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Good plan Tanya,
I personally keep things simple and always use a take profit and stop loss. I just use a fixed stop loss also.
For M15 I think a good range is 20-120, but I would increase the upper range a bit for higher timeframes (say 150 for H1 and 200 for H4).
If you are getting plenty strategies coming through using those ranges over approximately 5 years of data then all good 🙂
If I run my reactor and get about 50 EAs overnight on a pair and timeframe then I am pretty happy. If a pair has too much more than this then I’ll make a note that can change the settings a bit for that pair and if too few then likewise I will need to relax the settings.
Thanks for the tips!
– May I ask the reasons why you use fixed SL instead of keeping it open? (can be fixed or trailing or don’t use it at all)
– When running Reactor, how many strategies should I aim for per 1 pair per TF to build a solid pool? What’s your ideal number?
– After getting collections, do you recommend adding the strategies into a portfolio? For example, EURUSD M15 portfolio and EURUSD H1 portfolio. Or it’s better to run it as an individual EA?
If there are other tips about using EA studio expert and/or building strategies, pleaseeeee share them away! 🙂
Hey Tanya,
I think a stop loss should always be used so it’s really only trailing or fixed to choose between.
It’s kind of just a habit that I choose fixed to be honest so definitely feel free to try trailing also and see what gives you the best strategies. You could set two identical reactors running with only difference being one uses fixed and one uses trailing and compare that way to see what’s generally giving you the best looking strategies. Or just set fixed or trailing in the generator so it can choose between the two, both options are all good.
For the portfolios I would definitely recommend working with portfolios rather than individual EAs but I would also recommend not having overly large portfolios unless they are very uncorrelated (which is not easy for same symbol and timeframe).
I would stick to portfolios of about 30 personally, just a preference to limit too many positions being opened at the same time but this really isn’t a big deal unless doing scalping that requires super quick executions. Opening too many positions at once can cause several seconds delay on execution which you will be able to see in MT4.
It’s fine having lots of portfolios on different timeframes and symbols (say 10 portfolios of 30 EAs) as it’s unlikely that for different symbols and timeframes trades will open at the exact same time. But again it’s really not big deal just what I do.
Oh also for number of strategies, it’s much better to have more in the collection than less as you can use the performance filter to trim things.
It sucks when nothing goes in after 10hrs but I also don’t like it when too many are going in too fast. If I get 50-150 overnight then I am happy and I’ll trim those collections down to a portfolio of 10-30.
Hey Samuel,
Thanks for the insights. I will use 10 portfolios with 30 EAs in each portfolio as a ballpark and a starting pool then. And after that, I will pick about 12 winning EAs to run in live/mock demo.
Hey Tanya,
Sounds like a good plan. I wouldn’t be too rigid about the 12 EAs. I’d say aim for 10-20 EAs and stick with 0.1 lots size on your 10k account and you will get a feel for how much your balance will change over the course of a month.
It of course depends on the EAs you select as one EA may typically trade more often than another for example.
More important of course is to be moving your balance in the right direction but you will want to also get a feel for the risk you are taking on your account every month.
For example, if you have a trading plan for a month then you should be able to feel pretty sure that even if you have a really bad trading month that your balance is very unlikely to drop below a certain threshold.
As an example of you had 10 EAs trading then for each one you could get the average number of trades a month, win loss ratio and typical size of losing and winning trade. Then you could assume that the win loss ratio was halved to simulate a bad month and calculate what the loss would be for the month and scale your lot size accordingly.
I’m not saying that this is a good way as I just came up with it on the spot as a quick example but it would give you something tangible to estimate as a start and you can improve your calculation as you gain experience.
In a nutshell the point I am trying to make is just that you should have a reason for the lot size you are trading that is as much about the risk you are willing to take as it is about the profit target you are aiming for. But always aim to keep things as simple as they can be 🙂
hello everyone, please i have been finding it difficult to generate strategy for ETHUSD, i followed all explanation as expalined by petko.
i uploaded the history bar but still no result, the generator cant find strategy for ETHUSD.the broker i am using is OCTA FX. pls how do i fix this.
Hi James,
How much data are you using and what is your acceptance criteria? This sounds like it could be a combination of not much data and overly strict acceptance criteria.
Have you used EA studio on other pairs successfully?
Hello everyone!
What’s the best way to maintain and optimize your EAs monthly?
I’ve been practicing moving EAs to mock live, however, the results were always bad (negative return) compared to the demo account with 100’s of EAs running altogether.
I’m wondering if anyone maintains your EAs by generating a new set of EAs every month regardless of the result of the past month?
I’m not sure what I did wrong, but my ‘moving-winner-port’ has never been profitable.
Thoughts?
Briefly on my port:
– Trade on M15, H1, and H4
– GBPJPY, AUDCAD, EURGBP, USDCHFTanya
Hey Tanya,
Glad to hear from you.
May I ask a few questions before giving you some tips?
1. Do you use the same broker for both accounts, and which is the broker?
2. What rules do you follow to move EAs from the Demo to the mock live, and what rules you follow to remove the EAs from the mock live?
3. How did you choose these pairs GBJPY, AUDCAD, EURGBP, USDCHF?
Cheers,
Petko A.
PS I do not mind the EURGBP but all the rest. 🙂
Hey Tanya and Petko,
I can add a few points:
Tanya uses IC markets for both demo and mock live account and I know that she validates the strategies using the IC markets broker data.
Although I didn’t select these pairs I advised Tanya to do what I do which is to select 4 pairs to trade together that are as uncorrelated as possible. They look good to me? Also the mix of timeframes M15, H1 and H4 also works well for minimizing correlation on the same symbol.
I’ve got two of those pairs in my own portfolio at the moment and it’s been trading really well 🙂
Can you confirm the above is correct Tanya 🙂
As to the poor results Tanya:
You have at least a month of trading on the demo and at least a few trades when deciding how to move EAs right?
How many EAs are you putting on your mock live at a time?
Also you could try a few different mock live accounts at the same time and trial a few different selection methods?
But to answer the original question Tanya (at last :-):
My advice would be to maintain a pool of collections and then check them every 3 months or so using the validator for the most recent three months of data, then remove the ones that don’t perform well over the last three months and keep doing this ongoingly.
Over time you will build a higher quality pool.
The higher quality your pool of strategies the less need to continually create more.
Also keep things simple when moving the EAs, just a good profit factor and more than 5 trades for example over the last month.
Keep the demo running as long as possible and keep replacing the strategies that are performing poorly. This is why I actually prefer to work with single EAs rather than portfolio EAs as it makes it cleaner to just remove an EA that’s performing poorly and then replace it with a new one.
Keep practicing as you are Tanya, things will improve with practice, it sounds simple enough but it does take a while to get the knack of things 🙂
Of course nothing to stop you trying another pair combination in tandem Tanya. If pairs are working better for you then try combining them as it is likely that your pool of EAs for these pairs are higher quality (which can be partly lucky sometimes as it is very possible to run the reactor with exact same settings and pick top 10 the exact same what and one with far more overoptimised poorer quality EAs than the other.
This is one of the main reasons it’s important to test them appropriately out of sample, starting with using demo accounts (and patience) and progressing to using EA studio without the demo as your experience grows.
Hey Petko,
Nice to e-meet you and thanks for your reply.
Below is my answer. Please feel free to give me some tips and your honest feedback 🙂
1. Do you use the same broker for both accounts, and which is the broker?
– Yes, I do use the same broker for both accounts (as Sam already mentioned). It’s IC markets.2. What rules do you follow to move EAs from the Demo to the mock live, and what rules you follow to remove the EAs from the mock live?
– Rules to move EAs from demo to the mock live: I look back 2 weeks AND 1 month data, PF 1.2, trade number 5 or more. Rules to remove, whichever EAs that don’t fall into the criteria I just mentioned. I check and move EAs every 2 weeks.3. How did you choose these pairs GBJPY, AUDCAD, EURGBP, USDCHF?
– Sam advised me to choose uncorrelated pairs and I came up with these four.All the best,
TanyaHey Sam,
It’s been awhile! Hope you’re doing well 🙂
Your answer always WOW-ed me. I don’t know how you store all these info in your brain haha. Also, I appreciate your prior answer to Petko.
Q: You have at least a month of trading on the demo and at least a few trades when deciding how to move EAs right?
A: About 1-1.5 months I believe. I need to see at least 5-6 trades before I decide to move them.Q: How many EAs are you putting on your mock live at a time?
A: The last time there were only 6 EAs that matched the winning criteriaQ: Also you could try a few different mock live accounts at the same time and trial a few different selection methods?
A: GREAT idea! I will start doing soMy advice would be to maintain a pool of collections and then check them every 3 months or so using the validator for the most recent three months of data, then remove the ones that don’t perform well over the last three months and keep doing this ongoingly.
– Let me rephrase it and please let me know if I understand correctly; every 3 months, I will validate the EAs using Validator and remove the ones that underperformed. Then I generate new collections using reactors to replace the underperforming ones and to add more into the collection? Because the market is changing all the time, it’s possible to have the same kind of pool over time?Very best,
TanyaHey Tanya,
Great to see you are moving forward, and glad you appreciate my help and your kind words 😉
So my first point would be that it seems you switch the EAs every 2 weeks? This is fine but 2 weeks and 4 weeks together as selection is pretty similar. I would suggest as one of your filter tests you try just a simple filter of moving the EAs that have been profitable over the whole life on you demo account with over 5 trades (say 1.1 pf) and then as the life of your incubator account extends you could add an additional filter for the most recent month also.
Let’s say now you have a collection of 100 EAs in your pool, in three months you validate and only 50 of them have traded as profitable (or even just broken even) over the last 3 months. Move those 50 to a second tier pool for example that only has strategies that have performed suitably over three months on demo in real-time.
Over time you will build a pool of EAs that is higher quality, you could even repeat the exercise on your tier 2 pool after 6 months say and move all the ones passing that to a tier 3 pool.
Hope that makes sense? It’s just a suggestion of how you could build a higher quality pool of robots over time, you of course need a combination of good robots and sensible filter criteria to make profits.
While you are practicing and learning if you do this as a side then over a year you could make a really nice quality pool of strategies for yourself.
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