Rsmereka Trading Journal

[rsmereka]

It was a slow and lightly loosing month trading my live account. Results:

Account performance, all EA's
total trades: 16
won: 14
lost: 2
net profit: $-318.14
roi: -5.86%
pips: 4.8
Performance of EA MegaDroid
total trades: 4
won: 3
lost: 1
net profit: $-569.07
roi: -10.49%
pips: -40.9
Performance of EA The Channel Scalper
total trades: 4
won: 4
lost: 0
net profit: $188.53
roi: 3.47%
pips: 16.0
Performance of EA Forex Photon(EURUSD)
total trades: 5
won: 5
lost: 0
net profit: $45.73
roi: 0.84%
pips: 21.5
Performance of EA Forex Photon(USDCAD)
total trades: 3
won: 2
lost: 1
net profit: $16.67
roi: 0.31%
pips: 8.2
Performance of EA Forex Photon(USDCHF)
total trades: 0
Performance of EA Forex Photon(GBPUSD)
total trades: 0
Performance of EA Forex Photon(EURJPY)
total trades: 0
Performance of EA Forex Photon(EURGBP)
total trades: 0
Performance of EA Forex Photon(EURCHF)
total trades: 0
Performance of EA Forex Photon(all pairs)
total trades: 8
won: 7
lost: 1
net profit: $62.4
roi: 1.15%
pips: 29.7

Rick

[rsmereka]

While I was trying to find out where the indicator from the semi-automatic trading system called Two Percent Daily came from, I encountered this manual system called Drain the Banks (caution: all the material including the indicators and template are free but the author does not want people posting the material to other websites).

There are many revisions of this system. The link I supplied above is for revision 6 which is old but clear. The newer versions have a lot of clutter.

Like a lot of manual trading systems, this one is poorly documented. The basic system rules are documented but there are things in the rules that are not explained and the screen/chart is full of stuff that is never explained.

In essence, Drain the Banks as published is a scalping system that can trade just about any pair. Revision 6 uses a single pair on two different time frames. You open a H1 chart and a M15 chart. The scalping system is a stop-and-reverse, support and resistance system which opens a trade when the price bounces back from a support/resistance level.

As it is, it's a very good system but very time consuming because it's manual. The author has stated that he wants nothing to do with EA's. An attempt to build an EA from the indicators (there are a lot of indicators) failed twice (here and here).

I have no plans to trade this system as a scalper manually (it's too time consuming and I am too lazy) but I noticed something very interesting on the screen. Bring up the web page from the Drain the Banks link that I provided at the start of this post and follow along with me. Notice the yellow circle's with number on them. The author calls them semaphores. Notice how the semaphore immediately precedes a reversal. I have looked that a EURUSD D1 chart using the Drain the Banks indicator and template and the accuracy of the semaphores is eerie accurate.

What I am going to do is develop a manual system (check once a day at close) that swings along with the trend with the direction dictated by the presence or absence of the semaphore.

This is a good time for it because there is a semaphore on today's candle which is signaling a change in direction from long to short . This evening, I will be placing a demo manual short trade at 2% risk (I don't know what the stop will be yet).

I call this manual system Bob (as in bobbing for applies).

Attached is a monster 1900x1200 screen shot (oh, wait a minute, pipcop does not allow anything larger (resolution) than 1280x1024 so I'll have to chop the image ) that I just took showing the semaphores including the one developing right now.

Update:

I am running four pairs (EURUSD, GBPUSD, USDCAN, USDJPY) now using 2% risk and a 200 pip hard stop. Lot size is calculated as:

Lot = Free Margin  * risk(.02 is 2%) / stop in pips / 10

If you have a micro account skip the last divide by 10.

With my initial 10K account, it works out to 1 mini (0.10 in a standard lot account).

Here is Bob running:
Link: http://www.myfxbook.com/members/rsmereka/bob/47730



Rick

[Dan]

Pretty interesting system. I am going to give it a try, thanks.

Dan

[rsmereka]

Originally Posted by Dan

Pretty interesting system. I am going to give it a try, thanks.

Dan

Hi Dan,

If you try Bob on a D1 chart, you only have to check your chart once a day when your broker rolls over and the chart bar changes. With Alpari UK, that is midnight GMT+1.

I just also checked the GBPUSD D1 chart and is just as good, maybe better.

I turned the autoscroll off on the chart and I tried to find someplace where the chart and my strategy fails and I could not. The biggest DD I found was less than 100 pips and I went back a year.

Rick

[PipCop]

Originally Posted by rsmereka

Attached is a monster 1900x1200 screen shot (oh, wait a minute, pipcop does not allow anything larger (resolution) than 1280x1024 so I'll have to chop the image ) that I just took showing the semaphores including the one developing right now.

Fixed.

You may now attach 4000x3000 images.

[rsmereka]

Originally Posted by PipCop

Fixed.

You may now attach 4000x3000 images.

Thank you kind sir.

Rick

[Dan]

Rick,

At 0745-0830 est in the morning a big news announcement is due so it may alter your results. Just a heads up. Thanks again.

Dan

[rsmereka]

Originally Posted by Dan

Rick,

At 0745-0830 est in the morning a big news announcement is due so it may alter your results. Just a heads up. Thanks again.

Dan

Thanks Dan,

Nothing much I can do about news events.

Once of the consequences of trading a long-term trend catching system. Especially a swing system where I am always in the market. This is actually a good test of my stop loss placement. I would rather sort this out now on a demo account then be affected in a major way later on on a live account.

So far, Bob is doing ok but it's still early in the trade. It looks like I made a mistake when I broke the rules and entered the trade when the closing candle was not showing a semaphore. I am going to end up paying for that I think. The USDCAD pair is showing a buy semaphore right now and if that holds until this evening, I will have to exit and switch sides possibly at a loss. The USDCAD pair was one of those that was showing the semaphore the day before. I need to bang myself in the head and make sure I enforce that rule from now on.

BTW, tomorrow is NFP.

Rick

[carlprad]

Originally Posted by rsmereka

Hi Carlos,

Most EA's have a magic number as part of their settings. When you are running multiple EA's in one account, each EA on each chart needs to have a unique magic number. This is the way that you can separate the trades by EA. MetaTrader has no ability to filter trades by EA. You can use one of the MetaTrader statement hosting services like MyFXBook.com but their coverage of different EA's is tricky and mostly does not work properly.

What I do is to load all of my closed trades into a database and use MT4Analysis to report on trades by EA. That is how I can do my weekly and monthly reports so fast.

Rick

Hi Rick

First I'd like to thank you for all of your help so far. You have saved me a lot of time and frustration.

I tried setting up the MT4Analysis by following the steps on the documentation page. Everything was going well until I needed to verify my database. I placed a copy of skeleton.db database in the db/mydb folder and renamed it "carl-demo.db". I then changed the constants.php file to the path

define('TRADE_PATH_LOCAL', '/wamp/www/db/mydb/carl-demo.db');

However, when I go to the configuration page, my database is not listed in the drop-down menu for the databases. Moreover, everything is read-only. Where am I going wrong?

Thanks
Carlos

[rsmereka]

Originally Posted by carlprad

Hi Rick

First I'd like to thank you for all of your help so far. You have saved me a lot of time and frustration.

I tried setting up the MT4Analysis by following the steps on the documentation page. Everything was going well until I needed to verify my database. I placed a copy of skeleton.db database in the db/mydb folder and renamed it "carl-demo.db". I then changed the constants.php file to the path

define('TRADE_PATH_LOCAL', '/wamp/www/db/mydb/carl-demo.db');

However, when I go to the configuration page, my database is not listed in the drop-down menu for the databases. Moreover, everything is read-only. Where am I going wrong?

Thanks
Carlos

Hi Carlos,

Your very close. That TRADE_PATH_LOCAL is a directory path not a file name. MT4Analysis can operate on any number of databases in a directory so TRADE_PATH_LOCAL needs to be the path to a directory. In your case (based on what you wrote) try:

define('TRADE_PATH_LOCAL', '/wamp/www/db/mydb');

MT4Analysis will scan the entire directory and pick up all the files and display them in the database file name drop down.

In regards to the database being read only, in the constants.php file near the top of the file are two lines:

define('IN_PRODUCTION', 0);
define('DATABASE_RO', 0);

Just make sure that on both lines after the comma, there is a zero.

BTW, I think questions and comments about MT4analysis should be posted to the MT4Analysis thread.

Rick