Minimum account balance - and why it matters.

This explains the recommended minimum account balances for our EAs.

Micro accounts can trade with much smaller account balances than Mini Acconts.
The minimum account balance recommended for a MICRO account (where the minimum lot size is 0.01 lots) is:
- For the Combo Pack, $750, (better if close to $1000.)
- For the Master Scalper alone, $500.
- For the Breakout Hunter alone, $250.
Your broker's account should allow "micro" lots trading (0.01).

For mini-accounts, where the minimum lot size is 0.1 lots, the smallest recommended balance is much higher than for micro-accounts, that allow 0.01 lots.
The main concern is that you need to be able to open multiple lots on the pairs if you are going to use the Combo pack, to balance the Breakout Hunter in sync with the Scalping pairs, since the SL is much larger, and you do not want a SL in the BH to consume the profits of the MS on a bad day.
If you trade the Master Scalper alone, this is less of an issue, and you can trade flat lots across the board.
To use a MINI account, you need $3000 minimum for MS alone, so SL will not exceed 3% of the balance, trading minimum lots.
BH can work with $1000 when trading alone, and will still keep losses within acceptable percentages of the account.
For the Combo Pack you need 10k to trade a Mini Account, or the BH will be too heavy on the MS pairs.
It is a mistake to open a Mini-Lots account in order to get the better spreads, if you are not going to fund it adequately. You are far better off using a Micro account.

Regarding leverage
Our Money Manager is optimized to trade between 50:1 (max in the US) and 100:1.
When you trade with larger leverage, you expose your account to Margin Calls.
The way it works is that the first few orders will be of the same size, but as more orders come in, you can get in trouble. 

When we trade many pairs simultaneously and our Money Manager uses a percentage of the Free Margin of the account to determine lot sizes. Every time an order opens, it uses some of that available Margin and the Free Margin is reduced. The more orders you have going at one time, the less Free Margin you have, and consequently the MM starts opening progressively smaller positions. 

If your Leverage is too high, it will allow the MM to continue trading at the higher lot size. 

If at a time when you have many positions opened the market reverses for a while, you could get you into the situation in which you have exhausted your Free Margin. This authorizes the broker to issue a Margin Call. Not nice...

"Margin Call" is an excellent movie, highly recommended. Loved it!

But having a Margin Call in your trading account hurts. Been there, done that.

Much better to call the broker and reset your account to a 100:1 leverage, and sleep well knowing that when you wake up it will be a few dollars up or down, but never have been liquidated for trading at a high leverage.

Understanding Leverage and Risk!

  The difference in performance due to use of excessive leverage happens in two ways:
  a) When we are trading using the Money Manager to calculate the size of our trades, we have the lots sizes assigned as a percentage of the Free Margin in the account. If the leverage is too high, the size of lots would go up too.
  When we figured out the best amounts to trade in our default settings, we used 100:1. We made sure that even if you have orders opened for all pairs, you would never get into an over-trading situation that could trigger a margin call.
  We have tested this percentages and found that they work fine, never a margin call.
  But if you push up the leverage, the lots will be increased with the extra available margin, and you could find yourself over-trading to dangerous levels.

  b) When we have losses, our capital is decreased. If you trade with small leverage, your losses will be small. But watch what happens with increased leverage:
  Let's say that you have an account of $1000, for example, and you are using the recommended 50:1 leverage (maximum legally allowed in the US, and for good reason).
  Let's also assume for this example that 1 pip= $1 in the size lots you are trading on the $1000 account (keep the figures simple).
  Imagine that on a bad week you lose 100 pips. Given your lot sizes you would have lost $50 using 50:1 leverage (5% drawdown is normal for us).
  But if you had been trading at 500:1, you would have lost $500 because your lots would have been that much larger. Now instead of a 5% drawdown, you now have a 50% drawdown on the account!
  To get back to your starting point you now have to make $500 profit instead of just $50.
  Now let's say that the next week is a really good week. BUT, your account is now only $500, which means that your trade sizes are going to be half the size of the trades you took in the losing week, (because the MM will always calculate on available margin).
  To get back to your starting point you now have to make twice the number of pips to make up the loss, because each pip at half-size lots will only pay you $0.50 (whereas your losing pips cost you $1.00).
  To recap, in one losing week you lost 100 pips and the next week you won 100 pips. If your leverage is 50:1, you are pretty much even because the size of your trades is more or less the same, since you only have a 5% drawdown. If you are trading 500:1, your lots will be half-size and with 100 pips you will only make up about $250, to keep figures simple, because the size of your wins were much smaller than the size of your losses. You lost 100 pips, then you recovered the 100 pips, but you still have a $250 loss to make up! You still have a 25% drawdown, even though you made up the pips!
  That is the difference.

  Basically, in Forex the main concern in not how fast you make your profits, but rather how much you can control your drawdown, so the size of your trades remains more or less the same, or hopefully grow at an even pace

Trading Strategy - Masterscalper - Breakout Hunter

One of the problem with EA trading is narrowing down the possible market conditions to the most predictable patterns. If you trade the news, for example, you will find all kinds of market responses, from NFP wild volatility, to complete apathy in some cases where the news were anticipated. If you are anticipating either one of the two examples, and get the opposite one, you are in a bit of trouble, and that is the main problem with news trading for an EA.

We try to "standarize" the kinds of markets that we wish to participate, by filtering volatile times, news time, etc. 

In our Breakout strategy, we avoid news spikes and wait for the trend to confirm itself as a viable move 15 minutes after an important report. We also avoid those typical times of "back and forth" action, such as the London morning, Dow opening, etc. 
In this manner, when we enter a trend, we have some degree of certainty that it is not just a news spike, or a false breakout. It does not always work, of course, but the probabilities are on our side, and also the long term profitability.

When it comes to scalping, the situation is even better, since we only scalp when most of the markets are asleep. That is a sure way of making market conditions similar. After London closes and before Australia and Japan open, we have a good degree of certainty about the number of participants in the market, the anticipated news announcements or general political gossip that might upset the market, etc. 
Furthermore, each scalping pair has its very own schedule: 
EurAud and EurChf, start at 16:00 just as soon as Europe closes, assuming other scalping conditions and volatility requirements are met. 
EurCad, however, waits until the oil market closes in NY (18:30 gmt), since the Cad is highly affected by oil prices. UsdJpy also enters at 18:30. 
Finally EurGbp enters at 19:00, because with this pair we scalp a very narrow channel, and want it to be very quiet to perform best - entering sooner will find you "off channel" for long periods of time, should there be the slightest trend leftover after Europe closes, which would waste the whole day waiting for it to "come back", instead of scalping away once the dust has settled into a narrow "scalping" channel.
Granted any trading strategy, and therefore any trading EA, has markets conditions which would cause losses. But the more homogeneous the market conditions, the easier, more controlled action we can expect.
Long live scalping!

Broker Performance Comparison

Hi Traders:

EurChf and EurAud. These 2 pairs are notorious with brokers who push up spreads during the scalping hours to get rid of scalpers.
Different spreads will lead to different fills and different results.

Different fills can even affect performance between 2 accounts with the same broker! 
This is normal since they are actually buying and selling us currency contracts, it's not just a number, like it is in a Demo account (hence the difference in performance between Demos and Live accounts) 
Once two accounts are off sync, the results may vary for the rest of the day. 

This happens in all kinds of trading: If, for example, we both put a buy order for a stock, at the same time and with the same broker, we are also going to get slightly different fills. That's trading, buying and selling at a price that changes constantly.

In the case of Forex, and particularly of scalping, which is rather high frequency trading, that may happen relatively often. 
You may get into a trade that I did not get into, because the market reversed at just that point. 
From that moment on, our two accounts are out of sync. 

If we are with the same broker this may happen because I did not get filled and the EA's signal went away on the reversal, sort of missed the chance for the trade. This often happens with variable spreads, like in ECN brokers. The funny thing is that occasionally you could actually benefit (even with worse spreads) because you are not hooked with that order. If the trading session ends, you will not enter more trades that day. So even though I got my order filled, I may be stuck with a losing position and you got spared: I may be facing a Stop Loss, which may account for the different results you are seeing.

This is a rare case, since usually worse spreads mean worse performance overall.

If you have a different broker who never had that price available, then you don't get to place the order at all. This is how it works:
Let's say that the price is 1.00000 and my broker has a 2 pips spread. My broker will sell at 1.00020 and my EA will be able to enter a "buy" order at that price. Your broker, who may have a 4 pips spread, will not even offer the chance to buy at my price: they will offer you a 1.00040 price, because of the higher 4 pips spread. Your EA won't send that "buy" order because it does not want that price, since it is not a good "buy" according to the strategy. The EA would like to buy at 1.00020, but not 1.00040. 
If the price reverses at that point, I am now in a trade and you are not. And so it begins.

If I am busy with my trade when you are not, you could enter a trade the next time a signal comes along, which may in opposite directions than mine.
If the price action remains normal and the price keeps bouncing up and down, both you and I will make money in time, even though we are out of sync. However, if the price takes off in one direction, your position may clear at a win and mine at a loss, or vice-versa. Luck of the draw, it could benefit you or me, but it will not be the same.
That's Forex!

Guest post - by Robert

Forex Robot Trading Performance March 2011

How was last month? Is it safe to trade today?
A client asked me that question today and the thought kept coming back the rest of the day.
Well, I would not choose last month as my favorite month ever,
Apart from the non-stop human tragedies and the completely overwhelming grief one feels with the loss of so many lives - as a trader a month such as this last one really puts you to the test.
Earthquakes, revolutions, air strikes, nuclear threats - it seemed as if the term "geo-political events" wasn't even fit to describe what was going on worldwide this month.

We are fine in general - what started out as a promising month has seen some set-backs, but we are still ahead for the month and I find that to be no small achievement.
The robots were performing fantastically and were actually doing quite well - we may have inadvertently been too cautious and decided on a few non-scheduled no-trade-days being swept away by the contagious panic trading in Wall Street. Always a bad idea. If in doubt  - leave them to trade.

Once again we had the feeling that our robots perform just fine during tumultuous times - that's why we have volatility filters - to rule out unfavorable markets.

The USD/JPY was of course the currency most affected and there were truly a few free-falling days - now of course it is more stable than ever - with the world watching its every hiccup.

So, hopefully you have traded through this month successfully as well and have come out ahead in the end.
Let me know how you did....

The lowdown on drawdown - or - What is drawdown and why does it matter in automatic forex trading?

650% profit in the first 60 days trading!  

Win 100 pips with every trade! 

Never a losing trade! 

Claims like these are plentiful in the world of automatic forex trading - you can barely turn around without bumping into a new Forex Robot claiming sky high returns on your investment. However, rarely are we told what amount of your initial investment was in danger during trading to achieve such outrageous returns. 
The level of risk involved in a trading strategy is what we call its "drawdown".

Drawdown is the reduction of one's capital after a series of losing trades. This is normally calculated by getting the difference between a relative peak in equity capital minus a relative trough. Traders normally note this down as a percentage of their trading account. 

Drawdown is the very feature by which to evaluate the validity of the outrageous profit claims many Forex robots make. Surely, if the robot is planning to be risking 90% of your investment capital, the darn thing better have some hopes of astronomical profit - otherwise why take such an enormous risk. 
But we all know what happens in reality when sound money management goes out the window: One bad trade and your account is wrecked beyond repair.

Sound money management, with reasonable drawdown, in a low risk setting is the only way to make progress. Insane trading, with no sound controls, only to put your account at risk, always being at the mercy of one trade that could end it all, is a sure way to get an ulcer and lose your trading capital. Might as well go back to manual trading, at least you enjoy the gambling...

So, when evaluating your next Forex Trading Robot please, instead of being seduced by great sounding profit promises, take a close look at the risk settings used to obtain these profits.

Oh - and that last promise of "Never a losing trade" is of course completely silly - it is the equivalent of playing roulette and betting on the little ball never landing on "zero" again - won't happen - ever.

The Best Scalping Strategies - Part 2 - EUR/GBP

When it comes to a successful Forex Scalping strategy we need a currency pair that is reliably range bound and lends it self well to scalping. As we have seen in part 1 of this series- not all currencies are automatically scalp-able. As a matter of fact most are not. Most of the Majors: EUR/USD, GBP/USD, USD/CHF are too wild a ride to take the risk. The notable exception is the USD/JPY - which even though it is a major currency pair is still scalpable - why that is so and what the advantages are, we will discuss in Part 3 of our Scalping Strategy series.

But back to the EUR/GBP - the currencies involved are of course the Euro and the British Pound. Since we are again talking about two currencies from the same Economic region there is stability built into the relationship that is one of the main characteristics of this currency pair.
Even though the British Pound was affected heavily by the economic crisis worldwide and in some ways more so apparently than the more stable Euro from a Forex scalping strategy point of view the EUR/GBP is one of our most trusted allies and together with the EUR/CHF the backbone of any successful scalping strategy.
In scalping we are looking for three things:

1. Rangebound - so the losses and risk stay small
2. but not dead - so we do get many daily small entries
3. Stable economies behind the currencies - so geopolitical news don't blow up in our faces

The EUR/GBP offers all three and is therefore a "two-thumbs-way-up" trade recommendation for an automatic Forex scalping trading system.