Making Money from Forex, Quickly,
Reliably, and Consistently.
Written by Peter Parsons of
Fellow Traders
|
DISCLAIMER Trading carries a high
risk and you should never trade with money you can’t afford to lose. The contents of “The Roboteer EA” are for
educational purposes and should not be considered in any way as investment
advice. Ultimately you, the trader, must take responsibility for your own
trading decisions. Although every
effort has been made by the author to ensure accuracy (as at August 2008) the
content of this book cannot be guaranteed as accurate into the future. Past performance is no
guarantee of future results. The Author and Fellow
Traders accepts no liability whatsoever for losses or damages resulting
either directly or indirectly from the use of the information contained in
this book. © Copy write Peter Parsons 2008. All rights reserved. No copies of this document can be made
either electronically or on paper Without prior permission from the
author. |
Contents
Installing
Roboteer on an MT4 Account :-
Authorizing and Trading a Live Account
How
many Accounts can you have?
Changes in Roboteer-1.732 compared to Roboteer-1.731
$1
cent per pip lotsizes now automatically supported by Roboteer.
Changes in Roboteer-1.731 compared to Roboteer-1.723
Automatic
recognition of account type
Changes in Roboteer-1.723 compared to Roboteer-1.721
Optimized
settings download redundancy
Changes in Roboteer-1.72 compared to Roboteer-1.7
Changes in Roboteer-1.7 compared to Roboteer-1.6
Roboteer
now only trades optimized settings
Now
only works on 1 minute timeframes
The Basics of Currency Trading
Managing
Current / Open Positions:-
How
to Calculate a Profit or Loss
Forex Brokers that Support MetaTrader 4
Manually entering and exiting Trades
Placing
a Market order for Immediate Trading
Manually
Installing an EA for use
Getting
Authorized for Optimized settings download
Use
a dedicated PC when Trading Live
Keeping
track of each systems performance
Fixed
Fractional Money Management
Transitioning to a new version of Roboteer
Appendix A Trading Error Codes
Quick Start
Getting Started
Remember that this is the quick start. If you want more detailed information then please read the later chapters.
Manually copy the Roboteer EA into the experts folder of your existing MT4 installation.
Installing Roboteer on an MT4 Account :-
1:- Download MT4 from your chosen Broker
(FellowTraders recommend Alpari UK/US or InterbankFX)
2:- Install MT4 on your PC. Make sure you have MT4
revision 220 or higher.
3:- Download and copy the Roboteer-1.x-opti-load.ex4
from the download page.
4:- Load MT4 and clear any unused charts from the
MetaTrader desktop. Create a new chart for the EUR/USD.
5:- Install the Roboteer E.A. into your copy of MetaTrader.
(copy the Roboteer-1.731.ex4 file into c:\program files\metatrader4\experts
folder).
6:- Close and re-open MetaTrader4 and then open the ‘navigator’
by clicking the ‘navigator’ icon at the top of the MetaTrader 4 screen.
7:- Add Roboteer to your chart by clicking the expert
advisors list in the navigator window and then right mouse clicking over Roboteer
and choosing ‘attach to chart’ from the drop down list.
8:- Make sure that you set Roboteer as being able to
place trades automatically. If you are successful, you
9:- You also need to make sure that you have ticked
the checkbox for ‘Allow DLL imports’ and un-ticked the checkbox for ‘Confirm
DLL function calls’ in the ‘Common’ tab of Roboteer’s properties dialogue. You
can view this by left rightclicking on the EUR/USD chart that has Roboteer
attached and clicking ‘F7’
Authorizing a Demo Account
When you purchase
Roboteer from Clickbank, FellowTraders will automatically enter the clickbank
receipt number into an online database (this can take upto 24 hours to register
though)
You will have to
enter this receipt number (which will have been emailed to you by clickbank)
into Roboteer’s settings. Click the smiley face on the upper right hand side of
the chart of the EUR/USD and then click the ‘inputs’ tab and click the
‘ClickbankReceiptNo’ setting and enter the receipt number. Typically a
clickbank receipt number will look like this
#3UL5HGTG
Just enter the numbers
and letters, not the hash. Enter the original roboteer purchase receipt number,
NOT the monthly optimisations ervice charge receipt, this has an additional
-002 or monthly number attached.
Roboteer will then
look up this receipt number and if present, will automatically provide
Optimzied settings for Roboteer to use.
If you don’t do
this, then Roboteer
10:- Roboteer should start to trade within a couple of
minutes (if you are receiving live data. Roboteer
11:- Roboteer checks for optimized
settings once a Day. If you have just been authorised for optimized settings,
then you may need to close and restart MT4/Roboteer for the new optimized
settings to take effect. Also remember that optimized settings will be used on
any new trades that occur, but NOT existing trades.
12:- Roboteer is designed to run
on 1 minute charts.
That’s it. Watch the Trading via MT4’s Terminal window
as explained on page 52, and remember to leave your machine on !
Authorizing and Trading a Live Account
Once you have Traded a demo account for a Month or two (which is the recommended minimum) you will want to Trade a live account.
The Roboteer EA you have trades both Demo accounts and live accounts, BUT Live accounts need authorizing for use.
Simply
attach Roboteer to the EUR/USD on your live account, and Roboteer
“You are trying to run Roboteer on an unauthorized”
“Live account, or are authorized for the wrong
Live account.”
“Your actual account number is 123456”
“Use the following form for Authorization”
“http://www.fellowtraders.com/roboteer-authorization.html”
The number 123456 above would be replaced with your actual account number.
you need to use the online form here :-
http://www.fellowtraders.com/roboteer-authorization.html
to
get your live account number authorised for use. Peter
This is in addition to putting your clickbank receipt number into Roboteer’s settings menu as described for demo accounts.
You simply need to open and fund your live account, and then forward the account number (as displayed in MetaTrader in the top left hand corner of the screen) so that I can Authorize you.
Please remember to use the email address you used to purchase Roboteer to request your free live version of Roboteer, and provide the ‘clickbank’ purchase receipt number.
To get your live version please use the following webform :-
http://www.fellowtraders.com/roboteer-authorization.html
Note: Only one live account number
Changing Account numbers
In the unlikely event that you need to change your Live account number (perhaps because of a change of Broker) then you can do so by using the following web page:- http://www.fellowtraders.com/roboteeraccountchange.html
How many Accounts can you have?
You can have a single concurrent demo account and a single concurrent Live account authorised for optimized download.
You may change them more or less as and when you please.
Changes in Roboteer-1.732 compared to
Roboteer-1.731
$1 cent per pip lotsizes now automatically
supported by Roboteer.
InterbankFx have introduced a smaller propriatory lotsize of
$1 cent per pip. I have called this a nano lot. Roboteer will automatically
detect this lotsize and display a message on chart stating so.
Comments field text corrected
The comments field within the tabs of MT4’s terminal window has been corrected to
show the correct System placing (and exciting) the trade.
Changes in Roboteer-1.731 compared to
Roboteer-1.723
Lots of changes with this release.
Automatic recognition of account type
Finally figured out how to adjust Roboteer for customer
account type, AND which lotsizes are supported. Roboteer now detects the account
type (standard or mini automatically) Roboteer also detects whether microlots
are supported for the account too.
Manual lotsize setting will override any automatic
lotsizing still, but oinly if account balance is above £2k. Below this level
Roboteer automatically sets the lotsize at 1 micro lot (if supported) or 1 mini
lot if not.
System 2 parametric changes
System 2 has not shown consistent returns, and has been
changed quite significantly in terms of which time frames it uses to setup
entry, trail stops and exit. This has had a beneficial effect both in
back-testing, and in forward trading testing over the last few weeks.
Time based exit
All three systems in the trading array now have a time
based exit. This means that if a trade is effectively at an impasse, the time
based exit will close the trade (whether losing or gaining)
This parameter is optimised for each system separately, and
is now part of the optimisation process and auto settings.
Enhanced entry filter
All htree systems now use an enhanced entry filter that
limits trading to a medium term trend. Based on a moving average slope that is
calculated on Daily Bars, this has had a significant effect on trading
performance.
Changes in Roboteer-1.723 compared to
Roboteer-1.721
Optimized settings download redundancy
I have added an additional website for the download of
optimized settings. This has had an effect on the accuracy of optimized
settings used for some clients. I can only assume that some connections to the
internet have lazy DNS cache servers, which can lead to optimized settings
being a mixture of new and old. This additional redundancy has cured the
problem.
On chart Messages
I have changed the on chart messages and statement to give
a more sensible flow when installing and authorizing Roboteer. New users seem
to be able to install and cope more easily.
Changes in Roboteer-1.72 compared to
Roboteer-1.7
Broker set decimal places
I have had numerous emails covering an issue with the
amount of decimal places a particular Broker trades too. By default most Forex
brokers trade to 4 decimal places. However, some brokers, including Alpari
To overdcome this, I have hard coded the decimal places
traded to within Roboteer, and stopped using MT4’s default broker functions.
This means that Roboteer will trade to 4 decimal places no matter how many decimal
places the Broker is trading too.
Authorizing demo accounts
I am conscious of the time it is taking to authorise demo
accounts. When I receive as many as 450 emails a day, with several 10s or more
account authorisation requests coming in, a delay of 2-4 Days is just
unacceptable.
I have changed the authorization process to use the
clickbank receipt number. This means that all a user has to do is enter the
clickbank purchase receipt number into Roboteer’s settings menu, and Roboteer
should work.
I receive an email detailing every sale, and I also receive
a copy of the clickbank receipt number too. I will automatically place this
into an online database that is now read be Roboteer and automatically
authorises any demo account for you, so long as you put the clickbank receipt
number into Roboteer’s settings menu.
You only need to send me live account numbers when ready to
trade live.
Money management looks at your starting balance every time
it places a trade. I have had several people use live accounts with less than
the recommended $2k trading margin. I have now added a risk reducer that
automatically reduces the trade size to 1 microlot (if supported, or 1 minlot
if not) for each of the three systems if you have less than $2k in your
account. You can still manually override this using the manual lotsize of you wish.
Changes in Roboteer-1.7 compared to Roboteer-1.6
Roboteer now only trades optimized settings
I have had quite a few people comment that the system
trades even when it cannot access the optimized settings. I have stopped
Roboteer trading if the account you are running on is NOT authorised for
optimized settings download.
Lotsizing fixes
I have also spent quite a bit of time looking at feedback
with regards to lotsizing for different brokerage accounts. I have now deleted
the AcounTyeStandard settings and put two new settings in its place.
The first “Account$PerPip” is exactly as it says. A
standard account is $10 per pip movement and a mini account is $1 per pip
movement. Some Brokers now offer proprietary amounts per pip, so you will need
to ask your broker for this value and set it accordingly.
The second is “MicroLottsSupported”, the default settings
is true. Most brokers support microlots, but not all. If you set this to false,
Then Roboteer will round the lotsizes to the nearest whole minilot.
Now only works on 1 minute timeframes
Although Roboteer is designed to work on any intraday
timeframe, it has been shown that some of the indicators used do not correctly
support set intraday timeframes. This means that Roboteer actually works
differently on different intraday time frames. Roboteer 1.7 has there fore been
fixed to work on a time-frame of 1 minute only. An error message will appear if
you try to use Roboteer on any other time frame.
Money Management Calculations
I have altered the minimum lotsizing when setting lotsizes
manually. The smallest lotsize available is now 1 microlot. For a standard
account this is 0.01 lots. For a mini account this is 0.1 lots.
I have also reduced the minimum risk taken by the auto
money management by a factor of 5. If you want to risk more simply increase the
risk multiplier within Roboteers settings menu by increasing the default number
of 1 to a higher number.
I have now added Roboteer’s revision number to the files
that are written to the MT4 root folder\experts\files folder for money
management purposes. This means that when you change to a new revision of
Roboteer, the money management files will refresh.
I have also forced the money management files to be deleted
once a month (on the first) so that any new Funds added to the account will be
taken into account from this day onwards. The last trade will always impact any
fresh start by any of the 3 Roboteer systems.
If any of the inbuilt trading systems do poorly, to the
point where they run out of their split
of the trading margin (from the beginning of the Month), the system will trade
the minimum 1 microlot for the rest of the Month.
Introduction
Background
I have been Trading the markets for the better part of 25 Years. When I first started, it was as a typical buy and hold amateur. I would scour the financial papers, and watch certain stocks, initially by memory only, and then by recording price movements on paper. I learned quickly that money management was key, and that placing a protective stop with your broker (almost unheard of then) was paramount to protecting my trading equity.
Around 1982 the Personal Computer arrived, along with lotus 123 (a spreadsheet package). This helped no end. For the next 8 Years I was content to trade using information based on my own price observations, along with simple technical indicators such as a Moving Average overlaid on price movements within simple spreadsheets written in Lotus 123.
I did OK, earning additional monies to pay for holidays and Toys, as well as keeping my beloved PC bang up to date.
In the early nineties, I
came across a package called TradeStation. This was more than just a charting
package, it actually allowed you to code your own rule set into a system and
then back test this against historical data for just about every trading
instrument and symbol there was.
It was expensive (and still is) but it started my trek into the world of mechanical Trading systems.
Around1999 saw the advent of online brokers, and the ability to buy (and sell) stocks, and currencies via the Internet. This transformed Trading for me. I could now start to look at shorter time frames for Trading, and finally settled on two ways of Trading.
The
first was through the use of a swing trading system, written in eSignal’s EFS
which was an extrapolation of what I had been doing for the previous 12 Years.
Basically I had managed to create a rule set that traded large cap
I am very good at analysis when Trading End of Day Bars, but once time frames become intraday, especially 1 hour bars or less, I cannot take the pressure of being glued to a screen all day. I am also dreadful at managing a Trade manually. My discipline goes to pot.
The problem is I understand
the advantages of Trading Intraday. Making small consistent profits several
times a day, but my Brain is not hard wired to cope with HOW to do it well.
It was for this reason that I embarked on building the rules set that I use to Intra Day Trade into a fully automated process, where I only had to glance at the system once or twice a Day to make sure everything was OK.
It has taken the better part of 10 Years to achieve this goal.
The Roboteer and Roboteer Expert Advisors are part of this ongoing development and achievement.
What Roboteer aims to deliver
Fully Automated Trading.
This
is not your usual system manual. I
This is about arming you with the skills to drive a true black box mechanical DayTrading Forex system that is provided as part of the Roboteer Trading solution.
My
aims are to introduce you to Forex, and then dive straight into educating you
about the trading platform you
I will teach you exactly how I Trade the system, and what I have learned that works. You will not have to calculate anything manually; even the money management is taken care of.
Some statistics on Roboteer
The Underlying rules set that makes up Roboteer Expert Advisor has evolved from several systems in use over the last 10 Years. It is designed to Trade the EUR/USD currency pair today.
Historically Roboteer started as 3 separate trading systems. Each has evolved separately over the better part of the last 7 Years. However, I realized that rather than trading these separately, why shouldn’t I place them all into a single trading system, as a trading array. What’s more I could use each system to counter the others in times of loss.
Separately each system produces the following equity graph based on trading from early 2008, using fixed ratio money management, and a risk multiplier of `1:-
The first system within Roboteer
The second system within Roboteer
The 3rd System within Roboteer
All systems performance within Roboteer
One
of the first things you will notice is that the back-tests above have been
tested using open prices. This is because detailed analysis of back-testing
against real tick data shows that the simulated tick data used within MT4’s
‘every tick’ model are simulated, and not accurate. The most accurate and
factual model to use is open prices on 1 minute bars.
The
Forex Market
What is Forex?
Forex is an acronym for Foreign Exchange. It is
where all currencies are Traded.
The
foreign exchange market is by far the largest financial market in
the world. Just
to put things
into perspective, the
New York Stock
Exchange (NYSE) daily
volume fluctuates around
US$30 billion per
day.
Forex market
daily volume is
estimated to be
around US$1.5 trillion! In fact, daily world stock and bond market volume
added up is
only a fraction
of the daily
Forex trading volume.
Liquidity
(the ability to fill a Trade quickly), almost 24 hour Trading, as well as the
ability to open an account with leverage of up to 200:1 compared to that of a
Stocks account of 2:1, where you have the ability to Trade 200 x the margin you
have lodged in your account, compared to only 2 x for Stocks and you soon
realize that Forex is the market to be in.
So how
do you Trade the Forex Market?
The Basics of Currency Trading
Currencies are traded in set pairs.
Whatever is quoted first in the symbol name is
the base currency. So if you buy the GBPUSD pair, you will actually be buying
the GBP and selling the USD at the same time.
If you wanted to buy the US Dollar against the
British Pound, you would sell the GBPUSD.
There are two prices quoted for each pair, the
BID price and the ASK price. The bid price is always lower than the ask price.
The bid price will always be on the left side.
If your broker quotes the price of GBPUSD at 1.9516 / 1.9519, you will pay 1.9519 if you buy the GBPUSD (go long).
The spread is the difference between the bid and the ask .i.e. 3 pips in this
instance. If you decide to sell straight away, you will sell at 1.9516. This means you will lose 3
pips. As soon as you place a trade to open a position, you will immediately be
in a loss situation.
This is normal as traders pay a spread to the
broker instead of a commission. An open trade or position is one in which a
trader has either bought or sold one currency pair and has not sold or bought
back an adequate amount of that currency pair to effectively close the trade.
When a trader has an open trade or position, he
/ she stands to profit or lose from
fluctuations in the price of that currency pair. If the spread was 3
pips, the currency must move 3 pips in your direction in order to get to break
even and then profit is earned after that. To make 20 pips the price on the
chart would have to move 23 pips if the spread was 3 pips.
The 4 Majors are the major currency pairs. These
are:
- EURUSD Euro
- GBPUSD British Pound
sometimes referred to as Cable, or
- USDJPY Japanese Yen
- USDCHF Swiss Franc
When one currency is traded against any currency
other than the USD, the market rate for this currency pair is called a cross
rate. Examples include EURGBP, EURJPY,
EURCHF, GBPJPY and AUDJPY.
Placing a Trade
Market Orders :-
Market orders are orders that are executed
immediately at the market rate. This means at the current ‘Ask’ price, for a
‘Buy’ order, and the current ‘Bid’ price for a ‘Sell’ order. A market order
also means you are prepared to take the nearest and soonest price that appears,
and may be ‘bought’ or ‘sold’ at a price that is slightly out from that
desired. This is called slippage.
Limit
Orders:-
Limit orders are orders that a trade should be
executed (in the future) when certain market conditions occur. There are three
types of limit orders:
For
New Positions:-
Limit orders: specify that a
currency pair should be traded when it reaches a certain exchange rate. Applied
when entering into a trade or position, limit orders do not offset a current
position.
Managing Current / Open Positions:-
Take-Profit orders:-
Are used to clear a position
by buying (or selling) the currency pair of the position when the exchange rate
reaches a specified level. Take- Profit orders are typically used to lock in a
profit. For instance, if you are long USD/JPY at 112.58 and believe the price
will continue to rise until it reaches 113.00 but are unsure what it will do past
113.00, placing a take-profit at 113.00 will automatically close your position
allowing you to lock in your profit.
Stop-Loss orders:-
Are used to clear a position
by buying (or selling) the currency pair of the position when the exchange rate
reaches a specified level. Stop-Loss orders are typically used to limit any
losses that might occur. For instance, it you are long USD/JPY at 110.48 and
set a stop-loss at 110.18, your position will automatically be closed at 110.18
and you will be protected from a further price decline. Stop-Loss orders are
particularly beneficial because they allow you a certain level of com fort when
leaving a position open while you are no longer actively following the markets
(i.e., when away from your computer).
How to Calculate a Profit or Loss
Example
You see that the rate for EUR/USD is 0.9517/19
and decide to sell
100,000 EUR. Your trade is executed at 0.9517.
100,000 EUR * 0.9517= 95,170.00 USD
You sold 10,000 EUR and bought 95,170.00 USD.
After you trade, the m arket rate of EUR/USD
decreases to
EUR/USD=0.9400/05. You then buy back 100,000 EUR
at 0.9405.
100,000 EUR *0.9405= 94,050.00 USD
You sold 100,000 EUR for 95,170 USD and bought
100,000 back for
94,050. The difference is your profit:
95,170.00-94,050.00= $1120.00 USD
Pips
A pip is the smallest price change that a given
exchange rate can make. Since most major currency pairs are priced to four
decimal places, the smallest change is that of the last decimal point - for most
pairs this is the equivalent of 1/100th of one percent, or one basis point.
For example, the smallest move the USD / CAD
currency pair can make is $0.0001 or one
basis point. If price moves from 1.1525 to 1.1570, it is a move of 45 pips.
The smallest move in a currency does not always
need to be equal to one basis point, but this is generally the case with most
currency pairs.
A pip is the last decimal digit of a currency.
If the USDJPY moves from 118.79 to 118.89,
this represents a 10 pip move. A 1 pip move on the EURUSD and GBPUSD is equal
to $10 (fixed) for a full size contract controlling USD$100,000 or $1 for a mini
contract controlling USD$10,000.
A pip for USDCHF and USDJPY is variable and
dependent on your broker.
Roboteer’s
Base Platform
MetaTrader 4
MetaTrader 4 is owned by a company called
MetaQuotes http://www.metaquotes.net
They have been producing charting software
since 2000, and came about almost as electronic Trading across the Internet
arrived.
MetaTrader 4 has been adopted by many Forex
Brokers as their primary electronic Trading platform.
The platform allows full currency charting (if data
supported it allows stocks charting too) as well as supporting manual trading
through the use of all conventional Trade orders (such as stop market orders,
limit orders, as well as attaching contingent protective stops and profit take
targets).
MetaTrader 4 screen running on XP
On top of this, MetaTrader 4 also has a
development environment built in. This development environment allows users to
code both custom indicators, as well as Trading systems (called Expert
Advisors). It is this facility that is grabbing the Forex market by storm.
MetaTrader 4 E.A. editor
It runs as a windows application, and is simple
to install and use. For a better description please look at MetaQuotes website
directly here :-
Forex Brokers that Support MetaTrader 4
There is also another reason that MetaTrader
4 is becoming a known standard. Brokers are adopting the platform as their
default Trading platform. It also lends itself to offering FREE demo account
easily. This means that users can open a
demo account, and load and test a MetaTrader 4 Expert Advisor with
little up front cost.
Some brokers (Alpari
Choosing a Broker
A stock
Market Broker is the middle guy who works between every Buyer and Seller. He
provides the medium between which all Stock Market transactions occur. Unless
you are prepared to trade as a 'Local' and actually enter the stock market
itself and Trade Directly (an expensive and dying business) you need to
facilitate your Trades via a Broker.
There
are more Market Trading Brokers today than there have ever been. All of them
try to offer some unique feature that puts them above the rest. So how do you
decide which to choose?
Experienced
Traders say look at the transactions costs. This is true if you are Intra day
Trading, and placing 20 trades a day plus. However, if you are just starting
out, there are other more important features you should look for.
|
|
Firstly,
lets talk about what is NOT needed from your Broker.
Phone
based Brokerage only - You do
Not want a Broker who only takes phone Trades, where you ring the Brokers Trade
desk, and they place the Trade for you.
This is
time consuming, and opens you to being persuaded to do something else. It is
also a means of introducing slippage. Stay away from Phone based Brokers.
Trade
advice - You do not need, nor
want Trade advice.
The
Broker does not know what system you are trading to, and will push their system,
or worse still, be biased towards their own Trading activity.
They
will try to persuade you to Trade other markets and other instruments, and take
you away from the original focus of your own system.
Fellow
Traders never take Trade advice from anyone. Once we have decided to follow a
system, and have chosen a Trade, 'we' are not interested in what other people
think.
Remember
that 95% of the time most people lose their money on the Markets. This means
that 95% of the times, most people have a wrong opinion when looking at any
Trade!
News
Feeds - You do not need news
feeds, if you are aiming to Trade using technical analysis and chartist
techniques, you do not care about news. The only exception to this is when an
annual set of accounts is actually due. This information is available online
for free.
The
features you do need are :-
Stability
- where the risk of the Broker
going bust is minimal, remember your hard earned Trading margin will be in
their bank. The golden rule here is size, the bigger the Broker the better.
Look to use a well known Broker such as Interbank FX. They are international,
have an excellent online Trading Platform, and work to the tightest market
Spreads. Transaction and usage costs are fair to good, and their online
reporting will give you anything you need.
Ease of Use and support - where
the setup and use of the Trading platform is easy, and the help available from
the Broker in terms of support is good.
You also
need good online reporting for both current Trades, and Historic Trading.
For some
strange reason, Brokers have a tendency to show profit on a trade as a daily
balance, and not as a total balance from when the Trade was entered. This can
cause no end of confusion. Fortunately MetaTrader 4 displays the account
balance, open Trade P/L etc on screen which helps a great deal.
Historic
Trading suffers from the same issue. Make sure that the online historic
reporting is sensible, and provides everything you need to create an audit
Trail of what your Trading has accomplished.
Usage
Costs - the price of each Trade is important, but not as important
as any data charges, or minimal fees there may be if you are not placing a
minimum amount of Trades. Most Brokers that support MetaTrader 4 do not charge
for data, so long as you have active Trades on a live account.
Remember
when you are starting out, you may only place 2-5 Trades per Day with Roboteer.
Some Brokers levy a minimal Transaction cost per month for providing the
platform, and access to market data.
Also,
make sure you understand what 'spread' the Broker is likely to see on each
Trade. This is the difference between the actual market price, and what the
Broker offers you. Some Brokers make their fees look attractive by offering no
transaction costs but charging you via an increased spread. Make sure you know
what the spreads are for your chosen currency pairs.
Here is a list of Forex Brokers who support MetaTrader 4 split by Country. The list is accurate as of the 27 November 2007 :-
Real Trade Ltd. http://www.realtrade.lv
STS Finance SC http://www.finance.sts.bg
NorthFinance http://www.northfinance.com
Orion Global Financial Services http://www.orionbrokers.com
FX-Pro Ltd. http://www.fx-pro.com
The Commercial Group http://www.cgtim.com
KVB Kunlun New Zealand Limited http://www.kvbkunlun.com
Performance
Forex GmbH http://www.eforex-asia.com
Russian
Admiral
Investments and Securities Ltd. http://www.forextrade.ru
Bull Trend Brokerage http://www.bulltrend-bg.com
Financial Network Worldwide Ltd. http://www.forexservice.net
FinMarket Ltd. http://www.finmarket.com.ua
IC Vector Securities Ltd. http://www.icvector.ru
Integral Bank http://www.fxintegral.com.ua
Lefco Bank http://www.lefco.ru
Livingston Investment Inc. http://www.mytrustbank.com
Teletrade D.J. International Consulting Ltd. http://www.teletrade.ru
Ukrsotsbank http://forex.ukrsotsbank.com
FXBest http://www.fxbest.ru
Forex Service http://www.forexservice.net/
Man Financial (S) Pte Ltd http://www.manfinancial.com.sg
Switerland
FiboGroup
http://www.fibogroup.com
Crown Forex http://www.crownforex.com/
US
APEX
FX Trading http://www.apexfxtrading.com
fxTeam http://www.fxteam.ru/
Forex Global Investment LLC http://www.forexgi.com
Interbank FX http://www.interbankfx.com
SNC
investment http://www.sncinvestment.com
FXDirectDealer http://fxdd.com
N Two Bank http://www.n2bank.com/
Velocity 4X http://www.velocity4x.com/
Alpari
Ltd. http://www.alpari-idc.com
Manually entering and exiting Trades
Placing a Market order for Immediate Trading
Why is it important to know how to manually enter and exit Trades, when you are going to use a fully automated system?
Because systems can hang, or go wrong a for a multitude of reasons. You need to be able to manually remove Trades if needs be. You need to know how to do this confidently, so that you have this as back up if needs be.
Also the in built manual that comes with MetaTrader is not very clear. So I thought it worth the effort to pass on what I have learned in a simple, concise description.
To Trade manually, you simply right mouse ‘click’ on the chart and select Trading from the drop down list (by left mouse ‘clicking’) as per the following screen :-
The trading drop down list
Once you left mouse ‘click’ the Trading section of the drop down list you will see the actual Order menu as per the following screen :-
The Order window
Lets look at the Order window in more detail :-
The order window
To actually place a market Trade (ie to enter the market instantly), you simply input the size of Trade you want in the volume field (as lots or part there of), choose your stop loss price, as well as your profit target (if you have one) and then click either buy or sell.
Lets look at a few examples of using the manual order window to make Trades :-
Remember that I am using the EUR / GBP as the currency pair to Trade.
Let say that you want to make a ‘Sell’ of 10 MicroLots (or 0.10 standard lots) and want a stop loss of 30 pips from entry.
You would enter 0.10 as the volume, in the volume field. You would then either click the small up arrow on the stop loss field to increase the stop until it was 30 pips above the entry price being displayed directly above the ‘sell’ and ‘buy’ buttons. Remember that the price displayed here is split into two. These are the ‘Bid’ and @offer’ price for the currency pair. So you would be selling at 0.7173.
Once you have entered everything, you simply click the ‘Sell’ button. The order will be processed, and will emit both a noise and a confirmation once processed. Also the trade and its stop will appear on the chart like this :-
An open Sell trade on the chart
The actual sell Trade is the green line that has a Trade number attached to it on the right hand side of the chart. This number will match the open Trade displayed in the Terminal window that appears at the bottom of the screen (showing P&L)
The red line is the position of your attached stop-loss (remember the 30 pips we added at Trade time)
Now
one of the most important questions here is “How do you close this trade if needs be?”
Simple, look up the trade number that appears on the screen in the Terminal window. This can be activated by clicking ‘View’ and then choosing ‘Terminal’ from the drop down list.
Here is a terminal window screen grab :-
The open Trade in the Terminal window
To close this trade you simply highlight the Trade with a left mouse ‘click’, and then right mouse click hovering over the Trade (in the Terminal Window) and a drop down list appears, simply choose close Trade from this list.
A Order window will appear, but there will be a Yellow button under the ‘buy’ and ‘sell’ buttons that will have details to close the open Trade you have chosen. Simply left ‘click’ this button and the Trade will be closed.
Here is that Order window with the close Trade details :-
Order window with Close Trade details filled in on Close Trade
button
Although the above example uses a ‘sell’ Trade with stoploss, placing a buy Trade is very similar. You use the same process, but choose the ‘Buy’ button.
Placing a Pending Order
What does this actually mean?
Well in the previous section I described how to use MetaTrader’s Order window to place a simple immediate, or market order.
In this section, I will show you how to use the Order window to manually place a ‘Pending ‘ order.
A ‘pending’ order is one that is placed on the brokers servers, and remains ‘Pending’ until a certain price is hit, at which point the order becomes a market order, or (if you choose it) a ‘limit’ order.
So lets explain the difference in practical terms.
Placing a pending stop order uses a ‘stop’ price that has to be hit, before the order become an active market order and is filled at the first available price.
Placing a limit order uses a ‘limit’ price that has to be hit, before the order become an active market order, with the proviso that the actual ‘buy’, or ‘sell’ price is at or betters the ‘limit’ price.
So I bet the first question you are thinking is, “Why not always use a ‘Limit’ order?”
A limit order does not guarantee you will be filled at the ‘limit’ price. The trade action may pass you by.
Therefore the reason you don’t use a ‘limit’ order for everything, is that if you are looking to protect a position against a reverse move, you want to exit at or near your stop price, no matter what ……
So lets look at an example of a pending order :-
Lets place a ‘Buy’ Trade that uses a pending ‘Buy’ stop order to enter.
You bring up the order window as before, right click on the chart and choose ‘Trading’.
To setup the Order as a pending order you choose ‘Pending’ from the type field. At this point the order window will change to look like the following :-
Pending Order Window
Now there are new fields present.
You can now choose the type of pending order you want to use from a drop down list. These are :-
‘Buy Limit’
‘Sell Limit’
‘Buy stop’
‘Sell stop’
We’ will choose ‘Buy stop’. You then put the price at which you want to trigger a market buy, how about we put 40 pips up from the current ‘ask’ price (which can be seen in the tick chart as 0.7180) so therefore the following order window would be used :-
BuyStop order
Once accepted, the order price will appear both on screen, and in the Terminal window. It looks very similar to an open Trade, expect the ‘type’ is described as a buy stop, and the profit column is blank, because the Trade is not open yet.
Once the Trade price is hit, the trade will enter as a market order, and the order type within the Terminal window will change to Buy and a P&L value will appear in the profit column.
What I suggest you do, is practice entering orders in the system on a demo account, and also practice removing existing trades until you are familiar enough with the software to be able to extract yourself from most situations manually if you feel something has gone wrong.
Expert Advisors
So lets get to the interesting stuff … !
What is an Expert Advisor or E.A. ?
Effectively an EA is a piece of code that is written in a language that MetaTrader can understand. This code could be a custom indicator, or it could be a full Trading system. All MetaTrader clients have access to the editor that allows you to make an EA. It is called MetaEditor (funnily enough) and is accessed by left clicking ‘Tools’ from the top MetaTrader menu and then left ‘clicking’ ‘MetaQuotes Language Editor’. There is a keyboard shortcut that will open the editor and this is button F4.
Now there is quite a large amount of confusion covering what the MetaEditor can access.
Firstly, an EA is written as simple text, and stored in a file with extension MQ4. when the coding is completed, it is compiled into machine readable code which has a file extension of EX4.
The editor can access MQ4 files, but cannot access EX4 files.
If you buy an EA from a third party, it is highly likely that you will be given an EX4 file, and NOT the MQ4 source file. Therefore you will NOT be able to access and edit the EA code.
You can tell what sort of code you have by accessing the EAs your system has and checking the colour of the EAs in the listing. You access EAs via the Navigator screen. You can do this by left mouse ‘clicking’ ‘View’ and then choosing navigator from the drop down list. You then click the Expert advisor icon in the Navigator window, and you will see something similar to the following :-
Expert Advisors listed in the navigator window
Manually Installing an EA for use
To install an EA you need to copy the EX4 file to the expert advisors folder. This is typically under the MetaTrader folder. For Alpari this is :-
C:\Program Files\MetaTrader – Alpari UK\experts\
For InterbankFX it is :-
C:\Program Files\Interbank FX Trader 4\experts\
Once the EA has been placed in this folder, you need to close and re start MetaTrader for it to be in the EA list.
If you are unfamiliar with moving files around your PC, then this is how to do it:-
First you need to download the Roboteer.ex4 file to somewhere sensible such as your desktop.
Then you need to open ‘my computer’ (by double left mouse ‘clicking’ my computer)this will vary from one revision of windows but for XP it should look something like this :-
My computer window showing local drives
You need to find your local hard drive and then left click the icon representing this.
A new window will appear with something similar to the following :-
You are now looking at the file / folder contents of Drive c:
In the address field it says C: (meaning drive C ) the contents of the window are showing the files and folders on Drive c:
You want to double left mouse click on “Program Files” to bring up a similar window to the following :-
Program Files contents
You
may need to scroll down to see the MetaTrader folder. Also, depending on which
Broker you have used, you may find the name of this folder to have a Broker
extension to it. I use Alpari, and consequently, the folder name is “MetaTrader
– Alpari
Double Left mouse ‘click’ on this to bring up the MetaTrader folders and files :-
Window showing contents of MetaTrader
Next you need to double left mouse ‘click’ on the “Experts” folder. Once you have done this your actually in the location you need to be.
From here you need to drag the Roboteer.ex4 file into the “experts” folder as per the next picture. You do this by left mouse clicking the Roboteer-Phase-Two.ex4 file and holding the left mouse button. You then simply move the mouse whilst holding the left mouse button down) across to the “experts” folder window, and let go of the mouse button.
Dragging the Roboteer file
Roboteer should now appear in the file listing in the folder window. The following screen shows what you should end up with :-
Roboteer now present in Folder
Once this file is present in the “experts” folder, you will need to close MetaTrader (if you have it open) and reload MetaTrader.
Now you can open the navigator window in MetaTrader and add the Roboteer expert advisor to the EUR/USD chart :-
Navigator window open in MetaTrader showing Roboteer
If
you look for the Roboteer EA you
This
doesn’t mean that the EA can not be used though. In fact it can be used. You
simply highlight the EA you want to use, then right mouse ‘click’ over the high
lighted EA and choose ‘attach to chart’ from the drop down menu. If you do this
with Roboteer, the following screen
Roboteer’s inputs screen
If
you actually hit OK at this point the Roboteer EA
What you will now see when you look at the chart is :-
EA loaded on chart, but not Trading live
Note the cross next to the Roboteer EA. This means that MetaTrader has disabled ALL EAs. So first you have to enable all EAs. You do this by left mouse ‘clicking’ ‘Tools’ from the top menu and then selecting ‘Options’. The following window appears :-
Click the Enable EAs checkbox and ‘allow DLL imports
You need to make sure that the ‘Enable Expert Advisors’ checkbox is ticked.
You also need to make sure that ‘Allow DLL imports’ checkbox is also ticked, but that the ‘Confirm DLL function calls’ checkbox is NOT ticked.
Note that the EA is named, but has a non-smiley face next to it. This means that the EA is enabled, but not Trading live.
To make the system Trade live, you need to right click on the EA in the top of the chart and choose Expert Advisors – properties. The following screen grab shows this process :-
EA Properties Window
This will bring up the screen you saw when attaching the EA above. This time you need to left mouse ‘click’ the common tab. The following screen will appear :-
EA Properties Common Tab
If you get a cross next to your EA on the advanced chart, this means that the system has been set to Disable all EAs (which it will do on a new account)
Once you tick this box and ‘click’ OK the EA will then start to run and Trade. This will be confirmed by a smiley face next to the EA name on the chart :-
EA Enabled, note smiley face next to Roboteer
You
now know how to load and enable an Expert Advisor …. !
The Roboteer Expert Advisor
Key Features of Roboteer
Here are the main advantages to using Roboteer-Phase-Three:-
- It is fully automated, and places all Trades automatically.
- Is designed to trade a single currency pair the EUR/USD
- It is designed specifically to use optimized settings provided by FellowTraders servers. There are more than 16 system parameters being optimized continuously by FellowTraders servers.
- It uses fully automated money management to size the Trades based on the available balance within the account. There is a choice of money management systems available. ‘Fixed Ratio’ as detailed by Ryan Jones, and the standard ‘Fixed Fraction’.
- It uses 3, yes THREE separate trading systems to bring returns no matter what the market is doing. This Trading system ‘Array’ is effectively the most complex system of its type available today.
- Each trading system
uses its own money management and captures this to file on the local PC.
The idea here is that if a trading system is profitable it
- Two of the Trading systems Trade with trend, one trades against trend
- Overall Roboteer
- It will compound Trading returns as your Trading balance grows.
- With the risk multiplier set at 1, Roboteer has returned 8 - 23% per month since the beginning of 2008, and has placed an average of 2.4 Trades per Day.
- It has retuned an average of 89% profitable trades during this time.
- Drawdown varies depending on money management settings, but using fixed ratio, and the risk multiplier set to 1, Maximal drawdown has been less than 20% at anytime.
How Does Roboteer Work ?
Roboteer monitors incoming price data on the chart it is attached to (the EUR/USD). It also compares the current price activity of the latest bar, with the historical price action of previous bars, and uses mathematical algorithms written into a series of rules to decide when to enter the market, in which direction (to Buy or Sell) and what to do to trail the stop on existing trades.
Roboteer consists of three completely separate trading systems all working on the same chart, but using separate money management values based on its own performance.
The three systems use a mixture of the following algorithms :-
The Aligator indicator, Stochastic indicator, ADX (average directional movement), Fractal indicator, as well as ParabolicSar, Money Flow index, Demarker indicator and point based trailing stops.
There is also a moving average slope entry filter for all of the systems, and an oscillator being used as an extreme price movement filter for another (modified RSI)
Trading multiple systems together is known as a trading array. It is inherently complex, and un trade-able manually.
All of that said, you, as the user , do not need to worry about any of that, you simply need to trade Roboteer as is….!
Back – Testing Roboteer
Roboteer has been set up to forward trade into the current Month, with each separate system being optimized regularly (typically 1 a Month as a minimum, down to once a week depending on market conditions)
If you want to back-test RT against the EUR/USD, then you can simply click the ‘Strategy Tester’ icon at the top of MT4’s screen.
Opening MT4’s strategy tester
Once the strategy tester is open, the MT4 screen should change to look like the following
MT4’s Strategy tester applet on screen
To run a back-test you need to load Roboteer from the drop down list marked Expert Advisor above.
Then select the Currency pair as the EUR/USD, also from a drop down list marked Symbol above .
Then choose the model type. I tend to use the ‘every tick’ method to be as precise as possible.
You may need to add historic data via the History manager from the MT4 ‘Tools’ menu. You can normally download historical data from your broker. I use Alpari History for this.
Make sure you choose a 1 minute time frame, as any other will cause the back-test to fail.
Then simply click the ‘Start’ button.
Once the back-test has started, you can then keep an eye on both the journal tab, and the graph tab whilst the back-test is running.
Here is a screen grab of a back test run using Roboteer against the EUR/USD :-
Graph Tab of Strategy Tester showing equity balance etc.
Note the significant dip at the end of the test above. MT4’s strategy tester always closes all open trades once the last day in the history being tested is reached. In reality of course the system may well carry on trading leaving the current open Trades to exit according to the system rules.
So there you have it.
Bear in mind that the optimized settings being used by Roboteer are designed to trade the current price action, and are not optimized for past price action. Typically Roboteer should make good money if back-tested against the last 3 - 6 Months of data, but using data from before this can result in a poor back-test.
Trading a Demo Account
I would recommend Trading a demo account initially. This even applies if you are an experienced currency Trader. Unless you know exactly what MetaTrader 4 is, and have experience of Trading Expert Advisors in the past. Look to open a demo account with a supporting broker, and then Trade Roboteer for a period of time. At least until you understand how to drive MetaTrader 4, how to enter and exit Trades manually, and understand the foibles of what is displayed by Roboteer on screen, as well as recognizing when things do not look right.
Also I want you to see Roboteer working, making money, before you commit your hard earned ‘cash’
A demo account does not have to be run on a dedicated PC. Just make sure you can comfortably run MetaTrader4 with Roboteer loaded, minimized on a machine that is connected to the internet, and can be left on 24 hours a Day until you are happy to move to a live account.
Getting Authorized for Optimized settings download
Remember that you will not use optimized settings until you place
your clickbank receipt number into Roboteer’s settings menu. Click F7 on the
chart Roboteer is attached too and then click the inputs tab and enter your 8
digit alphanumeric clickbank receipt number into the first field. Then click
return, and finally click the OK button tom
exit the settings menu.
Use a dedicated PC when Trading Live
Roboteer is designed to run 24 hours a Day. It constantly monitors the price movements, as well as Trade entries and exits, looking to replace taken Trades within the Trade grid. It is therefore important that both MetaTrader 4 and Roboteer have undisturbed access to your Broker (via broadband) and that you have a PC that can be left on permanently.
Although MetaTrader 4 and Roboteer do not require that much processing power, dedicating a machine as a Trading server is recommended. I currently have a cheap PC (AMD Athlon, 1 gig ram, 40gig hard drive, XP pro) running as a dedicated Trading machine in my garage. This machine cost me $250 to build, and has been running for more than 18 months. In fact I have several of these cheap machines sat in my garage doing various tasks, from Trading live, running a demo account on new version of Roboteer, as well as running the mail service for FellowTraders..
My Trading ‘ Farm’ of cheap PCs
Just to prove that this really is in my garage, here is a picture taken further back !
Trading ‘ Farm’ above drinks fridge in garage .. !
Hardware Failure
The first question most people ask is “What happens if the machine dies, or there is a power cut, or broadband fails?”
Well
the first thing I would say, is “DON’T
PANIC” the system has been written with a certain amount of hardware
failure protection in mind. If the PC running Roboteer fails for a period of
time, then the trade grid remains, existing trades
Installing Roboteer
Installation of Roboteer is pretty straightforward.
FellowTraders have created an installer that installed MT4 from Alpari in a blank state (no user details or account registered) but with Roboteer actually fully installed on a chart, with all of the correct checkboxes ticked and ready to roll.
All you have to do is download the installer (roboteer.exe) from the download webpage and then double left mouse click this file to install. Follow the onscreen prompts, agree with the license and once installation is complete
Parameter Settings
If
you right mouse ‘click’ on the chart that you have Roboteer attached to and
click ‘F7’, the following screen
Roboteer’s Parameter settings
These parameters are adjustable by the user. The following table describes their meaning and use :-
|
Parameter Name |
Meaning |
|
ManualLotsize |
Default 0.0 (set this above 0 to override automatic lotsizes used in Mini and Standard account types above) |
|
UsedFixedRatio |
True (default) means use Ryan Jones fixed ration money management process, False means used standard fixed fractional Money Management |
|
Risk Multiplier |
Default is 1.0, this is adjustable in tenths to increase or reduce the standard risk by this figure as a multiplier. |
|
TradeSystem1 |
Default True (enter false if you do not want to Trade system1) |
|
TradeSystem2 |
Default True (enter false if you do not want to Trade system 2) |
|
TradeSystem3 |
Default True (enter false if you do not want to trade system 3) |
|
SendMail |
Default is false. Set this to true, if you have setup the ability to send mail within MT4 (options from the topMT4 menu, then click the email tab) If set to true the system will send an email for every trade that is entered, and closed out. |
|
UseOptimizedSettings |
Default is true, this tells the system to look to download and use the optimized settings from FellowTraders website. Set this to false if you wish to use the hard set generalized settings built into the system. Requires an authorized subscription to this service. You must register both your demo account and live account numbers via the following web form http://www.fellowtraders.com/roboteer-optiform.html |
|
Sys1MagicNumber |
Magic Number used by System 1 to identify its trades |
|
Sys2MagicNumber |
Magic Number used by System 2 to identify its trades |
|
Sys3MagicNumber |
Magic Number used by System 3 to identify its trades |
|
FontColour |
The font colour in RGB (default is white) |
What You See on the Screen
In the top to centre of the chart of the EUR/USD (that you have Roboteer attached too) you will see one of the following statements :-
Upon start up, you will probably see the following message :-
Chart message from Roboteer
The statement on screen and in the ‘Experts’ tab, states that your account number is only authorized for demo use (demo account rather than live account) and also that the account is NOT authorized for optimized download.
Once you have used the online form at :-
http://www.fellowtraders.com/roboteer-authorization.html
to request authorization for download of optimized settings, the following message will appear next time you boot MetaTrader and Roboteer :-
On Chart message from Roboteershowing authorised for optimized
settings download
The following statements are shown in the experts tab :-
Both above screen show that you are now authorized for download of optimized settings, but that you are still only authorized to use Roboteer on a demo account.
If you use the online forms to ask for authorization of Roboteer for a Live account, once authorized, the following message will appear on chart :-
On Chart message from Roboteer showing authorisation for both a live
account and optimized settings download
The experts tab will show the following messages each time you boot :-
Money Management
Keeping track of each systems performance
The system uses fully automated built in money management to gauge what to risk on each Trade. Because there are 3 systems in use, an initial available margin check is made, and then this value is broken into 3 and written to files that capture and hold the profit and loss of trading by each of the 3 systems.
The files are written to c:\program files\metatrader\experts\files when running live and are named sensibly (typically “System1monies-xxxxxx.txt”, “System2monies-xxxxxx.txt” and “System3monies-xxxxxx.txt”) where xxxxxx is the account number of your account being traded.
When back-testing, these files are written to c:\program files\metatrader\tester\files instead, to stop overwriting the live trading files.
The idea here is to let a profitable system use its profits to grow the lotsizes in new trades, and a bad system will reduce its lotsizes, all based on the calculated profit and loss of trading for each system.
Fixed Ratio Money Management
Roboteer has two choices of money management, Fixed Ratio and Fixed Fractional.
Fixed Ratio is based on Ryan Jones system as detailed in his book “The Trading Game” (John Wiley and Sons inc ISBN 0-471-31698-9)
I do not intend to explain the system fully, other than to say that it reduces risk as money is made, and is particularly good when starting out.
Fixed Fractional Money Management
Roboteer is also able to use fixed fractional money management. This is basically the method most people are familiar with, where a set percentage of the account balance is used to set lot size.
Roboteer in
Use
So how do you know what Roboteer is actually doing?
Well the answer is to look at the information summaries that MetaTrader give you. All Trading activity is summarized in several Tabs of the MetaTrader window called ‘Terminal’. This is accessible by clicking on the Terminal icon at the top of the metatrader main window.
Terminal Window icon
Once the terminal window is open, you can see several tabs along the bottom.
Terminal Window
The first Tab, is called ‘Trade’ and it is in here, that all open trades (along with their current P&L) are listed from the top downwards. At the bottom of open trades you will find a summary of the current open trading activity :-
Terminal window Trade tab
As you can see above, there are several trades open (in fact there are currently 23 Trades open on this account, and the current open Trade P&L is - £278
Also the current balance is shown across the left hand side, along with actual equity if current open trades were closed, the margin that is currently in use to keep the open Trades open, and the free leveraged margin available along with the margin level % (this drops to 0 once you are leveraged to maximum.
Every open Trade shows the Date is was opened, whether there is an attached stop price, what the attached profit stop is also. There is a column called ‘Swap’. This is where the interest for the leverage is actually accrued. Interest charged for a Buy Trade is more than interest for a Sell trade. Interest is only charged if you hold a position overnight.
The ‘Account History’ Tab is where all closed pending orders, as well as closed trades are actually listed.
Terminal – Account History Tab
Not only are the closed pending orders closed at the end of each day listed here, but closed trade that have either hit a stop, or a profit exit are also listed here. In the above picture you can see that on the 11th Jan 2008, there were at least 16 Trades that closed for a small profit (in fact there were 67 closed profitable trades on the 11th Jan 2008)
You will also notice that there is a summary at the bottom of the page giving P&L totals, and any other pertinent information you need to asses the systems performance to date.
Also, you can right mouse ‘click’ on the account history detail and then choose ‘Save detailed report’ from a list that appears. This is how I create the reports you have all seen on the web site.
Roboteer’s Stops
Roboteer uses a two
stage trailing stop system.
Lets say that system 1
uses a safety stop of 100 pips, and a trailing stop of 40 pips. What does this
mean? The safety stop is placed when the trade is entered. So if you were to
look at the trade tab of the terminal window you would see that the ‘S/L’ value
would be 100 pips away from the entry price.
If the price action
moves against you this would be the final exit point.
However, if the price
action moves in your favour, then once the price action has moved 40 pips, the
stop would then trail to stay 40 pips behind the price action.
Effectively this means
Roboteer is using a 2 stage stop system. This two stage approach has proven to be
more effective than a single stage trailing stop.
It is quite normal to
see aa safety stop of several hundred pips. This could be becuae there is a
large amount of volatility and noise in the EUR/USD, and Roboteers optimisation
servers have deemed it correct to open the safety stop up accordingly.
Knowing what Roboteer is likely to do
Roboteer aims to take several chunks from a short to medium term trend. It does this by Looking at the medium term trend based on a mixture of filters. The simplest of these is a moving average overlaid on a daily bar chart. Here is an example of such a chart :-
Understanding the medium term trend
Although not strictly true for each system, Roboteer would place buys above this moving average line, and sells below it. This should only be used as a guide, simply because each system uses an optimized MA filter, and can ignore it if other indicators oppose it.
The next important Tab is the ‘Expert’ tab:-
This displays any pertinent information with regards to what any loaded EA says it is doing (such as Roboteer) Roboteer has several key statements that ‘print’ to this tab when certain events occur.
It details when the EA loads and what the
inputs were. For Roboteer, one of the first things it does, is checks to see if
you have a live account authorized, and it also then checks and downloads the
latest
The last Tab that is of importance is the ‘Journal’ Tab. This is where system messages confirm what any EA (such as Roboteer) is doing, and also logged errors if they occur. The Journal and Expert Tabs between them, give you an idea as to what is really happening at the nuts and bolts end of running Roboteer. I usually request a screen dump of these tabs when there are issues.
The Terminal window ‘Journal’ Tab
Transitioning to a new version of Roboteer
FellowTraders are constantly working on
upgrading Roboteer. This means that there
I would learn to Transition during a
Trading session, because if you do this out of hours Roboteer
Leave existing trades open, but please bear in mind that these trades may not use updated features. Only new Trades will use all the features of the latest version once installed. Some traders prefer to close all open trades Directly after upgrading to a new revision.
To install the new version make sure you have copied it into your experts folder as per example on page 33.
The new revision should take up trading where the last one left off.
Expectations for Roboteer
Once Roboteer enters Trades, depending on
how long a Trend lasts, Roboteer can enter a period of Drawdown. This is
normal. Once price activity returns, profit
In practice, Roboteer makes good money when a short to medium trend occurs (where a trend continues for more than 3 Days) but will lose money if a trend changes, or if the EUR/USD is trading in a fixed trading range.
You can expect Roboteer to place an average
of 2.5 Trades a Day and make 3-25% per Month (compound if you use Fixed Ratio
money management). Roboteer does have down periods, and these
Depending on safety stop sozes, Roboteer can enter trades and then noit exit for some time (typically up to 10 days) this is quite normal. Just be patient.
Limitations of Roboteer
Roboteer has been written as a genuine
Trading tool that
Trouble Shooting
Revision Maintenance
Roboteer is a complex bit of Software. It has to integrate and work with several other pieces of software, and use Hardware too.
Even in the simplest of setups, there will be a PC, its OS (probably a variant of Microsoft Windows) and there is MetaTrader 4 as the brokerage and base trading platform. On top of this you have drivers that talk to your cable or broadband link, and the hardware that controls this.
I cannot provide troubleshooting for all of this, but I can at least give you a feel for the types of issues that show at the ‘Terminal’ window within MetaTrader, and that can be pointed either at Roboteer and how it is set up, or at your Broker.
The first thing to do when looking at issues is to make sure that MetaTrader is running the latest patches. Currently as of 12/8/08 MetaTrader 4 is at build 2.17
Roboteer not running live
If you have loaded and you cannot make Roboteer actually run live, then make sure you have a smiley face on the chart next to Roboteer. If you have a cross, or an unhappy face then refer to Page 40 of this manual, and make sure you have followed everything.
If you have, then the next thing to do is to look at the messages on chart. They are self explanatory. If all messages on chart look OK then check the ‘Expert’ Tab under the Terminal window and see if it has any red triangles (meaning an issue). Here is an example of Roboteer not running live, and yet having a smiley face on the screen. This is what was in the ‘Expert’ Tab :-
You can see that there are two red statements in the above list. The first says “ dll calls are not allowed, winnet.dll” the second simply says “expert stopped”.
There will also be a statement on chart to the effect that you have not turned ON ‘Allow DLL imports’
What this means is that the ‘Allow DLL
imports’ checkbox in the common Tab of Roboteer’s properties has not been
checked. To correct this you simply left mouse ‘click’ on the chart you have Roboteer
attached too, and then hit the F7 key. Click onto the Common tab and then tick
the ‘Allow DLL imports’, at the same time uncheck the ‘Confirm DLL function
calls’ or the system
Trading errors
MetaTrader performs a myriad of checks when placing Trades. These checks do produce a multitude of errors, that can be tracked in the ‘Journal’ Tab of the Terminal window.
Here is a list of the more common errors and what they mean :-
Pending
Sell Trade failed 130
The actual error is 130, refers to the mini grid that is trying to open the Pending Trade. Basically this means invalid stop, But also appears when the system try’s to open a trade stop too near the price action. The system will keep trying as the price moves, so this error does appear quite often, especially after a trade has exited with a profit, in the middle of a Buy, or Sell Many grid.
If you are trying to trade an unusual currency pair such as the GBP/CHF this error may occur because the spread of this currency is higher than the standard 2 pips, and it may point to stop prices and profit take pricing being to close to the market. Try making the profit take slightly larger than standard to take into account the larger spread (8 pip spread instead of the larger currency pairs 2-3 pips)
Pending
Buy Trade failed 131
This means that the trade volume within the Pending Trade is invalid. This usually points to the wrong ManualLotsize selected within RT’s properties. Try changing the ManualLotsize.
Pending
Buy Trade failed 148.
This error means that the Broker has determined that you already have enough trades open and pending, and have In fact reached the allowed Trade limit. This varies by Broker, and usually occurs because you have a large number of Trades open, and the system is also trying to replace pending trades in one of the mini grids.
Appendix A Trading Error Codes
|
Constant |
Value |
Description |
|
ERR_NO_ERROR |
0 |
No error returned. |
|
ERR_NO_RESULT |
1 |
No error returned, but
the result is unknown. |
|
ERR_COMMON_ERROR |
2 |
Common error. |
|
ERR_INVALID_TRADE_PARAMETERS
|
3 |
Invalid trade
parameters. |
|
ERR_SERVER_BUSY |
4 |
Trade server is busy. |
|
ERR_OLD_VERSION |
5 |
Old version of the
client terminal. |
|
ERR_NO_CONNECTION |
6 |
No connection with trade
server. |
|
ERR_NOT_ENOUGH_RIGHTS |
7 |
Not enough rights. |
|
ERR_TOO_FREQUENT_REQUESTS
|
8 |
Too frequent requests. |
|
ERR_MALFUNCTIONAL_TRADE |
9 |
Malfunctional trade
operation. |
|
ERR_ACCOUNT_DISABLED |
64 |
Account disabled. |
|
ERR_INVALID_ACCOUNT |
65 |
Invalid account. |
|
ERR_TRADE_TIMEOUT |
128 |
Trade timeout. |
|
ERR_INVALID_PRICE |
129 |
Invalid price. |
|
ERR_INVALID_STOPS |
130 |
Invalid stops. |
|
ERR_INVALID_TRADE_VOLUME
|
131 |
Invalid trade volume. |
|
ERR_MARKET_CLOSED |
132 |
Market is closed. |
|
ERR_TRADE_DISABLED |
133 |
Trade is disabled. |
|
ERR_NOT_ENOUGH_MONEY |
134 |
Not enough money. |
|
ERR_PRICE_CHANGED |
135 |
Price changed. |
|
ERR_OFF_QUOTES |
136 |
Off quotes. |
|
ERR_BROKER_BUSY |
137 |
Broker is busy. |
|
ERR_REQUOTE |
138 |
Requote. |
|
ERR_ORDER_LOCKED |
139 |
Order is locked. |
|
ERR_LONG_POSITIONS_ONLY_ALLOWED
|
140 |
Long positions only
allowed. |
|
ERR_TOO_MANY_REQUESTS |
141 |
Too many requests. |
|
ERR_TRADE_MODIFY_DENIED |
145 |
Modification denied
because order too close to market. |
|
ERR_TRADE_CONTEXT_BUSY |
146 |
Trade context is busy. |
MQL4 run time error codes
|
Constant |
Value |
Description |
|
ERR_NO_MQLERROR |
4000 |
No error. |
|
ERR_WRONG_FUNCTION_POINTER
|
4001 |
Wrong function pointer. |
|
ERR_ARRAY_INDEX_OUT_OF_RANGE
|
4002 |
Array index is out of
range. |
|
ERR_NO_MEMORY_FOR_FUNCTION_CALL_STACK
|
4003 |
No memory for function
call stack. |
|
ERR_RECURSIVE_STACK_OVERFLOW
|
4004 |
Recursive stack
overflow. |
|
ERR_NOT_ENOUGH_STACK_FOR_PARAMETER
|
4005 |
Not enough stack for
parameter. |
|
ERR_NO_MEMORY_FOR_PARAMETER_STRING
|
4006 |
No memory for parameter
string. |
|
ERR_NO_MEMORY_FOR_TEMP_STRING
|
4007 |
No memory for temp
string. |
|
ERR_NOT_INITIALIZED_STRING
|
4008 |
Not initialized string. |
|
ERR_NOT_INITIALIZED_ARRAYSTRING
|
4009 |
Not initialized string in
array. |
|
ERR_NO_MEMORY_FOR_ARRAYSTRING
|
4010 |
No memory for array
string. |
|
ERR_TOO_LONG_STRING |
4011 |
Too long string. |
|
ERR_REMAINDER_FROM_ZERO_DIVIDE
|
4012 |
Remainder from zero
divide. |
|
ERR_ZERO_DIVIDE |
4013 |
Zero divide. |
|
ERR_UNKNOWN_COMMAND |
4014 |
Unknown command. |
|
ERR_WRONG_JUMP |
4015 |
Wrong jump (never
generated error). |
|
ERR_NOT_INITIALIZED_ARRAY
|
4016 |
Not initialized array. |
|
ERR_DLL_CALLS_NOT_ALLOWED
|
4017 |
DLL calls are not
allowed. |
|
ERR_CANNOT_LOAD_LIBRARY |
4018 |
Cannot load library. |
|
ERR_CANNOT_CALL_FUNCTION
|
4019 |
Cannot call function. |
|
ERR_EXTERNAL_EXPERT_CALLS_NOT_ALLOWED
|
4020 |
Expert function calls
are not allowed. |
|
ERR_NOT_ENOUGH_MEMORY_FOR_RETURNED_STRING
|
4021 |
Not enough memory for
temp string returned from function. |
|
ERR_SYSTEM_BUSY |
4022 |
System is busy (never
generated error). |
|
ERR_INVALID_FUNCTION_PARAMETERS_COUNT
|
4050 |
Invalid function
parameters count. |
|
ERR_INVALID_FUNCTION_PARAMETER_VALUE
|
4051 |
Invalid function
parameter value. |
|
ERR_STRING_FUNCTION_INTERNAL_ERROR
|
4052 |
String function internal
error. |
|
ERR_SOME_ARRAY_ERROR |
4053 |
Some array error. |
|
ERR_INCORRECT_SERIES_ARRAY_USING
|
4054 |
Incorrect series array
using. |
|
ERR_CUSTOM_INDICATOR_ERROR
|
4055 |
Custom indicator error. |
|
ERR_INCOMPATIBLE_ARRAYS |
4056 |
Arrays are incompatible.
|
|
ERR_GLOBAL_VARIABLES_PROCESSING_ERROR
|
4057 |
Global variables
processing error. |
|
ERR_GLOBAL_VARIABLE_NOT_FOUND
|
4058 |
Global variable not
found. |
|
ERR_FUNCTION_NOT_ALLOWED_IN_TESTING_MODE
|
4059 |
Function is not allowed
in testing mode. |
|
ERR_FUNCTION_NOT_CONFIRMED
|
4060 |
Function is not
confirmed. |
|
ERR_SEND_MAIL_ERROR |
4061 |
Send mail error. |
|
ERR_STRING_PARAMETER_EXPECTED
|
4062 |
String parameter
expected. |
|
ERR_INTEGER_PARAMETER_EXPECTED
|
4063 |
Integer parameter
expected. |
|
ERR_DOUBLE_PARAMETER_EXPECTED
|
4064 |
Double parameter
expected. |
|
ERR_ARRAY_AS_PARAMETER_EXPECTED
|
4065 |
Array as parameter
expected. |
|
ERR_HISTORY_WILL_UPDATED
|
4066 |
Requested history data
in updating state. |
|
ERR_END_OF_FILE |
4099 |
End of file. |
|
ERR_SOME_FILE_ERROR |
4100 |
Some file error. |
|
ERR_WRONG_FILE_NAME |
4101 |
Wrong file name. |
|
ERR_TOO_MANY_OPENED_FILES
|
4102 |
Too many opened files. |
|
ERR_CANNOT_OPEN_FILE |
4103 |
Cannot open file. |
|
ERR_INCOMPATIBLE_ACCESS_TO_FILE
|
4104 |
Incompatible access to a
file. |
|
ERR_NO_ORDER_SELECTED |
4105 |
No order selected. |
|
ERR_UNKNOWN_SYMBOL |
4106 |
Unknown symbol. |
|
ERR_INVALID_PRICE_PARAM |
4107 |
Invalid price. |
|
ERR_INVALID_TICKET |
4108 |
Invalid ticket. |
|
ERR_TRADE_NOT_ALLOWED |
4109 |
Trade is not allowed. |
|
ERR_LONGS__NOT_ALLOWED |
4110 |
Longs are not allowed. |
|
ERR_SHORTS_NOT_ALLOWED |
4111 |
Shorts are not allowed. |
|
ERR_OBJECT_ALREADY_EXISTS
|
4200 |
Object exists already. |
|
ERR_UNKNOWN_OBJECT_PROPERTY
|
4201 |
Unknown object property.
|
|
ERR_OBJECT_DOES_NOT_EXIST
|
4202 |
Object does not exist. |
|
ERR_UNKNOWN_OBJECT_TYPE |
4203 |
Unknown object type. |
|
ERR_NO_OBJECT_NAME |
4204 |
No object name. |
|
ERR_OBJECT_COORDINATES_ERROR
|
4205 |
Object coordinates
error. |
|
ERR_NO_SPECIFIED_SUBWINDOW
|
4206 |
No specified subwindow. |
Document Information
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Document Template: |
Full Report Portrait Template |
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Document
Created by: |
Peter Parsons |
20th August 2008 |
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Document Approved by: |
FellowTraders |
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First Release: |
V1.15 |
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Change Information
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Date |
New
No. |
Changes
made |
Author |
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26-11-08 |
1.731 |
Various |
Peter Parsons |
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Distribution
This document is to be distributed as follows:
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All customers |
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