Good day, Petko.

I have some questions after reviewing your courses:

a. Profit-based system

In monitoring the performance of trades using the profit-based system; with your more recent courses, I’ve noticed that you are using 5 count of trades and to have a profit factor of 1.2.  In your past courses (e.g. Forex Trading Course with 12 robots), you suggested to have 10 count of trades and minimum of 100 pips.  Does this mean you no longer follow the latter system?

b. Commission input prior to exporting of data

What is the reason for putting the one-way value of commissions when extracting data from the broker?  Why not use the roundturn value?

c. Fixed vs. Trailing Stop Loss

I noticed that you like using the fixed stop loss, instead of opting to choose fixed or trailing stop loss.  May I know why?

 

Cheers,

Jay-R

Hey Jay-R,

Excellent questions here!

A. Yes, recently, I use fewer trades because with the time I noticed that if we keep the EA longer on the Demo, and we wait to see the profits there, basically, we are leaving the profits in the Demo account. As I explain in most of the courses, every strategy has profitable phases and losing phases. So if you catch the profitable phase in the Demo account, the longer you keep the EA there, the closer you are getting to the losing period.

So if you keep it too long in the Demo account, you increase the risk to hit some losses when you move it to the live account.

B. Not sure which course you are talking about here? When you export the Historical data with the script, it exports the commission by itself.

Now, some brokers, for some of the assets they have commission only in one direction (when you buy). I show that in the last course, the Stock market course + 10 Dow Jones EAs market.

If you look at lecture 4, you will see that with AAPL, I have commission when opening the trade and when closing, while with Dow Jones, I have just when opening the trade.

I hope that makes it all more transparent, but do not follow me like in 100%, try to experiment, see how it all works best for you. This way, you will find your style in trading.

Kind regards,

Petko A

 

Thanks for the response Petko.

A. Yes, that makes a lot of sense.

So for the parameter of 5 count of trades with profit factor of 1.2, do you apply this for all timeframes?

Since the smaller the timeframe (e.g. M1 and M5) it would be more active, and the 5 count of trades could be met earlier; conversely, the higher the timeframe the more time it takes for the 5 count of trades to be met.

B. I believe I was referrig to the Forex Strategy Course where there was a discussion under the comments section regarding which value to use (one-way or roundturn) when exporting data from the chart by using the scripts.

Right. You did mention that in the stock market course. For currencies, however, do I need to put the one-way or two-way value when exporting data using the script?

C. Petko, I think you may have overlooked my question regarding the Stop Loss =)

Yes, and I love the transparency. This is actually what makes you very different (in a good way) as a mentor because you care about explaining the
rationale about what you do to your students, and not just how you do things. Don’t worry, I love experimenting. I’ll do lots of those later on after
understanding the principles behind why you are doing what you are doing. As much as I love experimenting, I also do my best to not reinvent the wheel.

Cheers,

Jay-R

Hello Jay-R,

Glad to hear from you. Sorry for being late with the answers, but I have been quite busy recently. However, I do my best to answer every single question in the forum. If I miss to answer any, ask me again 🙂

1. Yes, I recently I use it on all time frames,

2. The script exports the information about the commission, but if you ask what you write, year, enter the value for the opening and the closing.

3. Yes, regarding the SL, I prefer the fixed SL because I think it gives better stats for the strategy itself. When it is trailing, the outcome is different every time. And I do not say trailing SL is bad, I just do not use it.

Cheers,

No problem, Petko =)

1. Noted. Thanks

2. Yes, I’m asking on what I’m going to write in the inputs after the script is placed on the chart but prior to the time I click to export the data.
For example, suppose I’ll be using Pepperstone and I’m going to export the data of EURUSD (a currency pair), and suppose the commission of Pepperstone for ROUNDTURN is 8USD, should I write in the input 8USD? or simply 4USD? Based on what you’ve mentioned, it would be 8USD, isn’t it?

3. That makes sense though. I actually like the principle behind that practice.

Cheers,

Hello Jay-R,

yes, you got it right, you would want to enter the round-turn commission.

Do not hesitate to put a bit higher commission or spread, this way you will be creating the strategies on a bit higher cost but after that, you will trade them on lower. Much better than the opposite.

Kind regards,

 

Noted Petko.  I’ll do that.

Cheers,

Good day Petko,

You mentioned every now and then in the courses that once the initial 5 count of trades and profit factor of 1.2 has been reached, you start the counting of trades again and also the observation of the profit factor using FxBlue.

So my question is when you start the counting of trades again, do you refresh FxBlue so that the count of trades will start at 0 trades? Is this even possible to do?

Or you just let the succeeding count continue starting from trade number 5?

I’m asking this because I’m anticipating a situation wherein the first count might actually have very good results (e.g. 5 trades, and profit factor of 10), but the succeeding trades might not be so good but the profit factor might still reach 1.2 not because of the current performance of the trades but based on the “overall” performance over the last 10 trades, thereby making an inaccurate assessment of the most recent performance of the algos. 

Cheers,

Hello Jay-R,

I am not really sure if I understand your question in 100%. I do not start the account again after the 5th trade. I wait for 5 trades and a min profit factor of 1.2.

If you are asking about the win/loss ratio I use it sometimes counting the trade to 10, and then restart for the next 10.

I hope that makes it clearer. Let me know.

Cheers,

“I do not start the account again after the 5th trade. I wait for 5 trades and a min profit factor of 1.2.”

Oooh.. Thanks for that clarification Petko.

So suppose, initially, there were 5 trades with profit factor of 1.0…

Trades                  Profit Factor

1

2

3

4

5                              1.0

 

And then later on there comes the 6th trade with Profit Factor of 1.2, excluding the 1st trade from computation of the profit factor.

 

Trades                  Profit Factor

(1st trade EXCLUDED)

2

3

4

5

6                              1.2

 

At this stage, you will already consider the EA as ready to be traded live.

Did I get that right?

Hello Jay-R, how would you exclude the first trade?

Hey Bart,

By excluding the 1st trade would mean that the gross loss/gross profit of the 1st trade would not be included in the computation of the profit factor over a particular strategy AFTER the 6th trade has taken place.

Thus, in this case, even though there are a total of 6 executed trades over a particular strategy, the profit factor will be evaluated based on the most recent performance, albeit, the past 5 executed trades (with the 1st executed trade being excluded from the computation since it does not reflect the most recent performance).

Cheers,

My question was different. I understand what you mean, but how technically you will keep looking at the last 5 trades? In FXBlue you have time filter, which will not work for you. Even you exclude the first day or two for some of the strategies and see just the last 5 trades, this won’t work for the rest.

Simple words, what will you do with your statistics in order to see always the last 5 trades for each strategy?

Hey Bart,

This was essentially my question that I was trying to ask Petko as I mentioned above.

“… when you start the counting of trades again, do you refresh FxBlue so that the count of trades will start at 0 trades? Is this even possible to do?”

I also tried the time filter in FxBlue and found similar results as you.

Hopefully, Petko could help us out on this one.

Cheers,

Hey guys….  You guys might want to check out an App that a guy on the other site made.  He sells it for $50.  It is called MT4 Tracker.  Hope it is OK to mention it here.  I am not affiliated with him.  You DL your account data to it and you can sort the trades by the headers.  You can then open another window that will show you the last n trades….  I find it helpful….  Image attached…

It also gives a nice little graph of each strategy.

If you wish you can then select which strategies you want to keep and the app will automatically create the ea for you with the strategies you don’t want “paused” within the ea…..