experiences, do you recommend running walk-forward optimization AND Monte Carlo validation? Does it necessarily mean it will generate better results/strategies, compared to 20% OOS AND Monte Carlo validation?

2. For M15, how far back of the data horizon should I choose to create strategies? 6 months? 1 year? 3 years?

Thanks!
Tanya

[Samuel Jackson]

Hi Tanya,

I would stick with just using the Monte Carlo. If you want to make it more stringent you can try increasing the number of tests and passing percentage or make the validation acceptance criteria better. I’ve found 20 and 80 works well though.

The walk forward is a more advanced tool(but that doesn’t mean better!). I have used it in the past but I no longer do.

For robust strategies I would recommend the combination of a good amount of data with plenty trades, OOS and Monte Carlo.

I only trade M15, H1 and H4 and I typically like the use 5 years data for M15 and H1 and about 10 years for H4. Can use more but I wouldn’t use less.

[Tanya Jay]

Thanks for the recommendations.

I have no intention of trading anything less than M15 as well.

I will use 300 trades, 20% OOS, and 20/80 Monte Carlo as a start then.

[Tanya Jay]

Another question I have is, what would be the best settings for TP and SL?

May use?
Fixed or trailing?
10 – 100? 10 – 300?

[Author]

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