Rsmereka Trading Journal

[rsmereka]

This first post will document my current trading accounts both live and demo.
This post will be updated anytime there is a change.

I currently use two trading accounts. One live and one demo account.
All trading accounts are with Alpari UK. Each one of these accounts
has a statement posted on my website every 5 minutes.

Both accounts run on the VPS ForexVPS.com

-Account one: live
Statement Link: mt4.live.future-lab.com

Starting balance: $4,691.26
Start date: March 3, 2009
Trading Systems: MegaDroid V1.21, EB-Turbo, The Channel Scalper
EURUSD H1: MegaDroid V1.21, all default
EURUSD M5: EB-Turbo, turbo strategy only, risk 1.0
EURGBP M5: The Channel Scalper V1.11, custom settings from tradingsystemforex.com, risk 12.0

-Account two: demo
Statement Link: mt4.demo.future-lab.com

Starting balance: $13,000
Start date: October 15, 2009
Purpose: experimental account using higher risk
Trading Systems: The Channel Scalper, Primeval-EA
EURGBP M5: The Channel Scalper V1.11, custom settings from tradingsystemforex.com, risk 85.0
GBPUSD M15: Primeval-EA (scalping), see review for settings
EURUSD M15: Primeval-EA (scalping)
EURCHF M15: Primeval-EA (scalping)
EURGBP M15: Primeval-EA (scalping)
USDCHF M15: Primeval-EA (scalping)
USDCAD M15: Primeval-EA (scalping)
USDJPY M15: Primeval-EA (scalping)
GBPCHF M15: Primeval-EA (scalping)
EURCHF M15: Primeval-EA (grid)
GBPUSD M15: Primeval-EA (hedging)

[rsmereka]

I started trading in the summer of 2002. I started trading mini
commodity contracts and commodity options. I was not very good
or experienced at this and ended up loosing.

I switched to Forex trading in the spring of 2004. I started with
the broker CMS FX. I tried dozens of trading system and none
of them were consistently profitable. I had this account almost
two years and only left CMS FX when their trading platform
VTTrader continued to have connection resiliency issues
(the software would make only one attempt to re-connect after
the connection was broken).

I switched to Interbank FX in the fall of 2006. This was my first
exposure to MetaTrader. Not knowing MQL, I had a company in Europe
code an EA based on the Donchian Channel indicator . This trading
method was profitable but requires very long-term trading on a four
hour or longer chart and often involves thousands of pips.

I started looking at signal services but they were either too
expensive or not that consistent. I next looked at managed funds
but realized that I would be loosing 25% (at least) of the profit
off the top due to the fees. On top of this, I would have to pay
taxes. Most of the management funds I investigated either had a
poor average return rate and/or required a massive amount of
money (100,000 or more) deposited.

In October of 2008, I started looking at EA's as a method of trading
Forex. Since then, I must have bought almost a dozen EA's. Not one
of them was worthy of a live account until FAP Turbo came along
and (almost, at the same time), I stumbled onto Pipcop.com.

I starting trading using FAP Turbo on a live account in early Decmeber
2008. It was a wild ride and FAP Turbo was very profitable before the
Christmas holidays. After the new year, everything changed. FAP Turbo
was unprofitable due to the brokers widening the currency spread
and the EA itself starting mostly loosing. After investigation, I
determined that I was with one of the worst brokers when trying to
run FAP Turbo.

In January 2009, I started using the FAPTS EA live. It made very good
profit for almost two weeks and then the dreaded floating drawdown .
The FAPTS EA only opens one trade at a time. It took a full two
weeks to close that one trade. I ended up manually closing the
trade and 8 hours later the price moved to my take profit point .
With a recommended 500 pip stop loss, this can be one scary EA.
After that experience, I drastically lowered my lot size but,
at the same time, FAPTS does not make that much profit. The
risk-reward is out of wack. See my FAPTS trading journal for more
information.

After some investigation (mostly here), I realized that FAP Turbo
was, once again, profitable but I needed to change brokers. I opened
an Account with Alpari UK and on on March
3, 2009 I started live trading again with FAP Turbo and FAPTS.

[rsmereka]

I managed to recover from a very small gain last week in my live account. FAP Turbo had a 3.8% gain this week with Wednesday being the best day for me.

The very first day I went back live with FAPTS (Wednesday morning), the trade went into drawdown . That was the start of the current bull EURUSD move. Fortunately, because of the 500 pip stop loss, I am only risking 2.5% of equity. The lot size is only 3 micros (.30 a pip) so even if the stop loss is hit, I will only loose $150.00. I have been seriously considering cancelling my fapwinner membership for a while now. I stick with it a while longer and see what happens.

Fapwinner has posted new recommended FAP Turbo settings with much less LRR values and some tweaking using V44 Pro. I have increased my demo1 account to LRR 15 on all four scalper currencies. I have also setup two of the currencies with V44 of FAP Turbo and made some manual adjustments. See post #1 for more details.

I have also increased the LRR on my live FAP Turbo currencies to 10.

[rsmereka]

The current bull move in the EURUSD pair just took out my 500 pip stop on the FAPTS EA . I just emailed fapwinner.com to cancel my membership. Fortunately, I was prepared for this and my lot size (in my live account) was three micros (.30 cents per pip). I ended up loosing $150 on the trade. My demo account is another story. With a lot size of of six mini's ($6.00 per pip), the account lost $3,010.80 with rollover fees.

Here is my summary on fapwinner.com and the FAPTS EA:
The risk/reward is out of wack. You are risking 500 pips per trade to gain 20 pips. Since the hard stop has been hit, I know it can happen. If it can happen once, it can happen more times and possibly several times in a row. The lot size recommended by fapwinner.com is way too large. One loss at 500 pips will cost you half of your equity.

On the other hand, I have had amazing profits with FAP Turbo for the first two days (Monday and Tuesday) this week.

Rick

[1ka]

Hi Rick,

Thanks for sharing that. Most people would not have admitted a loss. Your analysis has probably helped other people make a decision on this EA.

[rsmereka]

Originally Posted by 1ka

Hi Rick,

Thanks for sharing that. Most people would not have admitted a loss. Your analysis has probably helped other people make a decision on this EA.

You are welcome.

I have no trouble admitting my loses or admitting my gains .

Rick

[rsmereka]

What a day ,

First, I checked my EvolutionX demo account and it blew up. It was just a matter of time. The total lot size on the sell side was 1.5 and the total on the buy side was .9. With the current EURUSD sharp bull move, I the account was losing $6 per pip for every pip higher it moved. I closed Metatrader and my demo 2 account (rsmerekad2.mt4stats.com) is no longer trading.

Second, I had a wild experience when I checked my live account this morning. Yesterday, after my 500 pip stop was triggered using the FAPTS EA, I closed the EURUSD chart. The experts log shows that the EA was removed. This morning the same EA (keep in mind that I do not even have a EURUSD chart showing anymore) opened a sell position. By the time I caught it and with the current bull move in that currency , a loss of almost 200 pips was realized. Fortunately the EA was set at a fixed lot size of .03 so when I manually closed the trade, the loss was just over $57.00. I checked the logs and it turns out that the EA was still running even though I closed the chart. I emailed Alpari asking for a credit of that trade. That is an outright bug in Metatrader. Be forwarned. Every time you close a chart, the EA does not necessarily stop running. You have to restart Metatrader.

Here is the response I got from Alpari UK:
=======================
Dear Sir
Thank you for your email.

Regrettably we cannot be held liable for any orders that emanate from your IP address.
If there is some residual problem left after standard deletion of your EA I can only suggest that you contact the provider of the EA should you wish to be compensated.

They may also be able to shed some light as how to best cure this issue as if it has happened once there exists a possibility that it might recur.

We would be happy to disable your account until such time as it is fixed if that would help you ?
========================

That was helpful...NOT

It is interesting that it may be the EA (FAPTS) and not Metatrader. Can anybody confirm this behavior.

Rick

[rsmereka]

I have put the 20/200 EA on the Demo2 account. I have adopted the settings that geekguy suggested, which is:

EURUSD chart
5M interval
autolot = false
lot = .15

The account has been re-loaded with a $5,000 balance and I have begun with .15 lots to start.

Rick

[rsmereka]

After that wild ride this week with FAP Turbo, I managed to eek out 5.6% ROI this week.

This Sunday Alpari UK is splitting the accounts into classic and mini. I am planning to up my FAP Turbo LRR to 15 starting next week and I hope that the Alpari account split does not affect FAP Turbo's performance.

BTW, I choose a classic account which means that I have to trade at least one mini for each trade.

Update: I have decided to back-down my LRR on FAP Turbo for at least Monday March 23rd to 5 just in case the Alpari account split results in some negative performance for FAP Turbo. The FAP Turbo license also expires this weekend so the new (V37) EA will need to be re-installed.

Rick

[rsmereka]

I have suffered two full stopped-out losses with FAP Turbo this week both of them in the EURGBP pair. After analysis, this pair often looses the last trade of the day and sometimes, the loss is big.

I have modified my live account by putting FAP Turbo V45 Pro on the EURGBP pair and to stop trading this pair at 00:00 instead of the normal 01:00.

After a rather big loss with this pair last week, I reduced the LRR on this pair to 2.5. After changing the end trading hour, I have increased the LRR to 5. If changing the end trading hour on this pair proves to be successful, I will gradually increase the LRR on the pair.

I have made the same end hour change to my higher risk FAP Turbo demo account (rsmerekad1.mt4stats.com) with the exception of a higher LRR (10 for now).

Rick